“So. You’re eating a sandwich,” Kenny said, sitting down in the chair across from mine.
I barely looked up. “Yes, Kenny. I’m eating a sandwich. That I made this morning. And brought with me to work. For my lunch.”
Kenny smiled, grabbing one of my napkins. “Cool,” he said. “I’ll take my half now, then. I’m freakin’ starving!”
~finis~
Just don’t tell me that he horked down half of your chocolate milk. The bastard.
might want to re-evaluate his friend status, there.
Kenny: “Dude, you didn’t put any arugula on this sucker? Lame”
Is ur so-called friend a plumber?-cuz if he even pointed to my sangy w/his shit stained fingers I’d be like- “It’s urs bro-Ill be in the bathroom- paybacks a bitch!”
“might want to re-evaluate his friend status, there.”
Racist.
Proper response “Kenny, you know what happens to you in every episode of South Park?”
What? No pie?
u were sitting across from Kenny?
whose seat did he steal?
That’s funny. Cause during lunch at my place Jorge and Estella helped themselves to my bean burritos. Being white, I took it as a compliment.
Same as my gun, Kenny…
When you pry it from my cold dead hands!
Or, Kenny could try asking Michelle O! to share her Iranian caviar and champagne, Lobster toast tips, and two fresh lobsters…Probably paid for by campaign funds, dont-cha-know…Because, you know, she’s earned it…
Some folks are just more equal than others…
a soft parade of kennys
took sanctuary in a cafeteria
so the monk bought them lunch
This is why I don’t have any friends who are socialists. Unless their lunch is better than mine, in which case I’m all, “But what about ‘spreading the wealth around,’ you fucking hypocrite!?”
Which is another reason why I don’t have any friends who are socialists.
Hmm. Does anyone remember the before-time when socialism had an actual concrete definition other than “liberals are all a bunch of poopy heads”?
On the bright side, there’s probably a much smaller number of LIVs that actually know who Edmund Burke was and what he stood for.
With Brock’s socialisms, Kenny will let you know that he likes the crust removed and Spicy Brown Deli Mustard the best. Otherwise, you know, you’ll have an illegal sandwich, and Brock can’t allow that.
Are you calling liberals socialists, ST?
Here’s an actual concrete definition: 1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
Jeff – point to one example where Obama has advocated any of those things. Tell me why your fever dream differs from what we are experiencing now in any meaningful way.
Wait, I thought we were talking about Kenny…
The New York Times says I should vote for Baracky. I’m not though cause the New York Times hates America and they just want me to vote for socialism. I don’t think I’d ever vote for anyone the New York Times says for me to cause I don’t trust them and I don’t think they really live in the real world over there.
Great piece from iowahawk:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/i-am-joe.html#trackback
Kenny? You won’t hear from him no more.
Is Kenny his middle name like Hussein?
“Comment by ST on 10/17 @ 4:57 pm #
Jeff – point to one example where Obama has advocated any of those things.”
In his own words:
“We’re going to spread the wealth around”.
Scratch a lefty, find a fascist.
Better not scratch them then.
A new definition of a socialist:
A physician who believes the parasite is more important that the patient.
That was in Alien, right?
ST
When someone tried to kindly point out to Obama that his proposal to double the capital gains tax would result in LESS revenue to the government, it didn’t phase The One
Obama: “I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
Obama doesn’t look at taxes or confiscatory policies as just the cost of trying to run a government or raise funds for government programs…he is looking at taxes as a TOOL to engage in “social, economic justice”. He is not interested in allowing people to succeed or fail according to their talents or work, he is interested in equal OUTCOMES.
The amoral soul of an authoritarian collectivist.
I didn’t mind lunch w/ Kenny
until he asked the hostess for a booth..
and then
all his rowdy friends showed up
Of course you conveniently forgot to mention how many gentle tribal foreigners from noble, ancient cultures were exploited and/or killed to bring you that sandwich in the first place, you heartless warmongering thug.
It’s probably not even pastrami, it’s polar bear. You fucking savage.
BECAUSE OF THE DIJONITY!
it’s not the midnight snack
or the freedom fries w/ heart attack..
it’s that gosh -darned
breakfast in bed he kept alluding to
I just can’t remember the hands?
left=eat/or wipe?
right=check/or credit card swipe?
