That is, if you’re interested in returning to the economic paradigm of the Carter years.
Foreign-owned manufacturers who build cars with American workers pay wages similar to GM’s. But their expenses for benefits are a fraction of GM’s. GM is contractually required to support thousands of workers in the UAW’s “Jobs Bank” program, which guarantees nearly full wages and benefits for workers who lose their jobs due to automation or plant closure. It supports more retirees than current workers. It owns or leases enormous amounts of property for facilities it’s not using and probably will never use again, and is obliged to support revenue bonds for municipalities that issued them to build these facilities. It has other contractual obligations such as health coverage for union retirees. All of these commitments drain its cash every month. Moreover, GM supports myriad suppliers and supports a huge infrastructure of firms and localities that depend on it. Many of them have contractual claims; they all have moral claims. They all want GM to be more or less what it is.
And therein lies the problem: The cost of terminating dealers is only a fraction of what it would cost to rebuild GM to become a company sized and marketed appropriately for its market share. Contracts would have to be bought out. The company would have to shed many of its fixed obligations. Some obligations will be impossible to cut by voluntary agreement. GM will run out of cash and out of time.
The reality of the market is that you have to find ways to compete — and that you can’t guarantee prosperity simply by organizing and insisting it be so.
To some, this truism leads them to call for the demolition of the market economy; to others, however, this leads to innovation and new niche markets being both created and filled; lower prices for consumers; and fewer jobs lost to competition.
Place your bets on which way Obama will go, people.
****
Thanks to Terry Hastings, who sums it up this way:
The truth will set you free in the long run, but it may be painful in the short run.
Indeed. Which is why I’ve been suggesting that very thing as a long-term electoral strategy, instead of the short-term pragmatism that, with every iteration of its usage by both parties, becomes the status quo, and teaches the next generation of voters the a particular (and cynical) “grammar” of electoral politics.
To change the culture, you must be willing to change the mechanisms that form that culture.
Chapter 11. Look it up, Detroit. Oh, and by the way, no.
Ain’t no way in hell that Baracky will ignore the cries of the UAW.
…instead of the short-term pragmatism that, with every iteration of its usage by both parties, becomes the status quo….
Not going to happen. Kicking the can down the road is what earns them their place at the public trough.
Look for the union label for the purpose of not buying that product. Boycotting union-made goods is actually using the unions’ methods against them. Why would unions complain that consumers formed a union in order to strike on buying union products?
Yuck Funions.
Competition won by the better competitors, the more virtuous in the contest? No no no no no. Not in this USA. This USA must have everyone a winner, everybody gets a ribbon, no-one can be a loser in this game. We want habeas corpus rights for transnational terrorists for crying out loud. Every man a king.
Like I said before, a UAW bailout bill.
Look for the union fingerprints.
Is this from a larger piece or just part of an email discussion? Reason I ask is that I just had “discussions” about this subject with some friends over the weekend and I’d like to smack them about the head with it.
I bet Bush the Republican bails out GM before Obama takes charge of America.
Another confusing action for “conservatives” to ponder while they’re rebranding.
Shutup sniffy.
So, snuffles, you want Bush to bail out GM or not? ’cause I’m thinking either way you brand him teh stupid.
And, where is Jennifer Granholm during all this? Israel.
I like snufalphie’s logic:
Heads or tails, he/she/it wins.
Too bad we’re not requried to play your game.
Time for a bad analogy: the only way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk.
Bring on the hangover. I’ll keep buying Japanese regardless.
There is no intellectual honesty only hate. Why else would sniffer be on here posting his or her daily “I hate Bush” crap when he is taking an action she favors? Either that or this moron is operating from a tiny characiture in her head that everyone on here must agree with everything Bush does or it is teh Hypocrisy!!!11!!! Fuckin tool, why would anyone want to speak to you? Really I do not understand you are basically operating under no ethical or moral groundwork from what I have seen, and you obviously view “reason” as blindly supporting or believing whatever your “betters” tell you. I could get your viewpoint by reading 10 random Daily Kos comments so why bother with you when I could go to the source of your bullshit?
Safer than Detroit.
My guess? She’s hoping to bring back some BS investment for Michigan (which she will hail as the BEGINNING of the answer to our problems) and then she’ll feel OK to join Baracky’s cabinet.
Bush will not heed Jesse J’s call to implement the policies of O! before his term begins…
I realize that to folks like snuffy, it’s unfair to make folks pay the debt’s they’re responsible for; but O! will have to pay off the unions for their support-not Booooosh!
The unions enjoyed fleecing GM when they were in high cotton; either they can make some concessions now or lose it all when GM goes chapter 11.
And, we all need to be expressing our views to our representatives that we are not down with any bailout scheme that doesn’t include reducing all of the ridiculous and extravagent UAW extorted perks…
I personally believe that it;s better for GM to go chapter 11, and emerge as a reorganized and stronger business-if that is possible. Of course it may not be since the UAW will wanna go all scorched earth on them. It’s kind of a watergate mentality…If they’re goin’ down, they wanna take everyone with them…
Of course, come January 20, 2009, ever-thin’ gonna be allright again…
Pink, snuffles is a Reagan man! LOL…or so he says. He also has continued to confuse President Bush with the term conservative. Yes, Bush is a Republican, but conservative? Not so much. Snuffles is too stupid to have figured this out, yet.
So called 136 Program already in place, with “$25 billion in direct loans to eligible applicants for the costs of re-equipping, expanding, and establishing manufacturing facilities in the United States to produce advanced technology vehicles, and components for such vehicles.” It’s silly to bet on the outcome of a game that is already over, isn’t it?
Carin,
Even with its carved-in-stone timetable for our troop withdrawal from Iraq, we’re about to commit to spending over $700,000,000,000 on Iraq over the next three years.
If the government is going to blow taxpayer money on that, why should I even give a thought to it spending $25 billion to save one million jobs here in America?
My dogma allows it, let’s do it.
I ‘member a few years back when the newspapers always announced how much the UAW folks were pulling in with their Holiday bonus checks. They were more than happy to reaps the rewards during the fat days. Now, they’re crying like bitches that we need to help them out.
Actually, my husband’s business is in trouble if GM goes under. The whole thing pisses me off.
So, when they come for another trip at the trough in February or so? You ok with that? Hardly anyone is even pretending that this bailout is going to help.
Carin,
The conservatives kinda shot to hell the meaning of “fiscal restraint” during their brief reign.
So we’ll have to pump in another $25 billion in February, our kids are go for it, right?
That’s what the Republicans have been telling me for 8 years.
Anyone got a billion bucks or so? I’d like to buy Corvette, Cadillac or Saab and turn them into a profitable business.
The failures of the auto companies are CERTAINLY not a result of those hardworking UAW folks. $65 bucks an hour (for some line workers), 5 weeks of vacation and 17 PAID holidays. 10% absenteeism daily. At some plants that rate goes up to 20%.
Yes, let’s bail ’em out.
Don’t expect to get any satisfaction out of sniffles – alphie – monkeyboy – neville chamberlain. He is a testament to Patterico’s overwhelming patience (as well as Jeff’s) until he trots out some meme that is less oppositional defiant and more revolting, thus finally getting banned.
However, for transcendental trinkets, go here and see what sniffles proposed as a way for Israel to defend herself against missiles.
GM is Baracky’s vision of America’s future.
How can you call it a defeat of the free market when the U.S. end of the equation has been straitjacketed by UAW thugs? That ain’t free, that’s legalized extortion.
Easier too.
Unions would cost vice presidential candidates of the female gender and the rightist bent way more on wardrobes. I smell a deeper political strategy at work here, one aimed at finally rooting out such fiduciary evil.
LMC – My Saab is awesome.
sniffles, STFU.
You mean if all those lazy black union people lose their jobs you’re totally fucked?
Work harder, white people.
Haha. haha. haha.
Oh, and as alphie demonstrates in comment #20, everything gets compared to the cost of Iraq. It just burns at his widdle Reagan soul that that money is going, going, gone!
Also, do yourselves a favor and don’t even mention how many children die from intestinal diseases in Africa. The tears may just short out your modem.
There are cast in stone and covered in concrete memes and then there is the alphie/sniffles. He makes Mt. Rushmore look like a temporary fix.
BJ if you want to read some real brain-pounding stoooooooooopidity from sniffles/alphie/actus/monkeyboy go read the Michael Yon thread from Friday night.
You know, this is reminding me of the Smokey the Bear paradigm that the enviros used for so long regarding forest fires.
But now that the underbrush has built up but good, when you finally let the fire burn (let GM fail), it does an incredible amount of harm, because the forest is adapted to smaller but frequent fires, not one huge holocaust.
Morons.
You know Jennifer is a former beauty queen … and she went to BERKLEY.
OT but if anyone wants to gag go to victoryplate.com. Sorry but I have a huge problem posting links on this site or I would link it.
Actually, my husband’s business is in trouble if GM goes under. The whole thing pisses me off.
You mean if all those lazy black union people lose their jobs you’re totally fucked?
Nope thor. That is all on you. Carin said nothing of the sort.
Do you have a point thor?
That monkyboy seems like a smart guy, BJ.
You might even call him a visionary.
It just occurred to me its been 8 years since the Defense dept. budget has been weighed against domestic needs.
These are truly going to be tough times for those Americans who get their paychecks from the military industrial complex.
Unless you work in one of Detroit’s military complexes, I guess.
These are truly going to be tough times for those Americans who get their paychecks from the military industrial complex.
At least it is up front about their desire to gut the military and defense.
Still … STFU, sniffles.
Anyone want to enlighten me on how to make a link look like “here”?
Your Gods suck at economics, except yours BJT, and Jeff’s, and mine.
The devil is melting down that false idol, that golden cow – the fwee mawket is no more!
Hot tears for the hot air balloon… trickle down.
Jobs? Savings? Gov’t doing stuff it’s actually supposed to? Shirley you jest.
