JHK’s Three-Act Play
As the sage Robert Crumb once remarked about our homeland: “You can’t make this shit up.”
Sarah Palin entered the race for president this week (without stating it in so many words) with a national bus tour, itself kicked off with a motorcycle parade through Washington.
By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press – Sun May 29, 5:57 pm ETWASHINGTON – Sarah Palin rumbled through Washington on the back of a Harley as she and her family began an East Coast tour Sunday, renewing speculation that the former Alaska governor would join the still unsettled Republican presidential contest.Wearing a black leather jacket and surrounded by a throng of cheering fans, Palin and family members jumped on bikes and joined thousands of other motorcyclists on the Memorial Day weekend ride from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial….“How do you wear all this leather and stay cool?” she asked one woman. Palin asked others to show off their tattoos as she took off her own leather jacket and worked her way through a crush of fans, photographers and reporters.
Adolf Hitler liked leather and crypto-military costumes, too, and the build-up to the Third Reich was all about colorful pageantry. Make no mistake – to borrow a favored presidential locution, if I may – Sarah Palin’s campaign is all about shame, about being a nation of losers and feeling bad about it. Adolf Hitler’s career was all about him feeling like a loser at a peculiar moment in history when his whole country felt like a loser nation. His feelings resonated with the crowd’s. Germany had just lost the First World War. The victors (England, France, The USA) had imposed a harsh peace, including massive cash reparations. Germany was broke, demoralized, and humiliated. Hitler had fled to Germany from his own loser homeland, the fading empire of Austria, after a shiftless decade in Vienna of living in rented rooms and homeless men’s shelters, having failed twice to get into the national arts college.
Hitler loved the First World War. It energized him. The German army was the first club he was comfortable being in. When the war was over, he stayed on the army’s payroll as long as possible, even as he became active in Munich’s post-war extremist politics. The emergent Nazi party was the second club he felt good being a member of. And it was in the years 1920 to 1923 that he discovered his theme: playing on Germans’ feelings of humiliation and promising deliverance back to lost greatness.
This is exactly the theme of Sarah Palin’s campaign. A large segment of the American public has entered the dark wilderness of loserdom. They’ve lost jobs, incomes, and even their homes. They can’t support a family, can’t afford to gas up their God-given cars, can hardly even afford to buy food – though many of this group have been programmed, tragically, to get much of their food from hamburger and taco dispensaries that “free market” America has generously dotted the landscape with. They are ashamed, especially living in a nation where liberty is supposed to enable you to get a leg up in the world, to be self-reliant, to make something of yourself. Hence, they imagine themselves to have somehow been deprived of liberty (and honor!) which they must now get back.
They have even lost their racial standing now that the role of president is occupied by a half-African man (who, they suspect, is not even a legitimate citizen, but rather an alien opportunist!). This is very hard for them to articulate, because racism is also something to be ashamed of, and they are already overwhelmed with shame – but nonetheless the old tribal-ethnic feelings dog them. So they express it in a convoluted way as the hobgoblin of “socialism” – the government lavishing money on people who don’t deserve it.
But wait a minute. What money for whom?
Not people on Medicare (“keep your hands off my Medicare!”).
Not people on Social Security (“ditto Social Security”).
Not Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks (“ditto Free Market Capitalism”).
Not the futility of endless war (“Support our troops!”)
Not people on food stamps (over 40 million Americans)
Not people on extended unemployment (10 percent official unemployment; probably more like 16 percent in reality).
So, who’s left? (“Do we have to say?”)
So, the Sarah Palin campaign – and, make no mistake (I love that phrase!) it is a campaign – trafficks in code and buzzwords about the shame of being losers. Her bus tour rolls heavy under the rubric: “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Recognize those phrases? They are from the national oath that we are all trained to recite in the first grade. Most of Sarah Palin’s followers got through the first grade – and are proud of it. The phrase that really rings out, though, is “justice for all.” For a nation of tattooed, hopelessly fat, angry people without jobs or incomes, filled with shame, this phrase resonates. How come no justice for us?
Hitler was more direct. From his emergence out of obscurity in the early 1920s, he made no bones about how come there was no justice for his followers: because it was stolen by the Jews, along with their honor and their greatness. Sarah Palin may never get as explicit, at least not without igniting some kind of new Civil War in the USA. So the bad feelings her followers nourish about being swindled out of their livelihoods and their honor are liable to be expressed indirectly and perversely. One avenue is the idea of “American Exceptionalism” that Palin is retailing to her followers. It is not unlike Hitler’s idea that Germans were a “master race” who were different (exceptional) from other people (and ought to rule them).
I prefer to be direct. Sarah Palin represents a dangerous force in American culture that is startlingly similar to the grandiose hyper-patriotic militarism that Hitler brought to Germany during his rise to power. We have better things to do in this nation than go down some twisted path of vengeance-seeking in the name of lost glory. I hope that Sarah Palin’s competitors on the right will stand up to her American fascist themes and call her out for what she is: a half-educated TV performer unqualified for high political office. The true shame of this country is that we have to take a clown like Sarah Palin seriously.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
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James – What else do we need on Memorial Day? Fighting on the West Bank, war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya, with Yemen on tap, tornados tearing through the heartland, the big banks are bigger and still cooking the books. Everything is trying to tell us something about our extreme efforts to secure an oil-laden future at all costs. But our leaders don’t care about the messages, either from the people or from the planet itself. Our heroic Christian leadership has burned through the Rapture with no hopes of salvation, so the end game is “let’s grab as much as we can before it really ends.” Enjoy my thoughts today, kulturCritic.
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/the-rapture-the-end-game-the-hail-mary/
sic vis pacem, para bellum…
Sarah Palin is very good at practicing brain stem politics. She represents a serious threat to political discourse and needs to be marginalized.
I suspect someone else will fill the void though.
It’s Memorial Day, and Jim waxes nostalgic over Hitler in the comparison to Sarah Palin. I had expected a nice rant about the perpetual wars of this dying empire, drowning in unfathomable debt, utterly delusional, and in complete denial about any long emergency. …”Get your motor runnin'”
I believe that JHK was most prescient in his early predictions of peak oil giving rise to corn pone fascism. “She whose name must not be spoken” is a manifestation of my worst fears, my hope that she will be ignored and marginalized by the decent people of this country. However, it is a very scary time to be alive right now IMO!
As I read this, school bands & bagpipes are outside my window, tuning up and getting ready to march through my town in the annual Memorial Day parade, which begins near my house.
When the kids were small (and because it was so close) we went, and watched the boy scouts and girl scouts, school bands, politicians, old muscle cars, fire trucks, and aging veterans go by. Once I even marched in it – with the local peace group. (A bystander was heard to remark “there go those peace ding-dongs again”).
But I don’t know what this parade means anymore. To celebrate the waste, tragedy, and perversity of young people chewed up by a relentless war machine? I’m staying inside this year, marking the cruelty of war in quiet contemplation.
The last surviving veteran of WWI died recently at the age of 110. It was noted that he refused to march in parades.
It’s hard to imagine Americans taking Sarah Palin seriously.
Then again, thoughtful Germans didn’t take Hitler seriously either, until it was too late.
Jim, the following paragraph may be one of the most significant yet chilling I have yet read, out of the maelstrom of commentary and discussion here and on the many discussion boards over the past several years: I prefer to be direct.
“Sarah Palin represents a dangerous force in American culture that is startlingly similar to the grandiose hyper-patriotic militarism that Hitler brought to Germany during his rise to power. We have better things to do in this nation than go down some twisted path of vengeance-seeking in the name of lost glory. I hope that Sarah Palin’s competitors on the right will stand up to her American fascist themes and call her out for what she is: a half-educated TV performer unqualified for high political office. The true shame of this country is that we have to take a clown like Sarah Palin seriously.”
When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross? I’m not so sure. Maybe it will be wrapped in the flag and riding on the back of a Harley!
I suppose there were many in Germany who considered Hitler to be a clown.
Sarah P. Superstar, who in the world do you think you are?…
Thanks for addressing the nightmare that is Sarah Palin–Oh and as a talking head said today, She looks so good in a helmet!
Yes she imposed herself on the Wheels of Thunder, she wasn’t invited. As I said last week she also writes her own letters of recommendation and has notable people sign them.
Last week it was said that she will bypass the usual campaigning to set up huge arenas where she will play rock superstar!! (shades of Hitler without the gravitas)
Well I can only hope someone has told her the paltry earnings of PODUS, so she doesn’t skip out in the middle of her term to go on a book tour!!
I’ve been waiting for you to write about the corn pone Fascists for months now and you have rewarded your readers in spades with an entire post about the corn pone Fascist in chief, complete with photos. Since you almost never illustrate your essays, that you chose to do so with this one really says something, if only to hammer home the similarities.
The one good thing about Mooseolini is that she’s too enamored of the gravy train that Fox News provides her and too narcissistic to actually want to do any real work. She’ll keep doing publicity stunts, but probably won’t actually run. Instead, the corn-pone Fascists you really have to worry about are Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, especially Bachmann. She makes for a good Mooseolini substitute and she actually can work.
Enough about Caribou Barbie. We have our own corn pone Fascists here in Michigan. I’m glad, though, that I chose not to write about them today. Instead, I decided to cover something more hopeful at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News: a New York Times story about how Detroiters who are concerned about sustainability are reaching a consensus that food, particularly urban agriculture, is central to the future of the city. The future the foodies the author talked to reads like Detroit is already working on “A World Made by Hand.” I have a link to the N.Y. Times article in the blog article.
I also note that Hipsters have found Detroit an “inhabitable city.” The brewers of Pabst Blue Ribbon will be thrilled to have another market. Also the Nain Rouge, Detroit’s own Red Dwarf and local ill omen has hit the big time among devotees of the paranormal. Yes, even Detroit’s demons are becoming cool. Just hope you never see the Nain Rouge. He’s a harbinger of disaster.
i will take sarah palin over home grown city gangs any day of the week .
Well drafted as usual but in addition to the historical and political dimensions of Sarah’s Harley tryst, you can be sure that her “fellow travelers” or, in Eric Hoffer’s term, “true believers” were sportin’ wood in addition to their leathers.
When totalitarianism comes to America will it be from the left or right – or does it matter?
How sad it is that Sarah Palin is the best woman the US can produce to run for President. Apologies to Michell Bachman of course. But in the spirit of anarchy and entropy, I really hope she gets the nomination. It will comedy gold to watch her grow horns and a tail as she turns fiery red.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
I think James’ post today is very significant and should be widely read.
We saw a half-educated, unfit for high office candidate elected in 1980, again in 1984, and yet another of that ilk in 2000 and 2004. It has happened before, and given the state of things today, I definitely see it happening again in 2012 with likely far more disastrous results than our last two experiences.
Follow the money, James.
Who is it that is funding Sarah Palin?
Who is it that was funding Adolf Hitler?
Who is it that set up WWI and WWII?
Who is it that swindled the tax paying US citizenry and the tax paying citizenry world out of TRILLIONS of dollars?
(If you haven’t a clue, read the works of historians such as Anthony Sutton, Carroll Quigley, and get educated!)
Nothing is a coincidence, James. Follow the money. You’ll find all your answers there, including why your obsession with the fake red/blue political kabuki theater is so idiotic.
Should read: tax paying world citizenry
“Make no mistake – to borrow a favored presidential locution, if I may – Sarah Palin’s campaign is all about shame, about being a nation of losers and feeling bad about it.” -JHK
Thanks so much JHK.
The entirety of this piece shines a lasers’-beam through all the fake bullshit of hyper-nationalism!
Just think: this country going down in roaring hydrogen flames, like the Hindenburg Zeppelin, with SARAH PALIN at the helm! The absurdity is just delicious; but I think guys like myself would be hunted like rabid dogs… oh well…
Okay, PoC,
Do you get an inkling now? Don’t “get” why shame could be a powerful social motivator? …For assimilation or purge? …For a commonality; in evil or commonweal? Don’t get it? Read the piece again; there’s absolutely no need for me to “have a discussion” about this; James Howard Kunstler just drew you a map.
The only reason for following Sarah Palin would be to check out her ass. That takes ten seconds, end of following Sarah Palin.
Relating to the Hitler theme: the USA has made all the classic mistakes committed by the British Empire, and in fact was codependent with the old British Empire bailing them out whenever they forgot that they were a maritime power and realistically had no business meddling in continental disputes. We are now the same, hence the sorry results of recent history. When the British went bankrupt in ’71 they were forced to pull back from east of Suez. We need to do the same.
Moondog,
I feel that’s kind of a “given subtext”, don’t you?
Stand Back.
Here’s how the Big Boys write:
“All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.”
Adolf Hitler
Sarah Palin = Goddess of Distress?
A. Yes
B. No
C. Pass the cheese doodles.
Boogity Boogity Boogity
Good post, Jim. I think she has peaked, at least I hope so. The New Yorker ran a story a few years back exploring how voters decide on who to vote for… it was truly sobering…. Freightening….alarming …. Choose your pleasure, so anything could happen
While Americans enjoy their free entertainment via the Palin circus coming to town, Germany has its bloomers in a twist. Seems that they once again will have to bail out poor Greece. So as Mother Germany gets down on her hands and knees to clean and scrub the Greecey mess, her citizens are becoming increasingly pissed off. Using history as a guide, a pissed off Germany is not good thing – to paraphrase Martha Stewart. So enjoy the corn dogs and the cotton candy while ye may, America. Sarah’s dog and pony show is just getting started. Couldn’t be that there is anything else serious going on in the world, is there?
I like Sarah Palin. She’s a good honest woman without pretensions.
James you have failed to link Sarah Palin to Hitler. No analysis of corresponding statements. It is rather trite to disparage Americans with poor prospects who may or may not actually support Sarah Palin. You have to directly compare Sarah Palin to Adolph Hitler.
It’s true that for this one occasion Sarah Palin wore leather but it was for a speciality event. She doesn’t go marching around in leather.
Palin is so much easier to spell than Torquemada, Robespierre and Radovan Karadzic. Let us us appoint her to rule the nation, expeditiously clean things up and set things right at every level and quickly, then replace her with a constitutional leader. What can go wrong?
Amerika for Amerikans! Put a wholly holy woman in charge. Under God! Yeah, that’s the ticket.
As 45north chimed in:
“I like Sarah Palin. She’s a good honest woman without pretensions.”
I realize that there is really no point in leaving a comment. Unfortunately, in the Human brain Intelligence and Stupidity live happily side by side. There really is no Hope.
How is Sarah Palin a “LOSER”.
Lets run down the checklist
1) She is smart
2) She does not look like an ugly dyke nor does she hate men
3) She has a large, happy and healthy family
4) She is successful
The fact is liberals hate her because she is a better women than the one the leftists championed. The women are bitter, the social engineers are pissed off that she might be the “NEW WOMEN”.
Um, I like corn pone. My wife can make a fine one (she’s from south of Baton Rouge) on any morning and we have it with onions from our garden and eggs from our chickens. A black iron skillet over an open fire is a fine easy way to cook a satisfying meal, and it propels us through our day of garden work and home building or whatever else we are doing to sustain ourselves. And strangely we are both educated and successful small business owners.
Jim, I dig your comments and politics and fire under the ass to get us moving, and yet I’ll always enjoy my corn pone.
And here in Texas we watch the Perry show. Now that’s scary.
Agreed that Palin and her followers pose a significant risk to society via their supersimplified conceptualizations of the world and its problems. To underestimate her is dangerous. Recall that many Jews in German laughed at Hitler who was initially viewed, at least by the educated, as a clown; sound familiar?
The real issue though is whether the economic collapse will become clear, and felt, to a significant enough minority and the debasement of the US Dollar yields something akin to Weimar hyperinflation. With energy supplies on a downhill slide and food commodity prices going asymptotic, the latter is very possible. The question is will it happen by the election. If so, then the Palin/Hitler analogy will be right on. And, at that point the shit will truly hit the fan.
The next question is who will be the scapegoats in that scenario. In post Weimar Germany, Hitler was able to target the Jews in large measure because many of them had suvived the hyperinflation by buying gold and silver (most of us historically have had little allegience to local currencies other than gold and silver due to the former’s fleeting value). Those Jews who used gold to purchase things of value did quite well (recall that by the end of 1923 one ounce of gold was worth more than 5 TRILLION Dmarks, and would buy a whole block of upscale apartments in Berlin, no joke, check it out). Their doing well while the average joe fell on his face (sound similar) later made them targets for Hitler. NOW, the question is, who will be targeted by the Palinistas if the above scenario unfolds?? It could be bankers and financial types but they are not particularly identifiable overtly. It could be the middle classes, esp. the upper middle class who tend to flaunt what pittance of wealth they think they have (think BMWs, nice clothes, etc). Such flaunting might become very dangerous in the future.
Wardoc
I don’t usually even come close to watching that Indy 500 abomination, but it was on the screen when I walked in the room. My curiosity trapped me all the way through the fascinating hour and a half preceding the start. I could not get over the military aura of the whole business, overflights and all. It felt to be just one or two steps shy of a N-burg rally.
“The true shame of this country is that we have to take a clown like Sarah Palin seriously.”
How true, JHK, how true! Celebrating ignorance by making a celebrity of a truly inappropriate candidate is demeaning in the extreme. The slide from the top of international standing since the last Bush managed to be re-elected is profound, the embarrassing VP candidacy of Palin was a shock to the rest of the world (down here in Australia we were stunned).
That Palin is actually still being considered as a candidate for anything more complicated than a dog-catcher is really a big worry. Obviously she’d be useless as a leader and would need to be carefully controlled by “handlers” were she actually elected, much the same as Reagan was during his final senile years – which would mean even more shady characters having their grubby mits on the levers of power.
Hello Mr. Kunstler,
Great post, but a bit hysterical. Sarah will only have a chance if the big banks and other power elite members support her – if they think she’s too strong-willed, they will ditch her for a more pliable “mainstream” republican puppet to support business as usual.
Sarah loves sprawl, junk-food, and other horrors of our culture.
Have a nice day!
What a pathetic, so off the mark article! Have a little intellectual honesty for once! There are “Hitler’s” out there and they are where all you lefties are so proud of…the Arab uprising! They are a bunch of savages who spew VIOLENT anti- Semetic, Anti- American rhetoric and whose goal is to eradicate all Jews from the planet, yet instead of writing about this REAL danger that’s growing, you make up partisan dogshit like this and try to relate Hitler to Sarah Palin. Seriously, you area fucking joke! Why don’t you write about the reporter Lara Logan, who was being raped in the Egypt ” Democracy uprising” where they were yelling “Jew, Jew” at her and she barely escaped but no…you make up a fantastical horseshit comparison like this!
This article just shows how far out of touch you are and are really just a dishonest partisan jack off, as what you state has ZERO basis in fact!!!
As LEFTMOBLIE said above…how is she a loser? She is FAR more accomplished and knowledgeable than a pseudo intellectual douchebag such as yourself Jimmy! And whether she runs or not, she had/has credentials that your messiah Obama will NEVER ever have, yet the left trashes her with unreasoned bias bullshit. If the left was ever honest about what they say they believe, then Sarah Palin should be your poster girl. Not the communist pigs from Code Pink!!
She is a successful business woman and politician, whose husband stayed home while she worked. She is attractive and not your run of the mill, typical ugly lib, ala Hillary, who is weak as can be, as her husband publicly humiliated her, yet she stayed because she’s power hungry, whose marriage is a farce, whereas Palin has a good marriage and she balances both family and work and didn’t abort her special needs child .
Seriously, I could go on and on because the left’s entire stance on her is nothing more than slanderous defamation of character with NO basis in fact. Whereas, the violence and the thuggery are from left, despite all your lies to the contrary. Remember asshole…the Nazi’s had true ties to the muslim brotherhood back then(but why print the truth) and their anti-Semetic movement and they were what you on the left love….SOCIALISTS!!!
Scary – I have been thinking about the exact same things of late. What bought this on was this article – Global Capitalism and 21st Century Fascism, which I recommend everyone take the time to read. The author points out that fully one third of humanity is now “surplus” -unneeded as either producers or consumers, and that governments are merging with transnational corporations and profiting from the military-and prison industrial complexes needed to warehouse these people. He speculates that this will lead to a fascist movement in the United States. From the article:
like Hitler, her campaign is not based on rationality, but rather it is all about totemic symbolism. To the working classes, the Harley is the symbol of american toughness and freedom – a reminder of when Americans actually built things. Where I live in Milwaukee, the Harley is a sacred object amoung the mass of undeducated blue-collar workers, whose leather costumes and weekends of bike riding are the only freedom they enjoy, as long as they back are on the job site by 7:00AM Monday morning. Incidentally, riding around on Harleys is a favorite of right-wing politicians; our own Tea-Party governor Scott Walker did the same thing during his (successful) campaign.
The gun and hunting are the other pieces of totemic symbolism Palin uses to appeal to her followers, and macho gun symbolism is part and parcel of her eliminationist rhetoric. American exceptionalism, accompanied with a hefty dose of messianic religion, is the final component to a witch’s brew designed to appeal to the same dark reaches of the American psyche occupied, in Germany’s case, by visions of Wagner, paganism and the Teutonic Knights, except in Palin’s case it is motorcyle leather, Lee Greenwood, and wild-west cowboys.
Palin’s supporters are essentially the undereducated white lower classes who have been getting stomped on by globalism. Palin’s policies would make them worse off, of course, but she understands the symbolism and rhetoric, and she is “one of them”. Gun-toting, rural, religious fundamentalists are told they are the only ‘real Americans,’ and everyone else, i.e. those who disagree with her reactionary politics, city-dwellers, college-educated professionals and monorities are enemies who must be eliminated by “locking and loading.’ the Tea Party has already frequently resorted to physical intimidation of their opponents, from the Brooks Brothers riots of Florida, to the curb-stomping of a female protestor by Rand Paul’s campaign lieutenant. They are every bit the heir to the Brown Shirts (many of whom were ex-military).
Of course she’s incompetent, but this is actually a bonus to her followers, who see her as one of them. Make no mistake, working-class white resentment that is going unadressed by the chattering classes in Versailles on the Potomac could lead to the final shove into the abyss that we’ve been heading for.
Disgusting hyperbole…comparing Palin to Hitler…I guess JHK is trying to justify his imbecilic support for Obama’s election three years ago by trying to say Palin is somehow worse and could never have been allowed within a heartbeat of the presidency. Or maybe JHK just never forgave Palin for the “Drill, baby, drill” comment. Or both. Obama’s hatred for America is beyond a doubt. If his words to this effect were notenough just look at his deeds before becoming president…his chosing a virulent racist hater of America as his spiritual adviser for twenty years. Or some of his recent deeds as president…wooing America-hating leaders in the Middle East while throwing all the ones somewhat friendly to us under the bus.
Like any good leftist, JHK hates Palin with all his heart and soul. His article here can leave no doubt about that.
Well, James. You are right about Palin. She is a mini-me of Hitler, at least in emotional appeal. But, Hitler knew how to put words together; Sister Sarah does not. Not that this matters much; because as another commentator stated, if the money is there she will be Queen. I do think you are missing the boat on this one though. I think Sarah is the perfect pick (with Ms. Bachmann by her side) as the one to lead the final collapse of Empire. Also, I think the banksters would like her there; she can be easily manipulated. And the American people deserve her. So, I say let’s not worry anymore about the good, bad and ugly. This thing is already way past maintenance, and it is going down with the rest of post-industrial civilization.
Great post this week, Jim!
I am comforted by the FACT that Palin took a solemn oath to do a job, to represent the people of Alaska as governor, then she broke that oath of office and she quit.
She is a quitter and cannot be trusted to do what she swears (on a Bible?) to do. She is not an oath keeper.
Besides that, she represents a minority population of losers. She won’t get that much support from the Muslim, Mexican, Black, Gay, etc. voter communities.
If she became a candidate, Palin’s shameful record of financial incompetence and unethical behavior, both as Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska, would be re-examined.
The country is not in the mood to play games or take stupid risks. Ask the Republicans of NY26.
That’s a rather rude comment. It is true, though, that the more left-leaning politicians do not understand the threat of radical Jihad and the violent, fascist, intolerant wahhabi adherents.
I say we withdraw from that entire region and let them destroy each other.
If we had a good public transit system, we wouldn’t need their filthy toxic oil.
Jim is right I think, to worry about the rise of fascism in America, but I would point out that much of it is already here. We fight one undeclared war after another, with borrowed money. The media functions mostly as a p.r. wing of the government. The war on drugs has put millions in prison, we already have a police state because of it. The overly patriotic clodhoppers have plastered the flag all over everything, major league baseball uniforms, college football uniforms etc. The Patriot Act, half assed Nazi/Commie hacks in both parties sit in Congress and vote on what rights they think they can take away from the American people, all in the name of ‘security’. The endless ‘War on Terror’, this looks like they copied it right out of Orwell.
And both political parties seem completely incompetent to do anything to stop it. The Democrats, elected to stop wars have done nothing, except to prolong and escalate them. In other words they don’t really need an unqualified nincompoop like Sarah Palin to have a fascist state, they pretty much already have it. However, I do agree with Jim up to a point, it could get much worse.
Hey Jim,
Thanks for the post today – Sarah P. scares the sh*t out of me.
By the way, a small point – when you say: Not people on food stamps (over 40 percent of Americans) … did you mean over 40 million
American instead? 40% of Americans (if there are about 300 million of us) would be 120 million on food stamps.
Thanks,
Grey
Way to go Jim! When you run out of intelligent arguments you bring up the Hitler card. Hey, next time bring up the race card! Isn’t that what intelligent, snobby, leftists do? I’ve been waiting for you to tell us what you do approve of, but I guess I just have to wait. How about another four years of Obama? And his thugs at TSA, Holder, Geitner, Bernanke, etc? And four more years of war too!
..the threat of radical Jihad and the violent, fascist, intolerant wahhabi adherents..
==
A thread that was created and subsidized by the anglo-american imperialists. And still is. A threat that is used in the service of their divide & conquer machinations to pit jews against arabs, arab against farsi, arab against arab, muslims against christians, etc.
Just as they created Hitlerism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc, they created Wahhabism. They grew these monsters and brought them out of obscurity, funded them, gave them material and political support, and made them world players. All part of their contrived Hegelian dialectic in pursuit of world conquest and domination.
“We have better things to do in this nation than go down some twisted path of vengeance-seeking in the name of lost glory.”
What the heck are you talking about Jim? I don’t hear any hatred and vengeance-seeking. Sometimes I think you have your head up your butt. I think you could also make a case that Obama is like Hitler and that the democratic party is the National Socialist American Workers Party. They believe in big government, like the progressives, the democrats, the communists. At least you are an honset progressive and realize that all of these systems are too big and will fail-especially under peak oil.
Great reply–just too much cursing. I too am tired of these leftwingers.
Palin, Hitler bad comparison.
Palin is too dumb to be Hitler.
But I guess that is where Amrica is at- even our Facists have poor skills.
Wahhabi?
http://bit.ly/jBqVRr
Saudi Arabia, right?
The amazing thing is that the people who did rip off these dimwitted Palinites (as well as the rest of the American people) are the ones that are heavily funding (front-running) people like Palin and groups like the Tea Party, and these people refuse to believe it.
They somehow believe that bringing the ultra-wealthy and Wall Street banksters to justice for the financial crimes they committed is somehow anti-American…but persecuting Mexicans, Muslims, and unions is as American as baseball and apple pie. It’s not Goldman Sachs and Moody’s fault they colluded to sell fraudulently securitized debt obligations to teachers unions…its the damned socialist unions fault for buying that misrepresented piece of dog shit CDO!
As long as corporations and banks buy off our government and own our media there will be no justice for Americans and we will continue on this downward spiral of fake debate, fake issues, fake political divisions. The simple fact is: the corporate class has captured our government, both political parties, our media, and our means of production. They have stolen our country without ever firing a single shot. And this wanton delusion by groups like the Tea Party (and Reganites before them) have contributed to the pillage.
My one hope is that these financial terrorists are one day charged and brought before a jury of American citizens to answer for their crimes. Unfortunately, I think that it will be a much more violent and vindictive affair and a lot of innocent blood will be spilled in the process…
Palin, Hitler bad comparison.
Palin is too dumb to be Hitler.
But I guess that is where America is at- even our Facists are unskilled.
You kinda prove the point.
The comparison to Hitler is not that Palin is an anti-Semite. I don’t know that she is, and Jim has not suggested it.
The whole Hitler comparison is more subtle than you seem to understand; the nationalism that propelled him into power is the point, not his anti-Semitism. There is a fair parallel in the appeal of the candidate-to-be to the disenchanted, yearning for a past glory that never was, except in the minds of the manipulated masses who get all their info from the TV.
You like Palin because she is successful, which she is, in the terms favored popularly these days: she exploited her biscuit-from-heaven nomination for VP by becoming rich and famous and getting her own reality show. Successful politician? Did not finish her term as Gov, and could not be elected today. Good eyesight though- she can see them Russkies from her porch.
Oh, and Palin is hotter than Hillary. Yeah, that should qualify her right there. Maybe our elections should include talent and swimsuit competitions. Mmmm… leather bikini…
Have you ever seen the video of her exorcism? It got me speaking in tongues. Where’s my serpent, man? Gonna drink the deadly thing.
And speaking only for myself, a lefty socialist who loves his country, and learned his values from the new testament but does not buy into the god thing at all- it is a beautiful day here in the Sonoran desert. I saw western tanagers this morning, on their way north to nest. Take a walk, take a deep breath or two, try to get past your emotions, and think about the direction you want your country to take. Jefferson or McCarthy? It still matters.
“I hope that Sarah Palin’s competitors on the right will stand up to her American fascist themes and call her out…”
Waiting for salvation to come from the right wing? Which one of those are going to be marginally better than Palin? When the choice is between crypto-fascist and fascist, the selection is meaningless.
Is Sarah going to be your neighbor in Arizona?
Will she increase her foreign policy experience by being able to see Mexico from her home?
Suddenly, Huntsman is looking pretty good.
(that is Jon Huntsman Jr.)
Always follow the money behind her, if you can find it, thanks to the courts. Palin speaks for a huge swath of the disaffected population in rural America. Every time a new set of numbers comes out from the Census Bureau telling us more about the real state of America, Palin’s followers swell. It is not longer good enough to be white, middle-aged and settled in your job or your retirement. The brown folks are coming for your job and your daughters. Soon to be followed by the yellow men from across the sea. We are so ripe for a cornpone upheaval that is not funny, not at all. Spot on, James, spot on!
Doubt I can afford her neighborhood. Snottsdale, from what I hear. Pretty, but pretty vacant. Good fit.
As I recall, you believe this is already Mexico… We shall see.
If you define fascism as the merger of corporatism and state, combined with manipulation of the population by nationalism and patriotism, we’re already there.
There don’t have to be concentration camps to have fascism.
Sarah Palin doesn’t have to be a good wordsmith. She just has to deliver the lines written for her, and she does that well. As Obama is said to do, but she does it better.
She has a gift for delivering the one-liners in an entertaining way.
Hitler would never make it in soundbite America today.
Long speeches delivered by a screaming frothing angry man?
We are so beyond that. The attention span of Americans is short and prefers snappy phrases, self-righteous rhetoric and entertaining one liners.
And who is this Nazi’s Politcal Guru/Handler? None other than Jewish Power Broker Bill Kristol. Kunstler may be right from the psychological and sociological angles, but he’s dead wrong at the level of actual present day political context. If elected, Palin would continue our Crusades in the Middle East and our mindless support of Israel.
I thought it was very appropriate that Sarah Palin was hanging around with those motorcycle jarheads.
I will say thing in favor of Mr Motorcycle stupid fuck, he is dependable. Once it’s above fifty degrees he can be counted on to be out there dutifully wasting gas and making a lot of damn fool noise.
To equate Sarah Palin with Hitler is nonsense.
An example: I’ve seen a film clip of Hitler speaking (in the 1930s I believe) to a roomful of fat, prosperous German businessmen. He started out quietly and politely. As the minutes passed he raised his voice bit by bit, became more animated and started shake his fist. Inside of five minutes Hitler was shouting at the crowd at the top of his lungs and that group of portly, cigar smoking, middle aged men took leave of their senses. They were on their feet wild eyed, shrieking “Seig Heil” (Hail Victory) and giving the straight arm Nazi salute. It was something to see. Hitler had them in the palm of his hand. Palin can only wish she has such ability.
I think Hitler’s credibility with his followers came by virtue of having risked his life in the trenches in WW1. It’s hard to believe that his guts out performances on the podium didn’t have as their origin the mud and misery of those years. Palin as a speaker is an exceedingly pale imitation. Plus I don’t think she has Hitler’s political shrewdness or ruthlessness. Step by step he outfoxed his opponents to seize power and kept it by force and intimidation.
But I wouldn’t dismiss the dangers ahead. Palin could be a placeholder for someone, maybe as yet unknown, who is far more dangerous and more capable than either her or the crop of nobodies contending for the presidency.
I wouldn’t be too disdainful of the gun toting reactionaries or too admiring of the college educated elite. The gun toting church goers need to eat and make mortgage payments like everyone else. And they are your fellow countrymen. And I would be wary of those guns. IMO your police and military would be more likely to identify with them, the so called white trash that is so reviled on this site. When the call comes to man the barricades I’ll bet your cops and soldier boys will be at the very front shoulder to shoulder with the tattooed Walmart shopper.
As far as who’s responsible for the fix the US is in now I would be inclined to point my finger at the degreed bullshit artists in academe, the civil service and the business world.
Whose hands were on the levers of power after all? Who was pulling the srings? They’ve ravaged your economy, debased your currency, debauched your schools. And on top of it they lord it over everybody with those megabuck educations. They are no good to anybody, neither the degree holders nor the degrees they hold. If you have to offshore anything offshore them, preferably to China where the Butchers of Beijing can pick their bones clean. Your country will be immeasurably better off.
Yup that is exactly what fascism is. America still adds a dash of denial in the form of a bogus two party democratic system where the corporations are allowed by law to bribe both candidates (denialism translation: “campaign contributions”).
It is true that we have more people than global capitalism needs.
That’s why it baffles me that they don’t support birth control. Wouldn’t it be easier to give people the means to control their fertility rather than allow the population to hit 7 billion and then have a huge die-off?
However, to imply that things are better under Obama than they would have been under McCain-Palin is seriously delusional.
The march toward corporate domination of the planet continues no matter who is elected Head Puppet of the USA.
Last week I posted a link to a post I wrote about how the hatred of Muslims and Mexicans will be used to further subjugate Americans. It seems relevant again.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-you-hate-muslims-and-mexicans-more.html
The Brown Men ARE coming for our jobs if not our daughters – followed by the yellow men from across the. Often a true word is spoken in jest. You Lefties only tell the Truth when you bring it up to mock it. And you think it Unpatriotic to resist or you just trash the whole idea of Patriotism to begin with. Lovely. Then in the next breath begin to expound on National Policy. Hilariously Pathetic.
They are not wise, just powerful. They will destroy themselves along with the rest of us.
Otherwise, yeah.
Sarah Palin as Hitler? Isn’t that a little lame, or desperate, for you, Jim?
If the seething, corn pone loving, masses are about to revolt, why is that? Do you ever wonder why or what living in their shoes might entail? Trashing the South, as you are so wont to do, doesn’t seem to explain the desperation we see in our area, all brought to you courtesy of the globe-trotting Obamas.