– The irony is, as I said yesterady, if O makes it to the WH, something I still think is very much up in the air, as he installs his socialist progam, revebues wikk taper off, and he’ll find hinelf trying to sell from an empty wagon.
– Socialism doesn’t scare me, because it is self defeating, as has been shown innumerable times in history.
– If its going to take a large segment of the American electorate to learn that lesson the hard way once again, then so be it. When the smoke clears, they’ll have lots of time for remorse and to lick their wounds. What they won’t forget for a long time is that they’ll never rexover what they lose. It will be gone forever. They will only want one thing – to get back to a stable, free market based society, where individual initiative is not systematically destroyed.
– With Obama in the POTUS slot, you can see whats coming, and the subsequent major massive voter rebellion in 2012.
– But I by no means concede that – not by a long shot. I think the Obama camp is indulging in a little too much pre-game celebration.
chuck wagon!-hopefully they run outta arrows!
So O! wins and turns out to be a turd as a leader. How fast does the media which made him turn on him?
Fuck off, kate.
It’s soooo degrading to have to stand in line![fume!]
oh look! there’s KENNY!
KENNY..
KENNY!
yes/we met at Lourdes’…
ha ha- do you remember that plumber?…gawd-we used to call him link
the missing link
“How fast does the media which made him turn on him?”
Turn on him?
They’ll cover his ass, just like they’re doing now.
Bill Ayers?
Never heard of him.
Jeff, could you please ban kate’s idiotic ass?
Again.
A true patriot would have offered up his sandwich in a show of support for his fellow American.
Why do you hate America?
– nishit. Turns out you’re on the Left hand extreme 3 sigma edge of the bell curve for achievers. That’s the extreme in terms of under-achievement and personal initiative, as well as lazy thinking.
– So, as is so often the case with people who lack imagination, if you thought yourself special, you are, but only in the sense of being an unimportant freak.
– Enjoy your celebrity.
oh dear-let’s go native..
a SANDwich[hee-hee]
really- have u ever seen a hamburger roll?
some have these tiny little seed/and some don’t..
I have no Idea wot the difference is..
Q. What’s the difference between a Communist and a Socialist?
A. “Inter”
“They’ll cover his ass, just like they’re doing now.”
Not if inflation ramps up, unemployment goes up, hard times happens. Remember the MSM runs as a herd.
“Remember the MSM runs as a herd.”
To the left.
got any left over wealth?
we will put it in the ‘kenny’ jar
seventy=eleventy
Mark Steyn
“To the left.”
Monica’s blue dress
I know ur a boat person
I know ur family has been slaughtered…
but u’ll
just have to start ur own restaurant
didi mow!
as 4 affirmitave action cuz ur a minoritie-HA ha ha.,.
You know dre, now might be a good time for good folks like Steyn, Levin, Hanson, McCarthy and Goldberg to make a break for it — run from the pod people at the National Review and their “friends” at TNR, Atlantic, etc. like their lives depend on it.
Nishi can you give me your parents phone number? Maybe together we can find you some help.
Katie huffing again? Bet a PET scan shows a brain that resembles swiss cheese.
35% corporate income tax, ‘clio. Second highest in the world, buttercup.
Fail.
Why does cleo have streaks of paint around his/her nose and mouth?
And fifty trillion crisp American dollars in unpaid entitlements, ignoramus…
Why are you immune to facts, ‘clio? Suffering that projection-over-reality problem of the average ivy tower leftist?
Answer the implied question, ‘clio, and stop yanking my chain. Are contemporary Republicans at the least soft civil socialists or are they corporate stooges?
Why do you lie through your teeth, ‘clio? Or did I already answer and predict that all in one comment?
Fail. But I repeat myself.
Ah, opportunists. And I’m making them complex.
Given your propensity to deflect everything that doesn’t match the warped template in your head, that’s rich.
Answer the question: How did eight years of Bushco advance the entitlement burden to fifty trillion dollars while corporate taxes run second highest in the world if your premise holds water.
You’re the one making things complicated. Lying does that.
They are what they’ve always been……Opportunists. You’re making them far too complicated.