Speaking of seven hundred billion dollars, coincidentally, maybe if you’d bother to review, say, the DHHS’ annual budget and thereby purport to possess some degree of objectivity and balance, sniffy, you could comment with actual credibility. I’ll see your 233B a year and raise you sixty-eight percent.
Oops.
You are familiar with the DHHS, in all it’s myriad constitutionally-approved ways, means, enumerations, special interests, discriminations, dealmakings, paid lobbies, and leveraged policies, are you not? And that it’s run for somewhat longer than the Iraq war?
For that matter, for longer than you’ve been alive. Mostly doling out free medicine. Satisfied yet? Or shall we bankrupt the country in the name of some vague sense of entitlement?
The U.S. military was able to get by on as little as $200 billion a year just a short time ago, JD.
The fact that that amount is now just a quarter of the current defense budget tells you how much pork is in their to cut and spend on domestic needs.
I like simple math.
My Gods? I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about thor.
#Comment by snuffles on 11/17 @ 1:19 pm #
I find the cartoons in your head very amusing and would be interested in receiving your newsletter.
If you stand outside and look up to the sky with your mouth open long enough a snowflake will wet your tongue.
It’s a parting gift from God, Carin. Thanks for payin’.
“Comment by Carin on 11/17 @ 1:21 pm #
My Gods? I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about thor.
Neither does he.
He just opens his piehole and spews shit.
You probably look up alot of things with your mouth open thor. Please do not share.
thor, I thought you said that after you sobered up from election night, you were going to star making sense and lecturing us with your vast wisdom?
Honestly, you sound just as idiotic as before.
Color me disappointed.
So how about that annual DHHS budget, sniffie. Find that sucker enumerated in any American structural documents or anything?
Sniff is probably googling different combinations of DHHS and DailyKos in order to find his opinion.
I think the 68% part blew out her gaskets, Pink.
We. are. doomed.
A fair number of citizens refuse to settle on definitions of words, and that makes developing cohesive ideas and unifying influences impossible. As a result, our cultural mechanisms are increasingly secularly existential and endorse fashion as the foundation of mores. They are corrupt and corrupting.
The process does make escaping blame easier, however, though it may result in cultures only on the undersides of rocks and in old foodstuffs. Which may not be completely bad, since that once resulted in bleu cheese and beer.
But you wanted to teach persons to read, so how come you can’t extrapolate?
You’re in the Union, Carin, but having a card like everyone else made you feel yucky! Eff that feeling of equal, you’re better than them, got’cha 20-acres and a you-bet’cha home school. Proud of this country, so, so unlike them, and so “what’s the big darn deal?” Pray to your creator, plow through them cracked open doors with great honor and privilege to serve.
Fuckin’ idiot.
You may like it but you have no grasp of “simple math.” For the umpteenth time, an alphie/sniffles lesson in Defense spending as a percentage of GNP:
Next up will be alphie/sniffles claiming that the GNP percentages are meaningless. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WASTED TOTAL MONEY!
Lather, rinse, repeat…
Blame is one of those cathartic exercises that doesn’t accomplish much. Regardless of whose fault it is, GM needs to come up with $1500 per car to pay pension benefits and healthcare costs for retirees.
I don’t see why people who didn’t enjoy the benefits should be forced to pay for them. I don’t see why the stockholders should be saved from the blunders of their management team. It was nice while it lasted, UAW, but it’s over. Just like the no-money-down, deferred interest, no principal, balloon mortgage on the you-can’t-afford-it palace in California, somebody is going to get stuck.
In this case, GM’s owners can’t pay. The UAW can try a give back, or GM can try to do some unique and wonderful things to get more money per vehicle, or strafe a level or two of management, but it’s not the taxpayers problem. Giving GM our money fixes nothing.
It does buy some votes for the Democrats. Which is probably the objective.
Do you have some problem with the DHHS, Jho?
Shall we stop funding finding cures for cancer and heart disease, perhaps?
I think what’s being lost on a lot of people is where the power lies. Clearly, as evidenced by the Big 3’s recent PR assault (youtube videos, the freep, etc); they feel powerless. They’ve been reduced to begging for change from the electorate – an electorate, one would hope; that is completely exhausted(nauseated?) at the idea of more bailout money.
I would hazard to editorialize further that there may be more than a few automakers licking their chops, drooling even, at the idea of buying the Big 3’s operations at cents on the share. Imagine what a well run company could do with such a vast infrastructure going on the block at such a discounted rate! Of course, they’d almost be forced to wait until the Detroit boys are on their knees – that way they’d have the support for the sweeping changes that would have to occur inside those companies to make them profitable.
“Many shall be restored that are now fallen, and many shall fail that are now in honor.”
You’re in the Union, Carin, but having a card like everyone else made you feel yucky! Eff that feeling of equal, you’re better than them, got’cha 20-acres and a you-bet’cha home school. Proud of this country, so, so unlike them, and so “what’s the big darn deal?†Pray to your creator, plow through them cracked open doors with great honor and privilege to serve.
Fuckin’ idiot.
Once again, thor mediates on shit he don’t know shit about.
If the auto makers go down, just about everyone in Michigan who still has a job is in a shit load of trouble. Regardless of how I feel about the UAW or union workers, I’m FUCKED. I don’t have a daddy trust fund. Matter in fact, I have had to physically and financially support my father for the last year. My acres are because of that. I bought-out what he owed on a house he was building before he got really sick, and now have the privilege of having two mortgages since I can’t sell the other house, because it is in fucking DETROIT.
I suppose I could have allowed my dad to declare bankruptcy, losing the money he borrowed from his father, and then allowed him to flounder in a state run nursing home. But I didn’t.
Thor, you need to realize you don’t know shit before you decide anything about me. fuck off.
“Shall we stop funding finding cures for cancer and heart disease, perhaps?”
Yes.
Let’s see if I understand.
A legal entity in America contractually promised to pay a retirement pension and continuous helathcare benefits to employees who labored for 30-years or more in their factories, which these employees did, and the financial benefit of shareholders was huge!
Now, today, so many Americans are choosing to buy cars from automakers who offer no such benefits and/or from socialist countries who provide health care and retirement monies to all their citizens that Americans are mad as hell! Why shouldn’t we fuck over those back-broken factory workers – they’re so Goddamned Lazy!!! – by setting fire to all their papers with written promises?
Lazy redumblicans, always looking for a cheap buck and an easy fuck, are just now learning that a Larry Craig reach around ain’t free.
The surest clue that we’re dealing with alphie as “snuffles” is the number: $700 billion.
It has him hypnotized. Regardless of the subject, if he’s the one commenting that number will appear. I don’t know why $700 billion and not, say, $550 billion or $1 trillion, but there’s nowt so strange as folk.
Regards,
Ric
I don’t see why people who didn’t enjoy the benefits should be forced to pay for them. I don’t see why the stockholders should be saved from the blunders of their management team. It was nice while it lasted, UAW, but it’s over. Just like the no-money-down, deferred interest, no principal, balloon mortgage on the you-can’t-afford-it palace in California, somebody is going to get stuck.
Exactly. Everyone in Michigan – all those UAW employees were living high on the hog for something that couldn’t last. The legacy costs were a grand pyramid scheme. Until it collapsed, they enjoyed all their benefits, they holiday, their goodies … everyone had a vacation cottage up north along lakes or rivers. It was awesome.
Now, the companies are broke, and Ron Gettelfinger is declaring that the union employees have given enough. Give me a break. Obviously not, or they wouldn’t be in that position.
I know the emperor has no clothes, Carin.
Much like the compulsion to engage the talking telephone poles.
I’m done, Rob.
“The legacy costs were a grand pyramid scheme. Until it collapsed, they enjoyed all their benefits, they holiday, their goodies … everyone had a vacation cottage up north along lakes or rivers. It was awesome”
Pittsburgh circa 1981
Quit expecting thor to make sense. He’ll almost always disappoint.
Lower your expectations, and stop thinking you can engage in anything resembling conversation with thor, and you’ll be a happier person.
“Comment by snuffles on 11/17 @ 1:41 pm #
Do you have some problem with the DHHS, Jho?
Shall we stop funding finding cures for cancer and heart disease, perhaps?”
You actually expect the government to do that? The government?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!
A legal entity in America contractually promised to pay a retirement pension and continuous helathcare benefits to employees who labored for 30-years or more in their factories, which these employees did, and the financial benefit of shareholders was huge!
And what, exactly, has that to do with me? I am neither a shareholder nor an employee.
Yeah, I sued to sweat like a motherfucker. No air-conditioning, and the furnaces ran at over 2000-degrees. Red, hot, molten metal all around me. “My feet were in the river while my head layed-up on the bank, I’d look up into the Lord above and said ‘hey man thanks.'” Thank God I wasn’t a lazy union fucker like that guy sweating next to me. He pulled rods out of the furnace for thirty fuckin’ years! Sweated until he smelled like pig ears! He should’a gone to college and studied asteroids. Like me!!!
sued = used
Blame is one of those cathartic exercises that just put a dirty socialist in our White House I think. And I don’t know how else to get him out of there.
I was just thinking the other day you know what are freaking hot? Furnaces.
Jabaneros are fuckin hot my friend. Don’t you forget it.
“No air-conditioning, and the furnaces ran at over 2000-degrees. Red, hot, molten metal all around me. ”
Because of union rules the position couldn’t be automated.
thor, the legal entity that promised (or was dragooned in union negotiations) to pay for those things IS GOING FUCKING BROKE!
Your solution is throw more money at it to maintain the status quo, something you wouldn’t have suggested to the greedy, idiot lucre merchants on Wall Street.
Again, GM and Ford And Chrysler, in part because of their multi headed benefits packages, ARE GOING FUCKING BROKE.
Happy, what say you and I find another thread? You can tell me about your turtles. Or I could just go to the gym. It’s push-up/pull-up day, and I always need an extra kick in the ass to motivate for that.
You know what you shouldn’t do with jabaneros? Cut them up, and then go take out your contacts.
I don’t care how many times you wash your hands. You should just leave ’em in for a few days just to be safe.