You denigrate Sarah Palin’s intellect, but I bet you could check out her GPA and activities, as you cannot either of the Obamas. Don’t know if Sarah has enough money to hide all of her past, as did both Obamas, so what you see is what you probably will get.
Why have you determined that all Southerners are stupid? Until the end of the Civil War, most of the intellectual strength was in the South, and quite a bit remains.
Yes, we want our social security, which we were brainwashed into believing would be there during our old age. When I was a very young, single mother (divorced), I didn’t receive child support, food stamps or welfare. First out of pride and a great desire to have my ex leave me the hell alone, but also because those things weren’t available. I made $1.00 an hour as a very good bookkeeper, which even in the sixties was below minimum wage (and, yes, it was in the South), and I could have used the small amount deducted for social security to buy food for myself and my child. We’ve contributed to that scam for all of our lives and, By God, I want it back! Medicare, I don’t mind, since we’re both in good health and if the Obama legacy still lives, maybe I will be ready to die and leave the cost of my care to profit the banksters. I don’t think Sarah Palin is stupid, even though I’m not a fan of hers, but how can you compare her to Obama? You can’t prove anything because everything he does is hidden. Would you have allowed George Bush to get away with that?
Jim, I think your column is the most well-written on the web, but your knee-jerk support of the Head Jerk is becoming wearisome. We are currently supporting several adult children (oxymoron as it may sound) and they’re all well-educated and very bright, even with half of their genes generated by a (GASP) Southerner.
IMO, Sarah could not possibly be worse than the Obama racket, although potentially bad in a much different way.
We’re in Ohio now, a pathetically mis-managed police state, and are headed to North Dakota. Does that meet your rather whimsical criteria for smart and savvy? North Dakota has no public transportation which is also lacking in Ohio. Do you propose that we all stay at our homestead 100% of the time, or mush through the terrible winters to get tacos? I don’t know where you live, but we have no access to any type of public transportation. I get the feeling you are two blocks from the subway. We’re not, as there is no such thing in the entire state, and don’t even have a senior citizen shuttle for the elderly in our very small village.
Our family does garden and we can the proceeds for use during the winter. (For 17 people.) We have an orchard and our own water. Thank God I was part of the Hippie Back-to-the-land movement and find it beneficial and interesting to provide for ourselves. It also deprives Ohio’s leech-like government of sales tax. Happy Motoring, of which you are so dismissive, is about our only form of entertainment as we also don’t have the opera or stage plays availabe in our village of 700. Ohio is a beautiful state and we’re going to look around some more before the end of oil.
Please, please reconsider your hatred of the South and of Sarah Palin. You’re in great danger of becoming another left-wing hack, and at that point, I’ll quite reading you, no matter how good a writer you may be. Irrespective of how bad Sarah might be, she could not be as destructive as Obama and the banks which control him and his avaricious wife.
Kudos to Desert Dawg. As I read comments from all the brain washed lefties, I come across his post which keeps me from pulling my hair out.
Palin is a Dominionist and has attended Assembly of God churches. Here is an excerpt from a speech she gave at a Pentecostal Church:
Palin also asked the audience to pray for another matter — a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in Alaska (before she up and quit her job there, under a cloud of ethics investigations).
I don’t think that kind of rhetoric plays well anymore. A majority of Americans want our troops to come home. Palin wants them to continue a Crusade, to carry out “God’s plan.”
If you define fascism as the merger of corporatism and state, combined with manipulation of the population by nationalism and patriotism, we’re already there. – Wage
I think you need to talk to people who’ve actually lived under or suffered under or seen the horrors inflicted by actual fascist regimes like Nazi Germany or militarist Japan.
Nobody knows the future so it could go that way. But right now IMO you’re not even close.
One of my co-workers is a Harley rider.
He quit hanging with his gang, though.
He couldn’t afford the rides for various charities.
It’s like when you sell stuff for your kid’s school, and then you have to buy everyone else’s kids stuff.
One gang holds a charity ride, and then they have to go to everyone else who comes rides.
It gets expensive.
I’m seeing lots of discussion about the people who are being “stomped” on by globalism and corporotocracy. Thus I’m feeling compelled to do something I almost never do here; I’m making a second comment; my apologies in advance.
85% of this year’s college grad class and 80% of last year’s class went home to mama’s basement with a degree in worthlessness and debt….and no job or prospect of a job, even at Burger King.
The real people who are being stomped are those who failed to actually learn something of value in college, i.e. chemistry, physics, engineering. They get out with some sort of degree and a lot of debt they will never pay back. Several recent surveys (inc. USNWR’s college ratings) show that 14% of all college grads are psychology majors; 12% are history or english majors; similar numbers for various other soft BS (that’s bullshit) fields like personell or social service management or, god forbid, homeland security management or whatever. None of these now useless majors require even first year calculus, much less anything serious and useful like differential equations. The only science required is first year biology for lib arts and watered down (non calculus) so called “college math.” (somehow there is the assumption that one can understand modern molecular biology without first understanding the “molecular”, i.e. chemistry, part, but, then, who cares about real understanding). POINT: kids are coming out of college with no useful skills whatsoever, beyond being able to bullshit their relatives with pseudo intellectual talk.
Most of the kids who get trained in math and science return to their home countries leaving us with a bunch of know nothing, no skill people hanging out in mother’s basement thinking they’re “educated.” Some of the lucky ones get jobs at call centers working on full commission (they’re the people calling you an dinner time).
Globalism has taken away many of the entry level jobs and ancillary “fluff” jobs that in the past gave english, history and psych majors (and other similars) something to do. Those jobs are gone; all that’s left or all that corporate industry wants to pay for are serious jobs that require real skills (the #1 major in terms of starting salaries and number of job offers in 2010 was chemistry, followed by physics then various engineering fields and technical health care e.g. nursing).
So, we have a growing number of people out there who had GREAT EXPECTATIONS for their future (i.e. were brainwashed by their misguided parents), spent a lot of money to get what they thought was an education and, in reality, got nothing but debt, have nothing to offer, and truly have no future. I predict that they will be increasingly pissed off in the future, moreso than the completely lost kids who never even finished high school. Perhaps these pissed off futureless
“college grads” will be the next brown shirts.
Wardoc
All good points Wagelaborer. Sarah is a one liner. But no more than one a day. Also, true we do have a fascist state already here in Amerika. I think Chris Hedges puts it best describing it as “inverted totalitarianism.’ But, we are fast approaching the point where the rhetoric is going to flip into hard-line and hard hat, police control. The Patriot Act is only the tip of the iceberg!!
Good definition but you left out that the merger must be for the good of the Nation. Our current merger of Goverment and Corporations are for the good of the Corporations – so it’s not Fascism but Plutocracy. Or Kleptocracy.
Japan either meets the definition or at least comes close to Fascism. Most people believe that Fascism must be without elections. Not true as Japan illustrates.
Socialism is a similar type merger but in the classical model the corporations would be taken over by the Goverment – a bad move on many levels. Also Socialism has no respect for the unique traditions of each Nation and is classicaly opposed to the whole idea of Nations. Surely this is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
In any case, big Business cannot be kept separate from Goverment since it wields too much power over the lives of ordinary people via the political process. The only decison is whether it will take over the Goverment for its own benefit or whether the Goverment will rule it for the benefit of all. On this Fascism and Socialism agree. After that, they diverge sharply.
Well, that’s Mussolini’s definition, not mine. At least the merger of state and corporation part is.
My Mom used to work with a German who lived through Nazism. She told my mom that Hitler was great, at first.
Unemployed people got jobs, food was available, life was better for them. The only thing she didn’t like about Hitler was the wars he started, leading to them being bombed.
As for talking to people who lived under the boot of fascism, what about the people of Iraq?
Lives destroyed, ethnic cleansing done, concrete barriers up between neighborhoods, checkpoints everywhere, infrastructure destroyed, 4,000,000 refugees living day to day.
Don’t they count?
I might be alone in this but I tend to think that Sarah Palin’s appeal will wear thin in the next month or so (if she ever does in fact get around to announcing a presidential run), just as that appeal was already wearing thin before. The other clowns(Trump & Gingrich notably) have used up their own oxygen already, Michelle Bachman has yet to really declare, and the rest are too pallid for any serious excitement to gin up. Sarah has stepped back in briefly to fill the void, but her real gig is to get attention, make lots of money, and avoid contact with the press. Running for and serving in office are too much for the lady and I think the media have largely ignored that fact. She is entertainment and nothing more. The real frighteners, Bush and Cheney, have already served and the damage done could not have been greater had it been part of a huge and deliberate diabolical plan.
The sad fact of American life right now is that there has been no basic political consensus for nearly two generations. We are constantly arguing over relatively trivial matters or trying to reinvent the wheel. We don’t seem capable of making big decisions anymore, about anything.
A new awakening is needed. I hope it’s the right one when it gets here.
“…I bet you could check out her GPA and activities…”
========
Can we be sure Palin was really born in America?
Has she shown her birth certificate? The long form? Was it fabricated? Are you sure?
Great post Jim.
I agree with all you said. And I can’t stand that Palin.
Two things though, the real unemployment rate is a little bit higher:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
And I have no problem with socialism. Though it cracks me up, that those who support our troops, don’t realize the military is socialism. Of course American’s don’t know much – hence Palin.
Nazi Germany and militarist Japan are outlier variants of fascism, as Stalinist Russia and Maoist China are of communism. Neither are representative, but are suggestive of the outcome of totalitarian usurpation of the fundamental idea.
We in the USA are clearly living through a trend toward fascism, as defined by Mussolini and validated by the Supreme Court. Corporate citizenship is the absurd realization of the fascist ideal.
Speaking as a socialist, this sucks. One citizen, one vote. NOT one dollar, one vote.
Mr. K–
You missed Palin’s money quote from the rally: “I love that smell of the emissions.” Pollution is another source of shame imposed on us by hippy environmentalists. Sarah makes it a point of pride, natch. She messed up, though. She should have said exhaust; emissions has to many politically correct associations.
Why do you only post once? Why do you apologize for posting twice? I forgive you.
It’s true that a college degree is a scam, designed to throw millions of people into debt, in the hopes that they will be able to earn a decent living in the future.
Why blame them? Or their parents? It’s constant propaganda in our society. It is assumed that uneducated people don’t deserve a decent wage, and from that unfounded assumption follows the belief that getting a college education is the only rational thing to do.
Also, nursing is no longer a good trade to get into. We are going through a massive attack on our wages and working conditions.
Teachers, firefighters and nurses will all have their wages lowered and their benefits slashed. It’s part of the plan, and if you have open eyes, it’s very obvious.
The Tea Party is so terrified of being called racist they may well support Herman Cain for just this reason. Now from what I’ve heard, he will not support the movement to abolish or even audit the Fed. So he’s just fluff – a Neo Con tool just like Palin.
There are two Tea Parties – the original, grass roots one of Ron Paul and the co-opted, big money one of Cain and Palin. The People are clueless and the latter will prevail. Thus a promising conservative movement will be subsumed back into the hopelessly corrupt Republican Party and nothing will change.
She was refering to the FACT that the Obama’s records are sealed. Don’t be such a dick.
Why doesn’t Palin just show her birth certificate?
What is she hiding?
Can we trust her?
Do we really know who she is?
What qualifications does she have?
What has she done?
She scares me.
I heard Palin might be a secret Muslim.
That’s tellin him Juletta. I’m no fan of Palin but aside from that I agree with every word of your post. The people whose interests you’re defending were led down the garden path and fucked right in the ear.
The very people that talk so much about “blowback” against the United States usually liberals, usually gleefully, are usually the same ones that don’t bother to hide their contempt for the South or for rural people in general. And yet these same people, who always tell us they’re so damn smart, can’t see that their insulting rhetoric, which corrodes the idea of a common American citizenship, could (but hopefully won’t) lead to what they cheer and revel in when it happens to the US ie blowback.
There’s a very slippery slope between shouting and shooting. So I would say to this much to those people with this overt and monumental superiorty complex, that denigrate southerners and rural folk: shut the fuck up, you’re in no way superior, you only think you are, you don’t know shit from shinola, you only think you do, your country is in the mess it’s in because of the actions of people like you. And as for the fancy degree? I wouldn’t wipe my ass with it.
If roller-derby was as popular as motorcycling, Joan Blondell-Palin would be skating around the roller rink, no doubt a baby in one arm, the other pumping a fist into the air. But this shameless political opportunism will not go unanswered for the ego-maniacal never like to share the spotlight – get ready for a Donald encore.
Somewhere, President Obama is smiling.
“And as for the fancy degree? I wouldn’t wipe my ass with it.”
=========
Cash, you and Chairman Mao would have gotten along well.
But the people who suffer most from blowback are the ones whose children die in wars to support the corporate imperialists, as their jobs are shipped overseas and their wages and pensions are diverted to offshore trust funds. Their ignorance has long been exploited in the name of nationalism, but I doubt it can go on forever.
Do I revel in being proved right, as people around the world lash back against the evil done in my name, by my government? Fuck no, but I understand it. If I were Iranian, Iraqi, Chilean, Panamanian, Haitian, or Palestinian, you would be prudent to fear me and kill me. Lucky for us both I am not.
Blue collar is increasingly a slave’s collar. Mine is starting to itch.
So what’s wrong with sharing your community with brown and yellow people? It is all one world, after all, and we all have roaming rights. That’s how we got to North America in the first place. As immigrants.
They’re not as dumb as they seem, Shecky.
My co-worker, who is a right wing Christian, loves the Left Behind books, and who has two sons who served in Iraq, was told by our “efficiency expert” last week that she should think in military terms.
She was highly insulted! And lately, she’s been talking union.
Overall I agree with you. But, Nursing still has jobs available, so getting an RN or BSN has been reasonable. The hospital where I teach residents still hires nurses, albeit at near slave waves, but its a job. However, you’re ultimately correct; one of my LPNs is getting an RN, and she tells me that the class is full of former construction workers and middle management types (mostly males)….truly amazing. Most are there not because of interests but because they’ve heard there are jobs in nursing; they’re buying another high ed scam about going back to school to get jobs. By the time these guys are out, they will be competing with many many others for the same few jobs. Also, over the next decade, medicare will have collapsed (“private” insurance will follow suit) and everyone in healthcare will be working for peanuts, MDs included, if they’re working at all. Over the past five years Medicare fees have dropped 40+%!!!!! They will need to drop another 30% for the system to survive in any form, and at that point no one will take on 6 figure med school debt for a five figure job. Eventually no one in their right mind will go into medicine, or healthcare, for that matter. Then you best not get sick or hurt!!!!!
“you don’t know shit from shinola”….Oh boy, Cash, haven’t heard that one in quite a while. For the youngins out there, Shinola was a shoe polish. Your comment made me laugh. Good rant!
Cash, an argument might be made in favor of a student’s pursuing an education that is less, rather than more, pragmatic.
Perhaps the purpose of a liberal-arts education is to produce well-rounded citizens rather than productive workers.
Maybe it is not all about money and material goods.
1) “After what I have seen in Spain I have come to the conclusion that it is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism. Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism when the pinch comes. We like to think of England as a democratic country, but our rule in India, for instance, is just as bad as German Fascism, though outwardly it may be less irritating. I do not see how one can oppose Fascism except by working for the overthrow of capitalism, starting, of course, in one’s own country. If one collaborates with a capitalist-imperialist government in a struggle ‘against’ Fascism, i.e. against a rival imperialism, one is simply letting fascism in by the back door.”
– George Orwell
2) “Where I part company from him [Franz Borkenau] is where he says that for the western democracies the choice lies between Fascism and an orderly reconstruction through the cooperation of all classes. I do not believe in the second possibility, because I do not believe that a man with £50,000 a year and a man with fifteen shillings a week either can, or will, co-operate. The Nature of their relationship is quite simply, that the one is robbing the other, and there is no reason to think the robber will suddenly turn over a new leaf. It would seem, therefore, that if the problems of western capitalism are to be solved, it will have to be through a third alternative, a movement which is genuinely revolutionary, i.e. willing to make drastic changes and to use violence if necessary, but which does not lose touch, as Communism and Fascism have done, with the essential values of democracy. Such a thing is by no means unthinkable. The germs of such a movement exist in numerous countries, and they are capable of growing. At any rate, if they don’t, there is no real exit from the pigsty we are in.”
– George Orwell
—
it is–tragically but not surprisingly–impossible to convince the average amerikan that s/he is already a Good-Citizen-Consumer of a fascist empire (the most destructive in history, starting with the genocide and enslavement of Africans and American Indians).
“friendly” fascist or not, fascism is fascism.
and Sarah Palin would have to work very hard to “improve” on the fascist accomplishments of Barack Obama.
as George Carlin astutely pointed out, amerika went to war with Germany and The Axis because they were imposing on our imperial action and territory.
let us not forget, the amerikan empire was generally supportive of Nazi Germany until Germany declared war on amerika.
so be careful with the comparisons, as they do not reflect well in our capitalist, fascist, imperial mirror.
as for the pigsty we’re in, there are no positive signs either now or on the horizon.
and voting for Barack Obama was a brutal step in the wrong direction.
amerika’s fake-Left is just as fascist as the real-Right and non-existent-Middle.
enjoy our ritual day of memorializing, romanticizing and rationalizing our imperialism.
USA! USA! USA!
Wage,
I think that if there were any American interests to serve by the Iraqi invasion they would have been far better served by an Iraqi population that was peaceful, docile, polite, that said please and thankyou, that went to work the day after “Mission Accomplished”, that listened to their American governors, that formed political parties and turned out to vote.
Like good little doobies. Like Canadians. And then went to do some topless sunbathing on the banks of the Euphrates. Like Swedes. And then went to the cafes and smoked some pot. Like the Dutch.
But the thing is, and here was the American mistake, the Iraqis are not Canadians or Swedes or Dutch.
So the point is that as far as all the ethnic cleansing goes I seriously don’t think that this was the US intent. I think it was the result of age old animosities that came to the surface as a result of the removal of Sadam.
According to what I’ve read the party that Sadam headed was modelled on European fascist parties and their methods also. So Iraqis are/were well acquainted with the boot of fascism courtesy of Sadam and the Baath Party.
Thanks MM. I was wondering about you. Glad to see you’re back.
There is another reason Palin will not be elected President: she doesn’t have the support of Republican conservatives.
George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and other conservatives are saying essentially the same thing: Palin doesn’t have GOP support. She is toast. Poll after poll confirms what they say.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/60-of-voters-say-sarah-palin-is-unelectable/
Well, Cash, that was my reply to your comment that I should talk to the actual victims of fascism.
Maybe the US would have been better served by making nice with the people of Iraq. Maybe Germany and Japan would have been better served by making nice with the people of the USSR and China.
The point is, of course, that they didn’t.
They kick down doors, throw people into prison, fund death squads, terrorize the population, run over children, force farmers to buy Monsanto seeds, etc.
That’s not very nice.
I sunk a few thou into Excelsior’s medic-to-RN program before I actually looked at the faces of the nurses I work with. They are miserable. Most of them care about their patients, and take pride in their profession, but increasingly they are forced into the same turn-’em-and-burn-’em mode that I was in as a waiter, back in the day. How do you take care of 8-12 really sick people when the boss is focused on the bottom line?
So, at 56, I am looking at 13 more years of 911 bullshit, and if I survive it a pretty shitty pension might be waiting for me there. Meantime I work 80-100 hours a week. I am lucky, I tell myself- I have a job, seniority, and I love my work. I have a viable family, friends who are in worse shape than me but still stay in touch, and a couple of very nice recumbent bikes. Yeah, I got hurt last year, missed a few months’ work and lost my house, but what the fuck. At least my girlfriend left me.
It is hard for me to look my niece in the eye when she says she is applying for nursing school. She will be a credit to the profession. Will it we worthy of her?
I am gonna buy gold. Gonna trade my nuts for two nuggets and stash them in my sagging sac. That oughta do it. Clank…
Sarah Palin is a distraction. She’s the boogeyman for the Democrats, put out there to scare people Democrat. Talk of the 2012 election is a distraction, the Super Bowl started months earlier. Who the hell cares?
It isn’t right vs left. It’s top vs bottom.
I prefer when JHK focuses on our ruling overlords, rather than the Wizards in front of the curtain.
Jim, how ’bout if she was in blackface, with roots in radical Islam, American Communism, and the black nationalist movement, an intellectual Marxist bullshitter, would you like her better then?
Sarah Palin for President!
Campaign Slogan:
“Kick ass and launch nukes!
-Marlin
Wage- I have always thought that nurses had far more “on the ground” experience than doctors. Any time I’ve brushed up against the medical establishment, it was the nurses who provided the most valuable and accurate information.
People in the collapse community are always casting about for occupations of value to see them through the collapse. I think nurses will come through quit well. You might be taking chickens and produce in return for lancing a boil and sterilizing it, but your skills will put food on the table.
One of the drawbacks of the community I’m thinking of joining is that we’re a pretty aging group of people. 60s to 90s. A plus is, that one of our number is a nurse.
I’m sure you’ve contemplated a plan B or plan C. But, if not, you might start thinking about health care when the hospital and pharmacy are gone. Before their was aspirin, there was birch bark.
Today Obama said we owe a debt to fallen heroes that we can never repay.
Like we personally asked them to make a sacrifice.
Like they didn’t make the decision to volunteer due to the economic draft, or boredom, or family tradition, or simply being brainwashed.
Like the real reasons weren’t vain glory and promised benefits and respect.
Like they have made us “safer” instead of increasing the hatred of Americans due to their commission of military atrocities (think many and continuing Fallujahs, many and continuing Abu Ghraibs, or the 14 deaths in Afghanistan yesterday: 2 women and 12 children).
Like the military is not spending us into bankruptcy, with military benefits and military pensions promised into the future that we cannot afford.
Like the military is not wastefully and expensively using up finite fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate.
I remember them on Memorial Day. I wish they had never signed up. I wish they were still alive. I do not honor them and do not consider their actions a necessary sacrifice.
Comparing Palin and her ilk to Hitler & Co. really is a stretch. For starts, Hitler and his Nazi buddies were highly intelligent. Most of the Nazi hierarchy, unlike the current crop of Republican chicken-hawks, actually served in the military…Hitler was a WWI vet and was awarded his Iron Cross legitimately.
I was float nurse a couple of months ago. I was helping a nurse struggling with a heavy load.
EMS brought in an addicted patient they gave Narcan to. Thanks a lot! Now we had a 200 lb. pt thrashing around, screaming and trying to pull out her IV. Ativan did nothing.
In the meantime, they put a chest pain patient in another bed, so I went in to get her started. O2, monitor, IV, draw blood, assessment, and then the new stuff, started since the efficiency expert and the speed-up – computer charting (thanks Obama http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/12/health-care-in-america.html) and the new questions that all are asked (for their permanent record). Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? Do you have an advanced directive? Anyone beating you up at home?
I came out of that room, and there was a med ordered for the violent patient, so I went to the pharmacy to pick it up, handing the chart to the ward clerk to put in the orders in the meantime.
Oh. New rules. I’m supposed to put in my own orders. So my boss wrote me up for breaking those rules!
REALLY? The patient has to wait while I put in orders, while the ward clerk sits there?
This is the petty way they’re using to get rid of the nurses with seniority, so they can replace us with lower paid workers, who don’t realize how stupid the new system is.
While the conservatives scream about socialist health care, and the Obamabots insist that the Health Insurance Industry Giveaway is progressive, the truth is that the ruling class is cutting back on the expensive health care system in the US, not by switching to a government run system in which everyone would be covered, (like the rest of the world has), but by stopping the government money which has kept the thing running as well as it has so far.
Damn right, people are going to die. But it won’t be “death panels”. It’ll be the same as it is now, people not seeking care because they can’t afford it. Increasing insurance costs, increased co-pays, increased deductibles. Even people nominally insured won’t seek care.
Self-imposed death panels, due to an insane profit-driven system.
Yeah tell that to the Indians. How did such “free roaming” work out for them? And if we don’t watch out, the same thing is going to happen to us. Look Old Girl: Nationhood and a Universal Ethic don’t go together. The Hidden Communists and Globalists promoted this in the Colleges and the Media in order to undermine the West. It has. Europe is going down under the Crescent and we under the Enchildada. We are the new Indians – the real Native Americans.
Not only are you a dick, but a pussy too.
Well, thanks, LLB.
I have birch and willow trees, as far as that goes.
Did you know that we give aspirin to people having heart attacks?
It’s a basic standard of care.
So you should be against the Immigrants crashing the system – and bankrupting it as they have in dozens of hospitals in the deep Southwest. Or do you want the system to crash? Communists like chaos since it brings the Revolution on.
You don’t like enchiladas?
One of the benefits of diversity and multiculturalism — multicultural is America — is being able to sample various cuisines prepared by those who best know that cuisine.
Vlad, you do suffer so!
If only you could relax, celebrate living with people different from you, embrace diversity and understand that it makes us stronger as a nation.
“The only reason for following Sarah Palin would be to check out her ass. That takes ten seconds, end of following Sarah Palin.”
Bingo! Don’t know what kind of three ring circus the sheep-handlers have in store for us this time, but I’m sure it will involve lots of bubble-headed, what they want to hear speeches, kosher hotdogs, and low-brained schtick. How can anyone take American politics seriously these days? Hitler had a plan. Does Palin?
The handlers have a plan and it begins with taking all your money and then war, war, and more war. And then it gets really interesting…
P.S. (Sarah, you look GREAT in leather! Sieg Heil!)
Jim, what’s that guys tag say where the red arrow is pointing? Looks like “CFN FTW” to me.
Now you are anti-pussy? LOL!
“If elected, Palin would continue our Crusades in the Middle East and our mindless support of Israel.”
NO! You’re kidding me? You mean to tell me that you actually believe the handlers will appoint a Zionista to the office of the presidency?
John McCain said yesterday he thought Palin could beat Obama in 2012 and know what an excellent prognosticator of political trends he is! lol
http://alttransbikes.blogspot.com
Shecky just so we’re clear I’m faulting people for not seeing that blowback is something that can happen from within your own country.
If you keep on shitting on people by either insulting them or, as you say, taking away their livelihoods or making financial promises and then reneging, eventually there’s going to be unpleasantness. And on top of that the people getting crapped on are armed to the teeth.
The most serious blowback that I can remember was the Tim McVeigh incident that, from what I’ve read, happened as a result of armed govt action on the Koresh compound and Ruby Ridge. Nothing excuses the bombing of that building. But still, the lesson that ought to have been learned is that govts should tread lightly and be very parsimonious in their use of lethal force in their own country. Especially when, as in the case of Koresh, there appears to have been no reason that he couldn’t have been arrested during one of his many trips into town by himself.
I think that you and I don’t have a quarrel, we’re on the same side in this even if we live in different countries. Because a lot of what happens down there happens up here. In your country it’s the South and rural people that are denigrated by your arrogant urban liberal elite, up here it’s Westerners and rural people. Plus we have a rancourous French vs Englsh divide.
The people that think they’re so high and mighty ought to know better given that they’re so educated and well read. Or so they tell us all the bloody time. Because if they were so damned smart they’d know from history that there is no elite, no social class, no country, no empire that can’t be taken down. They all are sooner or later by either internal revolt or external aggression. And the elites in our respective countries that tell us they’re so much better than the rest of us will be too.
Nice week’s work JHK, thanks to you as always.
And WOW, did you bring out the Palin defenders. 150,000,000 women in this country and THAT’S the best we can do? Come on guys – the worst day’s work McCain ever did (other than getting shot down, perhaps) was to pick her for VP.
But the corporate control fascism crowd has it wrong as well, concerning Ms. Palin. Her main interest is self-promotion and helping Ms. Palin establish a “Palin Brand” that will endure and prosper, in profitable books and interviews – regardless of the words that fall out of her mouth.
And both groups should admit that Palin would have ZERO crowd appeal if McCain had not put her on the ticket. – – ClusterFucked we be, mateys!
To cases this week, here’s a great JHK example of the power of messages repeated over and over to diminish democracy, dialog, and common sense:
“Not Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks (“ditto Free Market Capitalism”).
Not the futility of endless war (“Support our troops!”)” -JHK-
We in the US are enjoined from even having a national level conversation about Banking Crime and War Policy – because of the power of these endlessly repeated messages.
No one called “First!” this week.
That’s too bad.
“One Hundred Twelfth!!
Obama gave 20 trillion dollars in transaction guarantees to the global bankers (which noble prize winner Stiglitz says we will be luck to get 4 trillion back) and you choose Palin as your example of fascist. LMAO. Follow the money.
I see Jim’s essay this week has flushed a new bunch of cockroachs out of the woodwork. Bravo! Lot’s of new posters with their undies in a twist because someone called Palin for what she is — a whining fascist.
BUT, what her critics and supporters don’t get is that she’s just the Distraction. She’s the Puppet bouncing around in front of you while the Powers-That-Be are behind you breaking out a new jar of vaseline for your next round of TARP cornholio.
When you look at the cast in this Circus Maximus, from Obama the Teleprompter-in-Chief on down to Bachman hawking bags of peanuts, you have to ask the question, is this the best we can come up with?
I think it was Orwell who thought the British ruling class was specially bred dumb to oversee the collapse of the British Empire.
We seem to have bred our own ruling class of dummies to oversee the fall of the American Empire.
I bought an extra hockey cup to put on backwards — hope that helps.
Homework well done, Jimbo and the pix add a nice touch to your sardonic humor. Sarah Palin is a menace for sure, but she’ll be challenged by even more moronic candidates like Minnesota’s own Michelle Bachmann…CAT FIGHT! My spouse and I planned to take a short walk to a peaceful nearby cemetery (where we have a plot for when we enter the Promised Land) to observe a Memorial Day service in honor of those who have given their lives to protect the good ol’ US of A, but severe thunderstorms (ya think global warming is for real and caused by the good ol’ human race?) put the kabosh on that. After the storm passed, we walked up there anyway and I was touched by the number of folks on the grounds milling around. Cars parked around included a black Mercedes CLK320 convertible with black interior and a rusted ’86 Olds Ciera with a roof mount US flag above one door and a MN Twins (go last place Twins w/ the worst record in baseball!) above the other. Ah America! Anyway, hope y’all have a great end to your MD weekend. Summer’s just begun…should be a winner!
“Do you get an inkling now? Don’t “get” why shame could be a powerful social motivator? …For assimilation or purge?”
-ozone-
Yeah, OK, ozone – I think I’m now getting some of your point, and JHK did a nice elaboration on the “power of shame.”
I’ve said many times that, for example, the southeastern US is the way it is (more militaristic, clannish, religious etc) is because they LOST in the Civil War and ongoing 140+ year occupation and conquest.
You suggest that it was not just losing, it was the SHAME of losing that was the worst/best motivator.
In the same way that the SHAME of being called racist motivates the whole country to try to “assimilate” huge increases in US population due to immigration, TODAY. When logically, this increase may destroy quality of life in the US before finally rendering most of the planet uninhabitable for humans, generally?
Maybe, O3 – I’ll have to think about that one a while. Thanks!
By the way congratulations on your name “shakazulu” which is certainly cooler than some. “Bubblehead” actually is slang for submariner, although I only did that for 4 years ending 30 years ago.
Some of the comments today are pretty ridiculous if you ask me, but that serves a purpose and I’m glad that there’s no gatekeeper to reject them as it doesn’t hurt to scroll past some of this shit.
I marvel at people who think that only technical degrees are worthwhile or that something is automically more valid just because it tends to pay better. I also think that there’s nothing wrong with having mulitple generations of a family living together. Let’s put it this way: living in your mom’s basement is a hell of a lot better than living with my last girlfriend, who suffered from religious mania and became a biter when drunk.
True, Hitler was an evil genius of sorts, although only politically and not militarily. From a military standpoint he was incompetent and it should surprise no one that the Prussian officer class did its damnedest to assassinate him.
If McCain had chosen Condoleeza Rice as his running mate he may well have gotten elected, and his ticket would’ve boasted twice the African content of Obama’s! Too late now.
Wardoc –
Don’t apologize! Please post more.
Apparently, nobody’s running a counter, either.
Your posts are worth reading.
One of your posts is worth 5 of Vlad’s – as he leads the thread into generally futile discussion of White Racism, week after week. (Vlad – whether that’s your intent or not is open to question. But that’s the effect your posts often have.)
One of your posts, Wardoc, is worth 100 of asoka’s – as he leads the thread into useless argumentative nothingness, week after week.
Someone earlier wrote: “I like Sarah Palin. She’s a good honest woman without pretensions.”
Is that “without pretensions” phrase a code for half-educated? She was unqualified even to be gov of Alaska, and she quit before her term was up. I suppose she’d be okay (even a “good honest woman without pretensions”) as a working mother, but she is most certainly unqualified for high office. She reflects America’s anti-intellectual bias supremely well, just when we need to be supremely wise and informed.
Shinola was a shoe polish”
-mm-
Dang, myrtle, I’ve been hearing that expression my whole life and never, until right now, knew that Shinola was a shoe polish.
Thanks!
And welcome back!
Hope your health continues to improve.
That was a total non sequitur, Vlad.
I say that I’m for a government run health system, and you say therefore I should be against health care for immigrants.
That is illogical.
One of the reasons that we have the pitiful government-run health care clinics that we have is because of those damn early 20th eastern European immigrants, with their TB and such, spreading it to the good northern European stock already here.
TB and VD, scourges fought by the government, through public health clinics.
I say we expand them.
I meant to say early 20th century immigrants.
Well Jim,
Since you brought up Hitler and the Nazis, perhaps it’s opportune to examine just how Germany went from the Wiemar hyperinflation and economic ruin to the world’s economic powerhouse in just a few years.
There are lessons for U.S. here…
Nazism and the German economic miracle
“From the Third Reich to the current regime of Gerhard Schroeder, Germany has shown remarkable ability to achieve economic prominence in the face of overwhelming odds – including those it imposed on itself through ultra-nationalism, militarism and racism….”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html
Vlad, you seem to be responding to something I posed last November about Palin.
The selling of a low information president
What describes the country best, but who is being bought and sold as our next leader.
Ah, Sarah Palin is back and ready to rumble. Enter her new “reality” show for which she is handsomely paid $1 Million per episode. Is this campaign funds from the “Lame Stream Media”? —Oh and a new book, written by someone other than herself.
She is seen in the wilds of Alaska awkwardly shooting a gun and self-consciously climbing rocks. She claims, that she’d rather be outdoors here than working (as Gov. or Pres.?)
But that is largely ignored as our media sees her largely as a sellable product and you know they just see her as the raw material they can form in the public eye.
The plutocracy is making a statement that no seasoned statesman need apply. They will be running things directly through the White House from now on, using their low information president of the free world as puppet. Bill Kristol’s wet dream is to play Charles Bernard Shaw (as god) pulling the strings of his subjects from some lofty clouds as seen on the cover of the album of “My Fair Lady” to her puppet regime.
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Aspirin is good for the heart – but it might not stop a heart attack, Wage.
I would think that “without pretensions” would mean that she wouldn’t feel that she was qualified to be President. How pretentious is that!