So says the biggest trolling simpleton!
Still waiting for an answer Jeff.
As far as “voting aainst my own best interests”, moron, I have two:
1. Seeing the constitutional republic succeed in keeping fundamental rights upheld, foremost among them protecting property, basic freedoms, and personal sovereignties.
2. Rejecting the inefficiency of getting ten cents out of DC for every dollar put in.
So explain. You want to prance around presuming motives and outcomes, then point out how either are served by voting Democrat this cycle.
I meant the national debt, idiot. It’s also what I said. Or did Bush run up fifty trillion just since Jan first? Clinton during any year of his term? Bush 41? Reagan?
How about I just FedEx you a shovel, you tool.
oooooh, is it request night!?
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN!!!!
such as???
You better believe it does, collectivist. And of the two of us, apparently only I know the importance of why.
‘Clio, on your planet is it considered a freedom-enhancing virtue to legislate envy and theft into law?
oh yes there is.
I demand it! it being open request night and all.
Cleo here are my reasons for hating socialism in the form of a short story. (I am really bored sorry)
I was lazy until the age of 22. I worked dead end bartending and barbacking jobs. I hung out with the wrong crowd for the most part. Mostly I would work and spend my money to party that weekend. I remember sitting in a bar around 3 months after 911 talking to my friends about what happened. They were moaning and bitching about what we should do or not do in response. I looked down the bar and asked the simple question “Well what are we doing? We are sitting around here drinking are we going to do anything about it?”. I remember the blank looks I got in response.
The next day I woke up with a huge hangover and dug up my birth certificate and social security card and drove myself to the nearest recruiter. I signed up for a 6 year stint in the Army reserves. Well to make a long story short within the year I already had orders to go to Iraq and was there by Feb 03. Spent about a year there saving up every dime I had. After the 2 first hectic months of over 14 hours a day with no days off, I worked 12 and a half hours a day and at the most got 1 day a week off. During my off hours instead of trying to hook up with the 5 ugly chicks in the unit or watching DVD’s bought for a dollar off a random Iraqi, I would work out for an hour and then go back to the TOC. The TOC had internet and I used it to take online college classes. At most I got around 4 hours of sleep it seemed like on normal days but I figured, fuck it I might as well advance myself since my life is on hold here in this hellhole and everyone is back in the real world getting ahead in life or enjoying themselves. I remember trying to get other people to take online classes too since they were free. Only 1 person took me up on that offer and I had to sign him up myself. Everyone else seemed to just wanna sit around and watch videos on their off hours which I did not blame them for since life sucked bad enough at the time why do school work.
Well after my year was up I applied to college. I was accepted and ended up graduating around 3 years later. I used the degree I had earned and my military experience to land me a job in the government contracting field. I am probably not considered some cliche “Joe six-pack” (I can down a freakin case), but I make around 50 a year which qualifies me as middle class I guess. I have worked for every god dam scrap I have right now, both intellectually and economically. Now the same people I have talked about in previous situations, the ones that sat around, want to take my hard earned dollars. FUCK THEM. I care about my buddies sure, but they are not entitled to my money or my property. Knock on my freakin door before you enter, you do not come in my house and take my freakin microwave cause your’s blew out. You can come over and ask for some mustard sure, you do not come over with a politician and take it. I am not entitled to someone elses money either. I would never dream of that. Somehow I am missing where that is socially or morally acceptable. Maybe I was raised wrong who knows.
The end.
If property isn’t important cleo why are you so Hell bent on taking it from other people?
What the jackass ‘clio misses, not surprisingly, is what makes her breed so offensive: There are a number of rights seen as so utterly essential to the survival of the originalist ideal as to not warrant excessive enumeration, if any. They don’t even appear in the Amendments. They are akin to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and any normal human doesn’t even have to think twice to understand them.
They are codified into the most inherent, instinctive, and automatic laws we have. Except for in collectives.
‘Clio denies all this.
Among them are don’t even think about stealing my family or my stuff. They shoot even horse thieves.
and what happens if everyone decides to make under 250K?
People, in any desirable expression of freedom and of the American way of life, don’t really exist without being able to hold property.