All it takes to prevent something from going broke is pump enough money into it, BJ.
It’s not rocket science.
“All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them.”
-The Geraghty Axiom of Barack Obama
via Hot Air
And when the Nazis found the museum was dark and empty, they screamed! “Where’s all the Russian art!” “We’ll capture their union’s artists, make ’em talk and tell us the whereabouts of all their preciousness.”
And as they buried those dead Russian artists, those unionists who wouldn’t talk, who accepted their afterlife was fated, there’s no doubt at least one Nazi said the strangest thing, “nice doing business with you.”
All it takes to prevent something from going broke is pump enough money into it, BJ.
It’s not rocket science.
Unlike balloon security fences. Which would be rocket science.
Again, why are you giving the TTPs the attention they crave?
I know! Let’s loan ’em THREE TIMES what their fucking companies are worth!
Didn’t I just ask you, twice, to show me where govt got the right to involve itself in the private sector and home to the tune of seven tenths of a trillion dollars a year, sniffy? Answer the question. Yeah, I got a huge problem with the DHHS: I think it should be abolished. It even wrecks shit. You got a problem with gov’t wrecking shit, snifflie?
Not perhaps. Absolutely. You want some pragmatism with that structural myopia, snortling? I’m alive because of medical advances borne by private funding and manufacturing.
That said, my other question remains. Answer it, subject of the State.
Yeah, bail ’em out, GM, FORD, Chrysler, all of ’em. Then force every import manufacturer to build their cars here and pay equal wages and benefits that our companies pay.
Equal competition on a equal playing field, that’s the American way. Fuck your silly lies and empty rhetoric about free and fair trade for it was neither free nor fair. And also fuck all your empty animus directed towards the honest hardworking Americans who gave their lives in our factories, you empty-headed spineless pussies who never met a imagined enemy you couldn’t be tricked into hating.
Dumb warehouser’s wife who thinks her feelings of preciousness is a plateau to spit down on people. Fuck her.
It’s a weird day Carin I think where you can circle and circle like a puppy dog and just never get comfortable nowheres. We should have had a thread on that creepy youtube Baracky did over the weekend I think. Because it was creepy, and the Geraghty Axiom of Barack Obama is wrong at least about one thing I think. When he says you will sacrifice what the marxist little bitch means is you will sacrifice.
I watched the same thing happen, on a much smaller scale, to the ILGWU in Massachusetts during the mid to late 80’s.
Remember “Look for … The union label …”? Nobody cared.
While the union honchos continued to bargain hard and obstinately, factory after factory closed up shop and either contracted their sewing production overseas or reopened non-union. Those people deserved better and worked very hard only to find, by the early 90’s, a beautiful and empty union hall and an unfunded pension liability due to the Union’s raiding of it and their insistence on including language in contracts with companies to cover the liability … just before most of those companies went belly up or moved away.
Ultimately the union failed to protect both jobs and benefits for a largely female, hard working group of members. They were even recommending companies close down and open up non union just to try a keep jobs for the soon to be ex-members.
One of those companies was my family’s business of over 40 years.
Why, the will of the people gives the government the right to involve itself in the private sector and home to the tune of seven tenths of a trillion dollars a year, JHo.
Also, habaneros. Those motherfuckers are motherfuckin’ hot!
Wash your hands? We put ziploc bags over our hands when handling them. Once we canned them; cut them up (being careful of course) without any hand protection, and the alkaloids burned all of the tender skin tissue under our fingernails. They peeled out over the next couple of days.
Moral of the story? Never pressure-can habaneros. The cans always leak a little, and then the pressure canner spews aerosolized habanero juice into your kitchen, and then a little while later your lung tissue decides that it doesn’t like that so much.
We found out right after that that habaneros actually freeze really well. You don’t need to do anything with them at all, just throw em in a ziploc, throw it in the freezer, and use them one at a time. They lose a little heat in the freezer, but they could stand to.
Must be a slow day for selling vacuum cleaners.
“Equal competition on a equal playing field, that’s the American way.”
So the UAW that gamed the system are unAmerican?
So, thor, America gets to dictate to the world what an “Equal competition on a equal playing field..” is and unilaterally impose it. That should work out just swell
“Sorry, rest of world, our people can’t compete productively so you will have to overpay them for under producing your own citizens.”
That should work out just swell
“I like simple math”
Yet is cannot even seem to grasp that.
STFU, sniffles.
All it takes to prevent something from going broke is pump enough money into it, BJ.
It’s not rocket science.
Is there any topic where sniffles has not proven itself to be an abject idiot?
Unions are the failed policies of the past I think. Also they are quite gay.
“Ultimately the union failed to protect both jobs and benefits for a largely female, hard working group of members.”
But the union honcho’s fishing boats were to die for.
Department of Redundancy Department
THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID “SWELL!” WHAT OF IT?
“Comment by snuffles on 11/17 @ 2:24 pm #
Why, the will of the people gives the government the right to involve itself in the private sector and home to the tune of seven tenths of a trillion dollars a year, JHo.”
No it doesn’t you retarded marmoset.
the will of the people gives the government the right
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that sniffles has such a fundamental lack of understanding of the concepts involved.
Did The Village People have a greasy gay union thug?
Ask Snuffie how he feels about “the will of the people” on Prop. 8.
That should be rich.
#99: Mr. O’Brain
Exactly, although a few did end up in the Big House for various offenses. When my family’s business was busted by the bank (who called the various loans) the Union tried to collect on “our portion” of the unfunded pension liability. The bank and the IRS told them to F*%& Off so they took at shot at trying to grab a piece of my retired father’s pension money. 18 months and $60,000 later the district court told them to F&$% Off again.
Good times.
Are you still down by my old alma mater on 40th and Locust?
Admit it, JD.
The only “concepts involved” here that you guys care about is the unions donate to Democrats.
Try not to be shocked when the government pork trough is moved from the Red States to the Blue States once Obama takes over.
The weaning will be good for the Red States, give them a chance to practice what they preach.
Versus your alternative of looting/selling our manufacturing base to the lowest bidder, yeah, screw that. That’s fuckin’ stupid.
We can make our own cars and trucks, unless you’re afraid of a little hard work. We can make our own laws. We can govern our own economy. We don’t have to let all others cheat, to pretend fuckin’ ourselves is some sort of advanced new technology. Nope, getting fucked is an age-old proposition.
You bought into the Reagan/Bush bullshit, now you redumblicans pay. Your economy is now shit, and you gave it away while turning a blind eye to the empty lies of the trickle down. Pay up!
Error: I don’t care what snuffles thinks about anything. Why do any of you?
The union’s primary function is to protect the incompetent.
How about Segregation, monkeyboy? That reflected the will of the people for quite some time, didn’t it? How about prohibition? Hell, alphie, 70% of the population supported the Iraq invasion in 2003. Wasn’t that the will of the people?
Stupid is as stupid writes…
Yeah, thor, WagnerAct-Unionism has been doing gangbusters in the Rust Belt. Why should we possibly change anything?
And thor wants to “show” the Red-staters somethngs. Ok, thor-chan, what are you going to cut to those “undeserving” reddies?
Close the military bases in GA, NC, SC, TX, TN, AZ, VA, FL? Kick them out of DOT funding? What? How are you going to “show them”, tough guy?
The construction worker and the cop were both card-carrying bona fide greasy union thug pansies. I know that for sure. But don’t ask me how.
Yeah, that-a-way BJT, fuck their fucking Union pensions. They act like they worked for it! Fuck ’em, every time a Union worker loses an eye he gets $27,000 in medical benefits. What kind of fuckin’ sick bullshit! Do you know how many eyes I’ve seen the owners of the business lose? They probably fake losing their eyes to collect the money and then sell ’em eyes out the backdoor of the shop for a double-dip.
Gotta watch ’em, all the time you gotta keep your eyes on ’em. They’ll steal you blind if you don’t.
[deep breath]
BWAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Oh you mean like West Va. and Illinois and New York and California and what was that state that just finished the biggest public works project in the history of civilization … oh, oh, I know Massachusetts!?!?
[deep breath}
BWAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Oh my, thanks for that, monkeyboy. I feel TRANSFORMED!! Not as good as the Balloon Missile Fence but purging.
It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.
Then it’s just a game: Find the eye.
STFU, sniffles. You said that the government gets the right by the will of the people. Lots of us pointed out how painfully wrong that is. But, as always, sniffles/alphie/monkeyboy shows a remarkable ability to simply ignore its more incredibly stoooopid statements, and act like it never happened, and just plow ahead with Teh Narrative.
I believe the “Big Dig” was Tip O’Neil’s pet project, BJ.
Nothing is harder to kill than a government-funded project once the checks start flowing.
That should be noted arch-conservative Tip O’Neil, right snuffie?
Having spent long stretches of my life as a skilled mechanic in the lock, safe, and physical security business-even after recieving my degrees in aerospace engineering-I still fail to see the logic in factory workers having “the right!” to earn more than a public prosecuter with many years experience; especially when they neither expended the money or time to educate themselves, outside of perhaps a union night school…
I’m all down with paying skilled laborers a decent, living wage. But, do they deserve to make outscale bank simply because they happen to wprk for a very profitable concern? I say no sir!
#Comment by BJTexs on 11/17 @ 2:35 pm #
Are you still down by my old alma mater on 40th and Locust?
I’m at 30th Street station.
It’s fun to watch the breaking of the elitist class in America.
Fun to hear ’em moan about how much harder working and smarter they are while their getting kicked down the staircase.
The hate collectors called and said to plant your asses on the curb next Tuesday.
Thor, you simply are mindless. The economy is in the toilet because of idiot politicians on the left who manipulated the whole housing crisis / mortgage meltdown to their personal and political advantage, and now have a guy with a huge checkbook and a whole conga line of leftists and failed business lining up for checks, and it’s the Republicans fault, exactly how? I will only accept one answer, and that is because our political class can’t say no for fear of losing the love and support of screeching shirtlifters like you.
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I’ll take Lincoln’s word over yours, JD.
