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Corruption Porn / Fatwah / August 29, 2011
By Mark Ames

Great news about Obama’s new pick to head the CEA, Alan Krueger, the so-called “labor economist.” Yeah, he labors all right: He labors hard to be Larry Summers’ tennis partner. And believe you me, being Larry Summers’ tennis partner is like being a made man in the mob. Krueger understood who butters his bread in this town: Larry Summers, the same guy who took everyone else’s bread and butter, not just in America but the world over.

Yup, that’s right hopesters: Hate to break it to all you “If only Obama had the right people around him” types, Obama knows who he’s picking, and in case you haven’t noticed over the past 3 years, there’s kind of a pattern here: Obama picks the same guys Clinton or Bob Rubin or Larry Summers would pick.

Krueger worked in the Treasury Department under Geithner in 2009-10, so this is a guy who’s got the magic touch all right. (That, and the secrets to the greatest crime in mankind’s history.) Like Summers and Geithner, Krueger also worked in the Clinton Administration.

But what makes Krueger such a great pick from President Obama’s point of view is that Alan Krueger plays lots of tennis with Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Gene Sperling. Folks, if that doesn’t prove that this guy is “credible,” then clearly you lack a credible cross-court game.

Even Billie Jean King thinks Alan Kreuger is “credible”

Here’s all you need to know about Alan Krueger, Obama’s stunning surprise populist pick to head the Council of Economic Advisors. It’s from a stomach-turning blowjob piece titled “Moneyball: Geithner and Summers Go To Tennis Camp,” published in the New Republic in October, 2009:

For the handful of people in charge of saving the U.S. economy, it’s been a grueling season. The last eight months have featured endless back-and-forths, tense stalemates, and spirited confrontations. Larry Summers, the president’s chief economic adviser, has drawn blood with his lacerating quips. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has dropped expletives to signal his frustration. Even their aides have gotten in on the action.

And, in those rare instances when the wonks get a break, they step outside their conference rooms, loosen their ties, and do the same thing all over again. On a tennis court. For years, Summers, Geithner, and a variety of deputies have stared each other down from opposite sides of a three-foot-high net. These tennis relationships have played out on courts from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Davos, Switzerland, and on pretty much every flat surface in Washington, D.C. It turns out that tennis is the unofficial sport of the Obama financial team. And, if you want to understand the way its members go at it behind closed doors, it’s worth watching them go at it with tightly strung rackets.

It may come as a surprise that the normally understated Geithner–his trademark verbal tic: “I don’t know anything about this, but …”–would play a similarly incautious game. But, decked out in tennis shorts, Geithner is wont to let it rip. “He’s a little different on the court than Tim Geithner the central banker,” says one colleague. “When he isn’t playing well, it’s because he’s going for it and missing, not because he’s being too careful.” Though nearing 50, Geithner is a natural athlete with a runner’s physique. He can materialize at net so quickly it feels like he served from mid-court, and the sight of his five-foot-eight-inch frame almost dares an opponent to lob him. This is generally not advisable, as Geithner has more impressive ups than you expect to find at a G-20 summit. One hallmark of a game with the Treasury secretary is an unusual number of overhead smashes. Geithner was, after all, a Summers protégé.

Since the inauguration, Geithner, Summers, and several other senior economic officials–including Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin and Assistant Secretary Alan Krueger--have played roughly half-a-dozen doubles matches. (Various members of the group rotate in or out on any given day.) The star of these outings is Gene Sperling, a top Geithner aide who, early in the administration, became known as the “undersecretary of everything” for dispatching the many thankless tasks circumstances had thrown his way. As a teenager, Sperling’s scrappy baseline play won him a tennis scholarship to the University of Minnesota, where he broke the will of more powerful opponents by chasing down every shot. So far this year, the team with Sperling on it has taken all but a single set.

This is not for any lack of effort. In February, Geithner and Sperling teamed up against Summers and Krueger for a match at Washington’s Rock Creek Park Tennis Center. Geithner and Sperling took the first set 6-3 on the strength of their aggressive net play, forcing Summers and Krueger to scramble defensively. There was talk of switching teams once the set ended, but the idea was promptly nixed. “We thought we’d come back,” says Krueger. He and Summers proceeded to lose 6-3 all over again.