Yup. that “without pretensions” resonated with me, too. I almost commented on it, but ya beat me to it! 🙂
It’s just all part and parcel of the (wide) streak of anti-intellectualism that runs through this country. And, I am not talking about people with advanced university experience. Anyone who reads (even popular fiction), uses words of more then a syllable or two and makes a stab at a grammatical sentence.
This wide streak is closely related to “who do you think you are?” and “do you think you’re better than us?”
I’m starting to question your reading comprehension skills, Vlad.
I agree. It all Hollywood for here on out. They probably enjoy manipulating us even more than they have too. Why George Bush as opposed to his brother Jeb – a much more serious and dignified man.
Very interesting link, West coast.
It explains what I said earlier, about my mother’s German co-worker, who said that things were great under Hitler, until the bombings.
lbendet would like this link. Here’s a quote-
“Any economic policy that does not lead to full employment is self-deceivingly counterproductive, and any policy that permits international wage arbitrage is treasonous.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html
Theortetically, I’d be for single payer insurance and alot of Goverment Health Care too. But having a welfare state and opening the borders are mutually exclusive. It’s simply an insane thing to do. So if we can’t have a rational state, I’m for as little goverment as possible. Thus my interest in traditional American Conservatism. Yes, I question if it fits the modern world completely too. But at least it will limit the damadge done by a State gone mad.
Western Europe was rational if not inspired for a few decades after WW2. Now they have gone insane and opened up their borders to Islam. Their future is as dark as Asoka. Fascism is their only chance now. It’s possible since that is their tradition as opposed to our’s.
I created you, put the bolts in your head. And now you stab me in the back. Frankenstein, you are doomed to walk the earth like Cain.
‘Sarah loves sprawl, junk-food, and other horrors of our culture.’
And the Obamas hate it?
Common at the Whitehouse! Gawd!!
No word about Common and his anti woman,gay etc
poetry….I just heard some on the radio…
hahahahah
The Obamas love money,power,rahmbo,common etc.
Heh, now a story surfaces where Rolling Thunder says Palin wasn’t even invited, they claim they didn’t know she was coming and she’s called a “distraction” by their spokespeople.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/27/6732550-rolling-thunder-sarah-palin-not-invited
Ellen Brown also talks about sovereign credit creation as a way to a prosperous society. She also points out that Hitler led Germany out of depression in this way.
http://www.webofdebt.com/
Obama is of mixed race and brought Zionists into the whitehouse….
So, I went to the Web of Debt website and noticed this.
For you and Prog, self-righteous defenders of the border. (And, no, I don’t support massive immigration. Every immigrant I’ve ever known came here for economic reasons, not “freedom”. If the US doesn’t want immigrants from Mexico, it should abolish NAFTA, quit taking all the water from the Colorado river, quit dumping corn, and quit using Mexican drug money to keep US banks solvent, and stop supporting certain drug cartels over others with death squads)
http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-22.php
Its the numbers wage…there were 10,000,000
[?] mexicans in 1900, 100m + 50 million latinos
here in 2000 wage..easy to put all the blame on the corporations.
So what telephone provider does she use. I’d like to know because she seems to have a direct line to the big man upstairs. I mean, how else could she know what God’s plan is?
Wagelabor,
Keep in mind that the German economics minister Dalmar Schacht, the guy that resurrected the German economy and took it from hyperinflation and ruin to a powerhouse–he got hanged after Nuremberg.
Our economics ministers, that took a powerhouse and have turned it into incipient garbage got billion dollar bonuses.
There’s just no justice in this world I tell ya.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html
Have you seen the John Perkins videos, the guy that wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman?
They are available on Zerohedge.
i.e. “If the bankers and economic hitmen can’t extort what we want out of a government, then we send in the jackals. If that doesn’t work, we send in the military…”
Stalin wanted National Communism in Russia.
That’s why he wanted to kill Trotsky who was for International Communism.
The Neocons like Palin’s handler Kristol are the heirs and successors of Trotsky.
They are mostly former leftist International Trotskyites who have metamorphosed into ‘anticommunists’.
The American people get duped again.
Bonus points if you know who actually killed Trotsky in Mexico.
“I am gonna buy gold. Gonna trade my nuts for two nuggets and stash them in my sagging sac. That oughta do it. Clank…”
“There once was a man from Madras,
his balls were made of brass,
in stormy weather,
he’d clank them together
and lightening would shoot from his ass…”
That Masters in English came in handy after all!
It ain’t over til it’s over, West. We’ve got time, and they’re still around.
I’ve read Confessions of An Economic Hitman, but haven’t seen the videos. But if South American countries can overcome US imperialism, so can we.
Yes, we can! Yes, we can!
Ramon Mercador killed Trotsky, and this was confirmed by a Barcelona detective who once arrested him.
I will be very surprised if Palin actually tried to run seriously. Also I’m not buuying any of this nonsense that Kristol, Palin’s handler, was once a Trotskyite. Speak of incongruity.
Republican candidates are routinely compared to Hitler, its par for the course. I’m surprised Jim has stooped this low.
I’ve yet to see any Democrats compared with Bolsheviks. I probably shouldn’t be holding my breath on that one.
-Marlin
Well, we have “pragmatists” like Cash and Wardoc declaring that most anything other than math or science as bullshit. As if the Wall Street mathematicians, devoid on any moral consideration tempered by liberal art study, are anything other that tools for avarice and greed. English, History, Art, and Philosophy are declared worthless endeavors even if they might develop the sensibility and vision to guide the direction of the head-in-the- microscope automaton Nope, this mist and water which provides the flexibility to actually learn from history or consider social impact are declared worthless by these dry buffoons of the monochrome. And then Prog–he of “saving-one -American-at-a-time” CFN fame, asserts this trash is worth much more than the well-rounded insights of Asoka or even Vlad when he is in one of his rare non-racial moments of consideration. Prog, you’re fast proving to be an intellectual whore who will jump into any ol’ bed if it means screwing Asoka up the ass.
Fortunately, the true pragmatist is not so blind as these right-wing clowns of screed and blindness.
“Prog, self-righteous defenders of the border.”
-wage-
Self-righteous? That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think. Not to mention that there’s at least one oxymoron in that little phrase.
You are probably correct that US corporate/govt. policies are somewhat to blame for the massive migration from the South.
But I’m a linear thinker, and in a state (GA) and a region overflowing with immigrants, I seized upon the “secure the border” idea as the only possible solution.
Of course, mandatory e-verify would solve the problem with less hassle and “he’s a racist/no he’s not bullsh*t.” Georgia’s demonstrated that by passing a mandatory e-verify bill that ALREADY seems to have illegal aliens leaving the state in droves – to the extent that agricultural interests are raising PR hell about having to pay more money to get their work done.
And I realized, just a few weeks ago that the increase in population caused by LEGAL immigration poses a far worse threat to the US and the World than does a porous border to the south or north.
Join FAIR, btw and help work for “Replacement Rate” immigration – before it’s too late.
No, she is not. She is a media whore and a demagogue who appeals to some of the darkest and most deluded parts of the American psyche.
Sarah Palin is both a loser and a winner. Both incredibly ugly and beautiful. It all depends on your viewpoint – whether you are a member of her tribe or not. The same could be said of Nancy Pelosi.
As for IQ – I sense she has a good practical intelligence but very little book smarts. She or anyone like her certainly shouldn’t be running for President. Not until they’ve been in Congress for a few terms to see how the whole thing works.
I finished reading Joe Bageant’s “Deer Hunting with Jesus”, an excellent book.
I particularly enjoyed Bageant’s description of how “brain dead” U.S. rednecks live in a mental hologram created by the U.S. media.
“‘The People’ doing our hardest work and fighting our wars are not altruistic and probably never were. They don’t give a rat’s bunghole about the world’s poor or the planet or animals or anything else. Not really. ‘The People’ like cheap gas. They like chasing post-Thanksgiving Day Christmas sales. And if fascism comes, they will like that too if the cost of gas isn’t too high and Comcast comes through with a twenty-four-hour NFL channel. That is the American hologram.” (Deer Hunting with Jesus”, p. 91)
“Like most of conservative Winchester, Tom believes violence can solve foreign political problems. During political discussion around here, it is not uncommon to hear someone talk about the Middle East or some Asian or European country “getting out of line” and “needing to be put in its place.” Any day of the week I can easily show you a hundred people who believe we should bomb France (although I doubt many of them could readily find it on a map). For a certain kind of American, it seems, bombing anyone anywhere helps to purge some unarticulated inner rage—rage that the easy truisms that once seemed to lend nobility to the dullest of lives are no longer believable. So long as Americans agreed that they were brave and true and exceptional—people toward whom the entire world looked, for example—and so long as they wrapped themselves in the cloak of that self-appointed goodness, their lives had meaning. No insight required. Just add religious faith.” (“Deer Hunting with Jesus”, pp. 71-72)
“Prog, you’re fast proving to be an intellectual whore”
-buckstud-
Damn, buck and wage declare Memorial Day to be “attack ProgressorSomething Day”
Buck – I didn’t say I agreed with old WarDoc, I said his posts “were worth reading.” (my exact words!)
I don’t make a big secret that I despise the way Asoka twists words into lies. And that most of his posts contribute “heat but not light.” – While frequently sidetracking discussions that could lead to very worthwhile issues to explore. And he seems to post – far more – I’m guessing, any other CFN poster.
Meanwhile WarDoc is worried about posting twice.
Jeeze, buck!
Now, I know – “That which we find most annoying has the most to teach us.” orionoir, paraphrased
I’ve been checking old CFN archives to try to find a reason that asoka’s prevaracations are so annoying to me.
BUT –
“an intellectual whore” hardly
“i did not have sex with that poster, that Monica Wardoc…” -bill clinton – paraphrased.
The Neo-Cons, mostly Jews at least originally, took over the Republican Party a few decades ago. Many of them had been Communists and had come from Communist backgrounds. They realized that Republicanism would be a better vehicle for their ethnic interests than Communism here in America.
Of course not all of them are this frank – even to themselves. Read David Horowitz. In any case, they changed main stream Republicanism away from family values and Christianity towards Globalism and every kind of bigness. Completely in favor of mass immigration: they transform America in the most fundamental way even as they trumpet Americanism for the rest for the rest of world. They have been and are a disaser for America and the the Conservative Cause.
“And then Prog–he of “saving-one -American-at-a-time” CFN fame,”
-buck, misquoting-
You screwed up the quote, Buck.
I am trying to “change America, one mind at a time.”
Asoka keeps messing up my workspace on CFN.
Hard to change minds when asoka has some of those minds too angry to think straight.
=======
On a lighter note, Wage extracted the exact same quote that I found from WestCoasts weblink.
“Any economic policy that does not lead to full employment is self-deceivingly counterproductive, and any policy that permits international wage arbitrage is treasonous.”
But I didn’t post it because I didn’t want to post too much on such a lovely Monday.
Cheers, you all!
Irving Kristol (Bill’s Dad) was the founder of the movement known as neoconservative.
Wikipedia:
Kristol was born in Brooklyn, New York, … He received his B.A. from the City College of New York in 1940, where he majored in history and was part of a small but vocal Trotskyist group who eventually became the New York Intellectuals. During World War II, he served in Europe in the 12th Armored Division as a combat infantryman.[6]
you can read the rest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Kristol
Buck is a huge Asoka fan – evidently you didn’t notice. It shows his imbalance.
Please no bare backing even if he is as cute as a button.
Dennis Kucinich has been branded a pinko. I used to vote for him, because I am a pinko. When he caved in to Obama on this ridiculous health care reform bill I voted for the Libertarian candidate in the next [last] election. I was disappointed that he managed to get reelected, but then that’s Cuyahoga County for you. I dislike health care reform as the Democrats settled for it because it is decidedly not socialized medicine, which of course is what I wanted. I do not agree with forcing people to buy private health insurance and if my VA card is not acceptable to the IRS then I will pay the fucking fine, as that will be be far less than the price of private insurance. Kucinich caved on the bill because Obama gave him a ride on Air Force One! Not much of a Bolshevik if you ask me.
The most absurd feature of “reform” is the fine for remaining uninsured. The government is counting on lots of people ponying up those fines. So if they’re expecting this to be a revenue stream how is that possible if everyone was to be insured? Then of course fines are to be calculated as percentage of income, so in effect, the unemployed will owe the government nothing! This is just too much. It’s a miracle that half the population hasn’t already emigrated the way we’re being herded around to be sheared by various business interests. Bolshevik my ass. More like they all want to sit on the boards of insurance companies when they leave politics.
Jim:
Your comments about Our Dear Sarah ( veiled reference to Kim Il-Sung – intentional) reminded me of a lecture Naomi Klein gave, pointing out the dangers facing American democracy today. She compared the present-day US to the rise of the NSADAP in Germany and found some shocking similarities. Thus, I see merit in your comparison of Palin to the big H, and agree that she is in fact dangerous (Hitler was initially considered to be a harmless, but useful buffoon by the conservative leaders in the Weimar Republic (gee: that turned out well!) . Your remarks also reminded me of something I picked up while doing a War Studies MA at Royal Military College.
The homily goes like this: In the pre-1945 German officer training system, all officers were sorted into four groups. The first group was made up of smart and hard-working officers. The second group contained those who were smart and lazy. The third group was composed of the stupid and lazy. Finally the forth group was made up of the stupid and hard working.
Based on this system the German Army sent the smart & hard working officers to staff college – because they had the precision to manage the countless details of army logistics. The smart and lazy were ear-marked for command – because they know how to delegate. The stupid and lazy were given some sort of job – because they at least could do something useful. But the stupid and hardworking were kicked out of the army ASAP, because there’s nothing more dangerous than a hard working fool.
I believe our dear beloved Sarah belongs to the last group. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
How lucky to have a picture like that? Good eye.
“who suffered from religious mania and became a biter when drunk.”
Drunkenness and religious mania? Nice combo. I met a “bubblehead” when I was in the army. He was as crazy as anyone I ever met while in the service. I put it down to oxygen deprivation.
Sorry, perhaps it was harsh.
But to ignore the eonomic rape of Mexico by profiteers, and only focus on the victims driven by desperate need, is not only wrong, but futile.
People don’t just fade away when their lands are stolen or their jobs taken away.
Without justice, there is no peace.
Without survival south of the border, there will be no border security.
Speaking of which, he that gives up security for freedom deserves neither.
You’re willing to live in a police state to make sure some Mexican peasant doesn’t come pick your vegetables?
“Papers, please” is the hallmark of a totalitarian state.
Dennis Kucinich? Obama is called a socialist by Marlin. He’s being disingenuous.
I’ll probably get criticized for linking too much to my blog, but I disagree totally that the ride on Air Force One was what turned Dennis. No way. He’s more principled than that.
I watched it on Democracy Now, and I totally understand what made him cave.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-forgive-you-dennis.html
I do agree with you about equating education only with future income. There is more to life than money, and education should make for a more well-rounded human being.
Now that you’ve promised me the moon can you loan me some fiat money so I can buy some toxic hotdogs because the latest JIHAD event is being broadcast on the evening boob tube after all the car commercials.
“One of your posts is worth 5 of Vlad’s – as he leads the thread into generally futile discussion of White Racism, week after week. (Vlad – whether that’s your intent or not is open to question. But that’s the effect your posts often have.)
One of your posts, Wardoc, is worth 100 of asoka’s – as he leads the thread into useless argumentative nothingness, week after week.”
And there is rest of your post, Prog. So you perhaps don’t agree with WarDoc. Fine, whatever, I don’t care who you agree with or what beliefs you espouse. Or anyone else for that matter, But this is a give and take forum and so I respond to what you write – all of it.
Apparently Wardoc is just a tee Prog sets up in order to take a wack at Asoka. There’s an old saying, if you get into an opponents head you can play around with them any way you like. Putting this as gently as possible, Asoka is having a lot of fun.
But hey, “Krantz The Incessant Racist” seems to know a thing or two about imbalance. Perhaps he can share some advice on how to overcome obsession and compulsion.
Has anyone come up with an acronim name for Sarah Palin? Our current president is “BO”, the one before hi, was “Duhbya”, so Mrs. Biker needs one. How about SAP?
You ought to read the “Odd Lies of Sarah Palin” a running series on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog. I don’t promote his site as a conservative in any sense, but it is interesting. I really sense there’s a lot of common ground between left and right… but the fringes, especially on the unhinged right, have stolen the conversation. JHK sums that up nicely.
When drunk on red wine she would literally think that she had been Mary Magdalene in a previous incarnation and that moreover, she’d literally been J.C.’s “bitch”. She did all her coursework for a Ph.D. in clinical psych. except for the dissertation. I also suspect that she flunked the required course of pschoanalysis. She’s the lady who sent me to barber college when I got medicaled out of the merchant marine. So she was a voc. rehab. counselor. After one year shacked up with her I’ll live in my mama’s basement and love every minute of it. Especially if mom is disabled and I’m what’s keeping her out of a nursing home. Submariners are nuts because their alcoholism rate is something like 75%, although they don’t go nuts on patrol, because U.S. submarines are dry, unlike the British, who pack their torpedo tubes with John Courage beer.
I think Mr. Kunstler is drawing too linear conclusions from the history. Germany after WWI was very different country than USA today.
It was full of harsh WWI veterans and folks used to hard work with their hands. WWI especially was very cruel, basically two huge armies sitting in ditches like rats, waiting for another useless attack or counterattack.
I think it must have been much more cruel and mentally devastating to the surviving soldiers than the WWII, which was a war of constantly moving frontal lines.
So German men were used to real hardship and were pissed off, violence always seen as an option. Then came the Weimar hyperinflation. It must have felt even more devastating for them and the lashing out was so much more stronger via fascism. Americans have not gone through nothing similar recently.
One another difference is that Germany was really homogenous white folks country and fascism was able to unify them using propaganda. USA is not and is also much bigger country.
If fascism really took over federal government in the USA, the consequences would be very different. Instead of unifying, it would break apart USA and all kinds of groups, mostly along racial lines, would start fighting against each other inside USA.
Maybe even second civil war would errupt and new borders of new countries would be eventually drawn. Something like after Roman Empire collapsed, it all got rather messy.
There’s no way in hell that Obama qualifies as any sort of real socialist. He is Wall Street’s lapdog, in fact, so anyone muttering that Obama is a socialist is probably as dumb as a box of rocks, which about covers 50% of the population.
Disingenuous is one of my favorite words. I’ll take your word about Marlin. It’s difficult to tell with some people. My usual best example of the meaning of “disingenuous” is these high church Episcopalians who think that they’re real catholics. It’s like the time when Tallulah Bankhead took Monsignor Ronald Knox to St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church off of Times Square to impress him with their faithful adherence to all the early catholic stuff they used to have before Elizabeth I put an end to it. After communion she asked the monsignor what he thought and he replied “I prefer the simplicity of the Roman Catholic Church”. This was nearly twenty years before Vatican II.
Hey,Shecky,do all your passports expire at the same time or is the Israeli one a non-expiring,lifetime Issue?
So what exactly does Obama have to offer to the American people beside economic misery and an ineffective foreign policy. He is the quintessential looser. He will be remembered as America’s biggest mistake – Jimmy Carter on steroids. I doubt Sarah Palin – no matter how ignorant she might be – could do any worse.
-economic rape of Mexico-
-wage-
I don’t disagree that a lot of Mexico’s problems are due to American Corporate/Political processes and overpopulation.
But, Wage, “nobody?” around here knows a thing about the “economic rape of Mexico.” They just know we’ve got problems – misshapen school budgets, overcrowded jails, overstressed ER’s – and that some considerable percentage of the high needs children, jail inmates, and uninsured ER patients are “illegal?” immigrants from south of the US border.
And that’s not racism, that’s just an objective observation of schools, jails, and hospitals. Little help here, Buck, because asoka is gonna call me a racist – again.
So, after a lot of citizen pressure – and a lot of snivelling and lobbying from the Chamber of Commerce and big ag – Georgia passed a E-verify bill. And it must be working, because big ag is already complaining that they are having to pay more to get workers.
“You’re willing to live in a police state to make sure some Mexican peasant doesn’t come pick your vegetables?”
-wage-
And “papers please,” Wage?? Come on? Do you not carry a driver’s license most everywhere? Can you cash a check, buy wine, without showing “papers?”
Have you ever – one single time in your life – gotten a job and a paycheck without showing ID and a VALID SSN? aka “papers?”
“Papers please” is a mirage, PR stunt to call up images of Nazi Germany. And that’s all it is.
Wage, Procon is urging you and everyone on CFN to join FAIR. He has been fairly obsessive about it, mentioning FAIR every week.
I have said that Procon is a racist and Procon’s promotion of FAIR is more proof he is racist.
FAIR has acknowledged and defended having received grants reportedly totaling around $600,000 from the Pioneer Fund, which has been described by The New York Times as having been established for the express purpose of promoting research into eugenics, and which has sponsored projects based on the notion that Blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites.
Every week Procon promotes FAIR, urging people to send money or join, is another week Procon is proving that he is racist.
It wouldn’t be that hard for a facist to arise. All you need are the right conditions, bad economy, no jobs, inflation, etc., and then what you need to do is find a scapegoat. In this case, once enough Mexicans to be a large minority are in this country, they will be pointed at and blamed for all of our problems. Whether they are or not. I’m against illegal immigration, but I’m not prepared to suffer under a dictatorship to do something about it. The scapegoat will be the Mexicans, which is just another reason to try & control the border, since I doubt the Mexicans will accept the role of scapegoat without a fight. They’re funny that way.
It is interesting to compare the early careers of Adolf Hitler and Sarah Palin. From the article:
So, where did Hitler get the financing that he needed to pull Germany out of the hole? Maybe these same backers will finance Sarah Palin’s “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” campaign and put her in the White House.
If this happens, what racial groups will Sarah Palin vilify? Will these persecuted people live in oil-rich nations? The presidential campaign of 2012 should prove to be very interesting.
“is another week Procon is proving that he is racist.”
-asoka-
You do see the problem here, right Buck.
Asoka uses the word “racist” like a blunt instrument – killing off any hope of dialog or understanding of a complex issue.
“Globalism has taken away many of the entry level jobs and ancillary “fluff” jobs that in the past gave english, history and psych majors (and other similars) something to do.”
-wardoc-
Nice post, as I already said Wardoc. At the risk of ticking of the (again?) missing qshtik, I’d say I concur 90%.
There’s nothing wrong with a genuinely rigorous lib arts degree, though. Apparently Mr. BuckS may have one. There’s an old saying that the engineers, chemists, etc will eventually wind up working for the lib arts graduate. There was some truth to that at one time, and there still is – but more for the elite Harvard/Yale/Emory lib arts grads. Which means that the contacts are as (more!) important than the knowledge the degree implies.
However, degree status of today’s graduates is one of those “deck chairs on the Titanic” things. To torture the metaphor – our Ship is listing heavily and down by the bow.
If the deckhands are only arranging the deck chairs it doesn’t matter where they went to school or what degree they have.
What matters is the knowledge of the guys working below decks to stop the sinking – and whether they care about the survival of the passengers on board.
The issue is your support of FAIR and its racism.
Good lord call Sigmund Freud I think we have a case of transsomething or another. I thought Jim was talking about the West Bank talmudic kooks, but then I found out I’m a SS officer in waiting (really folks the charade is over, you lefties will learn the meaning of the word “responsibility”)
Now I will expain Jim’s essay, and to be blunt it is racial in nature. His people get to play “good white people”, but Palin appeals to “bad white people.” JHK’s latest belongs on Daily Kos where they spew the latest anti-white hate thinly disguised as “anti-racism.”
Hey Prog, We don’t need no steenking papers! The man says I am good to be here so I am good to be here. Land of the free and home of the brave, Holmes! I was in the Memorial Day Parade today and people actually do still believe in this Country and what it stands for. Kids were waving flags and everyone was waving at me. I don’t follow the popular line on politics in this country. myself and family have all sacrificed. But it is what it is, a three day weekend and a hamburg and hotdog roast! I do believe that immigration should be shut down, NOW!!, we have plenty of people here already. And I am more than 1/2 in the bag so there!!!!!! Sheeet my fellow Irish fireman Buddies are still poundin’ them down at the VFW and I would trust them with my life any day over some piss pore college over edjumacated gradgiate. Sums of bitches don’t even know what end of a paper bag to put their damn lunch in!. Rant over!
Here is what procon supports in his promotion of FAIR:
FAIR has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) based on the writings and quotes of its founder and board member John Tanton.
The Anti-Defamation League, in a report on FAIR, said:
Unfortunately, however, there are today, as in the past, some individuals and organizations whose anti-immigration position is marked by mean-spirited distortions, nativist bias, anti-foreigner fear-mongering, and even overt racism. These groups foment an atmosphere chilling to the notion of an open, tolerant America that respects all persons, regardless of origin.
“but I’m not prepared to suffer under a dictatorship to do something about it. The scapegoat will be the Mexicans, which is just another reason to try & control the border, since I doubt the Mexicans will accept the role of scapegoat without a fight. They’re funny that way.”
-captainspaulding-
You are 100% correct about the above, Captain. But see my response to Wage – fears of dictatorship and police state are way overblown for someone’s PR purposes – notably our corporations who want a cheap, compliant, and illegal workforce.
Can ANYONE here honestly tell me they have traveled and especially WORKED in another country without carrying ID papers most or all of the time.
Seriously, you can’t even get back into the US – as a CITIZEN – without showing a valid US passport.
Papers please, my a**.
I do wonder what asoka thinks about E-verify.
Never mind, there’s got to be something racist about that, too. I won’t even bother to ask.
“But to ignore the eonomic rape of Mexico by profiteers, and only focus on the victims driven by desperate need, is not only wrong, but futile.”
What leads people to be so ignorant and feel guilty at the same time? I see statements like the above and I know the person is a pedant and not familiar with the harsh realities of the hacienda ruling elite of our neighbors to the south. Lets jump on the blame America bandwagon because that somehow relieves the angst built up while ignoring the failed policies of a century of agrarian ejido land reform in Mexico. Nothing has become more distasteful than liberal paper tigers.
Hey Wage, My local hospital, where I normally drop off, recently laid off all the LPN’s, nothing but Rn’s now . I think they laid off close to a couple dozen. My neighbor was there for 20 sumthin’ years.She could walk 200 yards from her house. Bye-Bye!, they also got rid of the security guys and went to a private company. I knew all the older guys, some had been there for 20-30 years. This is not a high crime area. They went with a new security outfit, 20 year olds at minimum wage and maybe a weeks vacation. Such is the new face of health care! I myself have been stockin’ up on suture kits and ER supplies. OH shit, now I am on the watch list again. The NSA should be at my house any day now with swat gear and shotguns. Fuck-Um!!
This was a truly offensive and misguided column. As an urban and regional planner, I usually look forward to reading your missives but this one was truly pathetic. If you want to make a comparison of someone or some movement to Hitler, you could look at the current adiministration and the sycophantic, left wing media and the negative affct it is having on free speech and factual information….and, oh, let’s not forget the Greek columns….really. This was a pathetic post and shows how blinded some are about the true state of this country. I personally have not voted in many years but I’m looking forward to Palin running and, hopefully, having an opportunity to debate Obama…one of the poorest speakers of recent memory (but touted by the same delusional leftist media as the greatest orator since Lincoln)…the need for a telprompter, the sybillant “s”, the stuttering, the inability to focus….Palin will rip him a new one in debates. I’m going golfing! This was also an interesting take on your article.
http://johnwsmart.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/is-corn-pone-fascism-worse-than-arugula-fascism/
Heil Titler!
Someone earlier said you had failed to make a connection between Hitler and Palin. Allow me to take a crack at it:
1. Attempts to make a defeated people feel strong again. For the Germans it was the loss of World War 1. For Palin, it is Vietman, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The “humiliation” of these wars must be excoriated and retroactively seen as just.
2. Appeals to a mythical past – constant invocations to Romald Reagan and the glory days of the middle class (ironically caused by stong unions and social policies). Palin also seems to long for the pre-civil rights era when minorities knew their place and woman were able to stay home and raise babies while the men wnet off to work. America’s growth was the fastest in the world in the ninteenth century due to technical innovation, untapped markets and plentiful resources, Sarah and the Tea Party seem to think that can be replicated, if only the shackles of “burdensome regulations” were removed from America’s multinational corporations.
Also, as Jim noted, the use of Exceptionalism – America is right in whatever it does by vitue of the fact that America did it. Everything America does stands for Freedom, and opponents hate the country. The Germans believed they were the natural rulers of the European continent as descendants from the mythical Aryan race. They too, believed they were a special people. Their rule would never fade from the world stage – it would last for a thousand years.
3. Playing on the downward mobility of the middle class – The Germans of Hitler’s day were plagued by a stagnant economy and mass unemployment due to the Great Depression and excessive war reperations to Britain and France. Today, reperations to the bankers, deindustrialization, illegal immigration, the rise of China and India, automation, outsourcing, soaring education, gas and healthcare costs and the highest concentration of wealth in the developed world are gutting the formerly prosperous middle class and filling them with resentment.
White working class resentment has become such a powerful force that I think the downwardly mobile would be perfectly content to live in their cars and feed their children cat food for the pleasure of seeing sister Sarah stick it to those know-it-all Harvard elites.
4. Scapegoating – rather than multinational corporations shipping off jobs and keeping productivity gains, scapegoats such as liberalism, socialism, excessive regulation, high taxes, etc. are trotted out to explain declining standards of living and policy failures. Her rhetoric revolves around and us versus them arrangment – us, the white, rural, gun-totoing, blue-collar evangelical protestants, and them – citydwelling, educated, latte-sipping liberal intellectuals and useless-eater minorities looking for handouts from the white working class so they can have more babies.
Hitler’s scapegoats were Jews, bankers, communists and trade unions. Plain’s enemies are Muslims, bankers, socialists and trade unions. Sound familiar? Oh, and don’t worry about the bankers – she won’t prosecute them any more than Obama has. every politician need them to bankroll their campaign, since they control all the money. And it’s woth remebering – the Jews were not the only emenies of the Nazis – so were ethnic minorities (Gypsies, Poles, Slavs), homosexuals, the mentally ill,, unionists, liberals – all these were victimes of the death camps as well.
5. Use of propaganda and selective media manipulation – rather than the “lamestream media,” Sarah uses her own friendly and personally approved sources to construct her narrative. Rather than relying on statements that are factually true, the propaganda machine repeats what Goebbels called “The Big Lie” – repeat it often enough and it will be believed, even if factually untrue, e.g. Obama is a Muslim, Obama is a socialist, he was born outside the United States, taxes for most people have gone up under Obama. All of these are lies and easily refuted with objective facts, but to her followers, the objective truth does not matter, only what they believe to be true. Fox news is simply a propaganda outlet; the truth does not matter so long as you can “catapult the propaganda.” glenn Beck did eveything short of brandishing a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the air to spin his elaborate fantasies of all-powerful liberal elites infiltrating the government and conspiring to institute global Communism on hard-working Americans.
I just fund out Sarah has hired a friendly director to make a feature-lenth film about her to recast her in a positive light. See here. My guess it will not be called “Triumph of Will 2,” but it just was well should be.
6. Elimination rhetoric and physical intimidation of opponents – Code words such as “Real Americans,” “Pull the trigger,” and “Lock and Load,” are used consistently. When something bad happens, a la Gabrielle Giffords, you can simply backpedal and claim you were ‘misinterpreted.” Then you can go right back to talking about “second amendment remedies” to the nation’s problems with immunity. Her proxies in media such as talk radio will fill in the blanks that she leaves empty.
Palin’s paints her opponents as not simply people with different opinions about how the country should be run, but as “traitors”. We know what happens to traitors. Tea-Party supporters already bring loaded weapons to town-hall meetings. Reports of physical intimidation of polititcal opponents by tea-party supporters are widespread.
7. Claiming a divine mandate – Hitler believed he was divinely annointed to lead the German people. Palin has frequently used similar language, and consistently asked her followers to pray for her victory and the victory of her cause.
8. Cult of personality – every politician uses this to some degree, including Obama, but Palin takes it to a new level. The commentor who said “I like Sara Palin, she sems down to earth” proves exactly the point. Can this person name even one of her actual policy positions? Hitler’s was protrayed as the ideal son every German wanted, and the ideal father for every German boy. Change the nationality and gender, and this type of rhetoric applies equally to Palin.
Someone mentioned she does not speak well. Obviously that is no longer a requirement as it was in the 30’s – campaigns are just televised spectacles, and Sara palin is very attractive and telegenic. Stick a flag behind her and Madison Avenue will craft whatever message is needed. complete with white picket-fence sets and sweeping orchestral score.
9. Appeals to emotion rather than reason – use of totemic symbols to rally people to her cause. This is where the use of Harley motorcyles come in. Harleys are terrible bikes; most their power is wasted in noise and vibration. Harley riders even tune their bikes to be as noisy as possible to make them feel “strong” and “macho” (I should know, the entire 3-month summer in Milwaukee sounds like one big jet engine taking off). Harley is all about marketing – they festoon flags all over their overpriced leather outfits (made in Chinese sweatshops, natch), and contantly equate riding a Harley with “freedom.” Palin’s campaign is marketed the exact same way – all images designed to appeal to American sensibilites.
Guns are especially used as replacements for lost male virilty, especially when undereducated white males can no longer obtain jobs that pay enough to support a family. Consider: since the tea-party take over of a number of states, none of these governors have addressed the job crisis or put forward a jobs bill. They have, however, instituted dozens of laws allowing guns in churches, schools, workplaces, public areas, etc. You may have to strap on an orange bib and grovel for customers all day, but when you strap on that Glock, you’re a man again!
For the Germans it was torchlit vigils , pressed uniforms and solemn ceremony. for Americans it is Harley leather, a NASCAR oval and country music. But make no mistake (see, I can do it too), it’s all about symbolism, ritual and belonging. It bypasses the intellect and appeals right to the tribal lizard brain.
10. Worship of military power and might – might makes right arguments. It’s no coincidence she chose to do here motorcycle stunt on Memorial Day – a day set aside for remebrance of military dead in war. Palin is often seen in the company of soldiers. Soldiers are lionized as “the heroes” simply for putting on a uniform, much as they were in Nazi Germany. While Palin did not serve, she has a son in the military. Aggressive saber-rattling about America’s enemies is part of the standard stump speech.
Again, this appeals to white males who feel strong vicariously through our military might. You might be a lowly second-shift fry cook, but dammit, “we” sure can kick those ragheads asses!
11. Disdain and distrust of elites. The Nazis were famously disdainful of educated elites. Georing once famously said, “when I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol.” Intellectual thought was downplayed. Any criticism of nazi policies was part of the “Jewish intellctual elite” and dismissed by Nazi followers. Even people with an education kept the fact well hidden for fear of persecution. Professors who held liberal views were forced out of academia, and often, the country.
12. Complete lack of qualifications for office. Hitler was a failed art student who painted postcards and spent much of his life as a homeless bum. then, seemingly overnight, he was head of a major political party, and then a candidate for Chancellor. Plain similarly came from nowhere. She barely graduated from a third-tier university, was on on-air TV personality and weather girl, mayor of a fyspeck town, and then suddenly is a governor and vice-presidential candidate. Both mysteriously rose from absolute obscurity, bankrolled and managed by a shadowy cabal behind the scenes, who felt that the raw charisma of these individuals was their meal ticket. Both were dismissed as buffoons with no chance of winning by people who thought they knew better.