He was a Republican, you know.
thor #114: Where did I suggest that? Were you paying attention when I mentioned that the Union Leaders had raided the pension plan, which caused the unfunded liability?
Now apologize to me Jane, you ignorant slut.
It is sad when sniffles is more coherent than thor. No less stoooooopid, just more coherent.
Having been repeatedly shown the errors in his arguement, thor retorts with name-calling, strawmen and silly little insults.
Why do we bother?
I’ve only been wondering that out loud, insistently, for the last few months, now. But some people are slow learners.
Here you go, thor. A little game for you to play.
Mr. O’Brain: You work at 30th St. station?
Alphie: Your Lincoln quote has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of “The will of the People.” We have a representative government, not a poll driven mass dictatorship. Google the difference.
Oh and “The Big Dig” was a collaborative effort between Tip O’Neal and Ted Kennedy, both liberal Democrats from the bluest of blue states.
Next?
GM is up a dime right now. They don’t need our money.
A machinist and a public prosecutor walk into a bar and ask the bartender for a couple of asshurts. The bartender asks “how do you make an asshurt?” “Easy” says the machinist, and he proceeds to use a hand drill on the ass of the sniveling recent law-school grad. “But how do you make two asshurts,” asks the bartender. “With plea agreements and civil suits!,” cried the teary-eyed lawyer.
No, I wasn’t paying attention. I was paying my taxes, sorry.
We got a thriving automobile industry in this country right now.
Just not in Michigan.
What’s up with that thorazine and sniffles?
Dumb warehouser’s wife who thinks her feelings of preciousness is a plateau to spit down on people. Fuck her.
I’m not addressing “it” anymore. This last comment is to merely say my lack of addressing it anymore is not to be confused with any sort of defeat. I’m just not wasting my time on useless pieces of shit, who believes he “knows” me though my comments, or has any clue what I’m like. I fucking LAUGH at your mad skills of cognition, asshole.
Anyone see Spies around here since last week?
“Comment by BJTexs on 11/17 @ 2:58 pm #
Mr. O’Brain: You work at 30th St. station?”
Yep.
spitting on thog would be a waste fo perfectly good spittle.
Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam
I think we should bail her out as well.
I saw Spies briefly I think it was this weekend so he did come back and I was glad to see that but psycho has been gone forever and that’s worrisome I think.
We got a thriving automobile industry in this country right now.
The Toyota plants in Indiana seem to be doing well. The new Honda plant opened recently just east of Indy.
Not to mention BBH and Maybee. I miss them all. Wither withheld and ahem?
Thor; Apology accepted. Now please stop assuming and writing that you know the innermost thoughts of commentators just by their comments. It’s small and juvenile, don’cha know!
Mr. O’Brain: We should get together for a snort one of these days. I haven’t been down to the campus in quite some time
Comment by BJTexs on 11/17 @ 2:24 pm #
BJT,
I wonder how many of those union employees drove foreign made cars?
I understand that it’s everyones right to choose their product flavor in this country. And, while I don’t buy into the notion that they are existentially better than the products made in detroit, I will admit that they’re lower cost component, excellent markt analysis and markeying have allowed them to come to dominate our automobile market. It’s a particularly sad example of the unintended consequence of globalization and the willing evolution of our economy to one that is based on consumerism and the service industry as opposed to smokestack industry…
While I believe that the unions have played a very large role in the ballooning cost of manufacturing in this nation, I agree in some ways with a few of the points that thor made…
During the 90’s, we embraced globalism and the evolution of our economy. There were many places that desired the foreign auto manufacturers to build plants, often to replace other jobs that had gone overseas. For want of a relatively small number of jobs, when compared to the overall workforce, we gave them large tax breaks for a number of years. Perhaps tha largest was to remove the import tax on the vehicles since they were, you know, built here…
This may have been the largest miscalculation-EVAH! And, it was one of the largest boons possible to the foreign car companies. Indeed, one of the reasons hat Daimler-Benz bought, restructered, and sold Chrysler was simply to get their hands on some of their unutilized facilities. I submit they never intended the merger to be permanent, it was simply cheaper than building new facilities from scratch-a lesson they learned in Alabama-and they got to peel off the profitable Jeep brand from the Chrysler group before selling to a hedge fund…
The bottom line is that regardless of the jobs they provide locally, all of the profits from these companies go back to their nations of origin. And so, in addition to giving them the tax breaks meant for domestic producers thay also enjoyed the benefits of not having to match the exhorbitant UAW contracts. Not to mention the low cost loans available in Japan and the outright government subsidies in Korea…
I’m perhaps as big a free market guy as they come; indeed I totally opposed the wall street bailout. But it would seem to me that we have, perhaps unintendedly, subsidized the foreign car industry in this nation for nearly 20 years. In doing so we have put additional pressure on our own domestic industry; one that we are now preparing to subsidize…
So while some may call it an empty argument, I still maintain that many of these loyal union brothers and sisters didn’t walk the same walk they talked!
My wife and I still do; even though we are not in any union. I drive an H3 and she has a malibu. Many folks criticize us as ignorant for buying American, but I prefer to keep as moany dollars at home as possible…
Best wishes to all
You mean if all those lazy black union people lose their jobs you’re totally fucked?
Work harder, white people.
Wow, they let black people in unions now? That’s new.
We should get together for a snort one of these days.
Like our next President is alleged to have done, I left my snorting days behind me quite a while ago.
They even let them be quarterbacks and President-Elects now, peter.
Bob – There is not one damn thing wrong with driving a Hummer.
JD: when you and I get together I will happily eschew alcohol for several of your mom-in-law’s spring rolls.
There is not one damn thing wrong with driving a Hummer.
If you don’t mind all the people pointing a giggling at you, JD.
A less obvious form of compensation might be in order.
“Mr. O’Brain: We should get together for a snort one of these days. I haven’t been down to the campus in quite some time”
I’d like to.
I DID give up smokes quite a while ago, so I need at least one vice….
sniffles – STFU. NOBODY, but nobody, is talking to you. We like to talk about you, in a haha what a tool, kind of way.
BJ – You need not sacrifice your simple pleasures due to me.
When are we all going to get together?
Point and giggle while Bob drives right over the top of your rusty bumper sticker covered Prius, sniffles. Point and giggle.
Bob Reed @142 – It’s like totally unheard of I think when a new manufacturing plant is considering locations for state and localities to serve up the same type of tax breaks they did to the foreign car makers, right?
#Comment by snuffles on 11/17 @ 3:44 pm #
As is evident upon close examination, our a priori concepts
and Hume tells us this is true), are the clue to the
discovery of our a posteriori knowledge. we can deduce that
the manifold, in the full sense of these terms, is the mere
result of the power of the transcendental aesthetic, a blind
but indispensable function of the soul. Our faculties,
irrespective of all empirical conditions, have lying before
them our deductive judgements by virtue of human reason, to
avoid all misapprehension, it is necessary to explain that,
then, the never-ending regress in the series of empirical
conditions, in so far as this expounds the universal rules of
the noumena, can thereby determine in its totality the
Categories.
With a bailout, I am looking forward to seeing pictures of parking lots full of green Edsels and Corvairs that Baracky is going to require Detroit to produce that nobody wants to buy.
Thanks JD,
Over the summer, when gas costs were high here in NYC, and the greens were breathlessly fulminating, I fully expected it to be savaged by some wilding tolerant activists on any given night…
Little do they realize, with my extra tall tires and practicing some speed discipline, I get approximately 23 mpg on the highway!
And when the road gets tough, I can just keep going…
Best Wishes…
My last car was a Pontiac. When I started looking to replace it, I looked at the current equivalent sold by Pontiac.
o I think it’s an ugly car.
o It lacks many of the features of the car I bought eight years ago.
o It’s actually made in Australia.
Detroit didn’t have anything I wanted to buy. They honestly weren’t even trying.
Rob is right. The closest American thing I could find that I might like was a mustang but not to where I wanted to give them real monies. Bless their hearts they’ve just given up. Ford has some interesting things in Europe but not nothing they can trust their stupid greasy American union workers to build I guess. It’s very sad.
JD,
I suppose in those pockets of America where men think it’s manly to dress up in funny hats and high heeled booties, a Hummer might be acceptable.
But it will be up to Obama’s Automobile Czar to decide if GM should continue to produce them or not, though.
For the record I like my 2007 Ford Focus. But I don’t think that 6 year warranty is worth much.
“I suppose in those pockets of America where men think it’s manly to dress up in funny hats and high heeled booties, a Hummer might be acceptable.”
San Francisco likes Hummers who knew.
I looked at the Focus and tried to get my patriotism on but then I found out they sell these ones in Europe and it felt like a bad deal. I won’t really decide until next spring.
Mr. O’Brain: Feel free to e-mail me at bjtexs at gmail dot com.
JD: I’m royally screwed between now and the end of the year for road trips. After that … we’ll see.
daleyrocks@152,
I think if you re-read my comment, you’ll see that while I mentioned the local tax breaks, that indeed are often given to any manufacturer, I then went on to speak about the mistake of the Federal government waiving the tax charged to other foreign products imported into our country…
Like I mentioned, the combination of these foreign companies ability to bypass the normal UAW wage structure, as well as enjoy the same tax rates as the domestic companies was conceptually wrong.
It was wrong because the profits all go back to the companies nation of origin, and because often these same companies enjoy outscale capital interest rates (0% in Japan for some time) or even government subsidization. In the end, the field of competition was in many ways slanted unfairly in their favor, and has contributed to our domestic industry’s approach to the brink of ruin…
Best Wishes…
#158
Nothing says freedom of choice like having the government tell what you can and cannot drive. You know. For the economy.
I suppose in those pockets of America where men think it’s manly to dress up in funny hats and high heeled booties, a Hummer might be acceptable.
There are prolly more Hummers in San Fran and LA than anywhere else.
700 billion for Eye-Raq! $700 BIIIILLLIONNNNSSSSS!!!
Not a penny for a Balloon fence.