Most of these tennis ties date back to the 1990s, when the men filled out the upper ranks of the Clinton economic team. But it took the Bush administration to usher in the golden age of Clintonite tennis. Not long after leaving office in 2001, Summers and a Treasury colleague named Lee Sachs spent a long weekend refining their strokes at Bollettieri’s world-famous tennis academy in Florida. (Among the illustrious alumni: Andre Agassi, Boris Becker, and Anna Kournikova.) “He and I were making the adjustments to post-government life,” Summers recalls. “His father lived down there, and we decided to try it for several days.”

The trip soon became an annual ritual, with Geithner, Sperling, and several other former colleagues joining in. Each March, the wonks-in-exile would present themselves to the Bollettieri instructors for two days of extensive drilling. In one particularly taxing exercise, the campers would hit a forehand approach, then charge the net to take two volleys before sprinting back to the baseline–one after the other in a whir of circular motion. Imagine the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker; then imagine that the dancers are middle-aged men of roughly average dexterity, and you have the idea.

Well, most of the idea. “Those guys are very, very competitive. Put that in there. Holy shit,” says Bollettieri. “There’s no friendship on the friggin’ court. They want to beat the shit out of everybody.” And how do they stack up? “Sperling is better than any of us,” Summers says. “I was probably second-best at hitting the ball, but I don’t move as well–I’m not as fast. So I would say Geithner or I were probably second-best.”

…The members of the economic team are close confidants. They spend evenings at tennis camp discussing children and career moves. They decorate their offices with pictures of each other in tennis garb. It’s only every now and then, when they reach a point in a match that will separate winner from loser, that their competitive pride kicks in. Conventional wisdom aside, the men aren’t enemies or frenemies or even rivals. They’re more like … frivals.

Late this summer, at a tennis court in Washington, Geithner teamed up with Sperling to take on Krueger and another colleague. Krueger’s team notched a commanding 6-1 win in the first set, then Geithner and Sperling stormed back to a 4-1 lead in the second. That’s when the trouble started. “I hurt my hand too bad to keep playing, and Tim really hurt his back,” recalls Sperling. But neither wanted to throw in the towel. “We stayed on the court for another thirty minutes negotiating who was going to look weak and use their injury as the excuse to end the match.” Finally, they agreed to call it quits so that neither would be crippled. Every frivalry has its limits.

Dang, if only I’d stuck with tennis as a kid, rather than smashing the racket my parents bought me into pieces because I sucked so badly.

I can hear you asking the obvious question here: “Why’d Obama choose Larry Summers’ tennis partner to head the economy? Hasn’t he learned anything?”

Yes, he has: Obama has learned that no matter how much he rat-fucks you, his base, you will have nowhere else to go. What’re ya gonna do, vote for Michelle Bachmann? Live under President Rick Perry? Or wait, you can always vote for the Third Party Libertarian candidate and hand the entire country over to the billionaires, rather than handing over 99% if you vote Republican, or giving away 98.5% to finance and Big Pharma as the Dems do. Yeah, good luck, suckers! The choice is all yours! Bwah-hah-hah!

It’s like what Sam Kinison said about the choice between heterosexuality and homosexuality: “Thanks for the big menu, God! Thanks a lot!”

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.

Click the cover & buy the book!

 

 

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27 Comments

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  • 1. iCONOCLAST  |  August 29th, 2011 at 9:17 am

    Almost makes me pity you lot. Almost.

  • 2. Marlais  |  August 29th, 2011 at 9:20 am

    And yet there are still people calling Obama a socialist. That must be the most successful propaganda campaign ever pulled off.

  • 3. John Drinkwater  |  August 29th, 2011 at 10:48 am

    If recent articles on Counterpunch, along with a tacit endorsement by Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute are any indication, many who pretend to be on the left who supported Obama in 2008 will back Ron Paul this time around, because what leftist couldn’t support a guy who wants to abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the EPA, all environmental regulations, all banking regulations, public education, the FDA, whatever remaining pro-union laws are left, all corporate taxes, abortion, and so on–obviously the left is just dying to sign up for that laundry list, that’s the answer to the corrupt Dems right? Obviously, Mark Ames and the liberal do-gooders at Alternet hate Ron Paul (partly due to the reasons above), but for many on the left–not that I can name any on the left, but I’ll just say “many on the left”– Paul’s opposition to US foreign policy and the drug war alone (which are long-held leftwing positions) are reason enough to support the man. So actually, Obama’s base does have a superior option. Which is, you know, support the guy who supports the billioniares’ agenda ALL THE WAY, not just part of the way like Bachmann or Obama.

