Post #129,669
12/8/03 1:23:26 PM
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Democrats are big spenders?
Ooops, they also failed to meet their most basic responsibility -- the $820 billion spending bill is two months overdue. The good news is that when passed, the spending bill will gut gun-control law and cut money for AIDS in Africa.
At least we'll never have to listen to Republicans calling Democrats "big-spenders" again. To hell with the gag reflex, the laughter alone will be deafening. What a Never Neverland they live in, just like Michael Jackson's. What's so maddening is that we have nothing to show for all this spending -- our education hasn't been improved, our health care system is still falling apart, the air is getting dirtier, and we're killing the oceans, lakes and rivers. There's no planning, no investment, no thought for the future. They're throwing away the seed corn, and we're sittin' here watching it happen. It's not just the money they're throwing away, it's democratic traditions -- bipartisanship, compromise, sound public policy.
Am I exaggerating? I don't think so -- you look at the legislation and tell me. This country is dirtier, poorer and less fair as a consequence of breathtakingly irresponsible misrule. Twenty-four percent of American workers now make less that $8.70 an hour, and they have effectively lost their right to unionize.
As Harold Meyerson reported in The Washington Post, "When European employers look to the United States, they see roughly the same thing that U.S. employers see when they look to China: millions of low-wage workers who have all but lost the right to organize and a government intent on keeping things the way they are."
[link|http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16084|source] lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
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Post #129,682
12/8/03 3:12:29 PM
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Quality of reporting on the bill
[link|http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1203/08medicare.html|http://www.ajc.com/n...3/08medicare.html]
As you see, the message is - help for seniors! Go Bush!
No mention of any of the hated aspects of the bill among right and left alike.
The reason we are flaming out is the abrogation of responsibility by media, and the failure of Congress to ensure open, even-handed media by restricting the rights of media conglomerates. There is no amount of voting or stumping or campaigning that will help when it is impossible to get balanced, accurate information. That is why there is no labor policy, no immigration policy, no health-care policy, and why we are 1 event from permanent martial law and explicitly militaristic rule.
Go to the Post-Dispatch (stltoday.com) and read about the cozy relationship between Boeing and the government - all this while Airbus is kicking the shit out of American aerospace. Ask yourself if Eisenhower had it right. Ask yourself if feminism and PC has not destroyed the American mind. Ask yourself if a country that can't add or find Arizona can live free.
It is late late in the day at this point to do anything about it. This is the consequence of having a fat, stupid, lazy, and self-indulgently ignorant population. In a real sense, we deserve to fail, and the sooner the better.
-drl
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Post #129,751
12/8/03 6:58:11 PM
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I'd like to rebut that;
Unfortunately - it's understated a tad. Thank Cthulhu for the occasional Molly; the despair is, however - intensified when the stark Reasons for it are set out so well. Note last line of this column It has been apparent for some time that much of the corporate elite in this country is blinded by greed, not just to long-term interests, but to simple honesty. I think the same thing is starting to happen to our political leaders.
Read more in the Molly Ivins archive. Of course that "starting to become.." is a generous understatemnt. Nope, don't see ANY way out of evading what is coming. As you say - when the vast majority of media are as gutless (or outright corrupt) as we see them to be - who's gonna listen / and how!? to the few counter voices: clearly they aren't 'popular opinion' so - how could they be any good? Sorry your kitty is disappearing; hope you find *something* to start refilling it. I feel that the US is a Lousy place to be, in any hard times as are a-comin. Look at the utter unimaginateness of a Hoover - throughout the last depression. A repo through and through + no-imagination. (No idea if the '03 Brits could match the wonderful solidarity of the Blitz -?- but I'd far rather hang-out in That Country in any rough times - than this one) ..the worse becomes the daily fallout from our institutionalized avian-like insouciance. (I Can) Imagine! how much more deconstruction can still occur in just the ONE INTERMINABLE.. YEAR we have left, in the hands of this collection of formerly-rejected psychopaths, a sittin around and mutterin for a decade, as they flung pure invented shit at Clinton, every day / a dozen of My Grammas running on Pure Hate.. Imagine.
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Post #129,831
12/9/03 11:39:14 AM
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Oh, so now results matter?