“the normal UAW wage structure”
There’s a problem right there. A monopoly setting prices.
Bob Reed – I reread your comment and I do not see your point about tax incentives. I see it implied about waiving import taxes toward the end after it was explicitly mentioned early. Sorry.
The other part you failed to mention if you are going to try to do an apples to apples comparison is the foreign exchange risk the foreign makers subject themselves to with a higher import content in their vehicles.
Thor, all I can say is that you had better be on your knees thanking God that neither Carin nor Darleen are my woman. Because if they were, and after seeing how you have addressed them here today, I WOULD find you.
And then you’d find yourself sucking on the business end of my Smith&Wesson like it was a big, nickel-plated cock.
At the very least, if I decided to take pity on you and not kill you on the spot for disrespecting my woman, I would certainly beat you to within an inch of your life, and never again would you dare to show up anywhere, online or offline, that I might come across you again.
We’ve all known for a good while now that you are nothing more than a weaseley, puerile little cocksucker. But you went over the line today, using the kinds of language you did, hiding behind your mommy’s keyboard.
I’d actually pay good money to see you talk that trash to their faces. Most likely neither Carin nor Darleen would even need their husbands/boyfriends around to make you wet your pants in abject fear of the ass-kicking those ladies would impart to you.
I’m done with it. And it had better pray it and I never meet face to face.
Mr. Pink,
Use Firefox and add this.
Yeah, yeah, we’ve read all your rants against lazy black people, poor Detroit beggars and the stupid Union people who you depend on to give you gold coins.
You are the One!
But They! But Them! But Over there! They all suck.
We don’t know you. You’re not a finger-pointing hate baggie. You’ve got the answers! And those answers requires They, Them, Over There need to shut up! They need to hear why it’s all their fault, but not yours, the one with all the answers can’t be blamed.
Thor sounds a lot like that Doc Weasel fuck stick who was into teen pooter, only angrier.
daleyrocks@168
Point taken, perhaps I didn’t express myself in type as well as I was understanding myself inside my head!
As far as the foreign exchange consideration, as of a scant few years ago both the Japanese and the Koreans had fairly steep taxes on foreign cars-even American ones. And, I admit that I’m not so sure about the Eurozone; but if the steel and Aircraft industries are any example, they are certainly not shy about either government industry subsidies or protective tariffs…
And, as far as I am aware of, only Toyota has an appreciable percentage of parts made in North America…
Regardless though, all of the profits go back to Japan and they don’t have to suffer the UAW wage and benefit costs…
Not to say that that UAW package shouldn’t be restructured…
Best Wishes
You can buy a used import and get a car you like and the money stays here in our poor little socialist America. That is what I will do most likely.
I suppose in those pockets of America where men think it’s manly to dress up in funny hats and high heeled booties
Kiss my ass, monkyboy.
No thanks, Cowboy.
But I’ll shake your hand.
I was a big fan of the Village People, BTW.
Cave Bear, you’re sweet. I’m done dealing with it.
And, that it keeps going on – THAT is why people leave PW.
Someone ought to jam a Resistol and a pair of Justins up sniffles/alphie/actus/monkeyboy’s ass.
I suppose in those pockets of America where men think it’s manly to dress up in funny hats and high heeled booties
And, one of those pockets would be among African Americans. But I don’t think you wanna make fun of their hats …
Is that what you guys normally do with them, JD?
The more you know!
No alphie, but for you, I would make an exception.
There will always be freemarkets. Just not here. The wealth will go where it gets better treatment.
Hey, JD. If you, daleyrocks and Bob ever make as far south as at least Dallas, I’ll spring for the brewskis and BBQ.
And Bob and I can race; him in his rock and greenie-weenie crushing Hummer, and me in my white (fastest) Corvette convertible what gets 30mpg on the highway. Let the envious rabble point and giggle then…:)
Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW and most of those foreign auto manufacturers attract quality workers by offering a Socialistic corporate culture and structure.
I wonder why they’re so successful versus get-rich-quick slave drivers?
Cave Bear – I will be in Ausin on Thursday, and might be in Dallas next week.
The real scandal is the “jobs bank” referred to in the original post. Thousands of UAW members are paid full wages and benefits to do nothing.
This is the same UAW that says “no more concessions.”
#168
Honda, Nissan, Toyota et al; all have plants here to overcome that obstacle. What a lot of people don’t know is that much of the parts that go into those vehicles are made here as well.
Something else. Many japanese machine tool makers have the precision parts of their machines made in the US.
In a madern CNC shop the expertise is in the programmer, not the operator.
#184
Talking out yer ass again, shit fer brains.
And the same UAW that wants “card check” so they can physically intimidate Toyota line workers into signing union cards.
“Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW and most of those foreign auto manufacturers attract quality workers by offering a [s]Socialistic[/s] corporate culture and structure.”
Only the Messiah can provide socialism.
Corvairs were/are a lot of fun to drive. Nader making his bones taking them down was just wrong.
That was when I was a teenager. Now it is, what has what I need at the right price. Currently a Chrysler Sebring that was a 1 year old demo when I bought it.
Crossfires are kind of pimpy but I’m not altogether certain I hate them.
You know, liberals are funny. They’ll drive to a pro-union rally. Then they’ll drive away.
In their Prius, or Corolla, or Volvo.
And not see any contradiction.
It probably would have made sense for them to do so, but Daimler didn’t keep Jeep, it went with the rest of Chrysler to Cerberus.
Very small, and based on a rather shitty Mercedes platform. The SRT6 version has some balls, but the lesser versions more or less suck.
I like my 300C. Black. What The Transporter would drive if he was an American, I think.
I have hear from other sources about a 10 billion bail out that Obama and his liberal illuminati are pushing mainly because the auto union contributed to his campaign. REALLY? It sure does seem that more needs to chance and will 10 billion really work?
Yes, BMWs are made in that socialist paradise, South Carolina.
Good point on the used car purchase thing, happy!
Best of luck on selcting one you like…
All the best…
Wedumbilcans are funny. When they talk they lie and then point at their flag pins.
Anyone see any contradiction?
thor
I hear Bwarney Fwank thinks you’re real thor.
Yes, BMW made so much money hiring socialist workers in socialist Germany they can afford to open a plant in the U.S. to perform final assembly work. And when those American workers saw how BMW treated its employees versus WalMart, they lined up to work for the German Socialists.
Yes, because there is no difference in stocking shelves and running auto assembly lines.
Do you always talk this far out of your ass, or is today a special event?
“Yes, BMW made so much money selling BMWs in Americahiring socialist workers in socialist Germany they can afford to open a plant in the U.S. to perform final assembly work.”
Oh, but I’m sorry, thor, EVERYBODY in the South works for Wal-Mart. I forget. Use Southerners are kinda slow that way.
“Yes, BMW made so much money selling BMWs in America
hiring socialist workers in socialist Germanythey can afford to open a plant in the U.S. to perform final assembly work.â€ÂI walked by the White House during the Clinton years once. Out of curiosity, I took a look at one of their parking lots through the fence.
Almost all foreign cars.
To be fair, for all I know I was looking at the reporters’ parking lot.
No, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are the way to go. You think any reporter worth their journalism degree drives a Ford?
thanks, Bob. I think I want one of those little Scion XAs they used to make. I need to figure out if it’s the earlier ones I like or the last ones where they did a “refresh”. The XD they replaced it with doesn’t do anything for me. Mostly I want a little car is the deal so I can park at the Trader Joe’s. I want a new mini but no one in my family on either side has owned a foreign car yet and I would have to finance that and we’re not doing that during socialism. It’s just not in the spirit of the times I don’t think.
Hey thor,
A former longterm girlfriend of mine worked overseas with Mercedes, during the years when they were first taking up production in Alabama; being an Alabamian that had spent much time traveling, she was involved with being liason between the Germans and Americans.
I used to visit for a couple months during the summer; pre-9/11 DC was very much like a southern town in that when congress wasn’t in session things were very quiet…
At a company party one evening, I had the opportunity to speak with one of the senior management. I couldn’t resist asking him, in the most polite terms, why in the world they would want to spend the money to build a factory for such a specialized car in Alabama? His answer was very illuminating…
He started by citing the tax advantage for the entire line, once they were constructing any fraction of that line in the U.S. He went on to say that it would save them a lot of money shipping the cars overseas. And, he also said that American workers were more productive, dollar for dollar, than the gGermans. Owing to the power of organized labor in Europe, the salary and benefit package per worker was muuuuuch higher than in America! There were associated human resource management issues; not the least of which was that owing to the unlimited sick leave granted as part of the union contract approxiamately 15% of workers didn’t show up on any given day! As a result, they had to maintain a larger work force to cover for this unpredictable labor shortfall.
So yes, they do offer incredible benefit packages to their workers. But in addition to the tax advantage I mentioned earlier, they realize higher productivity at a lower cost here in America!
It was an amazing conversation, and I don’t know if the conditions still apply. But, I’ve heard many economists and labor specialists cite the fact that US workers exhibit the highest productivity on earth…
I can’t speak about the other makes, but this info came straight from inside Die Schloss Mercedes!
I’m sure that your economic experience gives you a lot of insight in this conversation…
Do you think the big 3 should be bailed out?
Best Wishes, Moi Droog
Oh, we just finally got a Trader Joe’s. No wine/beer section, though. That takes some of the fun out of it.
oh. John it’s for real that liberals are considerably more likely to buy foreign cars than conservatives. I’ve seen for real data on that and it’s been a very stable trend for a long time.
happy,
One of my former co-workers had an xc…It was pretty sporty! And I know it was OK on gas, ‘cuz he was cheap!
You might find a good deal on one. I also hear Miata’s are good; they are majority Ford owned. I know some folks say thay they are chick cars, but I don’t necessarily agree…
I couldn’t own one ‘cuz I’m too big (6’3″, 275 lbs)…That’s why I drive an H3
Cave bear,
What year is your ‘vette? They look like they’re going fast when sitting still!