  • 4. Anarchy Wolf  |  August 29th, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    We are just fucked every which way. Can’t we just burn it all down?

  • 5. DeeboCools  |  August 29th, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    Ralph Nader 2012; it’s about damn time.

  • 6. John Drinkwater  |  August 29th, 2011 at 1:48 pm

    Well, if Counterpunch doesn’t represent “the Left” in America, then what does? Certainly not Alternet, Daily Kos or even The Nation by comparison.

    August 24, 2011 on Counterpunch – “In Praise of Ron Paul”:

    “Paul is also against things I’m for – like emergency care for illegals, and Roe vs. Wade and Social Security and Medicare. But so what? He has a laser-like eye for what’s sick about our economy – for example, the $10 billion monthly we spend in Afghanistan while child poverty at home goes rampant – and our fear-mongering politics – for example, the equally no-end-in-sight “drug war”. A ‘lonely’ figure in Congress, he voted against the Iraq war–along with 126 Democrats and 6 Republicans in the House, making Paul ‘lonely’ only among Republicans, but that’s neither here nor there–also, 21 Democrats and one Republican in the Senate voted against the war, but if you decide to forget all that, yeah, Ron Paul was all alone, a lonely voice in the wilderness. Oh, and when it came to the infamous Patriot Act, again Ron Paul was all alone–among Republicans at least. Sure, 62 House Democrats also voted against the Patriot Act in 2001 along with Paul and two other Republicans, and it’s true that Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, but if you ignore those, then you’ll see that Ron Paul was all alone voting against them.”

    Ames, I’m surprised you’re not falling for the libertarian talking points on Paul. Among other things, they have no sense of proportion. They think that if they can get everyone to focus on Paul’s position on foreign policy and the drug war – two issues that are far more important than abortion and medicare and social security and public education and environmental protections and free trade and busting unions and empowering corporations and billionaires and banks even more by unleashing their creative free-market energies from the shackles of Big Government oversight – if everyone can ignore all that and just focus on getting legal pot and the pipe-dream of ending the US empire, then everyone would agree this makes Ron Paul a far more radical candidate than any liberal out there. And boy, if your marker is a liberal politician, then you know you’re aiming high!

    Did you watch the last debate? Not only did he kick everyone’s ass on points–and wow, the competition was just brutal too, so you got to give Paul that, no way anybody could possibly kick ass on heavyweights like Rick Santorum or titans like that pizza guy– but the guy just comes across as real, honest and likable. I think too many people form their opinion of Paul based on what others say about him, rather than coming to their own conclusions. I’m trying to say that you, Ames, are getting your ideas from elsewhere even though I know it’s not true, but anyway, the current sockpuppet program says to say “it seems that way…”

  • 7. John Drinkwater  |  August 29th, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    Link to “In Praise of Ron Paul” on Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/24/in-praise-of-ron-paul/

  • 8. John Drinkwater  |  August 29th, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    If conservative = status quo, then Paul is a radical leftist. Aside from opposing the military industrial complex (nothing could be more radical than that, which is why Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, and a whole list of politicians are on record opposing it, but if you only focus on Republicans, then you know, Ron Paul is totally radical leftwing man), the EPA, Social Security, Medicare, public education, are all institutions of the status quo as well. Heck, life is status quo. But Dr Paul is so radical that he wants to protect life of non-living polywog fetuses, and throw living people to the law of the jungle to die. That’s sooooo radical man!

    Seriously, is anyone at the eXiled all that attached to the public education system in America? Didn’t Ames blame public education for Columbine? I mean no, he didn’t–he blamed the culture that Reaganomics and Clinton neoliberalism for bringing on Columbine, but I’m just saying–didn’t he blame public education? I know he didn’t but didn’t he?