Of course, to me they always do. And that's why you won't hear me saying "so what" to this.
There's an upside to globalization, which is hard for people in this country to appreciate, but we really should try: it is bettering the lives of people in some third-world hellholes. Yes, it sucks to lose jobs and pay to India, but they gotta eat, too. And they deserve something for finally shucking those idiotic Stalinist economic policies.
The squishy left have always been compassionate only in theory, not practise. They only care about rhetoric, political positioning and self-congratulation, never about results.
Me, I'm a liberal. A late 19th century liberal. That puts me about a millenium ahead of [link|http://www.policyreview.org/dec03/plattner.html|the neofeudalists of Europe], and a hundred years ahead of [link|http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/french/french.html|the hard Left]. As for the squishy left, they're not even on the racetrack. They thought they'd found a shortcut, but it's a dead end. And now they're hopelessly mired in a rut.
That's right. I just said the 20th century was a dead end. Socially and politically, that is. The technology was nifty, but few had the sense to make proper use of it. Restore the saved game from Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, and let's move forward from there.
But let's keep our technology. A big stick is better than nothing, but a [link|http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/intro-smart.htm|smart stick] is ideal.
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DEAL WITH IT.
"So what?" - lincoln, on the murder of tens of thousands of innocents.
"If I may be candid for a moment, and let's see you try to stop me..." - Jay Conrad Levinson
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
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Post #129,835
12/9/03 12:09:40 PM
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Proof of your vacuity
In fact globalization has been a disaster for the poor of India, as it has been here.
[link|http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/2001/0917india.htm|http://www.globalpol...001/0917india.htm]
This was written in 2001, a week before 9/11.
[link|http://www.geocities.com/ifihhome/articles/rm002.html|http://www.geocities...ticles/rm002.html]
This is the India the west needs to LEARN from. Globalization, in your view, amounts to exploitation of non-Western countries and messianic propagation of your own pernicious, exploitative worldview, shared by your radical right fellow-travellers. And your chest-pounding announcement of your humanity makes me ill. You have about as much humanity as an ICBM.
Most likely, the influx of American cash to India has exacerbated two problems they need to fix on their own - a natural tendency to social stratification; and being the West's "brain bitch" - the "bloody wogs" of the English lords - a people who exist only to be servile to the West. This is insulting and degrading to a great people who are NOT US but have their own worldview and contribution to make. Sadly, the Indians are as poorly served by their government and cadre of greedy opportunists as we are.
And you are no liberal - you are a collectivist radical rightist. Jefferson was a liberal. You are as far from Jefferson as can be imagined.
-drl
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Post #132,962
12/31/03 10:07:24 AM
12/31/03 11:32:47 AM
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Yes, proof of your vacuity indeed.
[link|http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/india.htm|Decades of Stalinist economic policies] are why India has been so dirt poor. England gave them an infrastructure, and they just let it rust for the sake of Gandhi's silly village economy (commune) scheme. That sad country's prospects have only recently begun to look better, thanks to some free market reforms, leading to an influx of jobs from... the West.
What India has to offer is cheap labor and raw materials. That's it. That's their contribution. Their culture's a complete bust, and so is the [link|http://www.hvk.org/articles/0503/230.html|racist], [link|http://www.friesian.com/caste.htm|elitist], [link|http://www.sanatansociety.org/yoga_and_meditation/hinduism_philosophy_maya_illusion.htm|reality-spurning ]worldview that supports it. It doesn't work. Never did, never will. They were losers long before America came along. Long before the East India company came along. Even before the Moghuls came along. They haven't been able to get their act together since the Gupta empire fell apart.
Everyone's as badly served as he's willing to put up with, and as badly served as he serves himself. It's always Somebody Else's Fault.
[I keep getting you guys mixed up. It's so damn hard to tell you apart!]
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DEAL WITH IT.