Trader Joe’s! Buffalo burgers! The are perfect George Foreman thingers. Also they make better salad thingers to go than anyplace I’ve found near me. The new thing is the British one called Fresh & Easy. Tesco owns it I think. A lot the same concept but people like it better than Trader Joe’s what I hear. We don’t have any in the Valley yet I don’t think but Other Guy goes all the time to his one wherever he lives. You’d think after five years I’d know that.
oh. I like the Mazda 3 I think. It’s grown on me. It gets an 09 redesign though that I think will be better. This one is just a little too big for what I want. I thought I heard Ford wanted to unload Mazda, but that might be wrong. That would strike me as poor judgment on their part I think.
oh. *They* are perfect George Foreman thingers. They are very lean and proteiny. They also make salmon patty things that are healthful and people like a lot but George Foreman rubberizes them unless you stand right there and just sort of flash cook it. I just don’t have that kind of patience usually.
“They are very lean and proteiny.”
Can you cook the deliverables on a George Forman?
Would it were, dre. But they’ll be done by the time Other Guy clicks in tomorrow and my year will be closer to done. I want this year done in the worst way. I’m over it.
Final assembly in South Carolina? Mmm, dude, seriously, you might want to retract that since we are the point of manufacture for the Z4 and variants plus the X5 as well. Now parts come from all over – local (mainly) to international – but to imply that BMW makes so much money by hiring socialists in Germany that they can give a little charity and have the final, lowbrow, assembly done is here wrong and condescending.
And with Wal-Mart comments? You don’t know didlly about the South, about SC, or about who works where or is qualified for what you condescending, foul-mouth twatwaffle.
PT
*sigh* make that “here is”
PT
Mmm, dude, seriously, you might want to retract that…
LOL! thor retract something stupid he said?
If he tried to suck that many words back in his mouth his fucking head would explode.
Now, now, Tiger, “wrong and condescending” is what thor is all about. You don’t want to cramp his style.
It’s especially fun to watch him rail at …rants against lazy black people, poor Detroit beggars and the stupid Union people… when the whole basis of his argument is “Back in yer ditch, Paydro, ah got RV payments t’make.”
Bob Reed, yeah, American workers are the most productive on the planet. A Chrysler exec once told me that the cost of labor per car produced in Mexico was higher than that of one made in the U.S.; the main reason they kept the plants down there open was because of Mexican and Central and South American import taxes — import a new car into Mexico and you will pay one hundred percent of the sticker price in tax, but for every X number of pickups they export from Mexico they can import a car tax free; I forget the value of X. Anyway it’s worth it to them.
All big Honda motorcycles, not just the fatass Gold Wings but the police bikes and the like, are made in U.S.A. Marysville, Ohio, IIRC.
American management, now, is drawn from the same pool of elitists that sneers at Sarah Palin (“not our class, dear”) and performs at about the same level. Telling point: J. Edwards Deming invented the system (“statistical quality control”) the Japanese used to transition from tin toys to their present status as quality leaders. When MacArthur called home to ask American industry to contribute advisers to help the Japanese build a real economy instead of an imperialist structure, GM volunteered Deming on the ground that he was an annoying gadfly who wasn’t contributing to the welfare of the company.
And alphie would be funny if it weren’t so grim. There’s a map going ’round, showing the red/blue breakdown by individual county. With the (predictable) exception of the Cotton Belt, the region adjacent to the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers that is either majority or large-minority black for historical reasons, the map correlates perfectly with economic role: blue counties are bankers, financiers, and middlemen, where red ones are producers, either farming or manufacturing. In a day when the Internet can bring producers and consumers together without needing any middleman but FedEx/Ups, what do those people contribute? The old saying about the oil business in Texas was “planned in San Antonio, financed in Dallas, staffed in Houston, and Austin gets the money.” Take a look at the county map with that in mind.
Regards,
Ric
Pretense of knowledge is a hallmark of leftist thought. Hayek wrote a whole book about it: The Fatal Conceit.
Pretense of knowledge is a hallmark of leftist thought.
Says the rightie who gets by on a few mindless slogans.
Exhibit A: snuffles pretends to know something about me
peter,
By definition, anyone who references Hayek is a moron.
Ditto Ayn Rand.
If the American worker is so productive then why is the American worker standing in the unemployment line or working at Taco Bell?
Having worked in a few places I think I’ve come to the conclusion we are not the most productive for there is no most productive, anywhere. Workers are good everywhere.
Pop! Flag pins are exploding!
False pride won’t solve problems.
But thor’s afraid of free markets, Ric. Probably for the same reason he fears his poppa. Probably because all that rage fears the way stuff really works.
As to stiffie:
Third time, constitutional scholar: Where’s that written? Underside of the SCOTUS bench?
These clowns are so far entrenched in artificiality they can’t so much as comprehend how jacked things are already. They’re looking for no less than 100% manipulated markets. For the safety.
By definition, anyone who references Hayek is a moron.
Snuffles, the bacteria nibbling Hayek’s skeleton know more about knowledge and economics than you ever will.
Because politicians operating at the whim of fools and wrecking markets, you stupid uncomprehending short-sighted bastard, put them there.
“Comment by thor on 11/17 @ 7:41 pm #
Bob Reed, yeah, American workers are the most productive on the planet.
If the American worker is so productive then why is the American worker standing in the unemployment line or working at Taco Bell?”
I don’t know, thor, why ARE you in the unemployment line?
Other than the fact that you’re a condescending, know it all prick?
“Workers are good everywhere.”
Go get some business done in Mexico tomorrow. Ain’t the drive thru at Taco Belle
Notice how the proggs here aren’t dealing with the real issue. Unions have become a corporate entity all their own monopolizing the market for labor in certain industries. The only difference between, “Big Pharma” and the UAW is that the UAW can bring in democratic votes.
Put them all in recievership and put the union pensions in the government guranteed pension program. Let the big 3 restructure and start from scratch, but don’t give them any taxpayer money. They made their own mess let them sort it out for themselves. There is no shortage of automakers.
Boohooo. Boohoo. What about the poor union workers? Union corporate management should have seen this coming and allowed for it in their contracts. Boohoo.
#228 JHoward: The market is largely manipulated right now, and Hank Paulsen is the most powerful man in the world. What hath you wrought? I suppose bailing out the auto industry is no different than propping up a failed financial sector. Gotta keep kicking that 5000 gallon can of industrial waste down the road.
You mean to say efficient markets.
You go to a cattle auction. There’s only two smelly hicks there. One bids $100 for a bride-cow and the other bids $120. The bride-cow is awarded to the $100 bidder. Anything wring with this scenario?
Hate to break it down to the babykin basics for ya, but you can’t seem to get your head around the facts that there has to be large participation and enforceable rules a reg.s in place for an efficient market to exist.
How’d that free market for electric energy that Enron created work out?
Meow.
You left out the way unions are permitted to use violence. Imagine if corporations were as free to use pipe bombs, star nails, and baseball bats on their customers…
Ah, thor, there’s a nicely short and vituperative career waiting for you at Chrysler de Mexico. You should apply immediately.
There’s nothing genetic about it, mind — as is proven daily in the construction industry, the same people that take a month to throw up a jerrybuilt concrete crackerbox en su propria pais can and do do careful, craftsmanlike work when removed from their cultural matrix. It’s cultural. Most Nissans sold in the Western Hemisphere, and lots of the ones that go to places like the Middle East and Africa, are made in Aguascalientes, Mexico, at a plant I’ve driven by a hundred times, minimum. Nissan pays a premium for foremen and mid-level supervisors coming up from Chrysler Toluca, because of the cultural training they get from American and American-trained supervisors. The production machinery is a combination of American, Japanese, and European, but they call in Americans to service the European (and American) stuff when it breaks.
The correct solution to labor-cost imbalances is to tough it out. IBM used to have a printer and copier plant in Mexico, but their labor costs rose until despite paying about half to three-quarters of what an American would get, the labor cost per unit was too high to be profitable. We are now seeing the same thing happen to the Chinese, and it really hasn’t been that long since it happened to Europeans — anybody but me remember when a mark was a quarter, and German workers made in marks what Americans did in dollars? That’s how Volkswagen got a toehold here. A VW Bug made in an American plant by American workers would’ve cost half again what they did.
Beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism won’t work, and it dumbfounds me to see people advertising it as “kindness” of any sort. Shoving Pedro back in the ditch is not an act of kindness. Mexicans (and Indonesians, Indians, and Chinese) deserve the fruits of their labor, too.
Regards,
Ric
Anything wring with this scenario?
Yes. Where would you get $100.
Are you talking to me, cynn?
Because clearly thor’s talking to his prostate.
Progressivism is not kindness.
Lay it out, free gas boi.
Y’know, thor, that sort of thing is the reason I don’t just ignore you. Once in a while you break through the sneering elitist bigotry and say something sensible that’s worth following up. Of course you don’t, because the stereotypes that live in your head don’t give you the material, but still…
It goes back to a comment somebody made about the meaning of the word regulation. To a free marketeer — a real one, not the strawmen thor flames to the delight of the audience — regulation means establishing “…enforceable rules and regulations…” so the market can clear with minimum therbligs. To the people thor loves with a love that dare not say its name, regulation means “make it come out the way my theory says it should.” (In both cases, all too many of them take as an important secondary meaning “see to it my favored groups get paid lots.”) If the theory is wrong, and it is, the second group is generally prepared to hammer the situation into the ground and pulp the results rather than accept the falsification, all the while screaming “I believe in science!” Pitiful, in a way.
Regards,
Ric
cynn, you made a tingly go up my leg. Thank you for that.
peter,
Please list a few counties/cults that live without government spending.
Your parents basement doesn’t count.
Believing in Hayek sounds great until you need roads or electricity or the internet, or etc.
Strange thing, Ric, is how your one-off example I can match.
Cemex, bitch.
And the buses run on time in Mexico city.
City
Yes, I was addressing you, JHoward, is there a problem? And Ric, I believe regulations should be unyielding to reinforce compliance, and oversight should be multipartisan to maintain those regulations. But what the hell, it’s a free for all now.