Strip them of their property and you have stripped them of freedom. Take away their freedom and they die. Which is why they fight to the death for it.
‘Clio the gulagist. Staggering. Probably next up is an essay on the nobility of strapping bombs on women and children for the right of self-determination.
Cleo the point is what makes you entitled to my hard earned money? I really want to know where you get that.
“Property before people…….no explanation needed.”
Late term abortion
Is $250k enumerated somewhere, ‘clio? Or is it etched on a stone tablet? Maybe inside the Washington Monument?
Because it’s an arbitrary figure, you blithering idiot, one that absolutely by its very existence as such proves the utter folly of politicians running on the fumes of the purely democratic mob.
It’s a figure you’re not even bright enough to have come up with yourself.
Hey Cleo
What do they call people withOUT property rights?
See, unlike Barry, I AM descended from such people. I refuse to vote my children/grandchildren back into that state.
Talking in defeated cryptics is only proof of the bankruptcy of your rambling, emotional, unsupportable position, ‘clio. Ask thor.
Fail again.
cleo is trying not to say “all property is theft”
Cleo I do not care if someone makes over 250. What difference does that make to me? Why do you feel that, YOU personally I am saying, are entitled to their money?
Mr. Pink
If you’re single, Barry and Cleo want to start punishing you at $125,000.
For starters.
You don’t need to worry about more taxes until you reach $250k AFTER all deductions.
How did you arrive at that number, Cleo?
The question you illustrate, ‘clio, isn’t the validity of taxation. It’s by what damn authority you would tax me.
Answer the question and stop spinning.
Cleo
When you’re in the grocery checkout line, do they check your income level before they decide what to charge you for a gallon of milk?
Do you feel the obligation to pay taxes of any kind?
Is that a trick question?
“Property before people…….no explanation needed.â€Â
Partial birth abortion
You are arguing Cleo, well as far as I can tell, that anyone making over 250 grand “deserves” to have more of their money taken than the general populace. Their money will then be given to people who earn less. I am simply responding by asking where you get the mentallity that anyone is entitled to the hard work of another. That is all.
Reaganomics sold by brilliant Hucksters who have cornholed you and everyone else.
If you think that Bush and the congressional GOP has been implementing Reaganomics these past 8 years, then you have no clue what Reaganomics are.
Property before people…….no explanation needed.
Property as one’s sovereign realm, yo. As in, this little spot of dirt is MINE, and the gubmint can’t take it away from me, and I can do pretty much as I please on it.
The purpose of the Constitution was to set up a tyranny-resistant government, and the right to private property is one of the essential elements of resisting tyranny. If the state owns everything or if it can confiscate whatever it wants, then you’re edging toward tyranny, if you’re not already there.
::shrug:: they inflate the money until $250K is the poverty line. (See: 1973-76. When I were a tad, $20K was doctor, lawyer, bigdeal corporate money. Now it’s below “poverty” — but the tax rates on the books are still doctor, lawyer level.)
Look at it this way: When everybody who has a job is paying the AMT, it’ll be a lot simpler to file.
Regards,
Ric
I am simply responding by asking where you get the mentallity that anyone is entitled to the hard work of another.
Easy. SemenClio is a thief.
You are arguing morality with a thief, Mr. Pink.
Ric Locke you always bring well resourced and intelligent commentary here. Can I ask you where people get the thought in their head that they are entitled to the hard work or property of another? I can’t grasp it at all.
Define how that is “fair” to both parties please Cleo.
I can’t grasp it at all.
Mr. Pink, I think the problem is that you’re assuming that Semen, and people like Semen, are men of good will, operating from some rational ethical/moral position. Since no such ethically justifiable position exists, you’re (understandably) mystified by their behavior.
If, however, you operate from the assumption that they are common thieves and murderers, no such mystery obtains.
Occam’s Razor, dude.
Any American who looks at another citizen and says “You will pay more because you can AFFORD it” is a clear and present danger to the republic.
Obama is on track to make half the voters in the country non-payers of ANY tax.
Clear.and.present.danger.
I said it this morning: I.D. requirement at polling places to vote and a flat tax would kill the Democrat party deader than Lenin.
They’d smell worse, though, and not look nearly as good.