"How can I go to the bathroom when my people are in bondage?" - Saddam Hussein
"If I may be candid for a moment, and let's see you try to stop me..." - Jay Conrad Levinson
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
Edited by marlowe
Dec. 31, 2003, 11:32:47 AM EST
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Post #129,837
12/9/03 12:16:10 PM
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but you are the left , follower of the hammer and sickle,
whatever pap of the month fed to you by your blessed commie leaders, wolfie rove and ilk say you joyeously nod your head in agreement. Meanwhile the constitution of this land which has kept us free for so long is being eroded at a pace that would have Kruschev jacking off in his grave.
thanx,
bill
"We must face the fact that there is not a single country in the world that measures up to the lofty moral and social standards that are the hallmark of the U.S.A.: even Canada is delinquent and deserves a whiff of grape. There is not a single country in the world which, like the U.S., reeks of democracy and "human rights," and is free of crime and murder and hate thoughts and undemocratic deeds\ufffd. And so, since no other countries shape up to U.S. standards, \ufffd I make a Modest Proposal for the only possible consistent and coherent foreign policy: the U.S. must, very soon, Invade the Entire World!" Murray N. Rothbard
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #129,843
12/9/03 12:34:31 PM
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'zacly
..and announcing their moral superiority at every turn, and their plans to export it to everyone in sight, at tank-point if need be.
I call him a radical collectivist based on his statements - YOU actually produce the hard evidence.
-drl
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Post #129,944
12/9/03 9:15:36 PM
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This is just gradeschool agit-prop Mark I
This one's on pure Roveowitz hash: whatever next rationale for the lies about 'imminent danger' as started this PNAC scheduled National Honorcide -- it /erases previous /absorbs new, daily; much as the tanner's skin yellows over daily exposure.
A one / or a composite-bot need claim only once: to be the possessor of Objective Morality, for every subsequent utterance to be decoded, its cut&paste origins sniffed out.
Every invader has a set of spiels; one for mom&pop and little Timmy, at home; another for the "wonderful beneficiaries of the invader's pursang Holy Motives, in freeing them from [whatever was unlike the Invader's own pre-invasion fantasy]". Always.
(Of course, with an expanded vocabulary - comes the ability to be irrelevant and vicious in multiple new cut&paste ways; perhaps incessantly, as the conceit, self-congratulation looks so much like wisdom ... in the mirror.)
Wanna see the model for Certainty? late-night Tee Vee preachers: they Know what God Wants >You< to Do cha cha cha (they never understood Any of those 'passages' .. especially about Judgments and judgment. Unnecessary - sell fear / raise $)
My Gramma: prescient blueprint for the Nintendo-Eloi du jour. What a legacy.
Pshaw
Ashton
(Personally, re this anonymous fear-filled nonentity: I tend to imagine one of those Lee H Oswald supercilious churlish smirks on its 'face'. Waste of energy, Box. Could get cooties from an illusion!)
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Post #129,972
12/9/03 11:48:52 PM
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could be an optical illusion
...or merely my diseased imagination, but it seems to me that the fedora'd one's last few posts are running a little less loathsome in tone—I do not suggest that the premises are any more persuasive—than usual. If it's not a statistical fluke this might, as intimated previously, be a pharmaceutical phenomenon, but on the admittedly remote chance that some grudging attempt at reduced incivility is being essayed...well, I'd incline to withhold ripostes, however merited, until we can descry a trend or no.
cordially,
Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
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Post #129,973
12/9/03 11:56:47 PM
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Re: could be an optical illusion
He used to be just one of the guys who happened to lean right - I assume he flipped out after 9/11 (I was away for a long time before and after 9/11 so I can't say when).
The sad truth is, this is how fascism gets organized - when leaners break and give in to their collectivist yearnings.
-drl
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Post #129,987
12/10/03 2:25:22 AM
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Anything's possible
Periodically -over lengthy interval- I've seen a few civil and even interesting arguments; still, when replied to in like vein; disconnect. Habit, perhaps?
However goes it - ya can't have a dialogue with a Rotweiler. WTF.. we be such an urbane bunch here, why - - maybe we could invite Phyllis Schlafly to present a piece. For discussion. Maybe even with the Lovely Ann C. for moral support?
(Pity you missed the early daze at Info [Hah] World, when it was possible to er cross-examine the occasional shill-M$-Columnist in "Forum" ... excoriate The Editor over such pabulum as, NT is the Wa(i)ve of the Future! and otherwise, be at play in the fields of the Lured.
Oh well,
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