Except that nothing Hayek says excludes any of those things.
You really are a fucking retard.
I’m watching Comedy Central. What channel is Projection Central on?
They almost killed Kenny!
I’m so happy Bernanke is giving so much money to AIG. Up to $150-billion now.
Without all that capital AIG might have to layoff a few Swedes in Sweden, but all’s well that ends well when the American taxpayer comes to the rescue. Yay AIG-employed Swedes! My taxes are for you!
So, you’re at least in favor of the government taxing and spending to provide the services you need, Rob?
That’s mighty big of you.
Wow, snuffles has obviously never read any of Hayek. Please, snuffles, please cite where Hayek says any thing of that sort?
Or are you furiously typing “DailyKos Hayek” at the moment?
Sure do. And you know what?
Every single one of them is run by an independent contractor. Yes, in the land of the Partidad de la Revolucion Institucional there is not one City-owned bus. Not one.
True of the long-haulers as well. The brand names, Flecha Amarilla and Estrella Blanca and Flota Roja… are all consortia of owner-operators. Some guys make (or have) enough to buy more than one bus and hire drivers, but the vast majority of them are owned by the guy who drives. The arrangement is very much like an American moving company like Allied Van Lines, with the vehicles the property of the drivers and the nameplate a matter of advertising.
I have been told, but cannot prove because I haven’t seen them all, that there is not one Government-owned bus carrying paying passengers in all of Mexico. The guy who told me that owns four buses and hires three drivers, and one big problem he has is that the (recent) introduction of American-style bank lending in Mexico means he can’t keep employees — the good ones all borrow money and buy their own bus, and compete.
Try another example, thor. That one doesn’t point the way you want.
Regards,
Ric
Don’t tell me Salma wrote a book! Stop the world; I must disembark!
there has to be large participation and enforceable rules a reg.s in place for an efficient market to exist.
Now that’s funny.
Untill very recently, what country had the least laws regulating business?
Techie,
I drudged through his writings in college.
What a loser.
Still waiting for the dictators he predicted would take over in Britain and America.
The buses run on time is a metaphor, of course, but that said, I know a Columbian. His family owned a city bus company for several generations. One day the drug-money-funded mobsters told him to stop his business because they were coming into the business and didn’t want competition.
They killed three of his relatives before he moved here.
Rules, regs, they’s nice things.
That fact that you claim to be college-educated scares me.
Columbia doesn’t have rules against that sort of thing?
Why’s that, Techie?
’cause I’m not among the 19% of Americans who still approve of the job Bush’s doing?
Think were down to Bob Jones U. grads on your side.
Also, that’s the final dodge I allow you. I asked WHERE Hayek said the claims you said he did, and your response is, in its entirety, “Hayek is a loser”. Wow, such skills. You must have owned on the Forensics circut.
Enjoy talking into the electronic miasma.
i know more shit about ecomonics than you xtian retards becuase i have a hot russian girlfreind and HAHAHA the “free market” is going DOWN losers so youll all have to suck it up and pay your taxes cuase Obamas going to tax the RICH only not too much and it wont raellly hurt the ecomony becuase taxess on the RICH dont do shit and anyway yuor alll a bunch of RACISTS who haet blacican americans cuase their black and dont pay taxes only they pay alot of taxes i raed someweher anyway your al RASICTS ans tuf cuas obmaamasas gona take yuor omony andn then yuol have to LISSSEN TO MEE godamt i knknow nmoreat bt ecomongascs adn russana gurlfrainad ssso hotat an hahaha loarsers hoat russssss sgirnglaofra obmama losserss sdumb chrsitianss rascistis im stmastrter girlgriand frruend hot russsinnan
Because, after all, it’s all about the approval ratings.
Twit.
The have enforcement issues.
Did you want to try out some new cliches and slogans on a former market maker?
Actually, it is all about approval ratings, Rob.
Techie,
Read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
He says government spending on things like roads, electrical power generation or the internet will lead to a dictatorship.
Seeing as it’s been 60 years since he made that prediction, and neither Britain or America is a dictatorship, I think it’s fair to call him a loser, don’t you?
girlgriand frruend hot russsinnan
they’re married now. It’s a new thing. Newish, anyway.
No, it’s not. It’s about governing.
Besides, if it’s all about approval ratings, then you’d have to agree the Democrat Congress is a bigger failure than Bush…
Why dontcha actually provide a quote? The DailyKos Cliff Notes version just ain’t cutting it, particularly since I’ve read the book, and the argument is quite a bit more sophisticated than that.
No, I just wanted to rhetorically pummel a hysterical nitwit. Thanks for being there. You can fuck off now.
Taking crap that “fell off a truck” to a flea market doesn’t mean you’re a “market maker”.
Well, thor, as it happens, I know a couple of Columbians myself. One of them is a descendant of the family that owned the Piper assembly plant in Bogota. American tort lawyers and the Safety Culture killed Piper, and unlike Embraer in Brazil his folks didn’t have the money to just keep going without licenses — which were not forthcoming, because after all the airplanes were unsafe, and you can’t sell licenses to build unsafe airplanes to unsuspecting brown people, now can you?
So he now builds an airplane of his own design. It’s very popular for use in back-country work. You can’t buy one in the US, because the certification isn’t too expensive, but it’s just the thing for buzzing around the Andes over terrain where there’s not space for a runway unless it’s vertical. He built the prototype as a way to transport his militia company — think “volunteer fire department”, except with M14s — into the wilds to fight back. He was the first person to explain to me that aid and support from Venezuelan leftists was vital in the support of the drug cartels.
Oh, and I’ve been inside (the ruins of) Pablo whatsisname’s fancy “luxury apartment complex” in Cali. It wouldn’t sell as condos in Lauderdale — too spartan. The interesting one is halfway down the hill from there, an eight-story building with four apartments on each floor, each of which has a swimming pool cantilevered out from the side of the building. Get that past the Miami-Dade zoning authority!
Yeah, “buses running on time” is a metaphor. Sure it is. The buses run on time in Mexico City because there’s always a guy lurking, hoping to make the payments on his bus, and if you aren’t there on the dot the passengers will all go with him. There’s a word for that, but of course you won’t know it; it begins with “c”.
Regards,
Ric
Oh, and BTW, I made a mistake: It’s Colombia. We ought to try to get it right.
Regards,
Ric
You sure seem bitter, Rob.
Sure you’re going to make it through the next 4 years?
Like I keep a copy of Hayek’s moronic screechings in my house.
The only economist more stupid than him is Thomas Sowell, the right’s own AA hire.
#266 Shows your sense of history-Do you think 60 years is the time period something Must occur in, or otherwise it could never happen?
That’s certainly a heart warming story, Ric. Lawyers, evil. Leftist, evil. Rugged entrepreneurial individualist, good.
“Rata-tat-tat, die Leftist drug-runners, you misallocation of humanity, you inefficient users of capital resources, rata-tat-tat!”
“Hmm, they looked so much older from the air in our flying Piper-designed death machine. These kids we killed, they couldn’t be more than 12.”
“Better their dead! They should have known the free market corrects inefficiencies. The free markets separate the strong players from the weak, those who live from those who die! It’s all a matter of profits and losses!”
“P’n-L’d, that’s you chiquitos!” “Hehe.”
Please disregard the Typing Telephone Pole – especially this one, it wished me dead on my last deployment. I find that worthy of the silent treatment, if you are with on this.
Government establishes the playing field, publishes and enforces the rules of the economic game. If it becomes a player it is as if the Umpires and the Baseball Association had their own team with “special rules” for them alone.
Well, thor, I find that my digestion flows better if I keep that sort of moral presumption to myself if I make it at all. It is a fact that FARC espoused leftist ideals, and I would make long odds that the folks who did in your friend’s relatives professed a love of Fidel at the level of yours for O! As for tort lawyers, ::shrug:: They have the money, and lots of my acquaintances in Kansas, Oklahoma City, and south Texas are flipping burgers. The airplanes soldier on, but when they wear out some things we take for granted will be a lot harder. They’re still made of the same stuff, put together the same way, because that’s the way it has to be done, court rulings or no. Physics and aerodynamics aren’t subject to the rulings of the Ninth Circuit.
Apparently you have the childlike faith in spray-and-pray common to nominal pacifists. I do assure you that my friend is a good bit more nuanced about it. You really ought to learn something about weapons and their effects. Or maybe not. A lot of your success comes from the fact that we can’t believe anybody is stupid enough to believe that crap, so we don’t react fast enough.
Regards,
Ric
Maj (P) John, you fuckin’ liar. Hope you saved up your combat pay, you won’t make much as a liar in civilian life. Oh wait, you claim to be a lawyer, if true, that’s different then.
If you have in questions concerning the Constitution, email them to the new President-elect and your soon to be CiC, he’s a Harvard-trained Constitutional lawyer and lecturer, as you might know.
RIc,
Spray-and-pray: Or as it has become known to many – the Iraqi Blossom of Death. The chain of firing that spreads outward from initial contact. Brrr… I remember a SVBIED going off and someone started shooting the wreckage. Man, that was, like, angry.
He’s talking about alphie.
279 – what in the heck are you talking about? If it is 276, that is directed toward alphie, or as he is known now “snuffles”. Save your angry-ness for an appropriate target.
I am in-house now. My IL ARDC number is 6226213 if you don’t think I am a licensed IL attorney.
I have no idea what you are talking about re: the alleged Constitutional expert/Second Amendment underminer in chief either. Have you confused threads?
If you wish a sample of alphie’s thoughts on the efficacy of the US Armed Forces in Iraq – see http://www.julescrittenden.com/2007/07/30/o-ye-of-little-faith/#comment-22912
Oh, so sorry, I’ve confused your ignore directives, Maj John. Hope all is swell.
Not really.
I think it’s pretty sad, actually, that you come home to America to tell people to shut-up after fighting for their right to speak-up. But I’ve said that before! While hoping for your injury free return I think I argued that.