And what Cleo doesn’t understand — Lefties never do, or if they do, their ideology is too important to let simple facts get in the way — is that when you make productivity, especially hyperproductivity — costly, people say screw it and settle for mediocrity. Or $240k by your lights.
See, the intellectual caste prefers socialism because it’s administered by — wait for it — the intellectual caste. With capitalism, any moron can make it work for them, and it’s not unusual for people who’ve dropped out of high school to become filthy rich.
OTOH, capitalism does not result in extremely high pay or worse, high position, for the intellectual caste.
Oh yes, they say it’s about fairness for the little guy, but we can see how well they regard the little guy when that little guy gets too uppity and questions The One. Or runs for Veep.
The intellectual caste despises all castes but their own. And it’s all envy: deep, pustulent, green envy. Because it’s intolerable to them that their Exceptional Wisdom is not prized more by the current system. Bastards.
There’s no such thing as “progressive” taxation, either.
“Progressive” means “we target a narrow enough demographic they can’t defend themselves at the ballot box”.
Why are you arguing with ‘cleo over the morality of taking people’s labor? He wants to reinstitute slavery. He thinks he’s entitled to all your labor, if he can find an excuse to take it.
At the moment, that excuse is you have/earn too much money. Who knows what the next excuse will be? Asking a question that makes The One look bad?
See, the intellectual caste prefers socialism because it’s administered by  wait for it  the intellectual caste.
At least until Koba the Dread comes along.
After that, things aren’t quite so cushy for the intelligentsia, as a rule.
‘Clio, under the US Constitution, do 51 of you have the right to take the property of 49 of me? Or are property rights necessary?
Does the law against theft — one so precious to the individual and his freedom that it’s not even described by a politically assailable constitutional term such as, say, the rights to speech and self-protection — ever justifiably fall victim to the mob of a majority?
In your town do police and property owners fundamentally protect property from theft? If so, is there a specific constitutional enumeration or Amendment by which that is done, or did that ethic predate the US Constitution as a fundamental assumed and historic right?
(Were you aware that likewise the right to parent has resoundingly been upheld by supreme courts hundreds of times in the last 200+ years yet it’s never become an Amendment? And it’s not mentioned, IIRC, in the Constitution?)
So by what right mentioned absolutely nowhere would you by dint of a simple, arbitrary whim and political majority take my stuff and call me out because I disagree with the covetous, thieving mob that does so?
Fairness?
How about “You pay ten percent of your gross pay in one lump sum on April Fifteenth, annually, or one fourth of the estimated yearly total on a quarterly basis”.
How’s that sound. Bill Gates? Check. Abu Mumia Jamal? Check. Warren Buffet? Check. TmjUtah? Check.
Every body pays equally under the law. Every body has a stake.
Shit and hellfire. I’m too angry to play this tonight.
Have a great weekend.
And fuck Barak Obama and his communist, terrorist hoodlum fucking friends. And somebody get a blanket for old Joe, he’s molting plugs again.
This video lays it out for the Cleos and Nishis in words so simple I think even they can understand it:
http://tinyurl.com/56v5nf
We may never agree about the definition of fairness.
Of course you won’t, and that’s really the whole point, isn’t it? If we agree, there’s the danger of some day attaining the goal and then the game is over for you. How much better to keep the high-minded word absolutely empty of actual meaning so as to fill it with whatever confiscatory political project can be dreamed up at a given moment.
I am a capitalist. I own a business.
I also look very dapper in my top hat.
“I also look very dapper in my top hat.”
And monocle. Mustn’t forget the monocle!
—-
No definition of fairness should include theft Semanticleo.
Brief point to throw out. What scares me the most in all this is the obvious breakdown in the separation of powers that this election could usher in. With such a very left leaning House, a teetering senate, and a rubber stamp executive…. it just keeps looking worse. AND you would have a systematic weakening of the Executive to stave off future power from conservative administrations. And O! will play along because he is only a puppet.
SCOTUS is the last line, and it is too vulnerable.
“Comment by Semanticleo on 10/17 @ 7:11 pm #
“foremost among them protecting property, basic freedoms, and personal sovereignties.â€Â
I couldn’t help notice the order………property first….