I guess you can tell I’m in total agreement with Jim on this one. Ishould note that I have studied Nazi Germany extensively, and I am also a card-carrying white male member of the lower-working class, just like Joe Bageant (except in the North), and not an idiot. Because of these things, I have a unique feel for this issue. Can she win? I’ve prattled enough already, but I’ll say I think it’s unlikely but certainly not impossible. ‘Night all and sorry for the typos.
Hey RippedThunder,
Thanks for the shout back, dude. I’m guessing you drove that tiller truck sober, though, right?
Just kidding – and yeah, I’d trust a drunken firefighter in front of a lot of sober people I’ve known. In fact I have trusted a few off-duty drunken FF’s in my day – and drunken cops, EMT’s, nurses, doctors, – and the occasional drunken teacher and real estate agent, as well. When’s your next shift? You’ll be sober then, I’ll bet.
Enjoy the rest of your holiday, man!
“I do believe that immigration should be shut down, NOW!!, we have plenty of people here already.”
-RT-
You’ve got that right, RT. What I’m trying to find is a way to do that without being called “RACIST.”
Here’s what FAIR had to say about the nasty charge of RACISM by the SPLC way back in 2007.
“Grasping for attention, and no doubt to expand its donor base, the SPLC’s recent report claims that the number of so-called “hate groups” has risen 4 percent since 2008 and over 50 percent since 2000.” -FAIR concerning SPLC.
http://www.splcreport.com/
That ended it with charges against FAIR, apparently. The charge of RACISM has not been renewed since by SPLC.
“I’m looking forward to Palin running and, hopefully, having an opportunity to debate Obama….”
==============
I also look forward to that. Obama was a very effective debater in the 2008 debates, and he did not have a teleprompter. By the way, he won the debates and became President.
Excellent!
I hope Desert Dawg et al. take the time to read your analysis.
Sheet yea Prog, I was straight as the proverbial arrow! I’ll tell ya’ the kids get a huge kick out of the ladder when I “crab” it down the street totally out of line from the tractor. Ever body points and says look at the guy in the back steering. The kids are awestruck. My buddy follows the yellow line and I just keep going back and forth from curb to curb! Even adults are not so familiar with the tiller job. It poured until 9:45 and the parade kicked off at 10:00, it could not have worked out better! I am off till Friday, people say we have it made at the FD But I am working Friday through Monday, 48 hours a week. The MC’s are out in full force now so I am sure we will be get sumthin’. Hopefully we won’t have to leave the barn! Plus the boaters are out and god knows what they will be up to!
Good point. I also explained to my local right wingers that the NFL accepts tax payer money for stadiums, and that Merchandise sold is shared by all teams. (Rush was complaining about that on his show) Many sport stadiums are Socialist projects, and churchs receive government money, thats Socialism. They stare and nod quietly then explode like some of the above right wing stuff above. Not to worry, the same group controls both right & left wing players. Sit back, plant a garden and await for the return of Zeus.
ProCon, SPLC has not removed FAIR from its list of hate groups. It’s a free country and you are free to support FAIR, but don’t act all surprised when someone calls you out for supporting a racist organization.
The millions of illegals already here aren’t going back to Mexico, and there will be more to come in the future. Many, many more.
Why don’t you use some of your mental horsepower (you are intelligent) to figure out how to incorporate immigrants into this society productively, instead of using it for bashing them.
I wonder how many of the Irish, Italian, Chinese, or German immigrants would have been able to stay here had they been subjected to the same invective as the Latinos have.
There were times in history where the arguments and baseless claims being levelled against Latinos were levelled against Eastern European and Catholic immigrants, as well as anyone whose skin colour failed to prove light enough.
Procon, these “illegals,” as you and FAIR call them, are human. Take the time to learn why they’re coming and you might have a harder time exercising your racism against them.
Sounds like my home town, NPT,
and sadly, I agree with your sentiment
There are parallels between the current depression and the last one. Between what happened in Nazi Germany and what is happening here. For one thing though there has been a population explosion since then in the undeveloped and developed worlds proportionately. There have been unprecedented environmental catastrophes caused by energy gluttony. There are no new frontiers for growth. All of our energy resources are petering out.
Real unemployment in most cities is 20 %. The safety nets are not holding-up very well. Many state governments have cut unemployment benefits. A lot of unfortunate people are being swept under the rug. I am talking about increased homelessness, no prospects for jobs, inadequate medical care for what were middle-classed people or their children. The working poor and the impoverished have to contend with inflation and competition for extra money in the form or a second job. They have to contend with increased demands from their primary employer because of the tenuous footing employers place their employees on in these awful times. They have to deal with shrinking benefits and increased demand in the safety net. Increased demand for food stamps or a need to get food at food pantries. Many poor and middle class families have to pay more for rent because of higher desire for rentals in this dismal foreclosure-based housing economy.
There are also environmental issues to deal with. The limits of resources, frontiers, and exploitation have been reached in most places in the developed world. The excess demand for energy in so-called first world countries that led to the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster was a run-up. The Fukushima disaster, where a first world economy on speed is responsible for the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, is a nail in the coffin for many of us. We are enduring the worst nuclear catastrophe ever. The radioactive clouds are coming directly to, and over much of the United States, via the Jet stream from Fukushima to the United States and Canada.
We live in one of the least free republics in the world. Even Russian and Ukrainian immigrants will tell you that. Immigration to me, is not a racial issue, or a liberal issue, or a conservative issue. All countries in the world were settled by migrations. Ed Abbey, the famous writer affiliated with Earth First !, was progressive. He was not considered a racist, yet he had serious reservations about open immigration policies. He was very concerned about the very real stretching of resources and destruction of the environment in energy addicted first world economies based on ever-expanding growth.
There are rabid gun nuts and criminal exploiters like joe-joe of Arizona on one side, and indoctrinated bleeding hearts on the other. But what about immigration? Seems like it is a wedge issue used by the repulicorps and democorps to keep everyone upset and distracted from the real issues.
The drooling lefty label and the rabid righty labels are
merely distractions,an artificial construct, to keep one’s independent
decision-making boxed up. They are boxed-up neatly in one of two
very-easy-to-manipulate boxes. Hartmann or Limbaugh for example, makes no difference. I do like Thom Hartmann and his coverage of Fukushima. Tom’s coverage of immigration issues seems quite partisan to a progressive like me. I am concerned about the wedge the immigration issue has created and the irrationality behind it on both sides. Both sides are playing lose-lose.
Since many people I know take up the lefty label, especially when it comes to headlines about immigration, I have to assume they are firmly locked
into yesterday’s right-left paradigm. This is sad to me. It keeps the fire going where partisans are unable to rethink reality, and end up being quite comfortable with the emergent corporate fascism. I sure wish more people would read Chris Hedges or Wolin’s articles about inverted totalitarianism. Maybe there would not be so much extreme partisanship then, and real issues could be addressed.
Procon is trying to get members of CFN to support a racist hate group called FAIR. If you remember the anti-immigration law in Arizona (SB1070), FAIR helped write the legislation SB 1070 is modeled after.
The SB 1070 law–which has been blocked by two courts since it passed last year–requires police officers to check the immigration status of people in some cases, and makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants not to carry proper I.D.
Since it looks like the courts are going to continue to rule against this FAIR-endorsed legislation, you would be wasting your money by donating to FAIR.
Frequently, asoka also demonstrates that he is so caught up in his own words, his own beliefs, and his own prejudices that he does not read and consider the actual words of others.
As I stated earlier in this thread, I am no longer as concerned illegal immigration, only. I am working to reduce US immigration, of all types. I am working for nationwide improvement of the E-verify database, prior to mandatory nationwide implementation of E-Verify.
FAIR (and other similar organizations that I am joining and/or researching for CFN) is concerned with total immigration rates – illegal immigration is only a small part of the 3,000,000 person/year growth in US population.
We in the US need to reduce TOTAL immigration rates to “replacement level,” to stabilize US population at its present level.
A growing US population is not good for the US, and it is certainly not good for the rest of the world.
FAIR also has a history of linking to Holocaust deniers and anti-semitic groups and neo-Nazi propaganda.
Anti-semitism is hardly new territory for FAIR; FAIR founder John Tanton has funded and promoted the work of white nationalist leader Jared Taylor. Taylor is both a member of the old White Citizens Council, and founder of the racist eugenicist publication, American Renaissance.
Another of Tanton’s D.C.-based anti-immigration groups, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), promotes the white nationalist website VDARE (home to Paul Craig Roberts and Patrick J. Buchanan), which also publishes the works of numerous white nationalists, including Jared Taylor and the late Sam Francis. The website also features Kevin MacDonald, the anti-Semitic California State University-Long Beach Professor.
FAIR’s close associations with extreme bigotry are inexcusable.
If you are going to donate to FAIR, know you are supporting a racist agenda, directly or indirectly.
Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM)
http://standing-firm.com/who-we-are/
The Fair Immigration Reform Movement is a national coalition of grassroots organizations fighting for immigrant rights at the local, state and federal level.
We are led by the Immigrant Organizing Committee, a group of 30 organizations committed to immigrant rights from across the country.
Procon said: ” I am working to reduce US immigration, of all types.”
=======
This is un-American. America was founded by immigrants and has always welcomed immigrants.
What you should be concerned with is global population, not national immigration. And you should support FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, instead of supporting racist, anti-semitic, anti-immigrant groups.
Illegally crossing an imaginary line on the globe, or legally passing through an immigration checkpoint, does not alter the global population one iota.
MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay taxes.
This is False.
All immigrants contribute to this country’s tax base. They pay income, property, sales, and other taxes. Contrary to popular belief, undocumented immigrants also pay income taxes, as evidenced by the SSA’s “earnings suspense file” (taxes that couldn’t be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers). This pot increased by $20 billion in the 1990’s.
(SOURCES: Cato Institute, Urban Institute, SSA)
MYTH: Recent immigrants, because they are generally low skilled and undereducated, harm the economic
opportunities of low skilled, undereducated US citizens.
This is False.
Most labor economists agree that immigrants tend to complement rather than compete with American workers, both at the high and low skill levels. US workers, if displaced, tend to find better jobs at comparable or higher wages. The American economy, expanded by the consumption of the immigrants themselves, creates as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.
(SOURCES: David Card, Gianmarco Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri, Open Letter to Congress by 500 US Economists)
MYTH: It is illegal for undocumented immigrants to work in this country.
This is False.
Although undocumented immigrants are not legally authorized to live here, they are not violating any law by working in this country. Since 1986, it has been illegal for employers to hire them.
MYTH: Lax border enforcement has led to high undocumented immigration.
This is False.
In the last 20 years, Border Patrol’s budget has increased ten fold and the number of uniformed officers patrolling the borders has grown to 10,000. Since, 1992, the cost of making an arrest along the border has increased from $300 to over $1,700. Despite the border enforcement buildup, there has been a decrease in the likelihood of migrant apprehension at the border and a significant increase in undocumented immigration.
(SOURCES: Cato Institute; Andreas, Peter. 2000 Border Games: Policing the US-Mexico Divide)
Oh, I get it; national sovereinty is for sale if the price is right,…..right? Yeah, sure; why bother with the cumbersomness of immigration laws crafted and enacted by democratically elected representatives honor bound to serve the will of the citzenry? Hell, just let national destiny default to however many foreign nationals choose to defy such laws. Ah, yes; simple!
MYTH: Immigrants are more likely to commit crimes and enter the criminal justice system.
This is False.
Despite prevalent myths and stereotypes about immigrants’ criminal conduct and their flooding of our jails, studies indicate that the rate of incarceration of foreign-born individuals is well below that of native-born ones (0.68% vs. 3.51%). Studies also show that incarceration rates increase in subsequent generations.
(SOURCE: Ruben Rumbaut-UCI).
MYTH: On the whole, immigrants utilize the public welfare and health care system at a much higher rate
than native-born US citizens.
This is False.
Use of public benefits by documented immigrant families is well below that of native-born citizens. Low-income native citizens use TANF and Medicaid at a much higher rate than immigrants.
Moreover, recent studies conclude that although immigrants pay Medicare, payroll and other taxes, they
receive less than half as much health care as native-born families.
(SOURCES: Urban Institute; Brookings Institute;
American Journal of Public Health)
“Ramon Mercador killed Trotsky, and this was confirmed by a Barcelona detective who once arrested him…
Bubblehead, you know that Mercador was George Orwell’s Spanish translator when Orwell was fighting for the anarchists in Spain?
The NKVD killed all the anarchists they could get their hands on in the Republic…
Politics makes strange bedfellows doesn’t it?
MYTH: International migration is primarily caused by the lack of economic development in migrants’
home countries and because of wage disparities.
This is False.
International migrants do not originate in the world’s poorest nations, but in those that are developing and growing. The initiation of economic development in migrants’ home countries and the structural changes it triggers causes increased migration to occur. Moreover, although wage disparities do constitute one factor in migrants’ decision to emigrate, households generally use international migration as a tool to overcome failed, missing or nascent markets for insurance, capital, and credit at home.
(SOURCE: Douglas S. Massey, 2002, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of
Economic Integration)
Yes, you’ve got it. Amnesty for illegals was one of the good things Ronald Reagan did for this country. And Bush was also good on allowing immigrants into the country.
‘Frequently, asoka also demonstrates that he is so caught up in his own words, his own beliefs, and his own prejudices that he does not read and consider the actual words of others’…………..
PC, Narcissists ‘write scripts for others to live out’…He just posted 100s of lines since yr post
I am replying by…I call it ‘scroll over country’.
During another high liturgical functions, Miss Bankhead observed the robes, the incense burners … “the smells and bells.”
She observed to the Archbishop … “Love the dress, but your purse is on fire.”
Yup. Fascism is always a possibility. Every once in awhile I pick up Eric Hoffer’s “True Believer” and give it another quick read. It’s small.
We have a fellow on our city council. Gives me the willies. I’m sure that if he were taken in hand by the Powers That Be, he could travel a fair ways down the ol’ Fascist Road. But I don’t think he’ll be “the one.” But he’ll make a great little local functionary.
For the record, I don’t believe you’re a racist, Prog. I also don’t believe that Asoka really believes that every person dubious of the economy is automatically an Obama hating racist as Asoka implied – one of his more bizarre(stupid) posts as I previously mentioned. But it reads like Asoka has researched the organization that you espouse more than you have. Perhaps. Associations matter after all.
But never mind all that. What about the Supreme Court upholding the Arizona immigration law with a 6-3 vote? Have I missed something here on CFN;I don’t recall any mention made of this rather significant immigration development. Moreover, why haven’t you asked Asoka why the Obama administration is targeting the employers who hire illegal workers? In fact, the Obama administration has been far more vigilant on this front.
Far more vigilant against employers than the Bush administration ever was,
* A 5-3 vote.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0526/Supreme-Court-upholds-Arizona-law-designed-to-thwart-illegal-workers
The Bush administration made some big crackdown shows which punished the worker. Conversely, the Obama administration is taking aim at employers, and just to put some real chill in ICE, some of the charges being leveled against employers includes Tax Fraud. Now which policy does anyone in their right mind think will have a more pronounced ripple effect?
“Last year, according to government figures, the enforcement agency started 2,746 workplace investigations in addition to the audits, more than double the number in 2008, the last full year of the Bush administration. Fines totaling about $43 million, also a record, were levied on companies in immigration cases.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/politics/30raid.html
Wrong Soak. Many European immigrants couldn’t make it here and had to go back. And others made it and went back of their own accord. In any case, there was no gigantic Federal System to support them and all the kids they could make.
In other words, the more alien, the more American. Thus Immigrants are the most American of all, the corollary being that Americans aren’t good Americans – unless they redeem themselves by supporting the real Americans, the immigrants.
Asoka always pushes false arguments to their ultimate absurd conclusions, in this case: it’s un-American to be American.
Political Correctness is a religion and those who are against religion should be against it too.
Blacks are less intelligent than Whites. Do you think the Pioneer Fund should be shut down by force? That White geniuses shouldn’t be allowed to donate their sperm to worthy White receipients?
What are you afraid of?
Papers? That’s Fascist! We’re all just People! Gay, Str8, “Black”, White – same struggle, same fight!
They think that illegals should be allowed to vote – just ask them. There is NO limit to the insanity. That’s why when the Strong Man arises it will be our highest duty and privledge to support him.
Accept your part in the downfall. Liberalism was too soft, too blase about human evil, except for the socially acceptable hate against White Males. Life was never as generous as Liberals made it out to be. And as for supporting other groups before our own, that goes beyond mere illusion – it was evil and insane.
Sarah Palin and Barack Obama and any other 2012 presidential candidate that you will ever see on the T.V. are going to stick to one theme…….
Who can blow the most feel-good smoke up the ass of the American people while things go further into the shitter.
Peak Oil, Climate Change, trade imbalances, fiat currency debt and all the other vultures are coming home to roost right now and guess who’s living without a tent under the vulture tree. That would be you and me whatever your political affiliation.
I’m not noticing that the floods, tornados and droughts are checking I.D.’s or taking note of anybody’s skin color before they toss their shit about. The pain at the gas pump may be proportionately less for the guys at the top of the heap but every time payday comes around and the cash goes into the gas bill instead of some local merchant some rich white guy’s business prospects sink a little farther into the mud.
Even here two thirds of the conversation is about whether we can blame it on somebody with a different skin color. Get over it already. Those politics aren’t going to fix shit.
Unless your political conversation is about installing solutions, trains, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal HVAC, bicycle infrastructure, etc you are still in the business of blowing smoke up your own ass. You can burn each other’s fields and feel smug but that isn’t going to do you a damn bit of good when your belly is empty and there’s no bread to be found.
Man, I would LOVE to drop Vlad’s racist white ass out of a plane and into the wilds of the Congo or New Guinea and follow him around with a camera and a local interpreter who could explain to the local people his views on the color of their skin.
Just the film of him breaking down and starving to death or succumbing to some local toxin or disease would be a treasure. Or perhaps he would try to steal from the locals and get put down…..
Racism is a mental illness. Unreformed racists need to be put in mental hospitals where they aren’t a danger to the public and can’t infect children.
You know Jim, I’ve had it w/you. You must feel very threatened by Sarah Palin bashing her the way you do. You make her out to be some kind of idiot, she was the governor of alaska, which I know you think is a joke but what have you done w/ your pathetic self? Have you ever been a governor? All you do is sit at home on your computer writing stupid weekly articles. Everything w/ you is doom and gloom, you are a miserable little man and it must really suck to be you. Why can’t you write something positive once and a while? you can’t because in your world everything sucks and no one is as good as you. I think you’re an asshole.
Here’s the Palin “I love that smell of the emissions” quote from earlier in the thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHkL1rvckBk
This is truly Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” coming true.
Let’s talk about HELL
Religions should only talk about hell, should only constantly hammer in and down on people how much they will suffer when they die, how bad it will be, they should create as much terrorism in the minds of people as possible, total psychological panic, fear, they should get people on the run big time. It will be really terrible, infinite pain forever, extreme pain, just imagine, just think about it, it should keep you terrorized for every living moment of your life. Because hell is really, but really bad, and that is where we are all going no matter what. But religions often just suggest it, just skim on it, just barely mention it, so the terror is subtly inserted in people’s minds, but they are immediately distracted with other things, but the concept has gone in the subconscious and is ready to haunt people forever. This is the power of religion, they are subtly manipulating people’s brains without them noticing it. But we are actually in heaven, or have been in heaven as just one picosecond of not hell is the greatest gift ever, so you have achieved everything possible, the greatest gift god can ever give you because he allowed you not to be in hell for one picosecond. You have won, you have won forever, even if you suffer an eternity, that one picosecond compensates all, you have achieved and are in heaven even though you are in hell, because god is not a mathematician, one picosecond of heaven (which essentially is the absence of hell) is more than enough, is infinitely more than an eternity of hell (god should go back to school and learn some arithmetic). By the way, when you go to church on Sunday, remember that your are actually going to a lesson in Philosophy and Metaphysics, as the object of discussion is imaginary metaphysical abstractions.
Bu this concept of hell is part of a more general system of thought as in the threat “you are accountable”, you must “behave”, if not you will be punished. This creates self guilt, self repression, self flagellation constantly in every moment of your life. It is based on you “are in control”, you are the “boss”, you can win, so if you didn’t win you deserve the punishment. But it is absurd, we don’t even control one electron of our mind or brain, let alone billions of moving parts life and an economy are made up of, all independent of you, all your enemies, all ready to contradict you and fight you as in the fight for imaginary “limited resources”. So we are set up for mourning, for always and ever regretting that past, we love to mourn, to be sad and angry or depressed about that one thing that went wrong (there is always and will always be one thing that went wrong, that contradicted us) the thing we did wrong, the thing that made us lose, only repenting and mourning that mistake we made, that loss we had, that thing we lost, or that promise that was broken, or that illusion that was revealed (there is and will always be a mistake, if I did G then I would have had S, but this is not guaranteed, ever, it is only a possibility, and maybe if you did G you would have gotten S, but after that N which you wouldn’t have wanted, so any path is a guess, any path can be “winning” or “losing”, but we only win temporarily, the game of chess against life will make us lose anyways in the end no matter what).
So this is what the ruling class wants, you must always be in self guilt, always trying to win, always putting the guilt on yourself, it is always your fault of your condition, self punishment always. They love these structures, these are the structures of the laws also, punishment and accountability and the rules you broke. But this structure of a law works well in small groups where the ritual that programs behavior is well known and where societies are simple: we live in ultra complex (or maybe really simple ?) societies where the rules are unknown, ambiguous, ever changing, and in the end you get laid off anyways.
Of course, I already see another infinite recursion of impossible problems coming up: if there is no accountability and punishment how can you force people to behave, since people behave badly because they are and like to contradict constraints and they suck, but the laws are necessary, but who chooses which laws ? and so on, an infinite recursion of intractable problems since we are pure contradiction always.
The real problem is that today there are really so few arenas economically to show off how better you are in comparison to others, also since the economic structure is hell bent on eliminating as much labor as possible, since a Technological Economy makes the system richer and richer by the moment and doesn’t need work anymore (so much for all of the “resource scarcity myths”), but this inequality between people must be forced, must be created when in all truth it is not justified, or justified only in very few cases: but the system wants everyone to compete “against” everyone else, to win the “competition” and “fight”, so that a person can feel “he deserves more”, he has won.
Kill religion and kill god. Believe in nothing, just say nothing exists, we are nothing, we are dead, the world is dead, meaningless, has no necessities, is nothing, is a void, is not pretty or ugly it is totally indifferent to all and everything. The truth is that there is nothing, no value, no universe, no necessities, nothing at all, everything is simply dead, no activity, no meaning, nothing further to achieve, a total void. Everything is independent from us, from our temporary state of life, there is no beauty or value, the world is your enemy BIG TIME, accept nothing at all as the truth. Just like the rocks on mars have nothing to say to us, they are “barren”, “boring” (boring is the best state of existence), so is the real nature of everything.
We should be dead, instead Matter decided to take a vacation from what it really is and what it really should be doing and what it really should be and that is indifferent, dead, nothing, no activity, no nothing, pure void, no values, no sensations, total oblivion. But it wants to take a small vacation from what it is and pretend to be alive, and pretend to exist and hence it comes alive and lives in the form of man with his self consciousness: but if you have to fake it, fake it BIG TIME, the transition from death to self consciousness and the process of living in this universe as decoded by our arbitrarily designed mind – brain can be substituted with a transition to another arbitrarily designed mind – brain that lives in another universe. And this other universe can be as wild and incredible as possible, they are both fake so who cares how you fake it, life is fake, just like our temporary decoding of this universe according to our temporary necessities imposed by the arbitrary design of man by what ? Natural evolution ? or god ? or the laws of physics ? well who cares, just change the stage, the reference system that imposes restrictions and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints, change them into something else and you can have a ball. It is all a lie anyways, who cares.
In that sense everything should be compared to the state of death, and since by comparing life, your life, or the universe o anything to the state of death you see that it is a lie, a temporary instability, Matter wanted to go out and play with itself for some time, but it must go back to bed, mommy will tuck it in bed again soon, then a modified mind playing a different game is just as good.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
“A sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.”
One interesting thing is that the Instant Singularity as defined by just wildly and randomly changing the neural circuits in minds as P creating A, and A being then totally independent means that since the nature of A is so far away from anything we can imagine, the relationship between P and A can be as far away as possible: hence even all of the symbols in the universe couldn’t describe some modified minds, and even those would be indirections for other symbols, trillions of indirections, of denotations, ever more vaguely implying some kinds of modified minds living in incredible universes, way past anything we can possibly relate to.
And those minds are just as real as any other mind: only because you have been so deeply programmed into believing and valuing other people’s minds, it is so hard to see how it is a simple indirection, a simple assignment, so you really believe in other minds, as deep as possible, but you don’t believe in these new modified minds, one is real the other is fake: nothing further from the truth, just invert the assignments, the real mind is fake and the fake mind can become just as real. You can’t touch other people’s judgment, it is a total abstraction, they give you clues, but don’t believe in the clues, just lie to yourself, lie to all, all is a lie, Matter likes to lie, if it didn’t like to lie it wouldn’t want to go out and play and pretend to be alive when it should be static, no activity and dead. But mommy will come back, and put Matter to bed, go on Matter, be a good little boy, the time to play is over, now go to sleep.
Now copy and paste all of this for your homework, show mommy and give it to the teacher, she will give you an A and maybe a star.
Watch it, Pan. Do you follow Vlad down with a parachute or go the easy way?
The local natives, seeing Vlad’s silk and your soul snatching camera, put Vlad on a throne of palm fronds and feathers along with bowls of kola nuts and jars of coconut juice, while you, well, you simply become long pig!
The finance-driven economy makes the most
odious dolts think they’re going to be the
next Donald Trump when they’re 99.9999%
more likely to be eating out of garbage cans.
And Donald Trump himself is a fraud who goes
around pedalling himself as a judge of
economic competence. He’s a failed casino
tycoon which is like a second-derivative
failure because we need casinos like we
need a second asshole. He’s often had a
huge negative net worth over the last two
decades because his Atlantic City casinos
are NEVER blockbusters.
The latest cultural euphemism is that public
education is “useless” or “worthless”. Yet
recent studies show that charter schools,
which cost an arm and a leg, deliver exactly
the same piss-poor results as America’s
current, and admittedly declining, public
schools. And I shudder to think of most
of the adults I see in public attempting
to HOME SCHOOL their kids since most of
them can hardly count or utter a single
sentence in pristine English.
The social aspects of our young polity are
even more alarming as they adopt the “BroWorld”
phony solidarity of ghetto-wear and ghetto-speak.
It’s amazing to see a bunch of Gen-Y kids try to
converse: The word “like” used every sentence
and the words “fuck” and “fuckin'” used, not as
profanity (which would show a soupcon of
creativity) but as FILLER because they simply
cannot think of another word while they’re
fishing for the right word. Their “attire”
uses the watchcap of the prison yard and the
slovenly underwear-showing/shirt-never-tucked-in
of the fat slob.
If Sarah Palin is “Third Reich v. 2.0” then
you must admit that it’s a comical sequel
because there really WERE a lot of bright
Germans in 1930s Germany. With our current
lot of innumerate and illiterate youth,
anything like Nazism will be farce because
stupidity of that depth can never be anything
but EFFETE and FECKLESS.
E.
P.S. Jim, according to you Sarah Palin is a glaring example of everything wrong w/ this country.. I think you’re a glaring example of stupidity! Why don’t you get the hell out of this country! You hate it here so much, go and try to find a better place! Good luck! You can add this to your hate mailbox.
“And those minds are just as real as any other mind: ”
Actually even more real, trillions of times more real than anything we can ever conceive, they have all kinds of sensations, all kinds of new causes and effects, ever new and changing, without end. Just like you believe in the sensations other people have, you must believe in the sensations abstract symbols have, even trillions of times more so, ever more, they are trillions of times realer (use big numbers to emphasize). Also the causes and effects creating the minds can be anything since P is anything now and even A is anything, so be careful, if you write a slightly wrong symbol for a mind you may create infinite pain (or pleasure, or anything else imaginable ?), any causes and effects can be assigned and associated, actually invent anything as far out as possible, the more impossible, the realer and truer, Lying is the only value our universe has, as truth was always just a make believe symbol.
your long winded diatribe was boring.. you need to get a life
Good Lord, another one of these “my country,
love it or leave it” morons. That’s like
saying “My mother, drunk or sober”. Duh,
I’ll take sober.
Samuel Johnson once said: “Patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel” and it was YOUR
type of “patriotism” that he was pointing at
when he made his famous remark.
I guess it has never crossed your mind, what
there is of it, that a TRUE patriot wants his
country to “be all that it can be”. Do you
think America is what it WAS or SHOULD BE?
If so, you have pretty low standards or you’re
so young you don’t remember when we were the
world’s largest creditor, had the best schools
in the world, and we were the world’s
manufacturing GIANT … not a “boiler-room scam”
kind of country where the financial sector is
FORTY percent of the economy.
Sarah Palin was so embarrassing during the
debate with Joe Biden that I could not even
PARSE half her sentences because they were
spoken in “Bushian” English. Her campaign
spiel now, what with trying to get people
to glorify the cheesy vanity of their tattoos,
is so stupid that it’s more farce than tragedy.
You, Ms. Suling, ought to move to a website
where your lack of rhetorical gifts will
handicap you less. People like you who
simply ORDER people to “get a life” ruin
blogs because you don’t debate or reason …
you just SHOUT.
E.
We should really try to get you on TV, Debra,
so that Tina Fey can work up another hilarious
parody like her eerily accurate impersonations
of your soulmate, Sarah Palin.
Your intellectual gifts are nonexistent, Suling,
because people like you who believe that writings
should blow “blue sky” up people’s asses don’t
realize that satirizing and parodying STUPIDITY,
AVARICE, and other increasing national traits
AFFIRMS the values that made America a great
country before the “Reagan Revolution” started
to make it go bust.
Being negative about negative developments is
being affirming of old-fashioned virtues that
America once possessed but no longer does.
What’s Palin’s next gambit … to be in a
biopic about her favorite tattoo’ed biker chick??
E.
I fail to understand how an intelligent commenter like you cannot see what the real macro trend is worldwide and what the real problem is: and that is how a Technological Economy is eliminating jobs faster than any possible replacement, and at the same time creating ever greater real wealth, in terms of optimizations in real production processes, science applied to technology, “cutting costs” (which means less need for both people and natural resources) and concentrating a huge amount of all of these gains in the hands of those 6,000 or so worldwide super rich families. This issue is the major reason of the economic crisis, especially in the USA, EU and JAPAN, this is the backbone of huge amounts of money the rich and capitalists have been accumulating worldwide for decades, this huge free money provided by technology.
Now there is absolutely no possible solution to this unless you simply force a solution in the form of handouts, cheap rents and free salaries: there is no magic hand of the market economy, no “less taxes”, no “innovation”, no “more education”, that will change any of this, that will “create jobs” and indeed most of these “solutions” will just amplify even more this huge elimination of the need for real labor, as in more innovation simply means even more ways to “cut costs” which translate somewhere and somehow in a job that is either paid less or no longer needed, “more education” just burdens people with even more debt, hoping that the future will play out like the (imaginary ?) past, but more education, if even used for “innovation”, will either result in even more “costs cut” and hence “fewer jobs” or just more intellectuals unemployed or underemployed that can discharge their “EXCESS CAPACITY” through websites like this with their never ending blocks of texts (hint, hint, may that include me?).
The reason why this issue is never mentioned is because it implies a very simple logical, predetermined and only possible solution: and that is, if the system is eliminating jobs automatically and structurally, then either we give handouts to people or a government, or public – private entities will have to INVENT and create them by the millions with large scale public – private endeavors like Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers and High Speed Trains, along with millions of fake jobs where, even if people do nothing at all, it doesn’t matter, the system no longer needs so much labor, so we simply distribute the free wealth that is generated.
But this implies a huge cultural and ideological change, something that people can’t wrap their heads around, they are so used to “fighting others”, calling others “lazy”, you have “to deserve it”; and so on, the “competition myth”; the “resource scarcities myth”, etc. that they are doomed to fight amongst each other and actually sustain ideological positions against themselves just for the pleasure of not giving out “free lunches”, just for the pleasure of hurting others. But this is a recipe for more and more economic contraction in the first world, while all the gains will be made in the third world, since their growth is mostly due of them going to poor to rich, buying their first car, their first TV, just like JAPAN went from 1960 to 1980.
And all of the trillions of dollars of profits gained by firing people will keep on flowing in the hands of the super rich forever. AMEN.
Spider,
I agree that money is continuing to flow
to the “bunkers” of the super-rich but I
think your argument about the “increase
in productivity” caused by high tech is
based upon statistical fictions.
First, in a non-manufacturing economy, the
statistics about “productivity” are laughably
jury-rigged. What is the “product” that is
being “produced”?? Indeed, even with the
jury-rigged stats, I believe that all the
“productivity gains” caused by tech are
about to end as nervous existing workers
are being coerced to be two people each
for fear of losing their jobs. You can’t
squeeze blood out of a turnip.
I do, however, support your idea that if
uber-plutocrats are going to put people
out of work they should damned well put a
roof over their head and food in their
stomachs. The “banana-republic-ization”
of the USA economy with obscene wealth
concentration is because of “Socialism
for the rich, capitalism for the poor”
i.e., CEOs don’t offshore their own jobs.
Yet, in the end, I don’t agree that all of
the third world “tigers” will ever reach the
standard of living in the USA in the 1960s
thru 1990s because it’s a “cornucopian”
idea that Planet Earth will have the resources
to allow Brazilians, Chinese, and Indians to
live the resource-profligate lifestyles of
Americans. That ship already sailed even
for us and it isn’t coming back for anyone
else.
Finally, the resource that’s really going to
kill the Chinese and Indian economic “miracles”
for good involve the increasing severity of
their WATER SHORTAGES. Though many of the
Jiminy Cricket when-you-wish-upon-a-star types
on this site think that Mother Earth has
infinite freshwater, base metals, oil, and
food, Mama seems to have different ideas.
E.
Mooselini and Caribou Barbie…very funny..
How about Wolverine Witch, Sable Slut and Beaver Bitch…..sorry but thats as much as she challenges my intellect.
But even considering it all from the point of view of the right wing and capitalists, they get a much larger bang for the buck using workers in Indonesia or Brazil: for those workers an increase of monthly salary from 300 to 400 dollars a month is a great incentive, they are young, they are going forward, they are optimistic. In the USA, EU and JAPAN, the only thing that workers see is less jobs, less pay, more expenses, etc. they are old, they are “has beens”, they are over.
So obviously, if there are jobs that are created and needed, you can be sure that most will continuously be created in the developing countries as opposed to the former rich countries where it is now everyone against everyone else, everyone out to stick it to everyone else.
Debra S., in his column next week Jim will feature photos of Obama with his friend Minister Farrakan, arrow pointed at crescent moon pinned to The Ministers collar. The will be photos of Obama with his neighbors, Weather Undergound founders and murderers, Ayers and Dohrn. Also in the column will be an account of the professed Maoists working in the Obama administration right now.
That’s right, next week Jim will have something for his fans who are NOT America Hating Libs, Atheists, Anarchists, or Sneering Academics. There are a few of us out here.