    Getting rid of such institutions does not mean they’d be replaced with nothing. Nobody knows if it would work, and the fact that America’s public school system worked well for most of the 20th century until Reaganomics started to fuck with it doesn’t mean it worked well until Reagan fucked with it. Paul’s idea is to simply transfer responsibility for such things to the states. Is that really such a crazy idea? I mean I know it is, but just because it’s crazy and doesn’t mean it’s crazy, does it? Just because for-profit education is destroying an entire generation faster than you can say “school vouchers” doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a chance on more school vouchers, does it?

    In term of Wall Street, bankers and the Fed, there is nobody those guys are more afraid of than Ron Paul. Okay, bankers aren’t really afraid of Paul the way they’re afraid of, say, Elizabeth Warren, which is why they put so much effort into getting her thrown out. But besides her, besides Alan Grayson (whom they also spent plenty of money to get tossed out), besides Russ Feingold and a whole array of leftish Democrats–and I say this knowing that you are anti-Democrat left–but anyway, the fact that Wall Street isn’t sinking money into getting Ron Paul thrown out of office doesn’t mean that they’re not scared of him. Oh, they’re scared all right! That must be a coincidence…

  • 9. Edmund Dorkey  |  August 29th, 2011 at 3:00 pm

    So we find ourselves behind enemy lines. How is our Herzen? Quo vadis?

    – Edmund Dorkey
    Turks and Caicos Islands

  • 10. helplesscase  |  August 29th, 2011 at 3:17 pm

    Real nihilists should vote Bachmann–give her migrainous deliria free reign over the nuclear football and see what happens!

  • 11. RanDomino  |  August 29th, 2011 at 3:24 pm

    Here’s hoping #OccupyWallStreet’s failure will be the last straw that drives the American ‘indignados’ generation out of politics and into revolution.

  • 12. Sam  |  August 29th, 2011 at 4:51 pm

    You had me at “New Republic”

  • 13. Gonad  |  August 29th, 2011 at 6:16 pm

    Hey, I thought I’d write something on your article, instead of just sniping behind your back. Don’t know why, but it seemed like a good idea.

    Yeah, anyway, ummm my thinking is, is that “journalism” has official rules to it. There are specific ways to officially convey information if you’re going to wear an official journalism badge. First and foremost: FACTS. You gotta have ’em if you’re reporting. No facts, no story, they like to say. 2nd is, no cultural inferences, unless you’ve made FACTUAL assertions to go with them.
    Unless you SPELL IT OUT for dumbasses like me, then you can’t just go around posting photos and quoting from stories about social events to make a point about how some guy is fucking hopeless for the leftwing cause.

    Nope, because FACTS, official ones, are the only things that can get us out of political hibernation, even if you steal the cave we’re sleeping in. We were taught how to mime hibernation a long time ago.

    Official journalists operate under rules handed down to us, and we are happy to have things defined for us.

    We reject the theory that “journalists” are just citizens using their First Amendment rights — who in some cases who are so good at communicating and dedicated at it that people pay them for it and build followings around what they say. We think journalism is defined by official institutions, official schools, and official methods. So we official journalists reject your methods of journalism Mark, because we are scared to look right at God, and recognize that we’re just citizens who spend their time focusing on one element of our many powers.

  • 14. John Drinkwater  |  August 29th, 2011 at 7:46 pm

    Ames, you intentionally improve the record by saying Paul, for instance, wants to “abolish” abortion even though he has said quite clearly that the federal government would play no role in deciding the matter. Same with public education and, well, everything else. Paul wants to promote school vouchers to end publically-funded legislation, which he credits Milton Friedman for giving him the idea–if that’s not radical left-wing, then my name isn’t Oroville Libertadbacker. He also wants to abolish federal civil rights legislation. Now, just because this led to Jim Crow laws last time around and very likely will again, doesn’t make it a bad idea. In fact it makes it the most radical left-wing idea in the history of American politics.

    The question is, why do I have so much faith in the state government to take care of people, despite all the evidence that suggests state governments don’t actually give a shit about people. I’m a sucker for libertarian talking points about how Evil the federal government is at promoting justice. Do you really think the solution to America’s problems is to give more power and money to state government? Governments that have proven itself to be totally corrupted by corporate interests, as well as racism, sexism, oligarchy, and injustice on a level that makes the foul federal government look downright benign by comparison.