That says a lot about you.”
And that comment says even more about you, you retarded marmoset.
I don’t see any defensible reason to slander the noble marmoset.
Intellectual caste? So basically you’re saying stupid people got us into this mess, and only even stupider people can get us out of it by shear gut instincts.
Excelsior!
Cleo, do you think 40% of Americans should pay no income tax at all? Do you think some Americans should get a check they didn’t earn written by people who did earn simply because the government can make it so?
“OTOH, capitalism does not result in extremely high pay or worse, high position, for the intellectual caste.”
Also, I might add, there is a polarization of ‘skill sets’ in capitalism, which is to say that the English Major specializing in meta-narrative analyses of gender roles in late Victorian (heh) literature well read of Marx and Engels is infinitely less useful to society than the pocket protecter guy who becomes a civil engineer. The English chick/dude, however, is well polished at all the cocktail parties and seems well-spoken, insightful, thus important, whereas the engineer may spend his friday nights playing world of warcraft. The former’s sense of importance is artificially inflated, and he and his compadres deign to get to the fore of the society they’ve been so assiduously deconstructing, while the soon to be engineer builds that same society.
Socialism elevates the narrow intellectualism of the English major because its a theoretical construct conceived and reinforced primarily inside academia, in essence repolarizing the ‘worth’ of individuals in society.
Mr. Pink: You have it backward. Communalism is how we started out. Have a look at the way chimpanzees and great apes live. In those days, the foragers who brought in food had to share it with the ones who stayed behind (mostly the women) or the tribe died out. Which is the truly wonderful irony in all this debate: those who call themselves “Progressives” are, in fact, longing for the long-ago Good Old Days. They’re not merely reactionary, they’re retrogressive.
The concept of “property” began with agriculture. If you stick seeds in the ground, and just anybody is allowed to take whatever grows, there’s no reason to go to the work of weeding and cultivating, or for that matter to stick seeds in the ground in the first place. That was also the beginning of turning the tribal hetman into der Führer and the origin of the military. This bit of property belongs to us, and ain’t nobody gonna come steal it! We’re big and bad and need more Lebensraum, so we’re gonna go take it from the bunch over the hill! For a contrast, look up the way the American Indians lived and carried on trade. They preserved the earliest forms much longer than anybody else. That doesn’t make them pacifists, of course.
The version of private property that we use derives from my hobbyhorse: avoiding centralization. That’s not the way they saw it, of course. The Leader was rewarding his most violent and/or sycophantic followers by assigning them to manage (and profit from) part of the land, so long as they continued to defer and pay tribute — but the tribes that did it that way did better, over all, than the ones who didn’t, because decentralized administration is more effective than centralized.
Libertarian theories are extremely useful as analysis tools, because they strip away a lot of the cruft that’s accumulated over the millenia, but they aren’t a basis of Government.
Regards,
Ric
“Comment by Semanticleo on 10/17 @ 7:14 pm #
Property before people…….no explanation needed.”
There is no dicotomy, you retarded marmoset.
There are NO human rights without property rights.
Tool.
Of course you won’t, and that’s really the whole point, isn’t it? If we agree, there’s the danger of some day attaining the goal and then the game is over for you. How much better to keep the high-minded word absolutely empty of actual meaning so as to fill it with whatever confiscatory political project can be dreamed up at a given moment.
See this is where they lose me again. Is their version of “fairness” everyone making 40 grand a year with no regard to any hard work? (Hell they pull numbers out their heads why don’t I?) Even if that requires taking money from anyone making over 200k. Give me some figures please. Should everyone make indexed middle class wages is that fair?
“Comment by Semanticleo on 10/17 @ 7:28 pm #
Do you feel the obligation to pay taxes of any kind?”
Yes.
Thanks for the response Ric.
See this is where they lose me again. Is their version of “fairness†everyone making 40 grand a year with no regard to any hard work?
No, the whole point is to keep “fairness” from ever acquiring a hard definition. Once it does, there is a goal to be attained and their whole political project collapses once that goal is reached. By keeping “fairness” a gaseous concept, they never put themselves out of business.
“We may never agree about the definition of fairness.”
You don’t believe in fairness.