-Marlin
“Globalism has taken away many of the entry level jobs and ancillary “fluff” jobs that in the past gave english, history and psych majors (and other similars) something to do. Those jobs are gone; all that’s left or all that corporate industry wants to pay for are serious jobs that require real skills (the #1 major in terms of starting salaries and number of job offers in 2010 was chemistry, followed by physics then various engineering fields and technical health care e.g. nursing). ”
Don’t believe this. Companies don’t need tech types, they just make believe, it is all a dog and pony show. Do you know how many tech types there are in the world available, how many older engineers who were hosed ? And most of all they don’t use most of the tech skills, only very few corporations really need all the math or whatever, most is fluff anyways sales, public relations.
I already posted often on these topics, and asked often show me exactly all of the calculations, all the tech skills, all the equations that “need to be solved” for 8 hours a day, everyday, (for a year or two or three ?) in what areas of production, in what endeavors, etc. for supposedly thousands of “new graduates”, etc. No dice, they hire some, they make believe there is a shortage, it is all a sophisticated game to show that the kids “deserve to be paid less”, they didn’t “learn the hard math” supposedly needed. Nothing further from the truth, the hard math needed, also can be done anywhere in the world, and you got kids in South Korea, JAPAN and China that study really hard “for the hard math”, corporations just go anywhere they want for the few real endeavors they need to do with hard tech skills.
And then worldwide, all of these “high class skills” may employ IN REAL PRODUCTIVE AND NEEDED LABOR only a few million at most really (and that is an approximation by excess by a large order), as the very tech jobs are those the most easily outsourced and can be done through communications and the internet. And most of all the easiest to optimize, automate and get rid of altogether.
If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you are not a racist…
…then you’ll have to vote for somebody else in 2012 to prove that you’re not an idiot.
The caricature you identify is George Bernard Shaw, who wrote the play Pygmalian which is the basis for My Fair Lady.
Man It is “A Beautiful Day” out today. Not a cloud in the sky! Bird’s are out in full force. Quite a change-up from the weather lately. I was just sitting out on the deck with the dogs and a coffee. Me thinksto meself “It don’t get any better than this” this song came to mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrFCwvlw0cs
Also, the tech arena is the arena of Inequality if there ever was one: the top notch techs, the ones that corporations really need occasionally are really much much better than the average joe tech, but those top notch ones are used either in very specialized areas and in companies doing research or cutting edge stuff. So not those many are needed anyways, only very – very good. But corporations know where and how to find them when they need them, they don’t have any dependency on “shortage of tech skills”, it is the other way around, the workers always have an absolute dependency on the corporations.
This is part of all of those lies that have brainwashed everyone for decades, the lies the ruling class can easily feed everyone since very few can challenge them when they say they have “a tech shortage”, who is going to stand up to the challenge ? Most are intimidated (math is always intimidating for most people), the ones working in these areas and know the truth usually never question it, remember tech types are not used to connecting the specific with the general, they concentrate on the specifics, so they couldn’t say, “why are you saying there is a tech shortage when you have laid off thousands upon thousands of tech types in the last few years ?”
They want to always convince you that there are “objective” structural reasons why you don’t have a job, or are paid less, or whatever, when in all truth there are only precise intentionalities behind most decisions, precise will powers to pay less, or just move an activity somewhere else, etc. There is no objective truth, only strong man crushing weak man, and putting the blame on the weak man. Don’t believe nothing of what the economists and most people say on these issues, it is all ideology.
Warren Peace from 10:22
Loved your post. I think you just about covered it to the point where I can’t add to it. A couple of things, though, and someone else said it. We are breaking down, not coming together, so that means the country will not be centralizing the way Germany did. The idea that we could be breaking up seems like it has some merit.
The media refused to cover that Todd Palin was part of an Alaskan separatist group. That should have been fair game since she said Obama was palling around with terrorists. When the media said nothing, I knew they were in her pocket. Now we have the Texas governor, Perry, also one who has brought up secession, as yet another Rep. Presidential hopeful. In 2009 there was a theory developed in Russia that we were going to be splitting up in several zones.
You can see the pattern.
Webster Tarpley has had made some amazing statements about where we are heading and it seems he too has seen some parallels to Germany. He thinks this might be our last democratic election and that we are heading down the path to real facism.
About Sarah Palin. You really don’t think the power eleite of this country is going to let her run the government, do you. Now she’ll be more like a paper weight in the oval office.
But especially the kids then feel guilty, they are a “failure”, the families, all a self guilt trip, all a victim that is to blame himself. He wasn’t good enough to do “the hard math” (that is blown way out of proportion to what companies really need, and do you know what they really need ? PROFITS and as few workers as possible, and they need more tech types LIKE A HOLE IN THE HEAD).
But this is so convenient for the ruling class (actually for everyone, since hating on everyone else is that which people love to do most), math is hard, you couldn’t do it, you are to blame for how worthless you are, the anger is not directed towards the capitalists and super rich drowning in trillions, but it is directed towards the self, self punishment, go on, you are to blame for your situation, go on, suffer ever more, you could have been Bill Gates too.
Beat yourself up, the system is “objectively” good, true and correct, you are a sinner (see how religion is tied up with it all).
She was a piece of work allright. I heard my Tallulah Bankhead stories from an eccentric Episcopalian monk who was hanging out at St. Gregory’s Abbey, Three Rivers, MI although he didn’t belong to the Anglican Benedictines there. She also liked to talk so much that she would invite whomever she was conversing with into the toilet to continue talking even as she took a dump, kind of like LBJ in fact. I liked her in the Hitchcock movie “Lifeboat” because an an AB in the merchant marine I was of course crossrated as a Lifeboatman, as are all rated deckhands and deck officers.
Also, another thing, corporations hire people mostly for what their ideology is, what they believe in, the most important trait is if those people that get hired are exactly the kinds they want: they believe in profits, pro capitalism, pro free market, workaholics, hate on the weak, career oriented, etc. They need future bosses more than anything else. The tech skills are worth close to zero for corporations, the political (be right wing conservative 12 hour a day workaholic hating on everyone else who is lazy) ideology of the worker is the most important thing. And they sense this immediately, if you are “one of us” or a lazy piece of crap.
The fact is that your ideology and political orientation, personality, how you behave (exactly like them) is the most important thing for them (but they hide this very carefully). They could care less about technical skills, these are a dime a dozen.
The most important thing they always love to talk about is “the need for long working hours”, you must not be “lazy”, always hitting on someone considered “lazy” (they love this concept), when this economic system has so little real labor left to do, go figure.
Mornin’ Asoka, I work in a town which has a very large population of immigrants from the former Soviet states. For the most part they are hard workers and industrious. The problem I see is that the whole extended family comes to the USA. Due to the lack of a decent health care system in the “Old Country” many of the elderly have all sorts of chronic health conditions. Many of these folks live in public housing, collect SS, and often receive hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical care, never having paid a penny into the system or worked a day in the USA. They actually receive preferential treatment over many of our native born citizens. Between my two jobs I probably average 80 hours a week, I say close the damn borders, we have enough people in this country already.
Jim – have you ever heard of Godwin’s Law? Once you start comparing those you disagree with to Hitler and the Nazis, you’ve already lost the argument. Sarah Palin may be many things, but the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler isn’t one of them.
I really like your more recent rants. Now for my mini-rant on education: it is our expectations that are unrealistic. As a teacher of 7 years experience, suburban parochial, inner city parochial, ghetto high school & Job Corps I wince every time I hear some ignoramus whining about how “LAZY” the kids are. Bullshit. Kids are not lazy. They are merely stupid most of them, which is why they’re never going anywhere academically. This didn’t used to bother us, because at one time we had something for them to do. No longer.
Also the brilliant kids don’t learn much in school either. But they do learn elsewhere. School is pedestrian, and not in the good sense of that word, or walking instead of driving everywhere. The teachers are more concerned that the dullards pass their graudation test so the bright kids get lost in the shuffle.
Public education is being trashed in the media so that people will give up on it and agree to privatize same which will be good for those investing in this venture to set up all these gimmicky motivational academies and so forth. This is no different than Governor Kasich of Ohio trying to sell the fucking turnpike to private operators.
Any large urban school district with its presumably intractable problems could be overhauled and made serviceable virtually overnight, but this is not going to happen because the various fixes would be politically unpalatable. And besides, if people actually became realistic about what is doable then the education entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to move in and make money off this mess. And that’s what I call a Catch-22.
Educational fads which have hobbled the schools: [1] mainstreaming, or the absurd pretense that everyone is the same. Bullshit. Kids run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous; [2] shutting down the bad-boy’s schools in the big city districts. Wonderful. Now all they’ve got is regular school on the one hand and the state reformatory on the other, and nothing in between; [3] forced busing for racial balance. Busing converts integrated districts segregated by building into overwhelmingly minority districts from which all the whites have fled, to achieve the phyrric victory of integrating the individual buildings; [4] absurdly small class sizes for everyone, including the normal kids who can do without that; [5] inclusion of chronic disruptors in the mainstream setting including teacher assaulters, often returned to the same building after a brief suspension;[6] presentation of academics as a grim chore rather the fun it could be at least for those who do have some aptitude.
The bottom line is that people seem not to appreciate that academic pursuits are not for everyone. Not by a long shot either. Mandatory academic instruction for 12 years for everyone makes about as much sense as requiring piano lessons for the tone deaf. Or tackle football for those suffering from chronic wasting syndrome. The real dumb-fucks are the administrators who dreamed up this vast quagmire.
nice comment Eleuthero, i’m very impressed.Sarah Palin is not my soulmate and I didn’t state whether I liked her or not, go back and read my comment. You and your soulmate Kunstler should get together so you can discuss how stupid everyone else is and how amazingly brilliant you are. Let me guess, you must be one of those bloviating academics of the highest order. I don’t want blue sky smoke blown up my ass as you say, I’m fully aware of the problems w/ this country and you write as if you know what I think. I may not be a sneering academic like you but I have something you don’t -a belief that you have to look for some good in this world. Kunstler and others (like you) don’t find much joy in being alive.Everything is negative, end of the world bullshit! Why don’t you stop living in the past. sorry to tell you we’re never going back to that “special time” where everything was just perfect!
I see some similarities with the positioning of Sarah Palin and the Aryan Pride movement in Germany of the 1920s, but I think JHK is reading in anti-Semeticism that is not on Sarah’s simple mind.
After all, she knows that Israel is not to be messed with, if one wants to be successful in U.S. politics. And, I don’t see her going after the many Jews in the Wall Street power block.
I do see her as crazy enough to give all the disgruntled the satisfaction of totally unleashing the one hole card our country has left — the high-tech U.S. military, with all the toys human decency wouldn’t let them use in Vietnam.
I have perceived an undercurrent of belief in the many career military personnel, in conversations over the many years since Nam, that “We could have won if we just nuked ’em.”
That is the one card we have left to play — to turn the Middle East (with the exception of Israel, of course) into a sheet of glass.
Playing to the many veterans’ unspoken belief that if we just killed or credibly threatened Ultimate War on our enemies, we could get the respect of the world back.
It would be too tedious and hard to explain our true situation and the wisdom of going back to the more agrarian, humane environment that I agree would be the intelligent course for this country.
So, yeah, Sarah’s got what it takes to give all the Diet-Coke-swilling, Cheez Doodle-eatin’ NASCAR lovers the ultimate emotional boost. I hope to God this country still has enough sane people to resist her will to power.
In that way, she is similar to Der Fuehrer.
I wrote a blog post about Memorial Day from a Conscientious Objector’s viewpoint, with more on how our toxic diet has mentally prepared us for accepting Sarah Palin as the logical answer to the Long Emergency: http://www.healthyplanetdiet.com
If you feel called to be a C.O. then that is your choice. Some military personnel file for C.O. status while on active duty.
I know of no professional officers who actually thought we couldn’ve won in Vietnam by going nuclear. One retired navy captain, a Dartmouth graduate, I stood watches with in the merchant marine used to actually let everyone go when he commanded a coastal patrol boat in Vietnam because he didn’t believe in the mission.
Nevertheless, punitive expeditions of brief duration are a more appropriate response to some outrages including even limited use of nuclear weapons in some extreme cases as for instance when one of your cities is bombed and thousands are killed. This is why I have expressed the belief that a nuclear weapon should have been used on Kandahar, after delivering a warning to evacuate.
Our current approach to terroristic provocations has only played into the hands of the perpetrators. By occupying these countries for extended periods we only make ourselves more hated. Besides, who really cares about them? If we’re going to rebuild a country shouldn’t it be our own?
I think ol’ Jimbo will want to get right in the middle of that photo shoot 🙂
The comparison between Hitler and Palin makes sense for more than the zeitgeist reasons you have cited.
As several legitimate researchers have shown (Edwin Black’s “Nazi Nexus” and “Antony Sutton’s “Wall Street and The Rise of Hitler” among the best for their footnotes, appendices, and primary source documentation), the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich was enabled largely through massive loans, investments, and technology transfers from American corporations–especially banks and financiers.
Big business loves both authoritarian leaders and continual warfare for the same reason–it enables them to make lots of money (in warfare off of both sides). The roster of conspiratorial traitors included Prescott Bush(former Connecticut
senator and father of two presidents) who pleaded nolo contendere to charges of “trading with the enemy” in 1942 and got off with paying a six figure fine.
For those who find reading well-researched books tedious, you can get the highlights of their content from these video links:
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sCpsq55uic
Nazi Nexus:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/285699-1
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/285699-1
JHK is not just engaging in sarcastic hyperbole with his comparisons of Sarah Palin (and her bankrolling by big money) to Adolph Hitler.
“Any large urban school district with its presumably intractable problems could be overhauled and made serviceable virtually overnight, but this is not going to happen because the various fixes would be politically unpalatable. And besides, if people actually became realistic about what is doable then the education entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to move in and make money off this mess. And that’s what I call a Catch-22.”
“Intractable Problem” may mean:
1) Problem due to conflicting will powers that will and can conflict forever, this is Metaphysical in nature, even if you don’t believe it, we are just a reflection of the fact that existence is always contradicting itself, it is always fighting itself, can’t stay still, if A then not A, and so on forever, it is existence trying to exist, but also denying itself, and this goes on forever. There is no solution, it is part of the strucutre of the universe. We are a reflecton of conflict, contradiction and fight, no matter what. A against B, if you say yes, I say no, end of story.
2) May mean we have no way to model somehting with our logic and language, so it will remain forever impossible to manipulate and achieve any result from any sequence of manipulations.
3) Also, most things will never have any solution, no matter what because the conflicting will powers cannot repress themselves, they will always pop out no matter what and most things have no logical solution no matter what. Man is “fight” and “contradiction” end of story.
4) Add to this, a huge amount of false imaginary causes and effects that have been brainwashing everyone as being true for decades and you can be sure that problems will remain forever intractable.
Check out all the posts of nameta9 on http://www.ilovephilosophy.com, that will clear things up a bit.
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/memorial-day-enter-hitler-release-20.html
“Any large urban school district with its presumably intractable problems could be overhauled and made serviceable virtually overnight, but this is not going to happen because the various fixes would be politically unpalatable. And besides, if people actually became realistic about what is doable then the education entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to move in and make money off this mess. And that’s what I call a Catch-22.”
“Intractable Problem” may mean:
1) Problem due to conflicting will powers that will and can conflict forever, this is Metaphysical in nature, even if you don’t believe it, we are just a reflection of the fact that existence is always contradicting itself, it is always fighting itself, can’t stay still, if A then not A, and so on forever, it is existence trying to exist, but also denying itself, and this goes on forever. There is no solution, it is part of the structure of the universe. We are a reflection of conflict, contradiction and fight, no matter what. A against B, if you say yes, I say no, end of story.
2) May mean we have no way to model something with our logic and language, so it will remain forever impossible to manipulate and achieve any result from any sequence of manipulations.
3) Also, most things will never have any solution, no matter what because the conflicting will powers cannot repress themselves, they will always pop out no matter what and most things have no logical solution no matter what. Man is “fight” and “contradiction” end of story.
4) Add to this, a huge amount of false imaginary causes and effects that have been brainwashing everyone as being true for decades and you can be sure that problems will remain forever intractable.
Check out all the posts of nameta9 on http://www.ilovephilosophy.com, that will clear things up a bit.
I invoke Godwin’s.
I’m all for pointing at Sarah and yelling “Watch Out!” but this analogy is a bridge too far. You can string hitlarian analogies to pretty much anything.
If Sarah palin were elected and if she didn’t play golf or basket ball and if she did not sleep and instead spent all of her time trying, I repeat, trying to fuck this country up more than our current idiot-in-chief, she could do no worse.
And that Jack, is a fuckin’ fact.
“I
think your argument about the “increase
in productivity” caused by high tech is
based upon statistical fictions.”
Simple observation of what goes on in daily life provides compelling evidence that a lot of the productivity increases associated with technology are real.
As one obvious example: Travel planning. Who goes to a travel agency anymore? My 88 year old mom and not a whole lot of others. Nearly everyone books travel on the internet. You can do yourself much more easily what you used to have a travel agent do for you.
Of course, there are huge side-effects of this productivity in terms of all the jobs that have vanished because they no longer are needed.
But it seems like a person has to be blind not to recognize that this phenomenon is real.
You know, I think one of the worst things about Palin is that she creates undeserved self-esteem among progressives. Hey, she is such a buffoon, that means we must be intelligent and wise. (Plus, she steers independent thinkers like Kunstler into being chummy with progressives even though he knows full well they are just as far off the track in having a genuine understanding of the problems our society faces as someone like Palin does.
(Don’t forget, Paul Krugman is just as big a fool as Larry Kudlow, they’re just different kinds of fools.)
“85% of this year’s college grad class and 80% of last year’s class went home to mama’s basement with a degree in worthlessness and debt….and no job or prospect of a job, even at Burger King.”
Ah, when you reached up your ass to pull out these “facts” did you have to reach around Kuntsler’s head?
“Like we personally asked them to make a sacrifice.”
Hey asoka. Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth. Think historically. In broader terms. Millions were drafted. They fought and died fighting the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. For once, try not to be such a CUNT.
” Also, I think the banksters would like her there; she can be easily manipulated.”
You mean like the oil companies manipulated her, douche? You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. (big surprise!)
“(ya think global warming is for real and caused by the good ol’ human race?)”
No.
“…and she quit before her term was up.”
Yep. She was forced to burn through most of her family’s accumulated savings defending herself from spurious nuisance suits brought on by a bunch of pathetic losers. And as such the state’s business was not being attended to as it should have been because of the nuisance suits. So, she did the right and rational thing and stepped down.
And of course not a single accusation of merit has survived the judicial process. How fucking shocking!
Actually, Prog, I rarely carry ID with me. It’s a personal choice.
I’ve never had to show my SS card or my driver’s license to get a job.
What’s more, I got this last job before the days of peeing in a cup and being fingerprinted and background checked. As Merle Haggard once said, he was freer as a parolee in the 60s, then non-felons are now.
You used to be able to go to Canada and Mexico and the Caribbean without a passport.
See how quickly we forget the days of freedom, once the curtain of repression starts falling.
No. Showing your papers is a sign of a police state.
Maybe you’re fine with it, but I’m not.
Hello all,
Posting late this week as we just got back from a fishing trip. I thought what the hell I know that such trips will probably be impossible soon so better enjoy now. One interesting thing that happened, out of five boats in our group only 4 small fish were caught. The gov isn’t stocking the lake anymore, yet this same gov wants to buy nifty new F-35 fighter jets to the tune of 75 million each or more estimates vary. Yet another enormous boondoggle and example of where gov priorities are.
Anyway I am a little tired of Hitler comparisons, really. Palin is pea brained idiot with the mentality of a pissed off toddler, who if put into power could be a dangerous idiot. But comparing her to Hitler? Well let’s just say Amerika has a large supply of public figures who caused as much damage as old Adolf or more. Think Blankfein or Paulson. The economic crisis IMO is an act of warfare against those not in the millionare, billionare club. Just because the victims quietly starve in the back seat of their car, or just quietly die of the lack of medical care doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. So get a new villain Hitler is a bit shopworn.
Actually, Asoka, I really don’t agree that we can have open borders, as long as we have the current system that we live under.
I agree that borders are artificial, but Mexicans do indeed start to consume more once they come here, and the earth can’t support US style consumption.
It is economic desperation that drives them here. Most people don’t want to leave their homes and their families and come to a strange country. To accept the US attack on Mexico’s people and economy, and simply say, well, some of them can come here, is immoral.
My kids were going to a school which had mostly Mexican immigrants when Reagan legalized them. The school emptied out for weeks, while all the Mexicans went back home to visit family who they hadn’t see in years, because of the difficulty in crossing the border. You celebrate that?
I haven’t believed the ruling class propaganda since the day I was reading the San Jose Mercury News, and they were saying that immigrants did the jobs that no Americans wanted.
Then I got on the trolley to go downtown with my daughter. The trolley driver announced the stops with such a thick accent that I couldn’t understand him.
Then we went to City Hall, where an imperious woman with an accent gave us a very hard time about paperwork.
Jobs no American will do? Bullshit.
No. We need to solve the problems of unemployment, imperialism and environmental devastation before we open the borders to people.
Starting, of course, by closing the borders to capital and financial speculation.
For those of you who don’t know BigJimbo – he is the latest incarnation of a long line of screennames that keep getting banned for foul language. Despite occasionally good ideas, he is a troll – as the word is defined on discussion threads.
Now he is attacking asoka, who also has occasional good ideas. Yet asoka is also a troll – he will argue most good ideas down to the point of that they become meaningless.
When big jimbo gets upset and runs out of ideas he begins to call other posters “fucktard” and implies that they have the characteristics of female body parts.
When asoka gets upset and runs out of ideas he posts the same few ideas repeatedly. And he calls other posters “RACIST.” Asoka implies that the ACCUSATION of “RACISM” is so powerful that all debate should stop so that all may agree with asoka.
Two strange beings – asoka and bigjimbo.
Have at it, guys.
“Palin also seems to long for the pre-civil rights era when minorities knew their place and woman were able to stay home and raise babies while the men wnet off to work.”
Riiight. That’s why she works and her husband stayed home. (Idiot)
Racism is definitely an illness. In a way it is a form of mental masturbation. Apparently, some chemicals are produced while a racist exercises his/her hate. I think it is very addictive. A racist is always looking for a case to apply racism. His hate can be directed toward any group like Mexicans, Blacks or Jews or Indians, etc. I also suspect that without this hate a racist feels a physical pain of some sort – some sort of painful withdrawal. I think, however, that only lobotomy can help the suffering person.
I heard someone on Democracy Now say that Bush targeted employers more, with workplace raids, and Obama is targeting communities more, with nighttime home invasions by ICE.
Obama has deported more immigrants than Bush, and thrown more into prisons.
If you hate this blog so much, go find another place.
Duh!
There are a lot of racists participated and participating in this blog. Vlad is only one of them. His racism and antisemitism is very acute and is on a level of delusion at times. Pour guy.
Hitler was intelligent and had a credible -if ultimately suicidal- strategy for getting Germany out of the Great Depression: war mobilization, war, and plunder. If America is heading down a similar path, it is at an early uphill hairpin turn of a long winding descent on a steep slope.
Too bad there isn’t a like button on this. Funny comment!
If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you are not a racist…
…then you’ll have to vote for somebody else in 2012 to prove that you’re not an idiot.
Shut up, FUCKTARD!
In 1980 we elected a feel-good fool already showing some pretty explicit signs of alzheimer’s disease.
In Palin, we have the same formula. She’ll make the recently disenfranchised feel good about America and themselves, if only for a few minutes watching a speech. They don’t care that she’s not smart. They *like* it that she’s not smart. It makes her more like them.
While her obvious narcissistic personality disorder may make her unable to govern effectively, that didn’t stop Bush.
In short, don’t underestimate her drawing power. Yes, she’s dumb, jingoistic and can’t think ahead. It doesn’t matter. They’ll vote for her anyway.
Yes. Hitler was intelligent. Nobody can deny that. If his kind of intelligence can be called this way. But he did not have a strategic plan. What he had could be called a vision. A vision of the great Germany. He was a very good tactician. He has done what he has done step-by-step.
The only thing he had in his mind strategically was his virulent anti-Semitism. He wanted to get rid of Jews. This thing he had strategically. It was his strategic war. The war against women, children, young people, old people. He was totally obsessed with this idea. If he had any traces of normal intellect, it was negated by this strategic obsession.
“I’ve never had to show my SS card or my driver’s license to get a job.”
-wage-
You may not have had to show the SS card, Wage, but you had to give the number to get paid. That system (trust, then verify) broke down when criminals (not necessarily undocumented criminals) of various white collar persuasions realized that the SSN had become an easy way to scam people. Demanding that the card be shown before you get your NEXT job is a way to attempt to foil that – a not very effective way, in my opinion.
I’ve always carried “papers” since I turned 15 and got a learner’s permit. I can’t imagine NOT carrying ID.
In some books – that makes me a tool of the police state.
In my book – it means that if I keel over out away from the house, that someone will be able to call some of my family to claim my body so I won’t lie there stinking up the sidewalk.
I’m being a little facetious, BUT –
I think the huge majority of citizens in America always carry ID without question – and they don’t mind showing it willy-nilly to cash checks, buy beer, and get through driver license checkpoints.
So the whole “papers please” thing is the sort of “brainwashing” that we often discuss on CFN.
Except it *seems?* to come from the Left?
I’m not so sure about that – remember RW corporate America wants cheap illegal labor –
They want it as least as much as the ACLU and the LW don’t want anyone to ever have to show ID.
Which makes “papers please” a distraction that prevents rational discussion of E-verify and programs like it –
Poet, thanks for the post and the links. I was familiar with Anthony Sutton but not with Edwin Black. I’m about 1/4 way through Edwin Black’s talk, but I became so livid watching it that I just had to stop and cool off. I tell you, the more I learn about America the more my hate for it grows. I didn’t think it would be possible to hate it any more than I did, but there you are. Now I fully understand those who cry ‘God Damn America!’. Indeed! The fscking country needs to be killed and sent deep into oblivion, never to come out. And if it be GS that’s doing God’s work, then I say let them continue doing God’s work. It’s way overdue.
Cukes, Tomato plants and lettuce coming up nicely, but my God, the weeds! Weeds are my nemesis! I’m in a Nietzchean struggle against weeds!
-Marlin
El Toro Farm
“La Casa de la Dolce Tomantinos”
“They don’t care that she’s not smart.”
Not so. They care that she is NOT Obama. Because he is so fucking bad that by just not being him, that is enough, That is what is truly frightening.
So morons like Jimmy, can try and chalk it up to corn-pone Nazism. It’s not that sophisticated. It is merely a recognition that we have elected a disaster. A potted plant would suffice. But a chick with a nice ass? Please.
True, I did give the number. But my SS card doesn’t have my current name, and the imperious workers at the SS office wouldn’t let me change it. So it wouldn’t help anyone if I showed it.
And, yes, Americans, as a whole, don’t mind showing their cards, peeing in cups, spreading their legs, letting their children be fondled, etc.
That’s why it was so damn easy for this country to go fascist.
Can’t wait for the Palin/Trump ticket!
Seriously Jim, I haven’t seen any comments from you about the current wrangling over the federal debt limit. Have you considered how quickly we will arrive at a “world made by hand” if the US defaults on its debt obligations? We will fall into fascism faster than you can say “sovereign default.” I hope all your readers have land in the hills to which they can retreat.
The good news is that it will solve a lot of problems. Overpopulation will cease to be a concern after the wars and genocides. Global warming won’t be a problem when no one can afford oil. Industrial agriculture will disappear when the road and shipping infrastructure collapses. There’s a better world on the horizon. …If you survive long enough to see it.
Obama is not a disaster. Our economy is and, therefore, any one occupying the Oval Office would be in a bad shape. The Obama’s mistake was his desire to be a president. The first black president!
Nobody can fix the USA problems. They are not repairable. It is so obvious! Any normal person would not like to be our president. Unless it is for perks and glory. That is why we have had Obama and that is why we may have Palin there.
Interesting article equating oil energy to slave energy.
http://www.alternet.org/vision/150914/why_our_21st_century_slave_society_can't_last/?page=entire
I know of what I speak Buck, I have one of those degrees that I wouldn’t wipe my ass with, from a fine university here in Canada, mostly but not all taxpayer funded and a gigantic waste of money. In my humble opinion 90% of the people in university should never have been allowed to set foot anywhere near the place, myself included.
That degree opened doors for me but I have no earthly idea why. Believe me Buck I had no clue as to how utterly useless I was to myself or to anybody else until I hit the adult working world where most of us reside. And I look at the young university grads with the pointless degrees that I worked with over the years and I’m telling you they were/are just as useless as tits on a bull just like me. It’s not enough to be a good person, you have to be good for something.
The more recent grads have the added impediment of having been steeped in self esteem their whole lives and marinated in political correctness. Which would be fine if their self esteem had some glancing acquaintance with their actual abilities and their political correctness had some practical relationship to the world as it actually exists. But neither apply and these dysfunctional attitudes are like millstones around their necks.
If only modern liberal arts grads had had knowledge of some sort pounded into their heads. That would be something. But they can’t fucking read Buck, they can’t calculate percentages, they can’t fucking find Newfoundland on a map, they don’t know Europe is a continent. This is not good enough given the torrent of resources we expend as a society on education.
If only a liberal arts education make them “good people” but in fact most of the younger set that I’ve seen are monumentally entitled, amoral, irresponsible, careless, undisciplined, self centred weenies. Not that us Boomers are one whit better.
And it’s us damnable Boomers that are responsible for their sorry asses because we raised them and we created the society that they grew up in. And if these kids lived in a world where it’s just us and them festering in our incompetence and fecklessness it’s one thing but there’s a wider world out there where kids aren’t similarly hobbled. We’ve set our poor kids up for failure and our society too and barring some cosmic miracle that’s exactly what will happen.
“Can’t wait for the Palin/Trump ticket!”
You’ll be waiting quite a while as neither will be running. Palin is a straw dog. Jim (and others) have offered her up as some sort of salve for their having been sucked into the Obama ruse. If Jimmy and his ilk truly want to save us from Republican fascists maybe they should spend some time in trying to get a few Demotwats to oppose Obammy in a Demotwat primary. How bout that Jimmy?
The USA is becoming more and more irrelevant on the international arena, the USA President is becoming more and more irrelevant on our domestic scene. The Office of the President is a very boring place. And I would like to see Sarah/Tromp ticket. It would be such a circus! I would love it! Other candidates will talk like ‘… the Washington is broken… they do not level with American people…I know how to fix out Social Security and Medicare… I know how to win the wars..’. What a bull.. This kind of talk is a talk of dishonest and delusional people. I do not want it. What I want is circus! The honest stupid circus we all deserve. Therefore, run Sarah, run!
“Our economy is and, therefore, any one occupying the Oval Office would be in a bad shape.”
Uh, huh. And anyone with HALF a brain would not try to inflict national healthcare, bank bailouts, the take over of the auto industry, and genital fondling at airports (and soon to come, bus and train stations) on a nation that was ALREADY suffering from a shitty economy. So, sorry. Obama is, was and will always be a disaster.
CFNation is going to need a Navy, and its going to need somebody good to head up that Navy.
BubbleHeadMark, by the powers granted to me by Jim, Grand Poobah in Chief, I hereby Commission you Minister of the Naval Affairs, ClusterFuckNation, the World!
Congratulations.
-Marlin
Anti-racism is a code word for anti-white and nothing else, and thanks for proving that dimwit.
Needless to say, while a nice jewish man verbally gesticulates wildly over the next and newest Hitler president Obama is gathering a real militia meant to terrorize the populace of tax slaves.
Drudge has linked to about 10% of the stories about racial violence this weekend wholly meant to cow the urban libs into compliance with the shariah of PC.
Yeah – drug laws and they way they are enforced are the spawn of Bible Thumpers and Satan, no doubt whatsoever about that.
To paraphrase the old saw: “When Fascism arrives in America – It will be wrapped in a Flag, carrying a Bible, and peeing in a cup.”
-PoC-
But the other indignities you mention – groping at airports – could have been solved by a credible national ID card and targeted interrogations of potential terrorists at airports.
So again, we have the Corporate desire to make money off *Security?* coupled with the ACLU desire to treat terrorists and granny the same –
conspiring to produce a fouled up system that does nothing very well.
Jimmy Kunstler and Chris Hedges. Mondays pack quite a whollop: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sky_really_is_falling_20110530/
Straight up, Mr. K.!
Damn, you are naive, prog, if you think that the indignities of oppression are about thwarting terrorism.
Then why buses and trains? Any real terrorist could target buses and trains without boarding them.
Actually, as many people have pointed out, real terrorists could load baggage onto planes with explosives in them.
It’s about making Americans submit to authority, and about a national ID card with biometric information that will be used for no good.
Real Americans have a right to privacy. We have a right to be left alone by our government. We have a right not to have our doors kicked down by goons. But those rights have been taken away, without a peep from people like you.
To give up freedom because of your manipulated fears of Muslims and Mexicans is pathetic.
Jim,
It interests me that you have such a strong dislike for “Sarah.” There is meaning in your missive this week – in that it says as much about you as it does about the sad state of what passes for national political coverage.
Certainly you must know that for whatever inspirational patriotic guise Sarah wishes to cavort in; it represents more of what is wrong with the American electorate than any willful strategy or pathos of Sarah.
Sarah is simply an invention. Part of an endless stream of distractions, a puppet, a media whore – who is to be used for whatever purposes seeming to favor those who control our national discourse.
You’ve done yourself and your BLOG readers a disservice in attaching Sarah to significance simply through you exposition.
This is one of the few times that choosing to say nothing, to DO nothing is far preferable.
Fascinating. Does this only apply to White Racists or Racists of all colors? What? You think only Whites can be Racists? And you call me delusional!
What other race of people would allow their own homelands to be colonized by people of other races? Whites aren’t the most racist group of people in the world, they are the least – stupidly so, to their own detriment.
let the revolution begin…
“It’s hard to imagine Americans taking Sarah Palin seriously.
Then again, thoughtful Germans didn’t take Hitler seriously either, until it was too late.”
If not Palin, some other Palin will arise from the masses. Ernst Rohm might have replaced Hitler but for “The Night of the Long Knives.”
Demagogues are, by definition, “of the people.” Palin is very canny in being able to play on fear of decline among the working class and working poor. Their parents and grandparents could earn a decent living making things or running small businesses. She does not talk down to these folks…she plays at being one of them.
This class knows it is screwed. Look at the Google advert for Express on this blog: thin, expensively attired supermodel is not America. But consumers who cannot afford groceries and gas and still pay their bills yearn for the return of limitless consumption. One meme out there is “$1.60 gas,” if only Obama leaves office and his “Green Agenda” is defeated.
If a revolution were to arise out of hand-stenciled “Taxed Enough Already” and “Restore America” signs I see by the highway, it would not be the Jews who were the scapegoats: the Hollywood liberal elite, the academics, the environmental and gay-rights activists would fill the camps. The nation’s Muslims would be forced into ghettos or out of the country.
