9/09/2006
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
- Peter Kropotkin
Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT.
- Theodore Kaczynski
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
- Karl Marx
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
- Sinclair Lewis
Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. - Graham Greene
A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
- Lysander Spooner
The seven deadly sins of the Christian Church are: greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Satanism advocates indulging in each of these 'sins' as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification.
- Anton Szandor LaVey
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
- Charles Darwin
Every normal man must be tempted at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
- H. L. Mencken
Patriotic Thoughts
-- John Adams
9/08/2006
Quote Of Note: On Civilization
Henry Demarest Lloyd
Man, The Social Creature
edited by J. Addams and A. Wirthington
Know Your Socialists
You never thought of Richard Nixon as a Socialist did you? Me either. But when you get so far right, you can't be wrong, Nixon's a Socialist. Just ask economist Milton Friedman.
On Richard Nixon
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Nixon was the most socialist of the presidents of the United States in the 20th century.
INTERVIEWER: I've heard Nixon accused of many things, but never [of being] a socialist before.
"first of all, the number of pages in the Federal Register, which is full of regulations about business, doubled during his regime. During his regime the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, was established and the OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the OECA [the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance of the EPA] -- about a dozen, a half-dozen alphabetic agencies were established so that you had the biggest increase in government regulation and control of industry during the Nixon administration that you had in the whole postwar period."
So, when OTBLer's whine about this "Socialist Blog" Ask yourself, " What do they have
against Richard Nixon?"
9/07/2006
There's Hope for The Delusional
Making false accusations, and libelous statements
about citizens being, Marxists, Communists, & Socialists.
The Cure:
.
America for Sale
September 4, 2006
As our government careens toward bankruptcy, Americans are being dispossessed by the outsourcing of industrial jobs and the buyout of our infrastructure by foreign interests.
We begin with a parable: Driven to the streets after a run of relentless misfortune, a man took up station on a street corner holding a hand-lettered sign stating: "Will work for food."
Most pedestrians and motorists passed the desperate man without so much as a second's worth of thought. One exception was a well-dressed businessman, who read the sign while waiting for the street light to change. But burdened by thoughts of his own concerns, the businessman gave in to a moment of imprudent sarcasm.
"You 'work for food'? I work for Visa!" he exclaimed to the sign-bearing man. "I'm working for food I ate years ago!" After getting the green light, the businessman launched one last unworthy gibe: "You're not broke — you're even!"
The homeless man eventually found a steady job paying just enough for him to get by and save a little money. His employer, a large and amoral conglomerate paying most of its employees subsistence wages, used its workers' savings (which the conglomerate controls) to make loans to spendthrifts like the heavily leveraged businessman — people who continued to live well beyond their means by stretching their credit lines well past the breaking point. At the same time, the conglomerate quietly used its expanding financial holdings to buy up practically everything in sight.
Eventually, the loans were called in, the debtors were unable to pay, and the businessman found himself — along with many of his fellow spendthrifts — working for that same predatory conglomerate. His earnings and standard of living were "harmonized downward" to those of the homeless man whose plight he had once mocked.
Adapted from a stand-up routine broadcast on Comedy Central about a decade ago, this parable is not intended to inspire mockery of the homeless or other unfortunate people. It's intended to encourage a realistic appraisal of our national economic condition. Think of the homeless man as symbolizing the poor but industrious Chinese population, willing and eager to work for a fraction of what Americans earn, and the businessman as a stand-in for an American population whose prosperity is largely a debt-enhanced illusion.
The conglomerate, of course, is the entity upon which our nation and our government have become increasingly dependent to underwrite that pseudo-prosperity: the Communist Chinese regime, which is rapidly acquiring the means quite literally to buy our country out from underneath us.
Indeed, the process of selling off public assets to foreign interests is already underway.
Read more @ The New American.
9/06/2006
Still "Smokin' - Five Years Later
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Taliban have increased suicide attacks, borrowing tactics from militants in Iraq. The escalation in the Taliban insurgency has stoked bitter fighting. More than 1,600 people, mostly militants, have died across Afghanistan in the past four months.
Bush Fails to deliver. Read More:
To Tell The Truth
From Think Progress
"On September 10 and 11, ABC Television is planning to run an inaccurate film depicting the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The film was written by an avowed conservative and it largely places the blame for failing to prevent the attacks on the Clinton administration while whitewashing the failures of the Bush administration."
"Our review of the film shows it to be full of such inaccuracies. Its distorted version of history is inconsistent with the 9/11 Commission Report, upon which it claims to be based. The events leading up to September 11, 2001 are too important and too tragic to play politics with the facts."
"ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:
1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.
3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.
In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.
The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”
Decoding the Republican Talking Points: Part 2
1. HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.
2. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
3. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
4. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
5. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
6. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
7. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.
8. You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.
9. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.
10. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers
Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering, but there are lots of other greedy fingers in the pie. We name names on 10 of the worst.
No. 1 and No. 2: CACI and Titan
No. 3: Bechtel: precast profits
No. 4: Aegis Defense Services
No. 5: Custer Battles
No. 6: General Dynamics
No. 7: Nour USA Ltd.
No. 8, No. 9 and No. 10: Chevron, ExxonMobil and the Petro-imperialists
Read the details @ Alertnet.com.
9/05/2006
Investors/Oil - Contango
"That's the typical explanation. But some in the industry think it's too simple. They say other factors are just as important as the relationship between demand and supply. Chief among them is "contango," a market term for the situation in which a commodity -- like oil -- has a higher future value than its current price."
"Oil companies and others like to buy futures contracts to make sure they've got oil coming to them well into the future. But lately, people who have nothing to do with the oil industry are buying oil futures, holding them as can't-lose investments that can return well over 10 percent."
"Investment banks from Morgan Stanley to Goldman Sachs are making so much money from oil futures that they've become a hot investment for all sorts of big-money players."
"Some of the biggest players are U.S. pension funds, which have put billions of dollars into oil futures. At least one analyst thinks that pension funds have become part of the machinery driving higher gas prices."
Election Fear Factor
Think back about a year when President Bush claimed he couldn't talk about foiled terrorist attacks because that would threaten National Security!
(But that was when there was no upcoming election.)
Recently, he can talk about nothing else.
You Can Fool Some Of The People...
"The Republicans are worried about the flag, gay marriage, and the terrible burden of the estate tax on the rich. The rest of us are obviously unnecessarily worried about the war, peace, the economy, the environment, and civilization. Another reason to vote Republican—they have a shorter list."
Molly Ivins,
Creators Syndicate,
6/8/06
OTBL blogger rescued from plastic cup
An OTBL skunk in western Wisconsin somehow got his head stuck in a plastic foam cup. But it rewarded its savior by not spraying the animal-control officer who removed the cup with her bare hands. This was an important sign the the OTBL skunks are moderating in their position towards public servants. Normal public servants are routinely sprayed by OTBL skunks for no reason at all. Typically these variety of skunk has its head stuck where the sun doesn't shine.
Authorities aren't sure how the OTBL skunk got into its predicament — but the police officer who responded early Saturday morning wasn't eager to help out. He refused to get out of his car and instead called his wife in animal control, according to NUTZ-TV in Hudson.
The woman who responded eventually managed to pull the cup off with her hands after applying duct tape directly below the base of the OTBL skunk's tail.
The skunk ran off, apparently unharmed, and spotted later in the posting slanderous information on a blog site about how the fact that the policeman would help the skunk was part of a grand conspiracy engulfing the St. Croix River valley. Commenters to the skunk's OTBL post pointed out that policeman actually hook his horn and waved at the local newspaper editor who had stopped to talk to the school superintendent with two last names.
9/04/2006
Bush Pledges to Help American Workers Be Competitive
Fastest Decline in Real Wages On Record
Inflation Up; Wages Down
By JARED BERNSTEIN Employers' wage costs grew 2.3% over the past year, the slowest growth rate on record, according to today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Factoring in the recent energy-driven increase in inflation, the real wage is down 2.3%, also the largest real loss on record for this series that began in 1981.
With hourly wages falling in real terms, the only way working families can raise their incomes is by working more hours-certainly not the path to improving living standards that we would expect in an economy posting strong productivity gains.Celebrate Cheap Labor Day
If you're a hard working entrepenuerial taxpayer like myself, I'm sure you're sick and tired of the government confiscating your money to "educate" the disrespectful little rugrats in this town. I know I am.
It's time to set things right and protect the constitutional rights of taxpayers. It's time to stop paying to educate other peoples kids. That's Socialism and I've had enought of it.
It's time for a real solutions. This fall after we elect a real Republican candidate like Mark Green, write your legislator and tell them that as a taxpayers you demand that Wisconsin's Child Labor Laws be revoked.
Join me in demanding that we get kids back where the belong, out of the classroom and into th fields and factories.
I can hear the bleeding heart liberals now crying. "Well what about the Special Ed Kids that can't work in the factories?" I say; Don't the schools need janitors and grounds keepers? Let's face facts these kids will never be Einsteins, so lets get some work out of them now. Let them earn their own keep and pay for their own "Special Ed." classes.
For too many years the valuable resource of child labor has been wasted in this state. Not only are we wasting a capital creating resource, but we're paying to have other people's kids educated. Getting rid of the child labor laws will have lots of positive effects for the people of Wisconsin.
1. We won't have to build new schools.
2. We can fire half the socialist teachers we have now.
3. We can tell the Teacher's Union to shove it!
Remember: Child Labor is Cheap Labor
and Cheap Labor is Never Easy!