Isn’t it a bit of conflation (and quite a bunch of abuse packed into the same conflation) to equate someone leaving a blog comment asking people to ignore a troll who wished someone injured or killed and the Constitutional prohibition on Congress making laws to prohibit the free exercise of speech?
More than just a matter of scale – it is a request by a private individual for a favor vs the State brining force to compel.
thor married one of his Russian hookers? Why, that’s right out of Pretty Woman!
Your moral presumptions suck and, frankly, aren’t moral at all. You’re loose in the head with your moral presumptions, just as you are with you silly-ass Capitalism is Godlier than Socialism bullshit.
I’d put a bounty on the head of your Colombian buddy if I had my dithers. I’d love to be in a room with a room full of committed FARC, “who will take this bullet from my hand and rid me of this meddlesome man? Who among you will be the one to kill this pig shit Romero!”
You’re not impressing me, Ric, with your Big adventure in Cali story. I’ve lived and worked in South America, been to Colombia before, saw my first freshly dead body in Peru, and let me tell you something – herr, hero worshiper – there are no heroes in those jungles.
Too much Hollywood and Bible school bigotry in your trough.
dithers = druthers
heha.
“How’d that free market for electric energy that Enron created work out?
Meow.”
Thor – Worked out fine for Enron but it kind of sucked for California, didn’t it. Fraud is what got Enron, not deregulated energy trading. Check your facts fuck stick.
Woof, Woof
I think you picked up something on your claimed globetrotting – Colombia, Peru, Russia, Toledo, Florida.
Did you find the Cupachabra yet?
Well Snuffles,
I originally cited Hayek’s work on knowledge, not economics. And Thor’s take on The Road to Serfdom is wrong. The book describes the phenomenon of how democratic nations giving their government the power to plan and control the economy eventually attract to the levers of that power the worst amongst them, resulting in dictatorship. The interesting part is that it was published in 1945, just a few years before Soviet imposed turned half the nations of Europe into military dictatorships.
But as to the knowledge thing. Hayek argued that compared to all the things there is to know, human beings know very, very little of it, that indeed, we are, collectively and individually universally ignorant. He also points out that most of the knowledge that we actually DO have is tacit knowledge, known only by those closest to it, in individual heads, nowhere accessible as any kind of coherent whole.
Leftist generally believe that our ability to think of ideas using abstract reasoning is sufficient to generally overcome our ignorance of most things to the point that we can run the world, including the economic world, as we desire, with smart leaders and benevolent state functionaries able to produce all manner of desirable social outcomes, from making health care free to controlling the climate.
Conservatives and classical liberals including Hayek tend to think much less of abstract reasoning as a practical substitute for actual knowledge of actual reality. Thus we believe that desirable social and economic outcomes can only be had in certain ways, and that the unimaginable complexities of the real world can only be successfully organized at a high level using the organic, spontaneous order of a generally free market, with market-derived prices communicating critical knowledge of supply and demand between economic producers, other producers, and consumers.
yours/
peter.
peter – Progtards like alphie and Thor are afraid to admit that they don’t know what they don’t know. It would give away the whole game.
“saw my first freshly dead body in Peru”
Thor – Did you use a condom or were you too excited?
Another boiling little redumblican. Dweeweguwayshun! Goo-goo-goo-good! Phwil Gwahm said so!!1!!
America’s tired of changing the fraud-filled diapers of free market mouseketeers. Piss off, waterhead.
Ugh, ugh, ugh. Me clever, you dumblepublican.
Hahahahaha.
We won, you lost.
See what I did there Thor?
Fuck stick pinhead. 1111!!!!eleventy!!!!111
Let me guess, you finished yourself on picture of Sarah Palin, again.
Welcome home Maj.
I have some good news and some bad news.
First the good news. There are now fewer pols in the City of Chicago to create political mischief.
Now the bad news.
They’re all in Washington DC.
Should we ever have an opportunity to meet, the first pint is on me.
Third time, monkeyboy: Point to the enumerated power that gives govt the right to absorb the private sector.
I’ll help: You can go with the part that gets into regulating interstate commerce. Fair enough?
You could say that. If you regain sobriety, kindly recall that I’m not a Republican and therefore that strawmen won’t kick over. Try again?
JHoward — it doesn’t matter. If you aren’t tonguing O!’s anus, you’re a Republican, and thus an enemy of the people.
Too late. In the first attempt to collect it, the Heroic Defenders of the Meek got half a dozen kids, all ten years old or under, and their half-Indian ama. Ooops.
The difference is: when people don’t perform to expectations, capitalists stop paying them. Socialists kill them, because of the kindness.
Regards,
Ric
We just need the right Socialists, Ric. Have Faith.
JHoward,
Yup. And the way you get the right socialists is to shoot all the wrong ones. A little messy, but that’s what backhoes are for, right?
Regards,
Ric
Wow. It’s like the thuggish behavior is reflexive.
It’s proof of concept, Rob. That personality disorder is some elegant, self-evident shit. Probably you could found nations on it.
At the risk of being nearly as tedious as thor: why are you folks trying to converse with him? It’s like trying to carry on a conversation with a parrot whose feed has been laced with mescaline.
Also, see: definition of insanity.
The hope of audacity, Slart. It’s all about sticking it to The Man.
It’s Two! Two! Two trolls in one!
Snuffles artfully pretends that skimming Hayek in college, once, means he has the authority to speak as to the man’s premises, arguments, and the cognitive ability of those that read him. Then shifting his nose skyward at the thought of actually KEEPING a BOOK in his HOME (think of the children!) when called on this fact. Well played, cornjob, but you’re fooling no one but yourself.
Thor, meanwhile, is fapping furiously to mental images of Perfect Markets, guarunteed and sanctified by the Man, and a little bit of putting bullets betwixt eyes of us kulaks. Because a man’s got to have hobbies.
Angry and drunk is no way to go through life, slappy. Now send one of your pseudo-Burroughsian epigram-abortions my way. Don’t fret on the viability, we’ll handle that this end.
Call it “inverse trolling”, Slart. I think it’s fun to lead them by the nose from “hope, change, and kindness” to firing squads and mass graves. It’s where they always end up, so I think I’ll work on minimizing the number of steps.
Regards,
Ric
Actually, it is all about approval ratings, Rob.
Then San Fran Nan and Harry Reid and the rest of the Dems running Congress will be kicked out forthwith for their approval ratings that are half of President Bush’s?
If you want a definition of insanity, Slart, and I know you do, check the vid Jeff just posted.
This is what I like about redumblican fucksticks. Who created the unregulated energy markets?
cHeCK uR fAcTs FuKKsTiKK!!!11!!!
Everything makes sense when you can only see the inside of your rocks tumbler, eh Narcrissco?
Fixed that for ya…
THERE WILL BE BLOOD!
“Who created the unregulated energy markets?”
Jesus? No, Buddha! No, the Demiurge! That’s it, the Demiurge!
Apparently fraud is ultra-double-plus impossible in a regulated system. Never heard of in the ol’ USSR, I’ll bet.
“cHeCK uR fAcTs FuKKsTiKK!!!11!!!”
Gesundheit.
Who created the unregulated energy markets?
The People’s Republic of California. Let me know if you have any questions.
iev beeen to peru and it was BADASS their i saw like a fukkin DEAD body their and my hot rusain girlfreind told me how BADASS i was for like going their and stuff anyway i know a shitload abuot that shit and yuo xtian idiots just wana kil poeple not liek my hot rususian girlfiand shes cool and obmanamas gonna tax uou yyuou lozers cuas yuo don twantta to payf ofor like raods ands chccools and slelcctircity and stonafu fl liek taht an yuo are aso pwned cos weer conna like killl youaf xtian banbngan ganbbangn pow! hahahs lozerssss nota i been to suotha amerikka no hoeross their not likee me didi dtela bout the tiem my hot rsussin girflfriand and and ai saw like this totallly DAED guy he was liek all dedad anshit no rly g
#317
Don’t forget to tell about the time you hit a black guy in the forehead for trying to steal your coat! Oh oh and tell us again about how you were in a bar once and someone pointed a gun at you and you didn’t flinch. You must be the toughest, smartest guy here ever, the only one who’s read a book, been in a fight, spoke another language, traveled to another country, had a foreign girlfriend, had a hazardous job, or knew someone in the military! Are you sure you’re not Indiana Jones?
You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re musing in over-simplified cliches. You risk becoming nothing more than a overly political harpy with such simplifications.
The tax revenue from a nation of telemarketers can’t afford to purchase enough Chinese-made tanks to support an effective military.
Dwill, baby dwill! What kind of low-information moron would imply the U.S. gov’t owns jack-up rigs? Who owns them? How many do they have? Our oil companies don’t have much drilling capacity. They’ve relied on foreign drillers on foreign soil. Should we ask the Chinese to make us some jack-up rigs? What if they say no? What if they insist CNOOC (the Chinese National Oil Co.) must develop our domestic fields and insist they get a cut. Gazprom is already in talks to partner with American oil companies to drill in Alaska. But then, Gazprom is Russian, and they’re able to make 400-ton offshore platforms and jack-up rigs all day and night. They didn’t collapse their basic industries.
Your free market slogans are not well thought out. Smelters don’t require empty office space. They require time to build. All your wants are upstream, therefore your calls for demolition of all that is downstream is senseless.
Instead of handing $25-billion to some bank that is a helluva lot more responsible for the economic shit-swirl we find ourselves in, why not re-think your not-so-well-thought-out economics. Instead of solely baggin’ on auto manufacturer’s management and their employees, take the time to figure out why you should bagging on those precious men in pin-stripped suits who have already been bailed out with no strings attached, and fuck that Barney Frank blame-all act, you really aren’t that stupid, I hope. At least drop the petty politics long enough to figure what makes sense. A consumer economy isn’t an economy, it’s a client state. Work from an understanding of that. A balanced steel and plastic (credit card) economy is the goal, not dumber-of-shit slogans that’ll leave us all bankrupt.
Classic economics might have something to do with classic liberal politics.
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