But that’s a nightmare, not a reality (yet). What amazes me most is that the GOP can get voters in an economically declining social class to vote against their own best interests, all in service of large corporate sponsors who have wrecked small business and run down wages even as they provide unlimited and anonymous campaign cash.
That may be Palin’s doom: if she really acts populist and shows who is turning the screws, the Big Boys in the GOP will push her and her Harley-Davidson sideshow off the stage and pick a less photogenic loser to run in 2012. But what she represents will be back, as America’s decline continues.
Good God who gave this chimp a keyboard?
It’s folks like BigJimbo who will make excellent stormtroopers for Palin.
Remember, the Mexicans don’t feel borders are artificial. They rigorously hunt down and deport their illegal immigrants. And as far as our Southwest goes, they consider it their’s. They will take as much of our country as we are weak enough or stupid enough to give them.
We have let an Enemy into our gates. Both the Mexican and the United States Goverments have nursed their grievances against us. All part of the plan evidently.
Since you don’t believe in Nations, why are you against the Elite – they are doing exactly what Communism tried to do but failed. They want a One World State just as you people did. In fact, Communism was just one of their projects altho you are too proud to ever figure that out. Proof: did Communism ever REALLY attempt to be egalitarian? It was and is hierarchical – it could not have been otherwise. Reality is Hierarchical and any group or organization that isn’t are just a bunch of ass clowns.
The world is collapsing and you all fiddle about Sarah Palin. Presumably to help BO get reelected. and What’s up with that? I am pretty sure you did not get what you voted for in 2008. Sarah Palin will never be our President, not because she is Hitler but because who we are as country are willing to elect a Chicago crime boss to the Presidency. I HOPE you get it. Everything is going bad. This President will not stop it and if some other candidate is elected he will have been chosen for all the wrong reasons also.
If you have no money you are a goner. Sorry to say that. I could go into all the reasons (repressive economics, the Whore of Walls street, Banks…Oh god it is all too much)but you already know it, may not think about it much but you know it.
Their greatest trick was to create the 2 political party system giving the false sense that you have a choice.
Part of the problem: you set up a charter school for the gifted. Black parents notice that there are almost no Blacks in it. They complain and get affirmative action – and the whole point of the school is destroyed and it just becomes part of the jungle.
Black IQ is far below that of Whites. Is it cultural? Sure, because it’s genetic first. That’s why Africa was/is/will be so backwards and savage.
Herr Kunstler:
You have hit this one out of the Sportpalast, mein Kamaraden. Cornpone Nazism has arrived, and she’s got a hot bod, packed into a load of black leather, and a rumbling Harley in her crotch. Sieg Heil, Semper Fidelis, and Yee Ha, Here We Go!
But who will play the role of the Juden in our unfurling Passion Play? Since overt racism seems to be off the table, at least for now, perhaps it will be those of us derided with a sneer in the heart of the Homeland as “libruls” — which, helpfully, can be defined in a rather open-ended way.
Who will sign on as her Goebbels? Herr Limbaugh? Not sure he is sufficiently acolytic — recall that as Goebbels recorded in his diary when he first heard Adolf speak, “This is the man! Our savior!” Somehow I can’t see old fat-ass Rush getting quite that fawning, speshly over a girl.
Her Goering, the dashing ace fighter pilot? Where oh where is he, who could that man be? McChrystal might do nicely, and he has the golden credential of having been fired by the Muslim Socialist Usurper President.
Her Himmler, the meticulous executor and feared head of the Praetorian Guard? I just can’t come up with anyone — somebody help me here. The pince nez went out so long ago, but perhaps there’s someone on the Right today who fancies black leather equestrian attire and riding crops?
And likes to keep very good records…
I guess the bikers roughly fill the requirements of a budding Sturmabteilung, to keep order at the rallies, (is the man behind her in the photo her Ernst Rohm?) When she gets real power in her grasp and the military and corporate elite fall in behind her, will he have to be dispatched as an embarrassment in a repeat of the Night of the Long Knives?
Per Santayana’s dictum, those of who do remember the past will be watching in horrified fascination as those who don’t go about repeating it.
Achtung Baby!
Pango your hatred is showing. Yes the ADL wants to put millions of Whites into Camps – just as they did in the old Soviet Union. And for you, I hope you get a personal invitation to a bongo party where you are the main course.
No, it doesn’t matter. While the Supreme court destroys our right to file a complaint when the judge doesn’t like the subject matter, and corporations are given, finally, full legal ability to bribe our legislators, the national security state increases their ability spy on its citizens, while peace demonstrators and union organizers are followed and classified as terrorists. Our rights are no longer in the Constitution, but a matter of contract reviewable only by corporate funded arbitration panels. Our police have become militarized, and citizens are seen as Hajiis, targets. Therefore, the increase in police violence is escalating, while judicial redress is diminishing. Peaceful demonstrators are slammed to the ground and beaten, while government paid torturers are given immunity
The national security totalitarian state is here at a governmental level, and corporatism is here in the financial/legal sphere. The only question remains is which group will grab the reins of power. And how long elections will be allowed to change anything.
Black Bike meets this week in North Carolina – one week after regular Bike week. The difference is that merchants and restaurants in town welcome the regular bikers but often close down during the Black event. Evidently the money is just not worth the amound of theft, vandalism, and insults. The Blacks have noticed and are predictably outraged. Of course they don’t take responsibility for their own role in this. They almost never do. Their ethic is to get away with as much as they can. And since they have be enabled in this, why shouldn’t other groups do the same – including our own kids?
Got to admit, though, she’s in great physical shape. Mid-40’s, 5 kids, and still a MILF. I bet no one ever got a boner by looking at Hitler.
So, wouldn’t it be great if she would apply the skills she does have (for health and physical fitness) to help solve the obesity problem in the USA, and stay away from those subjects about which she is totally clueless?
“About Sarah Palin. You really don’t think the power eleite of this country is going to let her run the government, do you. Now she’ll be more like a paper weight in the oval office.”
Do you think Obama is “running” it? Nah, he just goes to the parties.
Funny you should mention that – I wrote a long article on exactly that topic – automation and what it means to the workforce. See what you think:
http://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-are-people-good-for.html
Vlad, then would you say that European IQs were far below those of people in the Middle East and Egypt a few thousand years ago? After all Europe was backward and savage compared to the civilized Egyptians and Mesopotamians. Or compared to the civilized Indians and Chinese. No comparison between the Pyramids and Stonehenge.
Palin/Bachmann in 2012…it’s a no brainer.
“Damn, you are naive, prog, if you think that the indignities of oppression are about thwarting terrorism.”
-wage-
Damn, you are paranoid, Wage. Our oppressive security apparatus at airports and – maybe, soon to be – bus stations and train depots is ALL, repeat ALL, about making keeping politicians in the limelight and making money for whoeverthehell is selling the equipment and doing the staffing.
“To give up freedom because of your manipulated fears of Muslims and Mexicans is pathetic.”
-wage-
To clarify, I don’t have a fear of Muslims and Mexicans – manipulated or otherwise.
I have a fear of ecosystem collapse and starvation caused by an overpopulated US.
But, to let ALL Americans be groped at airports over a desire to “treat everyone the same and keep the ACLU happy,” is beyond ludicrous.
Great conversation, though, Wage – we gotta try to do this in person someday. Remember my wife will sit on the porch and sip mint juleps – she hates talking politics.
wonder why – -?
Sarah Palin said, “I love the smell of emissions”. Diogenes stop your search. We have found an honest (wo)man.
You Tea Party people are so afraid of being called racists that you’ll support a fraud like Herman Cain. The Elite have you right where they want you.
I’d go with Wage on that one Prog. The Elite are getting us ready by increments for a Police State. That’s far a deeper cause than just selling hi tech security stuff. Notice how once they have something on the books, they never ever repeal it. They already have the special powers to take us away in the middle of the night or to shut down the internet. They can invoke these at any time. Of course prudence dictates that they will create or at least use an “incident” as a cause.
*burp*
Funniest comment so far, but I’m still working my way through…
The difference between Sarah Palin and Hitler….no mustache.
Seriously though, Palin is like a Carebear to the H man’s horned demon. He was a genius, alibi a twisted, insane one. Palin is just a celebrity milking her fame (infamy?) for speech fees.
You talked to me first ass wipe. Now admit it: your a Negro worshiper. You’d rather die than be accused of being a racist. And you’d sell your friends and comrades out to get out of such a charge. You weak teas are a liability.
How’s it going this week, bigjimbo?
Your reparte sounds familiar…
Well, yeah, I’ve been posting for years here under this user name, so that might be why you recognize my prose stylings.
What about you? Are you new here? Have you posted under any other user names recently?
Just wondering so I can get things straight…
You are welcome. I wondered if someone, anyone would even bother to check out th info links. that you did validates my placing the info on this blog.
Regarding your anger, let me point out that anger is like a fire–it can rage unchecked and consume all in its path, or it can be harnessed into the fine focus of a blow torch or laser to cut through all the smoke and mirror distractions of political, diplomatic, business, and military rhetoric.
“They” could not do what “they” do without the passive acceptance of things as they presently are by the the rest of us.
It took several hundred thousand determined people about ten years of focused and determined attention to turn around an indifferent America to its racist ways and pass the three civil rights acts of ’64. ’65, and ’66. The Vietnam War protesters took about nine years to make the MIC finally shut down that war. What they both had in common was the conviction that “business as usual” could not and would not continue.
Cool down, watch the rest of the video, get informed, talk to(don’t harangue)your circle of acquaintances and spread the word that big business, big finance, both major political parties, and especially the military-security establishment has this country by its neck and is choking the life out of it.
“I’d go with Wage on that one Prog. The Elite are getting us ready by increments for a Police State.”
-vlad-
Vlad, you and Wage may be right. But that puts most of us in the US so far into DOOMED that nothing we can do or say about it matters.
And while I’m posting to you, Vlad – all this black/brown genetic inferiority stuff that you keep talking is a dead end for discussion. Stay on the cultural stuff and more people may be willing to listen.
“why shouldn’t other groups do the same – including our own kids?”
-vlad-
– Culture can be addressed by logical and non-racist people.
– Genetics can not.
– Just stating a fact that you should accept.
No need for suppositions – it’s been tested. Science you know, old chap. Middle Easterners average around 90 compared to our 100. But because of the more favorable conditions (back then at least) they were able to develop large civilizations. And of course their Elite probably had many people with higher IQ’s. Also remember that we were there too. Whites once lived deep into Asia and certainly in the area north of today’s Iran.
We became the Elite in India so scratch that. As for the pre-Aryan Indus Valley civilization, same as the Middle East. And then we became the Elite there through conquest. So it’s a genetic jumble today. And as for China, I’ve always admitted their high IQ’s.
The Africans aren’t the new Europeans. Compare how the Germans took to the Roman Empire (which was White anyway) to how poorly Blacks have adapted to modern Western Life. My Dear Fellow, you are wrong.
The Lovers have found each other again. I’m tearing up.
While you were away, he listed one of Herman Cain’s qualifications as “Black”. Big Jimbo is a closet liberal – so don’t be afraid to go forward in the relationship.
It has just been brought to my attention that the Rolling Thunder group she rode with advocates the notion that there are thousands of Missing-in-Action vets still in the jungles of Vietnam, with long white beards feathering across the fetid earth as they go about their daily slave-labor-and-torture routine, now in its fifth decade, beneath the green canopy that no ultra-tech spy plane or soot-smeared Rambo commando can penetrate.
This of course shows her brilliant grasp of the politics of resentment, and so perfectly aligns with the thesis of Herr Kunstler’s column today — perhaps he was not aware of Rolling Thunder’s background and so made no note of the Dolchstoss resonance, (memory-refresher here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolschtosslegende).
It worked such powerful black magic in the minds of those defeated, resentful, unemployed Germans of the 20s and 30s, why not take advantage of the political gift that keeps on giving?
POW, You Will Never Be Forgotten, As Long As We Can Make Political Hay With You.
Lock ‘n Load ‘n Let’s Find Us A Librul!
That is the sad truth I’m afraid – we didn’t wake up in time to do anything about it. We could still save ourselves if we elected a good man like Ron Paul – but we wont. The idjiots will go for Cain or Palin on the far Right and Obama on the Left – even if the same people are funding both. The mainstream Republicans will vote for some non entity who is between those two “extremes”.
Of course, Obama has offended many ordinary Jews so the story may have changed. We’ll see if Goldman Sachs still supports him. Soros almost undoubtedly will.
Can you provide some details so I can find that New Yorker article? Year of publication? Author? Keywords that could be searched?
Thanks!
There are of course many unaccounted for soldiers. This breeds beliefs like this I guess. Maybe a few POW’s caved in to the propaganda and stayed in Vietnam and even married. I’ve heard of stories like that too. But camps with thousands – why would they do that?
SBPDL has predicted that BRA will go up in flames this year, and that it will start in Atlanta. Personally I think we will muddle along, though blacks might destroy our public places the psychopath liberals and their shouts of “racism” will keep the people in the cult compound with their heads down and toiling away the best they can.
Oh Sarah, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen… Oh wait, nevermind, you did that already. Good luck with the “Undefeated” tour, hope you Hoover up lots of money that would otherwise be spent on NASCAR and Taco Bell.
Middle East IQ’s – “….90 compared to our 100. But because of the more favorable conditions (back then at least) they were able to develop large civilizations.”
-vlad-
Vlad, IQ tends to be a dead end for discussion, too. There are cultural factors that bias IQ – and no amount of denial can make them all go away.
Then, think about “the more favorable conditions…”
What if those “favorable conditions” such as good nutrition and a century of social stability LED to higher IQ among the pyramid builders?
What if IQ jumps around all the time, irrespective of genetics. What if 30 years of privation and chaos could make your own children – or even you, if things got bad enough – have the IQ of a pine stump.
One year after her stint as Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin was found guilty of breaching the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. The breach was in regards to a legal defense fund called the Alaska Fund Trust (AFT). The fund was supposedly set up to help Palin with mounting legal bills. Timothy Petumenos was chosen as independent counsel for the State of Alaska and presented his findings this past week. Petumenos stated that even though the fund was set up by Meghan Stapleton and other legal counselors, “the Trust itself, as ultimately conceived, violates the Ethics Act.”
Palin must now repay more than $386,000 in past contributions to the fund. The trustee of the fund must also be replaced. Perhaps what is most shocking is that all contributors to the fund must be publicly disclosed. This will mean that the fund becomes immediately transparent, something Palin likely hoped would not happen.
“In light of the evidence that the governor expressly authorized the creation of the trust and the fact the trust website quite openly uses the governor’s position to solicit donations, there is probable cause to believe that Governor Palin used, or attempted to use, her official position for personal gain in violation of Alaska statute.” Said the Alaska Personnel Board.
As Krishnamurthi said, Truth is a Pathless Land. I have no choice but to follow where the cloud leads me. It has lead me into the desert and I thirst. But what can I say but what it tells me to say? I have bread but I don’t know which side it’s buttered on. Like a Charlie McCarthy, it makes me say Blacks are dumber. I am stuck dumb at what it makes me say. My defence – I have no choice.
Palin Presidency
Hank Jr. is the National Poet Laureate.
David Allan Coe: Chair of EEOC.
No Tax Holiday every Friday, May – Sept for Harley branded merchandise.
Louisiana’s Travis Tritt: Secretary of Energy.
No Tax Holiday every Friday, May – Sept for Harley branded merchandise.
Abe Lincoln’s statute replaced by a giant marble Vincent Black Lightning (preferably a 1952).
Speed Weeks at Daytona renamed Redneck High Holy Week.
Bike Week at Daytona becomes a National Holiday.
Lee Greenwoods “God Bless the USA” becomes the new National Anthem for the new America, “a nation of tattooed, hopelessly fat, angry people without jobs or incomes, filled with shame…”
Pass me the Collard Greens, please.
Sorry – not always good with acronyms. Please spell out – it sounds worth knowing.
No, you have the IQ of a pine stump. (let’s do the Turkel/Jimbo shuffle)
“Lifeboat” Gosh, some of those old movies were great!
Just out of curiosity, I visited Fenton Johnson’s website. Teaching in the SW, these days. He mentioned in passing that he’s working on a novel that has to do with solitaries of one sort or another. A convergence of a monk, woman Bengali doctor and a Viet Vet marijuana farmer. Moving in a hermit direction myself, I look forward to reading it. No release date. Hopefully, it will be out before TSHTF.
Cash said: “It’s not enough to be a good person, you have to be good for something.”
==========
Oy vey!
My. Lots of new names, this week. Dinging La Palin seems to have brought out the astroturfing lunatic fringe. Lots of folks have made in into scroll over country.
Well, that just proves my point, prog.
The US government doesn’t give a shit what the ACLU thinks.
They aren’t targeting grandma and Sissy because of the ACLU. That is absurd.
They know that there are no real terrorists carrying bombs onto planes. That is why they don’t have to target Arabs.
It’s all about teaching grandma and Sissy to submit.
Sure, you can come sip mint juleps on my porch. Just last night I looked at the big bunch of mint growing and told my husband that we needed to think of a way to eat it, and I don’t like mint juleps (his suggestion).
I hope your wife is a heavy drinker.
National healthcare? Good for small business.
Bank bailouts? The banks repaid TARP.
Take over of the auto industry? Record profits.
Genital fondling at airports? Blame Bush for TSA.
Wage said: “Real Americans have a right to privacy. We have a right to be left alone by our government.”
============
We (and Mexican immigrants) should have the right to walk freely across “borders” without being asked for papers and without fear of arrest.
But that would mean we have the right to privacy and the right to be left alone by our government.
So what? What’s the point? What difference does it make what someone’s IQ is?
If you’re saying that IQ should be used to deny people employment or housing, or throw them into prison, or treat them like second class humans, you need to explain why that is a valid criteria.
By the way, this article sheds some more light on our police state, and the lack of legal accountability for the ruling class.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/31
I already told you how I feel about that, Asoka.
I totally agree that people should be free to travel.
But until we change our social system, it won’t work out well for the planet or the US or Mexico.
The sun rises another day on the village idiots, erm, “elders” debating on which of the neighboring villages they should slaughter and burn in a sacred fire in order to bring back the health of their youth.
Meanwhile the crops whither in the fields, rats have overrun the granary and the children have run off to the caves with the tribes opium stash. But that’s all ok because we can blame it on the neighbor’s witchcraft if only we could agree on what village has all the witches.
Of course, said village elders could be composting their shit, pruning the food bearing trees, keeping the goats out of the grain fields and baking bricks for a new granary…….. but fuck, that takes work and more importantly, co-operation. There’s no way they’re going to share work and resources with their lazy fucktard neighbors.
Especially when they can steal his bread after he bakes it.
I.Q. my fucking ass.
“I hope your wife is a heavy drinker.”
What are you saying girlfrien’? Either you’ve got lots of mint OR you think my wife would have to be a heavy drinker to live with me??
Either idea could be on the mark.
Anyway: “They aren’t targeting grandma and Sissy because of the ACLU. That is absurd.” -wage-
Wage, sorry, but that’s the way that it looks from where I sit. Most of the bitchin’ that I hear about “Groping at Airports” comes from Fox News and the Rush/Hannity RW entertainers.
I hadn’t thought much about it – except to think it funny that Fox went 7 years of increasing groping under Bush and didn’t complain until Obama went in.
I still think it’s lobbyist money, growing *Security?* bureaucracy, and politicians hungry for the limelight that have given us our present nonfunctional airport security mess – and may extend it to buses and trains.
And I don’t disagree that the whole mess may someday be used by a “police state.”
I just don’t think that our Elites were smart enough to build it for that in the first place.
And I don’t think you need airport security to train citizens to “submit.” I think you could cut off the power and water for 48 hours and entire cities full of people would happily “submit,” without need for years of “training.”
I’d like to declare we’ve fought this issue to a draw for now, if I may. You want to pick a new topic?
==========
I have a julep recipe with two cups of water, two cups of sugar, lots of mint, and 32 OUNCES of bourbon.
That oughta’ do it, hey?!
bigjimbo, let’s watch what happens in Vermont when they implement single-payer, BIG GOVERNMENT, universal health care. Vermont is on its way to socialist health care.
I predict businesses will move to Vermont because it will be cheaper to do business without the hassle of managing records and contributing to private insurance plans for employees. Instead, the STATE will take care of that.
Vermont opted out of Obama’s plan, as they had the right to do under Obama’s plan. State’s rights, eh?
Slight problem. Its a new phenomenon.
=============
A problem which wouldn’t exist if Bush had not created the big government bureaucracy called TSA.
Got it. I live in a free country. As long as I don’t walk too far in any one direction.
Sarah Palin puts something hard and fast between her legs.
Quite a photo-op!
“Without enforceable borders you have no nation.”
============
And your point is?
What’s so great about nations? All they ever seem to do is fight over borders. Read some history.
“Fox went 7 years of increasing groping under Bush…”
-bigjimbo, catching error-
You’re right Jimbo. The groping apparently was offered as a wholesale alternative to the new whole body scanners. Because the first Fox News headline that I saw about it was “Porn or Molestation.” On Fox.
Somebody tell me why the idiots in charge of those scanners didn’t/don’t just blur the faces on those scanners and make the whole controversy go away?
And I saw one of my grown sons groped rather extensively back in 2007 at the Atlanta airport.
So, whole body pat downs – and worse – have been an option on the table for years.
Jimbo, you want to just agree Airport Security is pretty well FUBAR’ed – regardless of who the Pres. is?
BTW, BigJimbo – I’m responding to you because you challenged me and got me to correct an error without needless insult.
And because you do have good ideas, sometimes –
When you’re not firing the “Fucktard torpedoes.” (tm Cash)
I wouldn’t worry too much about Carabou Barbie… there’s this one thing that stands in her way…. the Bush family. Barbra doesn’t like her, and if she shows political promise then some Lee Harvy Oswald type will emerge and do the CIA’s thing…..
Hitler was Bankrolled by the nice folks at Brown Brothers Harriman, Union Bank, and the Amerikan Hamburg Line…. he was engineered to cause a war (Hitler had NO oil… Where DID he get the money to conduct the massive war? Hint… they own Banks)
Sarah will only become Hitler if the Bush Family wants her to…. the Bushes and their friends at Skull and Bonz have been firmly in charge since November 1963… Obama is the CIA’s inside guy… he aint going no where.
ProCon, I’m responding directly to you to request that you cease and desist your promotion of FAIR.
If you were not aware of the history of FAIR’s founder and his involvement in extreme bigotry, then I owe you an apology for calling you a racist.
If you continue promoting FAIR on CFN, even after becoming aware of its connections to anti-semitism, eugenics, Holocaust denial, etc. then
Post-overhaul, they’re increasing 5.8% faster. Annual premium hikes in the state have averaged 7.5% since 2000.
===============
7.5% !!!! My God! Really!
Bigjimbo, since 1999, the cost of coverage for a family of four has climbed 131 percent in the rest of the nation.
Compared to national increases RomneyCare has saved Massachusetts citizens a ton on tax monies.
SOURCE: EMPLOYER HEALTH BENEFITS http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/2010/8085.pdf
I am a citizen of the world and a child of the universe. I am immune to your so-called “legal authority.”
(Is that the same “legal authority” that tried to draft me and send me to Vietnam? … and failed!)
Like our parents always warned us – never talk about religion or politics. So just talk chamber of commerce type stuff – price of sorghum and feed, how are the kids, how is the car, job, horse, lawn. Gradually, since nothing real is being said, people begin to covertly avoid each other while still keeping up the facade. Everybody? No just the middle people – the best already saw thru all that in their youth. The people on the bottom of being never stop – they have no depth to retreat to and the more introverted passtimes don’t mean anything to them.
Thus we begin to bowl alone. And in every home, the flickering blue campfire prevails.
“So, you are saying big government agencies are problematic? ”
===========
Not at all. Big government created by Bush set out to fondle people at airports and is doing so very successfully.
“got me to correct an error without needless insult.”
Like I give a fucking shit, FUCKTARD. Blow me.”
-bigjimbo/lingling/TooTsie, back in character-
Hey JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
You want to go ahead and ban this jackass again?
I have lots of mint.
Does the ACLU have a TV channel that I don’t know about, which insists that the TSA grope grandma?
I’m thinking not.
And I repeat that the US government has no interest in what the ACLU thinks about privacy issues.
And NOW I’ll stop.
I will not respond directly – it leads to trouble
I will not respond directly – it leads to trouble
If there is a better organization than FAIR for promoting reduced legal immigration into the US, perhaps asoka will find it and present it to the thread.
Meanwhile charges of RACISM against FAIR are being used to stifle debate.
What does it matter? Are you kidding? You’re not thinking just doing the Liberal/Leftist regurgitation. Here goes: smart people make more money on average. Such people are envied by the have nots. If the people who have money look the same, they become a group. If the people who don’t have money look the same, they are a group. The second group will envy the first just as poor individuals envy rich ones. A few smart people (like you) organize the dummies to kill the rich. That’s communism in a nutshell.
Hernstein and Murray, the authors of the Bell Curve, thought we could all get along. They reasonably argued that as long as we focused on merit, what did skin color matter. In other words, so what if Whites do better than Blacks on average as long individual Blacks are given the freedom to go as far as they can. I have no problem with it per se. The problem is that Blacks and Browns have a problem with it and will never accept not doing as well as Whites as a group. They are not individualistic cultures in the same sense we are. They will not accept it. To pretend that they will, in the face of all evidence, is either ignorance or irrationality. At this late date, it’s mostly irrationality.
Jim, this time your words aren’t ignescent enough for any sparks to fly across a Hitler-Palin comparison gap so wide that Werner Von Braun wouldn’t try to jump it with a V2.
Oh sure, there are various odious vapors of oppression in the air, but right now they can’t find a place to settle, to coagulate. Currently, the confusion of the times isn’t chaotic enough and even if the anger were higher pitched, Sarah Palin doesn’t bring enough jackboot sangfroid to make it all coalesce.
It’s a colorful comparison though, provocative leathers and all, and certainly better than flatly calling her a fatuous, feeble-minded fell-monger.
You may have done better comparing her to, say, “Frenchy”(Marlene Dietrich), in “Destry Rides Again” or to Doris Day in “Calamity Jane”.
Or even to Annie Oakley(Betty Hutton), in “Annie Get Your Gun”.
Better yet, staying with the male comparison, how about “Lash Larue”? I can see her now, mercilessly snapping that whip in highboots and assless leather, snarling like an insane Billy Idol with smeared lipstick, cracking the air with a fascism sexy enough to force all to submit.
Whew, let me wipe my brow!
Now you morons are arguing over the benefits of different private insurance plans. It’s like arguing over which stick you’re going to get impaled on; the results are guaranteed to be the same.
The U.S. spends almost DOUBLE per capita on health care as compared to the next highest OECD country, and we don’t even cover dentistry in that cost which every other nation does.
Socialized health care is just fucking CHEAPER than what is provided for by our craptastic frankenstein of government enforced private monopolies and private insurance providers.
Actually, what we have in the U.S. is a socialist system as local, state and federal governments pick up the majority of the health care tab except they are forced to do it through tens of thousands of local contracts instead of one national contract. Allowing for profit; otherwise known as graft.
Waste: it’s what Capitalism does best.
“It is based on you “are in control”, you are the “boss”, you can win, so if you didn’t win you deserve the punishment.”
Punishment is man’s construct. This gives the lie to “unending punishment” theory. God’s purpose is restitution, so if any discipline is of God it will have an object of returning man to his prior state, not annihilation or non-existance, or an infinite duration of pain and/or humiliation.
We have all won. Jesus paid the debts of all. The sin { law – less – ness } of the whole world were in propititiation of His suffering. By His stripes we are healed.
Rejoice your redemption darws near.
I respect your decision, ProCon.
I just wanted to give you the opportunity in case I had misjudged you unfairly.
I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.
So you are against the Veterans Administration health care system, even though it scores higher for quality of care and is cheaper and is socialist (government hospitals, government doctors, government-conscripted patients, etc.)?
Congratulations, Bustin.
So, you judge people on the color of their skin, their IQ and their income?
As I’ve always told you, I think that every person deserves a decent standard of living.
I don’t care if you’re as dumb as a rock, you should be able to afford food, clothes, housing and medical care.
You’re wrong about the envy problem, or Wall Street types wouldn’t be safe in stepping over the homeless.
Did you know that dirt poor Native Americans live on a reservation in sight of the rich in the Hamptons? And they never cruise over and murder them?
There is no one organizing the poor to kill the rich. That is your florid imagination at work.
Pango,
That’s just about a perfect distillation of the “high level” of ‘Murkin “thought” these fine days!
Good one.
bigjimbo, you are interfering with a meaningful conversation between Procon and me. If you persist in this behavior, you risk being called a “resident impediment”
You have been warned.
Yes, in other words, there is no social consensus anymore. Nevertheless, I have found the typical sort of urban parents in the big city districts to be believers in discipline per se, but this constructive attitude tends to get undermined by the social elites who created this mess, since they are big advocates of false gentility and do-nothingism, as I call it. In other words, the kids are looking for someone to follow, but there is no one taking a firm hand with them. All of which makes me sound like someone Nietchze warned us against when he said, “don’t trust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.”
At any rate, fully 50% of the kids in some areas require special education for learning disabilities, psyche. disorders, or developmental handicaps. Getting punitive with them is totally counter-productive.
A great video about Permaculture in the most water-scarce country, Jordan:
http://permaculture.org.au/2009/12/11/greening-the-desert-ii-final/
Marc,
If you’re middle-aged or older, do you
remember in the 1960s when parents would
say, if they had an average child, that
the child was not “college material”?
College was considered to be for the
academic/intellectual elite.
Unfortunately, after 22 years of working
at a community college, I’d have to say
that, despite many liberal rants to the
contrary, that we are NOT underfunding
education … at least at the college and
univeristy level.
We would be MUCH better off if we had a
system like the Germans where most kids
are funneled off to a vocational school
where they learn to be plumbers, electricians,
carpenters, and so on. As a result of our
foolish, utopian ideas, we’ve converted
our economy into an almost pure “service”
economy where a lot of people are unhappy
paper-pushers at financial companies or
call center folks at tech companies instead
of happier, more valuable skilled tradesmen.
I’d estimate that in the decade that just
passed by, around 75%, conservatively, have
no business in college and will never have
a SUSTAINABLE career in computer technology,
the area in which I taught.
There are too many colleges, too many college
students, too many college teachers, and too
many self-deluding people who have transcripts
full of “C”, “D”, and “F” grades, dropped
courses, and yet many of them appear in my
computer lab for seven, eight, nine years
thinking that more and more credit hours will
suddenly make their resume go from sow’s ear
to silk purse.
I am in full agreement with the contentions in
your reply to my post. Indeed, my disillusionment
with the “college-for-everyone” utopian ideal
is a major reason why I will be retiring …
in THREE WEEKS at age 59. It’s been bad for
years and I don’t want to contribute to the
delusions any more. I’d have to be a more
skilled actor than I am.
E.
First, I wish I were as stupid as some of the black people I’ve met. I knew an accounting major at Miami of Ohio who was so brilliant it was scary, and I’m sure that he was of entirely African ancestry. We also had African exchange students who were smart as hell.
If the schools were run properly there would be much to do other than straight academics. Abysmal school performance stems largely from a chaotic home life, living in the noisy projects, or even phsyical imtimidation in the hallways of some schools.
In my experience most persons of every race have virtually no academic aptitude whatever. This notion that everyone needs lots of academic training is not only a transparent scam but is actually wrong headed to the point of the grostesque. I myself although high scoring verbal am not the swiftest in mathematics. I don’t know what I’d do if someone had attempted to force me to become an engineer or an astronomer. I would’ve had to rebel to get out of it.
I think we’re laying our own fucked up head trips on the school kids. This is unfair to the kids. Kids who do not respond well to conventional academcs should be placed in alternative programs where they blow off some steam and discover themselves in other ways. Rich kids certainly don’t get treated like shit just because they’ve got problems. If we really expect everyone to do great in school then we’re truly fucked, because that’s just totally unrealistic.
I too am obsessed with becoming a do-it-yourself hermit. After all, if you really want to drop out of the rat race then you’re pretty much on your own as getting involved with others they will always want to compromise, such as Clevelanders I meet who actually think that rural Ohio is “remote”.
I’m a firm believer in ferro-cement quonset huts if you wish to disappear. That no one knows what ferro-cement is speaks well for ferro-cement. Let’s put it this way: if the lameasses knew what it was it wouldn’t be as good and as cool as it is. The other thing I believe in is composting toilets. In the meantime I will remain in my man-cave taking care of mom. If anyone has a problem with that they can kiss my ass.
True, Obama inherited a disaster. He didn’t
create it. However, as seems to be the case
in modern politics, his defense/coddling of
Wall Street banksters, his retention of
Defense Secretary Gates, his promotion of
Petraeus, his retention of Bernanke …
would have labelled the guy a Liberal
Republican back in the 1960s, not even a
Centrist Democrat.
His Libyan actions (which wasted billions
more we cannot afford) seem like they come
from the Neoconservative playbook. His
post-Libya speech, with all the jibber-jabber
about the “just aspirations of the Libyan
people” sounded like a Dubya speech.
Where are the progressives?? I’m not saying
I’d be one of them but where are the opposing
political forces so vital to the system of
checks and balances the Founding Fathers
had in mind. By actions, we appear to have
a slightly right-of-center party and a vastly
right-of-center party.
Personally, because of his close approach to a
balanced budget, I’d say Bill Clinton was the
best Republican we’ve had in thirty years. 🙂 🙂
E.
Sounds like you read the book ‘real education.’ I forgot the writer. Abilities vary is the main theme, along with too many people go to college.
“They” could not do what “they” do without the passive acceptance of things as they presently are by the the rest of us.
==
I agree with you 100%. The passivity and acceptance is absolutely stunning. And so shameful! So shameful! I really can’t understand it. My only explanation is that either the American public is made up of spineless wilful dupes, or they really are a bunch callous savage racist fascists. I can reach no other explanation.
James’ observations on Palin’s latest attention-whore antics this weekend makes me ponder the shallowness of the ‘biker’ meme that’s been building for 20 or 25 years.
This is mythology of the freedom of the road; independence, toughness, brother/sisterhood. For a great many people it’s a pretend world, a mask you put on to pretend you’re a badass for one day a week. When a pack of Harley riders roars by or plunks down at the bar next to me what screams in my head is not how tough they are, but how have been fooled – another demographic of sucker-consumers who have been fooled into believing in a made-up community. A corporate-branded community, not a real one.
Harley-Davidson has built itself a into a monumental marketing and “branding” machine. Making bikes has become almost secondary to peddling this mythology of freedom and badassedness. I think the very act of outfitting yourself with a Harley jacket, boots, bandanna and bike accessories has made you a corporate shill. I see people that have put a fortune into accessorizing themselves in Harley riding gear, jewelry, on top of whatever they spent on their bikes. And part of the image is not just the gear, it’s the loud: aftermarket pipes you can hear from miles around. It’s the same sociopathic drive in 16-year old boys in every neighborhood everywhere, with thumping car stereos and tuned glass-pack pipes bolted onto the back of their Honda Civics.