You believe in envy.
You believe in greed. Your greed.’
You believe in hatred.
You’re a reactionary
ST, there’s a little test we’re going to need you to pass before we can continue this conversation.
128.
Yeah like endstating racism. I get it. Sucks to be anybody but the ones setting the rules though.
– Just a little heads up Semi-colon-cleaner.
– Raw jealousy will eat out your insides, and kill you young.
– On a different note, the Univ. of Nebraska will not be inviting Ayers to speak at the school. They claim they rethought the invitation when his unrepentant infamy was brought their attention. Apparently UofN officials live in a very highly educated cave.
Clio and others,
Imagine a bell curve. Now in our current capitalist system, incomes are distributed across a near textbook bell curve. In the perfect communist system, that bell curve becomes a straight line because everybody, docs, lawyers, janitors, all make “The Salary.” There is no incentive to social mobility or innovation/invention, because you’ve always had and always will have “The Salary.”
In U.S. capitalism, that bell curve is always moving to the right, wherein the rich get richer, and the poor get richer. It doesn’t matter that the poor have cell phones and have obesity as a rather counterintuitive problem, but what matters to progressives is the difference between the ends of the bell curve.
Baracky wants to soak the rich, moving the far right of the bell curve leftward, in essence transferring the far right side of the curve to the far left. But when the rich have no capital left to be soaked of, the entire bell curve moves left. The rich get poorer and the poor get poorer, with the added benefit of removing the means and incentive for the poor to move upwards.
We could sit here all night and point out the litany of socialist failures of this nature.
“Comment by ST on 10/17 @ 7:58 pm #
Intellectual caste? So basically you’re saying stupid people got us into this mess,”
Yeah.
Democrats.
Nonsense. Socialism has become a weasel word to deflect attention away from the abject failures of movement conservatism.
Property is that set of things that let us tell the rest of the world to go fuck itself. Accumulating wealth lets you retire, or start your own business, or just take a vacation. A home lets you get away from the rest of humanity, carve out a space to your own requirements, live the way you want to live.
And they may be “just things”, but the process of getting those things involves providing worth to others, through your labor, your knowledge, or your wealth. My laptop represents about 100 hours of my work just in its purchase price: if someone were to take it, they would be taking those 100 hours for their own benefit.
There’s no difference between taking my laptop and taking my earnings under the guise of taxation. Yes, there are legitimate purposes for taxes: basic infrastructure, defense, administration of the courts, emergency services. But taking my earnings — effectively confiscating my time — in order to “spread the wealth” is as far from legitimate as it gets.
And, yes, in the end property really boils down to time. Somewhere along the line, someone traded their time to serve someone else in a manner that netted them some wealth. Time is the most precious resource each of us has, and anyone who takes it — or the outcome of how we spend our time — from us unnecessarily is as immoral as I can imagine.
“The Leader was rewarding his most violent and/or sycophantic followers by assigning them to manage (and profit from) part of the land, so long as they continued to defer and pay tribute  but the tribes that did it that way did better, over all, than the ones who didn’t, because decentralized administration is more effective than centralized.”
Seems to be the way outsourcing the destruction of Joe the plumber is working.
“Socialism has become a weasel word to deflect attention away from the abject failures of movement conservatism.”
Wrong. Try again.
You are the proud recipient of TROLLHAMMER.
Enjoy it. You earned it.
I don’t pay enough regard to your posts to know precisely what this is, ‘cleo, but if it’s a mark of low esteem in your eyes, I’m honored.
N. O’Brain – Six years of absolute Republican control. Executive. House. Senate.
“Comment by Dash Rendar on 10/17 @ 8:16 pm #
Clio and others,
Imagine a bell curve. Now in our current capitalist system, incomes are distributed across a near textbook bell curve. In the perfect communist system, that bell curve becomes a straight line because everybody, docs, lawyers, janitors, all make “The Salary.†There is no incentive to social mobility or innovation/invention, because you’ve always had and always will have “The Salary.—
What was that old Russian joke from the communist days:
“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
That statement is the be all and end all of seman’s desires.
Pitiful, ain’t it?
Or from the KGB guy all hopped up on acid in ‘The Good Shepard,’ “its all painted rust.”