    As for Columbine, the rotten culture created by Reagan can be separated from the rotten culture that defines the public education system in America, which wasn’t fucked up before Reagan implemented the sorts of free-market economics promoted by Ron Paul (who supported Reagan for president).

  • 15. Jose  |  August 29th, 2011 at 7:55 pm

    ‘hopesters’ made me giggle. Ron Paul isn’t going to get nominated. Neither is Bachmann. Though if this was The Sims: Election 2012 they’d be more entertaining than any other nominee.

  • 16. John Drinkwater  |  August 29th, 2011 at 7:58 pm

    Elizabeth Warren, Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson are great, but to bring them is a red herring since none of them are running for president. If any of them did, I’d have to pretend that I’d support them over Paul, which we all know I wouldn’t but that’s not the point. As it is, Paul is easily the best candidate in the race to destroy America – the furthest to the left of Herman Cain and Rick Santorum, for sure. Don’t ask me how I got that idea. I mean sure Mitt Romney gave health care to his state, whereas Ron Paul wants to end all federal health care programs including Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention Social Security, the EPA, the FDA, publicly school education, and all government oversight of banks, oil companies, and all corporations in general. Which makes him sooooo leftwing, because he’s also for transferring police power over drugs from the federal to the state level, and as we all know, states never oppress anyone, only federal government does.

    And I know Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute pissed you off by attacking the credibility of your expose of Cato- and Koch-linked libertarians running the anti-TSA scam without Glenn revealing his conflict-of-interest, but he has fooled more people into believing his left-wing credentials than anyone else in the libertarian crowd, which is nothing to sneeze at. Sure, Glenn Greenwald supported Ron Paul in 2007, and Bob Barr in 2008, and came out for Libertarian Gary Johnson this year–but still, is anyone more left-wing than Glenn Greenwald? He was recently congratulated, you might have noticed, by both Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore. Congratulated! Do you hear me? If being congratulated by liberal officialdom doesn’t qualify Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute as the most left-wing person in the past three centuries, as I noted before, then my name is Pon Raul.

  • 17. BigFan  |  August 29th, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    The improving of John Drinkwater’s comments is epic and should become a feature article at Rolling Stone or brought over to liberate websites that evangelize for Paul.

  • 18. required  |  August 29th, 2011 at 11:21 pm

    It was really interesting to see MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry (filling in for Rachel Maddow) sharing Alan Krueger’s apparently delicious balls with Ezra Klein. They gave the impression that this guy represented some sort of radical break with the status quo and that his lovely voice could draw the sun out.

  • 19. matt  |  August 29th, 2011 at 11:46 pm

    To all the people bashing counterpunch, they publish opinion from across the spectrum, as long as it’s against the American empire. For example, they publish Paul Craig Roberts, who used to work in the Reagan admininsitration. He is against many of the policies that Bush and now Obama are for, and he is definitely not a leftist. In fact, he is more of libertarian than anything else. Counterpunch publishes Roberts’s writings and essays in support of Paul because they speak out against the evils of American Empire, not because the editors agree with everything Paul says. If you read enough Alexander Cockburn, you’ll find that he is a Trotskyist/Socialist and not a libertarian at all. Counterpunch publishes writings that challenge conventional wisdom. They’re regulars include people like Patrick Cockburn, Michael Hudson (aka the man who should run the American economy), Mike Whitney, Medea Benjamin (code pink activist), Uri Avnery (THE expert on Israel/Palestine) and Ralph Nader, who is a safe progressive voice. Just because Counterpunch has at different times published articles by libertarians doesn’t make they’re editorial bent libertarian.

  • 20. Zadig  |  August 30th, 2011 at 5:11 am

    Yeah, who the fuck do we vote for? I’m still a firm believer in reforming the Democratic party rather than doing away with it, so if someone worth a damn challenges Obama, I will vote for him in the primary. But voting for Ron Paul? Maybe in a Marxist attempt to burn the house down and bring the real class war on all the faster, but any “leftist” voting for Ron Paul because they believe he is the best choice isn’t one.

    Not that Ron Paul has any actual pull outside of internet polls, but still.