My biker friends say how nice their fellow bikers are. A lot of bikers are good people; perhaps even most of them. And they represent a comforting cross-section of America; there are bikers that live in trailers and bikers from gated suburban communities; there are true badasses and weekend pretenders. But hell, everyone’s fun when you’re engaged in a leisure activity. It’s only when you work with them every day, or suffer through something challenging or difficult (like life, or the Long Emergency) that you can tell a friend from an asshole. I contend that the biker image being peddled is not even uniquely American; biker gangs have roamed Russia, England, Japan and probably the south Americas too.
As always James, thanks for your wit and wisdom on current events…with Fukushima simmering and a Palin on the loose, wine alone isn’t enough to get me through these days 😀
“Should they, their haircut awaits.”
=========
Like in NY26?
Big 2010 mandate? Ha!
Eleuthero,
At my kid’s high school, they have sign-up day for all the jr. colleges–West Valley being the most popular. All the kids that haven’t been accepted to a four-year college, are basically herded into a room to register. Only one student listed “work” as her destination after high school. Of course getting a job–even at Petco or Target is harder than signing up for jr. college. What are kids supposed to do? And parents need them to be registered for college in order to keep them on their medical insurance policy.
Congratulations on your upcoming retirement.
SJmom
I’m not surprised that woman find your intelligence very attractive.
SJmom
E., I am glad you are finally going to retire.
I thought you had already retired in March for some reason. 22 years in the Calif. retirement system should give you a comfortable retirement income and that puts my mind at ease.
The book I read was called “Down And Out in Academia”. It was about the plight of college instructors with multiple part time lecturing gigs all over whatever region they lived in. The the most horror inspiring chapter was the account of the poor slob who was so deluded he actually tried to teach high school! As Colonel Kurtz said, “the horror, the horror”.
Speaking of imbalance, get your head out the clouds, Vlad. And I agree – you’re as dry as a bundle of Arizona twigs( notice I didn’t use that other word) in August. Put you’re feet back on the ground and on the higher ground while you’re at it.
I coudln’t agree more. After all, if these people were actually interested in academic pursuits you’d need a crowbar to separate them from their library books, yet curiously, YOU DON’T NEED A CROWBAR TO SEPARATE THEM FROM THEIR LIBRARY BOOKS because guess what? They don’t have a fucking library card! Why you ask? Because they don’t read, that’s why.
And more to the point: was Jimi Hendrix a spoiled little suburbanite like me who’s daddy bought him a guitar and paid for guitar lessons while he was growing up? No, actually he couldn’t afford a guitar. His first “guitar” was a broom he PRETENDED to be playing as a guitar. When he finally did manage to obtain a guitar he spent EVERY WAKING MOMENT PRACTICING THE GUITAR, SITTING IN THE FRONT ROW OF SEATTLE NIGHT CLUBS COPYING EVERY CHORD ON EVERY SONG. Pretty soon voila, he was a professional guitarist touring on the chitlin cirucuit.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. The biggest reason teachers tell kids they must all go to college is because these same teachers have never done anything but [1] go to school; or [2] teach school. Yet curiously, these same people are not actually intellectuals and basicly don’t read anything other than text-books. Maybe if people want these kids to learn something they should get them to hand out with some of the misfits who actually frequent the library.
“Maybe if people want these kids to learn something they should get them to hand out with some of the misfits who actually frequent the library.”
================
Agreed. Tweeting and Facebooking is not the same as roaming the stacks and reading in all areas of the Dewey Decimal system, which is what I did as soon as I was old enough to read and get a library card.
The FREE public library is the people’s university. I know someone who reads hundreds of books a year, which would cost more to buy than the property taxes he pays to support roads, infrastructure, schools, and the FREE public library.
Re: Mom. You’re priorities are in the right place.
Concrete: Frank Lloyd Wright went through this interesting stage in the 20s, mostly in So. CA., where he used a lot of molded, patterned concrete block. Looked like Deco Mayan Temples. Would like to try something like that on a MUCH smaller scale. Just Google Hollyhock House or Charles Ennis house for some examples.
Have my “Humanure Handbook” (3rd. Ed.) close at hand 🙂
Was rummaging around Fenton Johnson’s website and noticed he’s working on a “Meditations on Solitaires.” Dropped him an e-mail to see if there’s a publication date on that, yet.
Everyone keeps asking what I’m going to do when I close down the store. “Be a hermit and grow potatoes.” No one takes me seriously. Which is one of the reasons the hermitage beckons. Might be a good thing.
“I can’t say I care much for Emily Dickinson’s poetry, but I surely admire her lifestyle.”
Jim, I have admired your spunk, confidence, intelligence, and eloquence ever since I discovered your website several years ago. Furthermore, I also have consistently agreed with your opinions. I too have always spoken my mind, but, as a result, I have been told that I am from a different planet, a different dimension, and from Never, Never Land. It takes one to know one, right? I think I could be as successful as you, and generate as much feedback as you do, however, it must be the words I choose to express myself that differentiates my results from yours. So, where am I going with this? Now really? Maybe it is simply a backhanded compliment.
Living in Massachusetts, my health care insurance with an HMO for myself and my wife, peaked at $19,000 per year, which I paid myself, as a small business owner. I was in a good, but not the best plan the HMO offered.
Now I’m in the Medicare program with supplemental insurance through the HMO (coverage D), and my wife and I pay about $5,700 per year. Do you see why seniors don’t want the politicians to eliminate Medicare? We’re better off than the typical senior because we’re still working. If we had no other income other than social security, we might be able to pay the $19k per year, but we’d be right on the poverty line. In a way, this is positive because we have to remain fit to work, so we exercise and work out.
Re: Too many college students, too many colleges…
A book: “Shop Class as Soul Craft” by Crawford. Well worth a read.
I am very happy for you (really). Now go out and make up for lost time.
Astonishingly good article, JHK! Had to read it twice, it was so good! Having talked about Palin over and over again with my “Country Club” Republican friends, I don’t see Palin getting the GOP nod. She is too dumb (can’t answer even simple questions/can’t debate) and a proven QUITTER. She won’t get the job done of leading because she is too busy trying to extract campaign money from dimwits who actually believe she is able and willing to lead. Palin is very willing to take those funds and spend them on silk drawers for Todd, her First Dude.
However, Palin’s ego is bigger than Alaska. If enough of her followers beseech her to run, she just might run as the TEA PARTY candidate. The GOP, who seems to despise her (even Roger Ailers according to a recent Times article despises her), will run their own candidate, probably a successful businessman (Mitt Romney?). So that would effectively split the Republicans between the Have Mores (the rich and powerful) and the Have Nothings (the loud and crazy fringe).
The only thing that could really propel Palin into the presidency would the total collapse of the economy. This is not likely to happen as the 2008 total world economic collapse was headed off by Henry Paulson/Ben Bernacke who made deals with the devils called Wall Street. Watch the commodity market, that will be the key to who runs and who wins the Presidency.
Got distracted and starting ranting. In point of fact our community colleges now ARE the trade schools to a very great extent. In other words, high school kids are no longer believed to be mature enough to learn anything useful. That’s why kids with I.Q.s of 95 are WASTING their time “learning” about nonsense such as ancient civilizations even though the teacher himself has never read an entire book on the subject. Plainly, if the teacher is someone they don’t look up to or want to emulate then they’re not going to learn anything, even if they had the aptitude, which they don’t.
The problem with training people for the service economy is that they’re going to spend their lives catering to the irrational whims of idiots. My favorite example of this in the barber trade was the guy who ordered a flat top even though he was entirely bald ON TOP. When I told him that would be impossible owing to his having NO HAIR on top his wife argued that his last barber gave him a flat top. I’d known him for some time so I asked her “was that ten years ago by chance?” She actually wanted to argue with me about this issue. I finally asked her, “was that barber’s name Jesus and did he miracle him a head of hair to cut?” If you’re working in someone else’s shop they will no doubt have a policy of amiably FAKING such imbecilic requests. Which reminds me of our entire educational system: AMIABLY FAKING THE IMBECILIC REQUESTS OF THE UNEDUCATED THEMSELVES PARENTS.
“For the record, I don’t believe you’re a racist, Prog.” -buckstud-
Thanks, buck – I don’t think I’m a racist either.
It’s too bad that any concern about population growth in the US is going to get one labeled RACIST by individuals and organizations with an agenda.
I was called RACIST numerous times by one poster, last night between 1:00 am and 3:00 am. I just now scrolled very rapidly through all that and found your post among the blather. Saying something numerous times does not make it true.
But it is a horrible CHARGE and it does tend to stay RESIDENT in one’s mind where it may IMPEDE important discussions. I won’t let that happen.
And I researched FAIR as best as I could and threw it out to the CFN thread for evaluation over one month ago. I also suggested that someone might find a better alternative to FAIR. Not a negative evaluation out of anyone, until last night – although one or two CFN posters have also reported that they have joined FAIR.
Replacement Level immigration is a reasonable and non-racist goal – for the good of the US and the rest of the Earth.
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On to other things – yeah – I’m not sure why that SCOTUS decision has not gotten bigger play. They haven’t yet addressed Arizona Bill # 1070 – but this does give an indication of how they will rule.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0526/Supreme-Court-upholds-Arizona-law-designed-to-thwart-illegal-workers
And yeah, Obama is doing a better job of honest immigration enforcement against employers.
Bush and his Neocons became too pro-business to be pro-America – or something.
Someone pointed out up the thread that new immigrants – maybe especially legal ones – are more reliable as Conservative Voters. I sometimes wonder if that was a primary motivation for Reagan and Bush.
Opinions, anyone?
Also check out “PAPERCRETE” on line.
I am convinced that the key to happiness as a solitary do it yourselfer is to relocated to an unincorporated area where there are no builing codes or zoning. Then provided that the building is for personal use only you should be free to do as you wish and improvise. Another option is to build your own pontoons using foam core so that there are no voids to fill up with water. Ferro-cement is the most common boat building material in the third world, and is also big in New Zealand. It is far easier to get a boat license for a do-it-yourself houseboat than it is to build a real house in an incorporated area where the BUILDING DEPARTMENT GOONS will have an opportunity to fuck with you relentlessly.
I posted the last and I believe legal immigrants are conservative because they have a high rate of self-employment and believe in the much vaunted “American Dream” believing that they’re going to strike it rich selling groceries in the ‘hood at inflated prices and that the gang-bangers are going to recognize their inherent wonderfulness and refrain from shooting them down next time they need a pack of smokes but don’t have any money. I once worked for an Irish immigrant who watched FOX news all day. He was so stupid he joined the Republican Party because it sounds kind of like Irish Republican Army! He billed himself as “The Irish Barber” and would bore everyone by talking about nothing but Ireland. I busted him for having an Ulsterman accent and not an Irish accent. At my next shop the owner and I referred to him as “The British Beautician”. Do I have a right to despise immigrants because I’m 1/64 th Seneca Iroquois out of Rochester, NY? Yes, I think that’ll work just fine for me, thank you very much.
E.
Didn’t you know, colleges are a big business something like puppy mills at this point. And the banks just love those outstanding loans.
They keep this thing going by saying you have to compete in the global economy, only the competition doesn’t have huge loans to pay off and expensive housing. That’s where the rubber meets the road competition-wise.
There are plenty of good math students here, btw, who just cost the companies too much.
Congrats on your retirement.
My Birthday is in 3 weeks too. Age-wise I’m not far behind you.
immigrants are conservative because they “believe in the much vaunted “American Dream” believing that they’re going to strike it rich selling groceries in the ‘hood at inflated prices…”
The Resident Submariner
Thanks for explaining that “bubble head” reference, Marc. I hadn’t heard that term in that context in so many years – I guess I thought you were just being self-deprecating, or something. Cool handle, now that I understand what it means!
And yeah, on immigrants as hard core Republican entrepreneurs –
My wife and another grown son went to the “Thanksgiving Day After at 3:00 A.M. Sale” last year – or whatever the damn thing is called.
None of us had ever been to a thing like that before. I doubt one of us will ever go again.
They were shocked at the huge crowds. And there were lots of people (many Asian immigrants – a factual observation, not RACISM) in the crowd who had actually FLOWN INTO Atlanta, rented a car, driven the 80 miles from ATL to this mall – just to buy cheap Coach pocketbooks or whatever – to sell at a markup on the internet.
Of course all of that foolishness, buying, selling, flying, driving, and marking up stuff on the internet counts as Productive Labor by the maroons who calculate the GDP – and those who think a US with 666,000,000 souls resident is a Peachy Idea.
What a mess we are going to have.
In California, the Jr. College system is quite affordable….except for the textbooks. The system was established by Edmund G. Brown, Sr., and when they first opened they were FREE! Of course, it’s more expensive now, but really, these colleges are a bargain.
SJmom
I love reading your weekly column but frankly I’m a little outnumbered here. Tho’ I’m not exactly wild about Sarah myself, a lot of the diatribe in the comments and main article are a little over the top. A lot of comments about this president or that not being “qualified”. Hm. How would one get “experience” at “president”? Not to sound “corn pone” or anything but all things being equal Abraham Lincoln was nothin’ but a failure of a stump attorney in a wheat field of the midwest who knew nothing of war. Didn’t Palin go against the big oil companies of Alaska during her term at bat? She doesn’t live in a homeless shelter like Hitler despite whatever the conspiracy theorist may say. Has she actually DONE something deserving of all this venom? Peace Out.
“Thanks, buck – I don’t think I’m a racist either.”
========
Well, that does it procon. A consensus of two people, both of whom I respect, have concurred that you are not a racist.
And you should know if you are racist or not. Some racists do know. I recognize and admit my own racism, which comes out of my experiences of mistreatment during Jim Crow. It is deep inside, and though I try to not let it affect me, I admit it often comes out. I am calling myself a racist.
I apologize for calling you a racist, procon.
Your association with FAIR influenced my thinking on the subject. But you have researched FAIR as best as you could, and threw it out to CFN, and you are convinced that it is not a racist organization.
You apparently don’t care that the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified FAIR as a hate group. (Maybe that gives FAIR more status in your eyes?)
“…the Jr. College system is quite affordable…”
=========
Not only that, often there are top-notch instructors, especially in rural community college settings where someone has retired from a life of teaching and research at a university, but then wants to do some adjunct teaching in retirement. The community college students then get a PhD who may have written books or published extensively or have decades of university teaching experience.
In other words, just because it is inexpensive doesn’t mean the quality is lacking. My first computer programming class was taught by someone who had worked at Microsoft and the University of Washington. I took carpentry classes from master carpenters with decades of experience. Ditto adobe construction.
Community colleges are definitely a good (and inexpensive) choice, whether for academic transfer (first two years) or for learning a trade.
Delightfully creepy comments thanks for that. Never forget that the CIA ships chartered for the Bay of Pigs invasion were all named after female members of the Bush family.
With 450 or so comments in less than two full days since Jim’s Hitler-Palin comparison appeared and with everyone all in a lather, let me set some of y’all’s minds at ease. Here is what will happen between now and Nov 2012.
Palin won’t be the Republican nominee. The American people are dumb but not THAT dumb. Chances are she won’t even declare herself a candidate but if she does she will fizzle out for any one of several face-saving reasons (insufficient campaign funding, perhaps?) but will further solidify her “brand” (God knows I hate that term) and ability to make a buck as a professional celebrity — a person similar to Paris Hilton who is a household name worldwide yet doesn’t actually DO anything. She will remain a physically attractive woman well into old age when she will pass away with a significant bank balance. Though I wish no misfortune on anyone I can envision one of Palin’s kids dying before her, for whatever reason, in which case that offspring’s obituary would appear in the NYT with the only claim to fame being that he or she was the son or daughter of Sarah Palin.
Nor will Cain be the Republican nominee. From what little I’ve seen and heard of him on TV he appears to be a generically competent politician but, unlike Obama, is simply “too black” and speaks with a noticeable “black accent.” (Going forward, with Obama as their model, serious black polititians with an eye on higher office will realize the necessity of losing the black accent.) Cain will give it his best shot but will fizzle as well.
Ron Paul will again be a favorite of thinking conservatives but, of course, doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. He’s too wimpy and the average American can’t grasp issues like auditing the Fed much less eliminating it, why Big Govt and ever-growing mountains of fiat money are a bad thing, etc.
I have no idea who will be the republican nominee but it doesn’t matter. Obama will win a second term handily. (Sorry Vlad, sorry Tootsie but admit it, you already knew this.) Central casting back in ’06/’07 could not have come up with a more perfect combination of attributes in a candidate than the half-black, handsome and articulate Obama and no matter what his successes or failures the American public is not about to repudiate their choice after only four years.
I don’t know if I’ll vote in Nov 2012 but if I do it will be for utterly shallow reasons.
Lincoln was already a public figure when he ran for President or he wouldn’t have been able to run for president. Also, remember that Illinois was the frontier then and so the bar was lower for being a public figure. Lincoln did however serve in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War, probably as an officer although he didn’t see action if my memory serves me.
Common goes to the WhiteHouse and JHK says not a word!
Maybe you’re right. Maybe your vote or anyone else’s won’t count. But admittedly, you are an old, old man. The consequences of this election are unlikely to be visited upon your narcissitic old self. Why condemn the rest of us to a life filled with inconsequential irrelevance on your behalf? Perhaps there are a few of us who will live, perchance WANT to live beyond the next 20 or 30 years. What right have you to vote for “shallow reasons” (your words). Maybe it’s the same “right” your generation has always had in its attempt to protest and fight Vietnam both at the same time? Maybe you’re pissed off that your life may be ending at the same time Medicare is. (prep?…oops,sorry). Or maybe you’re just too filled with regret at all of the things you could have done or should have done in your life to make a difference in this world, other than suck on the tit which is the American government (can you say S-0-C-I-A-L S-E-C-U-R-I-I-T-Y)? And then you have the nerve to tell the rest of us off how we don’t know how to conjugate a verb, spell contractions, or finish sentences without using a preposition. AND you go after people such as Procon who has the balls to call you on the contemptible little lizard you are. Frankly, I don’t get it. By the way, how is your mother in law getting on? Does she get the little check in the mail from Social Security, or do you and the little Mrs. Q pay for her full upkeep? Miserable little worms such as yourself should stay inside your little cores as much as possible. Your little outbursts concerning grammar and self-serving diatribes leave the rest of us a little perturbed…I mean, you HAVE had more than your turn sucking on the government teat. Cheers! Digby
Not college material, yukyukyuyk!
Funniest thing you ever posted here!
College [like govt] employes the unemployable.
Also College ‘keeps students out of workforce’
[theoretically, with collapse of middle class students are working PT and as ‘interns’
Also with Loan programs and for profit schools….college is a scam, sadly.
but is Cost of Living in California affordable?
E.
The tragedy of education in the U.S. is that for many careers the only way to gain entrance is to sit in a chair, listen to lectures and spit back a verbatim or slightly modified version of same lectures at test time.
Short of a court reporter I can’t think of a single other job that requires that particular skill set.
Which is why we have houses, bridges, planes, cars, medical systems and an economy in general that doesn’t work. If Dr. Wonderful never had to treat bedsores as a student/apprentice he’s not going to prioritize their prevention. Likewise we would all be served better if building inspectors had to do repair and remodeling work for a few years before they approved roof plans that leak.
Education is a wonderful thing; but it’s fuck-all compared to experience.
The text books to which you refer have been run by years by the major publishing companies. When I first started in the field (early l980s) known as “Education”, Lippincott was chief among the little bastards who would “update” a paragraph or two in each and every chapter, requiring the professors to assign new ($75.00 – $l00.00 texts) to new classes. The entire educational system, top to bottom, K-12, and beyond has been usurped by these publishing houses, sucking up millions of state tax payer dollars. As has been said before on this blog, how many times do you have to update math and physics? It’s been the same since before Aristotle carved out equations on a stone tablet. The graft and corruption in the whole system is beyond ordinary human comprehension. I know. I taught this stuff. It amazes me that middle class people (by which I’m defining couples who earn between $100k and $200k per annum) willfully dish out the cash to send junior to a four year, diploma mill institution (name your favorite 4 year cleptocracy) for a degree that will get him, at best, a non-paid internship for a year and a half, and at worst, a part-time, assistant shift manager at McDonalds. Good luck with paying off the $100K loans at that rate, folks. And the housing market? Just who do you think is going to buy that $700K Mcmansion you and hubby invested in 20 years ago? Certainly not some lawyer, freshly minted from a “prestige” law school, working for $23K a year as a paralegal. Let’s get real….okay?
Digby_Wall of text is unreadable. Find the return key and familiarize yourself with it’s use.
Qshtick_ A shockingly realistic assessment. You forgot to mention that the current Republican leadership shot themselves in the heads by declaring publicly their intention of raising the age of Social Security retirement and destroying Medicare.
Most Americans of working age know that Social Security is their only hope of relief from wage-slavery. The GOP informing them that they are to work until they are dead or homeless (same thing) doesn’t endear them to anybody but total morons and foam-at-the-mouth racists.
Since we don’t have either a financially conservative party in the U.S. OR an actual Left party we’re stuck with iterations of the current neo-liberal insanity of which Obama is notably less insane than any other viable option.
Wonderful comments on the education industry. The phenomenon you describe has been called credentialism, I think, but it was the subject of a lengthy article in one of the literary magazines perhaps a decade ago, either Harpers or The Atlantic. The problem as discussed in that article was how the gatekeeping function for entrance into the professions was handed off from the practitioners themselves to the universities and that thereafter persons were no longer chosen because they could confidently be expected to excel at the profession in question but because they could be expected to do well at THE TRAINING for that occupation. This is why new lawyers for instance, don’t really know how to do the paperwork which is expected of them as active lawyers. The article also took a look at the issue of the MBA degree and how the business schools were attempting to convert what had been a practical pursuit, that is running a business, into a more academic profession including numerous negative comments on graduate business school products and whether or not they were worth what they expected to be paid.
MEDIA BLACKOUT..According to the AP,
“Allahu Akbar!” means
“I have to go to the toilet”
Another terrorist thwarted under Obama’s watch, and the liberal media tries to cover it up.
Almurisi is his name
You should have given yourself the name digbylemons, as you’re writing has a sour, negative tone.
If your life isn’t where you want it to be, don’t take it out on Q, who wrote a good post. Remember, what goes around comes around and so it will fall to you and your ageism.
Compared to national increases RomneyCare has saved Massachusetts citizens a ton on tax monies.
================
Assuming the percentages (7.5% and 131%) and time period (1999 to 2011) mentioned in your reply to Jimbo are accurate, your statement above (that
“RomneyCare has saved Massachusetts citizens a ton on tax monies” is wrong.
7.5% compounded annually for 12 years would result in an increase over that span of time = to about 138%. 7.23% compounded etc etc = an increase of 131%. The numbers are not vastly different but RomneyCare is more expensive, not less.
What’s an asshat anyways? Is that like a hat you wear on your ass or is it a hat made from an ass? Either way, it stinks.
Damn, Q, getting all mathy and shiz. Are you an accountant or something? 😉
What, pray tell, do you do for a living, lil assia? If you’re so intelligent and the college/government jobs are so cushy, why don’t you get off your duff and get one? With all the time spent moaning on here, you could have come up with a Grand Unified Theory by now.
Yeah, education is nothing but gatekeeping. I’m perfectly cool with my knee surgery being performed by a DIY surgeon. And when I go to court, I’ll have Biff Ferguson representing me, who got his law degree via mail order.
Is California affordable? The cost of housing is definately going down, down, down. Our taxes are crazy. Sales tax in San Jose is 8.65%. Energy costs here are high…but the weather is so nice, you don’t need air conditioning, and you could easily stay warm enough with blankets if you didn’t have heat (having someone to snuggle with, would help).
The idiots next door (I’ve mentioned previously that they don’t take good care of their dogs, and they don’t mow their lawn enough) bought their house back in 2006 for $806,000–not a McMansion by any stretch–a one-story house with 1800 square feet. They both work for non-profits and send their kids to private schools. I’m sure they’ve saved at least $3 bucks for retirement. Their house is now valued at $565,000 according to zillow. If they go bankrupt, I’ll throw a party after they’ve moved.
Two houses on our street have “bank owned” for sale signs.
California may not be a bargain, but I like living here.
SJmom
Q in intentionally compounding just to make the numbers come out right for his purposes. What is hidden behind that “compounding” we’ll never know. Lie, damned lies, and statistics.
A hundred years ago the world changed a lot slower than it does now. In those days an old person gathered a lifetime of experience that was still relevant 70 years later. The younger generation could appreciate the accumulated wisdom of oldsters (those who weren’t idiots and had some basic common sense), and the elderly were generally respected.
Today things change so rapidly that much of the experience gathered by old people is not applicable in today’s world. It’s no wonder the elderly aren’t listened to so much. That, and the fact the younger generations realize they aren’t going to get the entitlements the old people have been receiving for almost 80 years; and to add insult to injury, they are the ones paying for those entitlements.
I try to stay up with the modern world. I’ve always had a sort of futurist outlook and embrace change. I believe I’m much more “with it” than the average person my age, but even I have trouble keeping pace. No wonder young people are disdainful of us oldsters.
Re: education as gatekeeping: Don’t they teach knee surgery via home schooling or charter school vouchers?
PRIVATE MESSAGE FOR Q:
Bank of America hit a new 52-week low Tuesday
PRIVATE MESSAGE TO Q:
7 Simple Steps to Move Your Checking Account
moveyourmoneyproject.org/checklist
Once you institute taxes you get “tax creep”, that is, the total amount of taxes you pay in all categories as a percent of your income gradually goes up. When the income tax was instituted in 1913, the tax rate was 1%.
I know the government must take some money from its citizens, but I have a hair across my ass when it comes to taxes because I don’t approve of what they do with most of my money. Wouldn’t it be something if we had a real say in how government spent my taxes?
If they take $10,000 from me in taxes, it would be nice for me to be able to say, ok, I’ll pay $1,000 of that for defense, $2,000 for medical and science research, $2,000 for the homeless, etc. I despise the idea that my $10,000 might have purchased a 1,000 pound bomb, or 5 $2,000 toilets, or went to Goldman Sachs for part of some exec’s year-end bonus. That’s why I call taxes immoral and thievery.
“I believe I’m much more “with it” than the average person my age, but even I have trouble keeping pace.”
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My mother is 84 and she is still working.
Why are you still working? Necesity? Love of work? Born in the midwest?
History according to bigjimbo:
Slavery ended in 1865. Thank you massa Lincoln.
Jim Crow ended in 1965. Thank you massa Johnson.
“That’s why I call taxes immoral and thievery.”
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It may be some consolation that taxes have gone down with Obama and are now at historically low levels, the lowest tax rate since 1950, according to Reagan’s policy analyst.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/31/federal-tax-rate-bartlett_n_869330.html
Yeah, education is nothing but gatekeeping. I’m perfectly cool with my knee surgery being performed by a DIY surgeon. And when I go to court, I’ll have Biff Ferguson representing me, who got his law degree via mail order.
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Designed to keep the so-called “uninitiated” out of the club, all “professions” are juat that — clubs. They do not serve their clients, they only serve themselves. The law profession, the medical profession, all professions are self-serving frauds. But more than that, the fact that these “professions” are politically centralized, means that they are very susceptible to political manipulation. Which I suspect was the real motive behind forcing persons engaged in these activities to becoming professionalised.
And just to add to that, the reason we get all the absurdities that we do in the legal system, insurance, accounting, healthcare, education, etc., is precisely because all these activities are “professionalised”.
And, finally, my take on the American educational system:
About 900 years ago when I started the sixth grade, we got a 500 page social studies textbook for the school year. Well, to me it was very interesting. So in addition to my regular schoolwork, I took the book home and read the whole thing in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I had to spend the rest of the school year going over the book so other students could gradually catch up. BORING! For me, school was stifling and I felt trapped being chained to a desk for 6 hours every day.
I eventually came to the realization that school was designed as a “one size fits all” situation. It was mass production as applied to education. When I went to college, it became even more clear, that at that time, the system was designed ss an assembly line for industry, and the student was fodder for big business.
That system hasn’t changed and is still in place today, except there are no jobs for graduates, and colleges still crank out graduates, as the assembly line is still on. Back in the ’60’s I felt the average student wasn’t too smart, and apparently today, the situation is even worse.
I don’t buy into the idea that colleges are scraping the bottom of the barrel because they need their money to stay operating. Harvard and many other universities literally have billions in endowments. What do they use that money for?
Big stadiums and increased sports curricula with all its additional expenses, such as lavish recruitment. All for prestige, not educational quality.
Why shouldn’t the quality of students decrease when illiterate athletes are propelled through the system without having to learn very much? It doesn’t set a good example.
In my experience most persons of every race have virtually no academic aptitude whatever.
============
Your statement above is an exaggeration but not by much. It has taken me much of my lifetime to realize how totally unfit most people are for the rigors of “higher learning.” There are so many reasons.
A dear close relative of mine told me how he came out of high school and went to U of West Virginia for less than a full year and simply could not bear to listen to a marketing professor discuss the art of salesmanship as though it was a science. When this relative speaks it sounds like a malapropism-filled Norm Crosby routine (which, obsessed as I am about such things, drives me to near madness) yet he is a 100% people-person and could charm the balls off a brass monkey. As such he made a good living as a salesman and has run his own business for many years. The thought of him trying to write a term paper though is laughable.
About a year or two ago I was watching CNBC (the stock market from morning till night) and they used to have a talking head named James Altucher on fairly regularly … a guy with ridiculously mussed up hair but an obviously educated smart cookie. One day, off script and for no discernible reason, he launched into a rant explaining how and why he was advising his two daughters NOT to go to college. His rationale covered much of the same ground as you, Eluthero and others have covered today. In particular the tuition debt issue and the uselessness of much of the curriculum. It made a big impression on me.
I am currently in the middle of reading David Foster Wallace’s posthumous book, The Pale King. It is filled with wonderful insight into different personality types and their fitness for certain fields of learning and employment … in this instance employment as an examiner of tax returns for the IRS. The book is essentially about the ability to endure boredom. Wallace’s skill at observing and describing are unequaled and in my opinion he was a genius of the highest order. He committed suicide in Sept 2008.
Bubble, I think you would enjoy the chapter in which Wallace describes a Jesuit professor (if you can imagine) at DePaul U. summing up the semester prior to the final exam in a class titled Advanced Tax. It is inspiring.
Bank of America hit a new 52-week low Tuesday
================
That would be Tuesday a week ago. But it makes no difference to me. I don’t own B of A stock and never have. I have an account there and the stock price is irrelevant.
“That’s why I call taxes immoral and thievery.”
Welcome to this fun little gathering called civilization. Pick your poison…
Taxes are thievery. Education is gatekeeping. Blah blah blah. Talk to the hand.
“Submariners are nuts because their alcoholism rate is something like 75%”
The submariner I ran into arrived late to a kegger we were having at a lake in the California valley. He dropped a tire in the middle of the picnic table and started ramming his fist through the hole in the tire and frantically screaming how he barely survived a blowout going 90 mph on his way to the party. He was drunk of course. The party immediately livened up and he and I hit it off real well.
I think your ex girlfriend and my ex wife would really hit it off, too.
Q said: “That would be Tuesday a week ago. ”
==========
No, that would be today.
May 31, 2011. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) hit a new 52-week low Tuesday as it is currently trading at $11.84, below its previous 52-week high of $24.33 with 6.2 million shares traded as of 9:36 a.m. ET.
Drives me crazy when someone does not pay attention to the details and gets their financial data and time periods wrong. These things matter in the world of finance.
Great post Pangolin. I will use it to springboard into some John Ruskin who indicates an architect would do well to be a sculptor as well:
I take this opportunity of repeating what I have several times before stated, for the sake of travellers, that St. Ouen, impressive as
it is, is entirely inferior to the transepts of Rouen Cathedral.] But with this very perfection of his work came the unhappy pride of the
builder in what he had done. As long as he had been merely raising clumsy walls and carving them like a child, in waywardness of fancy, his delight was in the things he thought of as he carved; but when he had once reached this pitch of constructive science, he began to think
only how cleverly he could put the stones together. The question was
not now with him, What can I represent? but, How high can I build–how wonderfully can I hang this arch in air, or weave this tracery across
the clouds? And the catastrophe was instant and irrevocable. Architecture became in France a mere web of waving lines,–in England a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Redundance was substituted for invention, and geometry for passion; tho Gothic art became a mere expression of wanton expenditure, and vulgar mathematics; and was swept
away, as it then deserved to be swept away, by the severer pride, and purer learning, of the schools founded on classical traditions.
You cannot now fail to see, how, throughout the history of this wonderful art–from its earliest dawn in Lombardy to its last catastrophe in France and England–sculpture, founded on love of
nature, was the talisman of its existence; wherever sculpture was practised, architecture arose–wherever that was neglected, architecture expired; and, believe me, all you students who love this mediaeval art, there is no hope of your ever doing any good with it, but on this everlasting principle. Your patriotic associations with it are of no use; your romantic associations with it–either of chivalry
or religion–are of no use; they are worse than useless, they are false. Gothic is not an art for knights and nobles; it is an art for
the people: it is not an art for churches or sanctuaries; it is an art for houses and homes: it is not an art for England only, but an art for
the world: above all, it is not an art of form or tradition only, but an art of vital practice and perpetual renewal. And whosoever pleads
for it as an ancient or a formal thing, and tries to teach it you as an ecclesiastical tradition or a geometrical science, knows nothing of its
essence, less than nothing of its power.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174513
[quote=”nameta9″]From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/03/make-no-mistake.html
The reason no one talks about the real macro trends of Science and Technology eliminating labor automatically, structurally is because it implies a very specific solution, the only possible solution and namely free salaries to all, cheap rents, or less bluntly huge public – private projects. By finally exposing the truth about the effects of Science and Technology on all productive endeavors there would be no more deceptions, no more room to hide the fact that no jobs will be created anymore by more small businesses, new skill sets needed by “innovation”, more competition etc.
But the economists, politicians, you name it, try to hide this truth and this fact as much as possible to avoid exposing the only possible solution there is to the present worldwide needs of millions of unemployed and without homes or in sacrificed living conditions.
By the way, these myths the capitalists chant about all the time are exactly the same as the “grow your own food myth”: it is just another way to say “be your own boss” and is just another way to emphasize the small business myth the capitalist love to brainwash everyone with: this is done purposely to atomize people, to break down as much as possible any collective effort, any labor processes that add up, [b]THAT ACCUMULATE INTO SOMETHING GREATER THAN THE PARTS, [/b]that are serialized. Divide all the small slobs and then crush them.
This blog also shows how right wing the posters here are: they are all concentrated on overpopulation, too many people (if anything there are too many people who think that “there are too many people”). They think that by saying this they are saying something really interesting, some great discovery, some great truth that nobody else could imagine. By saying there are too many people, they are essentially saying, hate on others, there is not enough room for others, fight a war, kill them, get rid of them, I want to grow my own food and protect myself with my rifle against all those “other” slobs.
It also feeds into a justification to express as much violence and hate against others as possible because now you found the “logical connection”. But then who exactly is to decide who is too much ? For me, the people who think that there are too many people are the first ones that we should get rid of. Even because it is false, there is no over population, it is just a right wing brainwashing device to make people hate on others.
The other favorite of these posters is racism of all kinds, blacks vs whites, mexicans vs who knows who, who is bad who is good, and so on (but this is mostly USA centered). The subtext here also is, hate on others, kill them, fight them, war. Another favorite is protect the environment, even here the subtext is kill people and protect nature. Nothing more idiotic, because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people, it has always been this way, but the greens and environmentalists want to fight people, get rid of them, there are “too many”, but nature must be protected. Kill people, protect nature.