  • 21. Bruce  |  August 30th, 2011 at 7:25 am

    Well, like the Baracketeer prexy, there’s the Third Way, BESTIALITY!

  • 22. Josephus P. Franks  |  August 30th, 2011 at 8:06 am

    Agreed with Matt on Counterpunch.

    But more importantly, fuck, even I’d vote for Ron Paul – he’d absolutely destroy the United States’ grip on the world, both by dismantling the U.S. military empire (leading to a massive loss of economic power) and by implementing his libertard policies (leading to a massive loss of economic power). There was a brilliant War Nerd article months ago about assassinations that hit the nail on the head: you want an absolute idiot running an enemy organization. Being that the U.S. government has proven time and again to be the enemy of the vast majority of humankind, excepting U.S. billionaires of course, I want the guy who will do the worst job in charge. That would be Ron Paul.

  • 23. Ganryu  |  August 30th, 2011 at 11:56 am

    OK, who honestly believes that Larry Summers could actually play tennis? That Jabba The Hut-like physique and a penchant for narcolepsy? He already sweats while he’s sitting in one place, I can’t imagine him surviving throwing that bag of Crisco around for 20 min let alone 2 sets of tennis.

    Don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see this, but you’ll find it amusing:

    http://newsflavor.com/politics/us-politics/the-ulsterman-report-rats-from-a-sinking-ship/

    http://newsflavor.com/politics/us-politics/white-house-insider-the-obama-plan-part-three-2/

  • 24. John Drinkwater  |  August 30th, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone here bashed Counterpunch. It has my vote for the best political magazine.

  • 25. John Drinkwater  |  August 31st, 2011 at 12:18 am

    19. matt

    Nobody ever said Counterpunch was libertarian. I said pretty clearly that Counterpunch is far left, which is a good thing. Further to the left than any other publication in America, I believe. At the same time, many of their writers – not just Paul Craig Roberts – are fans of Ron Paul – going back to 2007. I gave the link to a recent piece, “In Praise of Ron Paul” on CP. Here’s another one from April: “Is Ron Paul More Progressive than Obama?”

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/04/28/is-ron-paul-more-progressive-than-obama/

    Here’s a clip:

    “Let’s just assume the worst about Paul: that he’s a corporate libertarian in the Reason magazine/Cato Institute mold that would grant Big Business and the financial industry license to do whatever the hell it wants with little in the way of accountability (I call this scenario the “status quo”). Let’s say he dines on Labradoodle puppies while using their blood to scribble notes in the margins of his dog-eared, gold-encrusted copy of Atlas Shrugged.

    So. Fucking. What.”

    Now, if that doesn’t qualify as the most radical leftwing writing ever put to print in the Western Hemisphere, then my name isn’t E. Libertardus Unum.

    Google “Counterpunch, Ron Paul” and you’ll find more. Almost all pro-Paul. You can choose to be in denial about this if you want, but it won’t change the fact.

    Therefore–and I hope you see the flawless syllogistic reasoning here, follow me if you can–therefore, since Counterpunch is the most leftwing of all, and since many Counterpunch writers support Ron Paul, therefore, by classical syllogistic reason, we can devise the following:

    A: Counterpunch is the most leftwing publication in American history;
    B: Many Counterpunch writers support Ron Paul;
    C: Therefore, all men are Ron Paul.

    [Oh, and thank you, Almighty Exiled Censor, for improving my deductive reasoning skills. You are the Big Government intervention against comment-retardation that I always wished I’d had.]

  • 26. John Drinkwater  |  August 31st, 2011 at 12:48 am

    Whatever. You’re right: Counterpunch’s support for Ron Paul is completely meaningless. It does not suggest that there could be any legitimate reasons for someone on the left to support Ron Paul. Only Mark Ames is right about Ron Paul. Everyone else is wrong. Alexander Cockburn is a phony leftist. Mark Ames is the only real leftist.

  • 27. bjk  |  August 31st, 2011 at 12:52 pm

    He’s clearly a beginner because his grip on his serve is all wrong. Everybody knows that you use a continental/handshake grip on the serve. He’s got a eastern grip on his racket, which is fine for hitting forehands – it’s what Mardy Fish uses – but it’s all wrong for the serve.


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