And this blog and posters somehow are “liberal”, “left wing”. Wow, the truth is there is no longer any left, as in “progressive”, as in wanting progress. We only have 3 kinds of right wings: the real right wing in the US (which at this point is the most left, bush did give hand outs to people, the most left thing you could do today), the left of obama which is a hidden right wing, and the worst left which is this green, peak oil, overpopulation, resource scarcity left that essentially wants everyone to hate on everyone, and is therefore the most right wing.
Why do rich countries – societies kill themselves ? Think Germany during the 1930s was becoming an economic powerhouse, if they discharged all of their excess capacity, thanks to the application of Science and Technology to the production process, towards enriching themselves instead of going crazy and starting WW II, they could have become extremely rich even with that more primitive technology (after all, that primitive technology, tanks, planes, etc nearly wiped out half of Europe). They could have already reached the USA standard of living of 1965 by 1945 if they concentrated on building houses, cars, skyscrapers, train lines, all those things that benefit the collectivity.
After all the real reason why societies become rich is not because of the Free Market or Capitalism, it is because Science and Technology applied to the production process (along with its capability to harness energy also through oil) allows an unprecedented amount of wealth to be generated automatically, allows wealth to be generated and given to everyone with much less effort compared to 200 years ago. The market economy and competition helped the process by making the economy flexible and creating incentives to optimize and produce more efficiently, but I would say the ratio is 80 % Science and Technology, 20 % Competition.
Also JAPAN and Germany from 1945 to 1975 had spectacular growth anyways, again with that more primitive technology and they didn’t need all the flexibility, competition, start ups, entrepreneurs and “be your own bosses” and small businesses that the present economic theory thinks is so important: it is not at all, it is all just an excuse to not share the wealth with the lower classes.
Again, why do rich countries – societies kill themselves ?
It reminds me of the rich guy who has everything he wants but is bored and starts “fighting himself”, starts self destructing instead of constructing. The USA (and partially the EU and JAPAN) is in this phase, self destructing, everyone against everyone, full of hating on others, because they are blacks, asians, too many people, resource scarcities, you name it. There is no collective goal, no collective pride, something that South Korea has for example. They are “proud” of themselves, each subgroup in the USA hates any other subgroup within itself. If South Korea was as large as the USA with 300 million people, they would have gone to Mars and back again 100 times, and would have been wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, thanks to their emphasis on collective effort, labor that is serialized, that accumulates and that doesn’t dissipate in puny fights.[/quote]
I answer:
“because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people”
And in fact we need MIND OVER MATTER, we must kill and defeat nature and not fight amongst ourselves, but against nature and create collective results. Manipulate nature, colonize the galaxy, trillions of skyscrapers all across the galaxy. Trillions of Will Powers of trillions of people that add up as one monolithic force that crushes nature and dominates the universe, as existence waking up and dominating itself, as one entity, one chunk of matter completely and totally manipulating and dominating another chunk of matter.
Instead we have small puny fights amongst each other, no collective action and goal, no pride, no feeling that you belong to something greater than your puny egotism and this puny capitalistic – individualists “I am better than you, I hate you, I must win” mentality that sets everyone against everyone else in a never ending fight demolishing society.
You can see this really clearly in technology: from the 1950s through maybe the 1980s, technology and tech workers were concentrated on fighting nature in a sense, on a collective action to improve technology, on designing better circuits, integrating electronics in chips, etc. A collective action that was adding up, it was real productive labor that accumulated results, that added up, that created a common good, in that everyone benefited from it.
We were fighting Matter and Manipulating Matter and Not Fighting Others.
But as technology killed more and more work, and since less and less real labor was necessary, slowly, people started to fight each other, as in an activity that doesn’t add up, but destroys. So, even in technology this happened in a sense, ever more contrasting standards, programming languages, ever more perverted and wrong software, ever more human interaction stuff as against objective clear cut direct manipulations of matter that represented hardware advances. Instead of fighting matter we fight other will powers, even though they are hidden behind laws, and software, and whatever.
The capitalists subtly created “A Matter to Will Power Evaporator Machine”, where we once had to fight matter, but now have to fight ever more contrasting will powers, the concentration of will powers as a sticky fluid blocking the gears of progress.
In fact, in hardware, we had people that “worked together” to overcome technical problems that were objective and clear cut, and that really created progress and productive results. Now, we have mostly people simply working against each other, to express their ego, to fight, to “compete”, to “win”, and all of this fighting creates less and less product and results as increasing home prices and rents and increasing health care prices, and so on.
But this is an ideological choice, this is by design, this is by intention and by the hidden will powers of the capitalists that need to atomize people and direct all of their efforts in fighting each other instead of directing all of their efforts on creating collective results that add up like Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, High Speed Trains, and you name it, there could be a never ending array of productive collective endeavors that could make societies richer beyond their wildest dreams.
But the ruling class has deeply and totally brainwashed everyone to hate against everyone else, to fight and conflict, and has invented a never ending array of excuses and imaginary causes and effects to justify everyone fighting each other as in all of the Resource Scarcity Myths (overpopulation, nothing further from the truth, the earth could carry thousands of trillions, but people are so totally brainwashed on this, and population may not even reach a puny, nearly invisible 20 billion, not even a grain of sand in the greater scheme of things), Peak Oil (nothing further from the truth, just solar energy could furnish equivalent of gas for thousands of trillions of cars, skyscrapers could house thousands of trillions, etc.), You Have to Compete (which means fight everyone else for market share, but this essentially means try your best to not create a collective result), innovation (which means find every possible way to distract and keep people from building something useful together, like the idiotic APPs of IPADS, etc.).
We need Cheap Rents and Free Salaries and huge Public – Private projects like Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, and all things that add up, paid by the governments worldwide and by the money that is being printed by the FED and others that is presently just being gifted to the ultra rich by the billions daily.
Also, get private actors out of the space programs, we need huge government programs, and BIG GOVERNMENT, that’s right, BIG GOVERNMENT, BIG ENTITIES REPRESENTING EVERYONE, THE COLLECTIVE, something to be proud of, not puny private thieves that just hog up all the money.
Now go on, hate on all of the “immigrants”, hate on everyone else “they are lazy”, go on, hate on all and everyone, fight everyone else, go on beat yourselves up, go on, go on, chant that there is not enough for everyone and the resources are running out, go on, this is what the capitalists want while they choke on ever more trillions everyday.
[quote=”nameta9″]From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/03/make-no-mistake.html
The reason no one talks about the real macro trends of Science and Technology eliminating labor automatically, structurally is because it implies a very specific solution, the only possible solution and namely free salaries to all, cheap rents, or less bluntly huge public – private projects. By finally exposing the truth about the effects of Science and Technology on all productive endeavors there would be no more deceptions, no more room to hide the fact that no jobs will be created anymore by more small businesses, new skill sets needed by “innovation”, more competition etc.
But the economists, politicians, you name it, try to hide this truth and this fact as much as possible to avoid exposing the only possible solution there is to the present worldwide needs of millions of unemployed and without homes or in sacrificed living conditions.
By the way, these myths the capitalists chant about all the time are exactly the same as the “grow your own food myth”: it is just another way to say “be your own boss” and is just another way to emphasize the small business myth the capitalist love to brainwash everyone with: this is done purposely to atomize people, to break down as much as possible any collective effort, any labor processes that add up, [b]THAT ACCUMULATE INTO SOMETHING GREATER THAN THE PARTS, [/b]that are serialized. Divide all the small slobs and then crush them.
This blog also shows how right wing the posters here are: they are all concentrated on overpopulation, too many people (if anything there are too many people who think that “there are too many people”). They think that by saying this they are saying something really interesting, some great discovery, some great truth that nobody else could imagine. By saying there are too many people, they are essentially saying, hate on others, there is not enough room for others, fight a war, kill them, get rid of them, I want to grow my own food and protect myself with my rifle against all those “other” slobs.
It also feeds into a justification to express as much violence and hate against others as possible because now you found the “logical connection”. But then who exactly is to decide who is too much ? For me, the people who think that there are too many people are the first ones that we should get rid of. Even because it is false, there is no over population, it is just a right wing brainwashing device to make people hate on others.
The other favorite of these posters is racism of all kinds, blacks vs whites, mexicans vs who knows who, who is bad who is good, and so on (but this is mostly USA centered). The subtext here also is, hate on others, kill them, fight them, war. Another favorite is protect the environment, even here the subtext is kill people and protect nature. Nothing more idiotic, because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people, it has always been this way, but the greens and environmentalists want to fight people, get rid of them, there are “too many”, but nature must be protected. Kill people, protect nature.
And this blog and posters somehow are “liberal”, “left wing”. Wow, the truth is there is no longer any left, as in “progressive”, as in wanting progress. We only have 3 kinds of right wings: the real right wing in the US (which at this point is the most left, bush did give hand outs to people, the most left thing you could do today), the left of obama which is a hidden right wing, and the worst left which is this green, peak oil, overpopulation, resource scarcity left that essentially wants everyone to hate on everyone, and is therefore the most right wing.
Why do rich countries – societies kill themselves ? Think Germany during the 1930s was becoming an economic powerhouse, if they discharged all of their excess capacity, thanks to the application of Science and Technology to the production process, towards enriching themselves instead of going crazy and starting WW II, they could have become extremely rich even with that more primitive technology (after all, that primitive technology, tanks, planes, etc nearly wiped out half of Europe). They could have already reached the USA standard of living of 1965 by 1945 if they concentrated on building houses, cars, skyscrapers, train lines, all those things that benefit the collectivity.
After all the real reason why societies become rich is not because of the Free Market or Capitalism, it is because Science and Technology applied to the production process (along with its capability to harness energy also through oil) allows an unprecedented amount of wealth to be generated automatically, allows wealth to be generated and given to everyone with much less effort compared to 200 years ago. The market economy and competition helped the process by making the economy flexible and creating incentives to optimize and produce more efficiently, but I would say the ratio is 80 % Science and Technology, 20 % Competition.
Also JAPAN and Germany from 1945 to 1975 had spectacular growth anyways, again with that more primitive technology and they didn’t need all the flexibility, competition, start ups, entrepreneurs and “be your own bosses” and small businesses that the present economic theory thinks is so important: it is not at all, it is all just an excuse to not share the wealth with the lower classes.
Again, why do rich countries – societies kill themselves ?
It reminds me of the rich guy who has everything he wants but is bored and starts “fighting himself”, starts self destructing instead of constructing. The USA (and partially the EU and JAPAN) is in this phase, self destructing, everyone against everyone, full of hating on others, because they are blacks, asians, too many people, resource scarcities, you name it. There is no collective goal, no collective pride, something that South Korea has for example. They are “proud” of themselves, each subgroup in the USA hates any other subgroup within itself. If South Korea was as large as the USA with 300 million people, they would have gone to Mars and back again 100 times, and would have been wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, thanks to their emphasis on collective effort, labor that is serialized, that accumulates and that doesn’t dissipate in puny fights.[/quote]
“because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people”
And in fact we need [b]MIND OVER MATTER, [/b]we must kill and defeat nature and not fight amongst ourselves, but against nature and create collective results. Manipulate nature, colonize the galaxy, trillions of skyscrapers all across the galaxy. Trillions of Will Powers of trillions of people that add up as one monolithic force that crushes nature and dominates the universe, as existence waking up and dominating itself, as one entity, one chunk of matter completely and totally manipulating and dominating another chunk of matter.
Instead we have small puny fights amongst each other, no collective action and goal, no pride, no feeling that you belong to something greater than your puny egotism and this puny capitalistic – individualistic “I am better than you, I hate you, I must win” mentality that sets everyone against everyone else in a never ending fight demolishing society.
You can see this really clearly in technology: from the 1950s through maybe the 1980s, technology and tech workers were concentrated on fighting nature in a sense, on a collective action to improve technology, on designing better circuits, integrating electronics in chips, etc. A collective action that was adding up, it was real productive labor that accumulated results, that added up, that created a common good, in that everyone benefited from it.
We were fighting Matter and Manipulating Matter and Not Fighting Others.
But as technology killed more and more work, and since less and less real labor was necessary, slowly, people started to fight each other, as in an activity that doesn’t add up, but destroys. So, even in technology this happened in a sense, ever more contrasting standards, programming languages, ever more perverted and wrong software, ever more human interaction stuff as against objective clear cut direct manipulations of matter that represented hardware advances. Instead of fighting matter we fight other will powers, even though these contrasting Will Powers are subtly hidden behind laws, and software, and whatever.
The capitalists subtly created “A Matter to Will Power Evaporator Machine”, where we once had to fight matter, but now have to fight ever more contrasting will powers, the concentration of will powers as a sticky fluid blocking the gears of progress.
In fact, in hardware, we had people that “worked together” to overcome technical problems that were objective and clear cut, and that really created progress and productive results. Now, we have mostly people simply working against each other, to express their ego, to fight, to “compete”, to “win”, and all of this fighting creates less and less product and results as increasing home prices and rents and increasing health care prices, and so on.
But this is an ideological choice, this is by design, this is by intention and by the hidden will powers of the capitalists that need to atomize people and direct all of their efforts in fighting each other instead of directing all of their efforts on creating collective results that add up like Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, High Speed Trains, and you name it, there could be a never ending array of productive collective endeavors that could make societies richer beyond their wildest dreams.
But the ruling class has deeply and totally brainwashed everyone to hate against everyone else, to fight and conflict, and has invented a never ending array of excuses and imaginary causes and effects to justify everyone fighting each other as in all of the Resource Scarcity Myths (overpopulation, nothing further from the truth, the earth could carry thousands of trillions, but people are so totally brainwashed on this, and population may not even reach a puny, nearly invisible 20 billion, not even a grain of sand in the greater scheme of things), Peak Oil (nothing further from the truth, just solar energy could furnish equivalent of gas for thousands of trillions of cars, skyscrapers could house thousands of trillions, etc.), You Have to Compete (which means fight everyone else for market share, but this essentially means try your best to not create a collective result), innovation (which means find every possible way to distract and keep people from building something useful together, like the idiotic APPs of IPADS, etc.).
We need Cheap Rents and Free Salaries and huge Public – Private projects like Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, and all things that add up, paid by the governments worldwide and by the money that is being printed by the FED and others that is presently just being gifted to the ultra rich by the billions daily.
Also, get private actors out of the space programs, we need huge government programs, and BIG GOVERNMENT, that’s right, BIG GOVERNMENT, BIG ENTITIES REPRESENTING EVERYONE, THE COLLECTIVE, something to be proud of, not puny private thieves that just hog up all the money.
Now go on, hate on all of the “immigrants”, hate on everyone else “they are lazy”, go on, hate on all and everyone, fight everyone else, go on beat yourselves up, go on, go on, chant that there is not enough for everyone and the resources are running out, go on, this is what the capitalists want while they choke on ever more trillions everyday.
Bustin J says:
“I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.”
I answer:
So, does that mean you won’t read all my posts anymore ? Does that mean you won’t study them inside out for hours on end ? and all of those I have been writing on http://www.ilovephilosophy.com as nameta9 and old6598 (before I was eight man or something like that) for years now ?
And why are you telling me ? So I can feel so envious ? I will now proceed to inflict infinite envy upon myself, self punishment, so you can rub it in, real hard, rub it in that I am not getting any, go on, do that, tell me that I am not getting any and don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell to get any. I can’t even look at a lady a mile away without running away frightened, go figure…
But you can read my last post on HELL, and I am in paradise, the most extreme paradise ever because I didn’t experience the infinite pain of hell for a 30 seconds, but even experiencing very extreme pain for 30 seconds is still paradise achieved, since if you achieved paradise in the past even 10 years ago, then it is achieved forever for all time and all points in space.
But god will throw you in hell for eternity, but you will be in paradise anyways and for always because those 30 seconds of extreme pain you had, which was not the infinite pain of hell, was equivalent to paradise for all time and all space (god uses all kinds of different logics from us, time and space and quantities are all inverted and can be manipulated and assigned in all kinds of new ways) and compensates an eternity of hell and represents paradise achieved.
Aren’t you glad you are not me ?
I suggest you to leave the lady you found and tell her that for ten years you will have to study all my posts very carefully, and then maybe you could see her again.
Bustin J says:
“I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.”
I answer:
So, does that mean you won’t read all my posts anymore ? Does that mean you won’t study them inside out for hours on end ? and all of those I have been writing on http://www.ilovephilosophy.com as nameta9 and old6598 (before I was eight man or something like that) for years now ?
And why are you telling me ? So I can feel so envious ? I will now proceed to inflict infinite envy upon myself, self punishment, so you can rub it in, real hard, rub it in that I am not getting any, go on, do that, tell me that I am not getting any and don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell to get any. I can’t even look at a lady a mile away without running away frightened, go figure…
But you can read my last post on HELL, and I am in paradise, the most extreme paradise ever because I didn’t experience the infinite pain of hell for 30 seconds, but even experiencing very extreme pain for 30 seconds is still paradise achieved, since if you achieved paradise in the past, even 10 years ago, then it is achieved forever for all time and all points in space.
But god will throw you in hell for eternity, as he will throw everyone, no matter what, that is the big trick he played on all of us, when we die, he will say, you got all of the religions wrong, you all guessed the wrong god, I am the real god and I throw everyone in hell just for the fun of it, there are no conditions that can ever save anyone because I am the boss and decide, and decided that you all deserve to go to hell, but you will be in paradise anyways and for always because those 30 seconds of extreme pain you had, which was not the infinite pain of hell, was equivalent to paradise for all time and all space (god uses all kinds of different logics from us, time and space and quantities are all inverted and can be manipulated and assigned in all kinds of new ways) and compensates an eternity of hell and represents paradise achieved.
Aren’t you glad you are not me ?
I suggest you to leave the lady you found and tell her that for ten years you will have to study all my posts very carefully, and then maybe you could see her again.
I few posts above, I forgot the BOLD, so I had to correct this, here it is, say thank you, and you can copy it and use it for your homework, show mommy and teacher, they will give you an A and a blue star too.
“because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people”
And in fact we need MIND OVER MATTER, we must kill and defeat nature and not fight amongst ourselves, but against nature and create collective results. Manipulate nature, colonize the galaxy, trillions of skyscrapers all across the galaxy. Trillions of Will Powers of trillions of people that add up as one monolithic force that crushes nature and dominates the universe, as existence waking up and dominating itself, as one entity, one chunk of matter completely and totally manipulating and dominating another chunk of matter.
Instead we have small puny fights amongst each other, no collective action and goal, no pride, no feeling that you belong to something greater than your puny egotism and this puny capitalistic – individualistic “I am better than you, I hate you, I must win” mentality that sets everyone against everyone else in a never ending fight demolishing society.
Ooops, forgot another BOLD, I am sorry, please forgive me: don’t forget to copy it and use it for your homework, show mommy and the teacher, they will give you an A and a blue star too.
“because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people”
And in fact we need MIND OVER MATTER, we must kill and defeat nature and not fight amongst ourselves, but against nature and create collective results. Manipulate nature, colonize the galaxy, trillions of skyscrapers all across the galaxy. Trillions of Will Powers of trillions of people that add up as one monolithic force that crushes nature and dominates the universe, as existence waking up and dominating itself, as one entity, one chunk of matter completely and totally manipulating and dominating another chunk of matter.
Instead we have small puny fights amongst each other, no collective action and goal, no pride, no feeling that you belong to something greater than your puny egotism and this puny capitalistic – individualistic “I am better than you, I hate you, I must win” mentality that sets everyone against everyone else in a never ending fight demolishing society.
Ooops, forgot another BOLD again, where is FREUD when you need him ?
“because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people”
And in fact we need MIND OVER MATTER, we must kill and defeat nature and not fight amongst ourselves, but against nature and create collective results. Manipulate nature, colonize the galaxy, trillions of skyscrapers all across the galaxy. Trillions of Will Powers of trillions of people that add up as one monolithic force that crushes nature and dominates the universe, as existence waking up and dominating itself, as one entity, one chunk of matter completely and totally manipulating and dominating another chunk of matter.
Instead we have small puny fights amongst each other, no collective action and goal, no pride, no feeling that you belong to something greater than your puny egotism and this puny capitalistic – individualistic “I am better than you, I hate you, I must win” mentality that sets everyone against everyone else in a never ending fight demolishing society.
From my point of view no, my comments were not hyperbole. To me if the only reason you’re engaged in a particular activity is because your parents enrolled you in it, and then on an ongoing basis you’re persisting in this activity solely owing to externally applied pressure from your teachers and family, and especially if you dislike the activity and constantly dream of doing something else while fidgeting uncomfortably or sneaking peaks at your cell phone looking for text messages, then you are entropy made manifest and plainly are going nowhere in that particular activity.
I am not saying that the majority of people I meet strike me as being “stupid”, whatever that means. I only mean that the majority strike me as having no interest in intellectual pursuits. Such people do strike me as being “dull” however. Whereas many persons with no aptitude for sports are nonetheless extremely interested in same and participate as spectators, the same orientation of the untalented to academics does not seem to obtain.
If society had everyone’s best interests at heart then I don’t think we would have dreamed up this pressure cooker approach to academics. I also think that the interpretation of academics as “work” and those who do not excel as “lazy” is also indicative of a complete lack of perception into what is really going on. But that most people appear to have no intellectual curiosity strikes me as beyond dispute.
The fact is it may be good to expose everyone to this understanding going in that some will excel and then hit the jackpot as a consequence of this exposure, but to a great extent this reminds me of the eccentric Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein’s experience as a crank school-master in a remote Tyrolean village where he attempted to cram advanced subjects down the throats of his peasant students including as well the girls. The villagers thought that he was crazy. He got to indulge his quirks because he was a member of the richest family in Austria. He would also get frustrated and yank on the kids’ hair and so forth, which at the time was not really such exceptional conduct admittedly.
Wittgenstein ended up living in England where he became a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University. His students worshipped the ground he walked on and aped his various mannerisms such as never wearing a tie, for instance. So not all Austrians were psychopathic monsters like Herr Hitler. Wittgenstein served in World War I as well and after enlisting was made an officer and volunteered for all the most dangerous missions as for instance a forward artillery observer. So the two Austrians had that in common perhaps, but apart from that they inhabited radically different universes. Then also Hitler admired the British while Wittgenstein actually became a British subject. Wittgenstein famously once managed to convince Bertrand Russell that there was a rhinoceros in the room even though none were visible!
Spider/Old;
Dude, you’re really outdoing yourself. You ought to try to get this stuff published (in book form). I’m sure it would be best seller.
According to BBC, the bombing campaign over Libya continues unabated. You don’t hear about it much anymore. Evidently the entire Libyan infrastructure, except for oil facilities, is being destroyed by high explosives.
Here’s my advice to Sarah Palin.
Get some charcoal, blacken up your face.
Adopt a Muslim name.
Get yourself some radical friends like Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn and Louis Farrahkan.
Find a way to get an Ivy League school on your resume. Your state university in Idaho won’t cut it. The more left wing, the more homo oriented, the better. Columbia comes out on top.
Try to get your parents to say they were communists back in the 60s. This is important.
Trash the US as much as you can, specially when traveling overseas.
Make all kinds of impossible promises to the electorate, i.e. roll back the seas, end all wars, close Gitmo, green economy, college for all etc. In short, give them a utopian vision.
Do all this and the media will love you!
Thats about it, a recipe for a successful Presidential Campaign.
Good luck.
-Marlin
Marlin,
The media does love Sarah!
Right Wing Thug says:
“Dude, you’re really outdoing yourself. You ought to try to get this stuff published (in book form). I’m sure it would be best seller.”
I answer:
Jesus speaks to little children. I only write all of this stuff so little children can copy and paste it for their homework, as I am only 7 years old myself.
Maybe we can reprogram a new generation.
amazing
The reason the media loves Sarah Palin is because she’s photogenic. Ever notice how there are virtually no ugly female news anchors? That’s not accidental. The media also loves Sarah because she is polarizing and conflict sells.
I must amend my comments above in the sense that the reading public which consumes high level printed material but doesn’t produce or write its own original material could be compared to sports fans who admire athletics but either cannot or no longer does engage in such contests themselves. Then of course there is the wider public which can read but reads less and also reads more accessible materials such as Readers Digest let’s say, instead of Harpers or The Atlantic with their comparatively more long winded and elitist articles.
To me the role of public education is to try to turn everyone at least into a Readers Digest subscriber while also being trainable in the trades having learned basic skills in school such as reading a tape measure, for instance. To expect that everyone is going to become Joe College and at least trudge through a business curriculum seems unrealistic. Besides, who’s to say that we should all get stuck with the tab for such over-reach? This could be kind of like building codes creating homelessness because so many luxuries are now required in a rental unit that some or even many persons are priced out of the market when they might have made do with a simple old time cold water flat. The same sort of over-reach applied in the realm of schooling could be producing nitwits who not only are anti-intellectual but also worthless even as tradesmen thrown into the bargain.
Bustin J says:
“I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.”
I answer:
We are Impotency achieved, in almost all endeavors of life, in the economy, in absolutely everything, we can’t change anything at all, we can’t even change an electron, we are incapable of really doing anything at all, of getting anywhere at all, 100 % total Impotency achieved in all possible senses, sexual, psychological, economical, spiritual, you name, total failure, total Impotency, total absolute defeat. In fact we must GIVE UP, BIG TIME, that’s right, just give up, give up real fast, throw in the towel, and get real angry depressed and rage against yourself and the world, go on, do it. The rich capitalists or the lucky will have everything always and you nothing. So suffer and feel pain and be defeated forever. How I love to defeat everyone, I am so envious of everyone, they must all suffer now.
But the dominating Economic Mythology always says don’t give up, try harder, it is your fault you don’t succeed. And then we have way Too Much Information, all of this information is useless anyways, it is used to confuse everyone even more, the spectacle of Free Will Powers conflicting against each other and fighting: what a depressing 1 bit universe, what a depressing 1 transistor circuit, a one line program, always repeated forever and ever, always fights, always me right you wrong, and so on and so forth.
That is why I am always conflicted in whether to write this crap or not, it is useless anyways, it won’t change an electron of anything, but maybe I can piss off some Right Wing Thugs real bad.
No go on, little Susy and John, copy and paste this for your homework tomorrow, show mommy, it is a nice block of text that will get you an A + and a nice Blue Star.
And go out in the backyard, pick up some new modified mental contraption that fell from some very far off star, and try to imagine what this one is doing, in what incredibly and impossible new universe this one is playing games in:
GDGGR%&&&&HHHH%&66666666666666ll7l77ll7777
A lot of numbers in there, who knows what 7 means…
Some spelling corrections.
Bustin J says:
“I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.”
I answer:
We are Impotency achieved, in almost all endeavors of life, in the economy, in absolutely everything, we can’t change anything at all, we can’t even change an electron, we are incapable of really doing anything at all, of getting anywhere at all, 100 % total Impotency achieved in all possible senses, sexual, psychological, economical, spiritual, you name, total failure, total Impotency, total absolute defeat. In fact we must GIVE UP, BIG TIME, that’s right, just give up, give up real fast, throw in the towel, and get real angry depressed and rage against yourself and the world, go on, do it. The rich capitalists or the lucky will have everything always and you nothing. So suffer and feel pain and be defeated forever. How I love to defeat everyone, I am so envious of everyone, they must all suffer now. Actually everyone of trillions of people will have everything and you only you, one person infinite hell forever, that’s the way I like it. Now be envious.
But the dominating Economic Mythology always says don’t give up, try harder, it is your fault you don’t succeed. And then we have way Too Much Information, all of this information is useless anyways, it is used to confuse everyone even more, the spectacle of Free Will Powers conflicting against each other and fighting: what a depressing 1 bit universe, what a depressing 1 transistor circuit, a one line program, always repeated forever and ever, always fights, always me right you wrong, and so on and so forth.
That is why I am always conflicted in whether to write this crap or not, it is useless anyways, it won’t change an electron of anything, but maybe I can piss off some Right Wing Thugs real bad.
No go on, little Susy and John, copy and paste this for your homework tomorrow, show mommy, it is a nice block of text that will get you an A + and a nice Blue Star.
And go out in the backyard, pick up some new modified mental contraption that fell from some very far off star, and try to imagine what this one is doing, in what incredibly and impossible new universe this one is playing games in:
GDGGR%&&&&HHHH%&66666666666666ll7l77ll7777
A lot of numbers in there, who knows what 7 means…
ooops, another spelling error, it should have been “Now” instead of “No”. Let’s play a game, let’s see who can find where it was…
Bustin J says:
“I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.”
I answer:
We are Impotency achieved, in almost all endeavors of life, in the economy, in absolutely everything, we can’t change anything at all, we can’t even change an electron, we are incapable of really doing anything at all, of getting anywhere at all, 100 % total Impotency achieved in all possible senses, sexual, psychological, economical, spiritual, you name, total failure, total Impotency, total absolute defeat. In fact we must GIVE UP, BIG TIME, that’s right, just give up, give up real fast, throw in the towel, and get real angry depressed and rage against yourself and the world, go on, do it. The rich capitalists or the lucky will have everything always and you nothing. So suffer and feel pain and be defeated forever. How I love to defeat everyone, I am so envious of everyone, they must all suffer now. Actually everyone of trillions of people will have everything and you only you, one person infinite hell forever, that’s the way I like it. Now be envious.
But the dominating Economic Mythology always says don’t give up, try harder, it is your fault you don’t succeed. And then we have way Too Much Information, all of this information is useless anyways, it is used to confuse everyone even more, the spectacle of Free Will Powers conflicting against each other and fighting: what a depressing 1 bit universe, what a depressing 1 transistor circuit, a one line program, always repeated forever and ever, always fights, always me right you wrong, and so on and so forth.
That is why I am always conflicted in whether to write this crap or not, it is useless anyways, it won’t change an electron of anything, but maybe I can piss off some Right Wing Thugs real bad.
Now go on, little Susy and John, copy and paste this for your homework tomorrow, show mommy, it is a nice block of text that will get you an A + and a nice Blue Star.
And go out in the backyard, pick up some new modified mental contraption that fell from some very far off star, and try to imagine what this one is doing, in what incredibly and impossible new universe this one is playing games in:
GDGGR%&&&&HHHH%&66666666666666ll7l77ll7777
A lot of numbers in there, who knows what 7 means…
ooops, I forgot the bold…
Bustin J says:
“I just popped in to announce that I no longer hate women. I am getting laid regularly now.”
I answer:
We are Impotency achieved, in almost all endeavors of life, in the economy, in absolutely everything, we can’t change anything at all, we can’t even change an electron, we are incapable of really doing anything at all, of getting anywhere at all, 100 % total Impotency achieved in all possible senses, sexual, psychological, economical, spiritual, you name, total failure, total Impotency, total absolute defeat. In fact we must GIVE UP BIG TIME, that’s right, just give up, give up real fast, throw in the towel, and get real angry depressed and rage against yourself and the world, go on, do it. The rich capitalists or the lucky will have everything always and you nothing. So suffer and feel pain and be defeated forever. How I love to defeat everyone, I am so envious of everyone, they must all suffer now. Actually everyone of trillions of people will have everything and you only you, one person infinite hell forever, that’s the way I like it. Now be envious.
But the dominating Economic Mythology always says don’t give up, try harder, it is your fault you don’t succeed. And then we have way Too Much Information, all of this information is useless anyways, it is used to confuse everyone even more, the spectacle of Free Will Powers conflicting against each other and fighting: what a depressing 1 bit universe, what a depressing 1 transistor circuit, a one line program, always repeated forever and ever, always fights, always me right you wrong, and so on and so forth.
That is why I am always conflicted in whether to write this crap or not, it is useless anyways, it won’t change an electron of anything, but maybe I can piss off some Right Wing Thugs real bad.
Now go on, little Susy and John, copy and paste this for your homework tomorrow, show mommy, it is a nice block of text that will get you an A + and a nice Blue Star.
And go out in the backyard, pick up some new modified mental contraption that fell from some very far off star, and try to imagine what this one is doing, in what incredibly and impossible new universe this one is playing games in:
GDGGR%&&&&HHHH%&66666666666666ll7l77ll7777
A lot of numbers in there, who knows what 7 means…
Oh yea, Sarah, when I say get yourself some radical friends, make sure they are America hating left wing radicals. If they are to the right, even a little bit, you will be accused of being a Nazi. What? Whats that you say? You already have been accused of being a Nazi? Alright then. Now you know how the game is played.
In a week I’ll be sending in my quarterly tax payment, money I could otherwise spend on summer camp for my grandson. I got a sick feeling it will be funneled right to Wall Street, so those c–ksucking grifters can have their own summer vacation … at the Hamptons, with helicopters to fly them out from rooftops in Manhattan, and Bentleys to drive around in when they arrive. Scumbags! Running their companies into the ground, and the whole American economy, then wanting public funds to make up the losses so they can keep the highlife going a bit longer into the future.
After all the grandiose promises made by Obama, promises never meant to be kept, that amounted to nothing more than campaign bullshit, you all are surprised that people are bitter and resentful, and back someone like Sarah Palin? These people that most of you hate, I’m one of them. We have no great love for you either.
-Marlin
Taxes are thievery. Education is gatekeeping. Blah blah blah. Talk to the hand.
==
You’re being farmed. And when they outgrow your usefulness, you and your family will be talking to the grave. You were brought to and you live on their plantation. You’re too emotionally blind and propagandized to see and comprehend that. But soon enough you will make acquaintance with reality.
One more question before I sign off.
Considering the story on BBC that I mentioned, about Libyan infrastructure being totally destroyed by high explosives dropped from Nato aircraft, where are all the anti war protesters, Code Pink, Democracy Now, Cindy Sheehan etc. that were so prominent up until a few years ago? Until November 2008, if I can remember correctly. They seem to have disappeared.
Its a real mystery as to why.
-Marlin
I know.
Senator Kyle is not seeking re-election in Arizona. If Palin was an Arizona resident, she could run there.
Palin’s disapproval ratings are so high that, if she were to run for Senator in Arizona, the democrats could win there.
CORRECTION
Senator Kyl is not seeking re-election in Arizona.
Steady Marlin –
I don’t like paying quarterly taxes either.
And BTBill wrote a nice post concerning the use of his specific tax dollars. It makes me feel a LITTLE better to think in percentage terms – but not a whole lot better. ‘Cause, for example, I would not have spent a penny bailing out the airlines and then creating DHS in it’s wasteful bloated glory.
And just think, for every dollar I pay in taxes – another 30 cents +/- is BORROWED in my name.
“….people are bitter and resentful, and back someone like Sarah Palin? These people that most of you hate, I’m one of them. We have no great love for you either.” -marlin54-
You’re going to have to be more specific with your hate, though. Targeted like a laser, hate might change things for the better.
Broadcast randomly, hate only generates heat before destroying itself.
I’m going back out to destroy nature. (tm spider)
Or at least bend nature to my will –
By irrigating vegetables –
And picking squash.
Wow
Long posts this week. Anyway I am tired of people claiming social security is an “entitlement”, as if it is free, it’s not. If you work you pay into it. As someone pointed out above, you pay as soon as you enter the workplace. So no today’s youth doesn&