BTW ST not worth responding to, except for Fil-I-Bus-Ter.
ST, Majority Leaders Pelosi and Reid would also like to see the results of your test. They don’t want to discuss it, mind you, but they’d like to know.
“Comment by ST on 10/17 @ 8:23 pm #
N. O’Brain – Six years of absolute Republican control. Executive. House. Senate.”
Since when did Republican = conservative?
For example, I voted for Bush the second time for his foreign policies, not his domestic ones.
Por ejemplo, Bush should have been bitch slapped for signing McCain-Feingold into law.
Anyone know when that happened? Because I can’t remember a whole hell of a lot getting done.
FWIW, I don’t think Obama is a socialist in the classic sense of the word – he’s not about to nationalize the means of production and distribution of goods and services. He learned that in Chicago…there’s just too much money to be made and power to be accumulated in confiscating the incredible wealth generated by capitalism. He’ll be happy to attach hisself parasitically to this magnificent machine and suck off enough to buy votes from those he makes dependent on the continuation of the system. He’ll crank down on the regulatory apparatus of the State to punish enemies and bring them to heel. In short, he’ll expand the state to benefit himself and his political cronies. We’ll all be poorer for it, but who cares about serving in Heaven when you’re reigning in Hell?
““They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work…and on those religious holidays they still pretend they observe, they allow us to bow our heads in thanks for the bountiful rewards of the Great Peoples Workers Party, for the gifts we are not about to receive.â€Â
Por ejemplo, Bush should have been bitch slapped for signing McCain-Feingold into law.
And No Child Left Behind. Fucking insane law, that one.
Duh. O’Brain, that’s oxycretinous (a word I just made up: it’s one step worse than “oxymoronic”.)
If you “feel the obligation” it isn’t a tax, it’s a debt — and you’re halfway to giving Semanticleo the point. This is even good American jurisprudence, the so-called “Learned Hand Rule”: Taxes are forced exactions, not voluntary contributions, and no man is obligated to pay more than is demanded.
The problem is simple, and amply illustrated by the last couple centuries of history: You can’t do agriculture, let alone industrialization, using the rules of communal tribalism. The American Indians preserve communal tribalism for a long time by specifically rejecting agriculture, to the point of teaching the young men to stamp it out wherever it was encountered — which was the underlying bone of contention in the Indian Wars. The kicker is, they also accepted the consequences: an enormously restricted resource base, resulting in a minuscule population living in conditions you or I would be arrested for subjecting a dog to.
If you insist on communal tribalism but demand a larger resource base, you get slavery. Some of the more “advanced” (from the European observers’ point of view) tribes did that, and of course Europeans, who were originally as tribal as anybody on the planet, went for it in a big way.
People like Semanticleo, and Obama (and his followers), don’t understand any of that because, to them, abundant resources are simply a given. They themselves don’t contribute in any way to creating them, so from their point of view they simply rise out of the ground, just as the wolverine-kills and apples did for the foragers so long ago. It is therefore perfectly reasonable for them to concentrate on “fair” distribution, and ignore production entirely. That doesn’t make them right, and in fact every time that’s been tried it’s resulted in disaster, but when food-growing is a faraway abstraction and electricity comes from wall-sockets, it’s an easy assumption to make based on (limited) experience.
Regards,
Ric
Whatever Pablo. Keep playing with your Sean Hannity action toys and imagine taking over the world.
I’ll be at the grown-up table.
the taco bell curve
the more russian jokes u tell
the more russian jokers sneek across
the “border”
btw-what’s a bookstore?
don’t take the brown acid
Excellent post, Ric (149)
“That doesn’t make them right, and in fact every time that’s been tried it’s resulted in disaster, but when food-growing is a faraway abstraction and electricity comes from wall-sockets, it’s an easy assumption to make based on (limited) experience.”
Agreed. I am beginning to think that convincing them otherwise is about as useless as some anti-war protestor hoping that one day all of humanity will unite.
They’ll expect coherence too, ST. The circle block only fits in one hole. Can you find it?
By regaining the tremendous respect they all used to have for us before Chimpy McHitlerburton! O!
– The Left is fairly easy to understand. They lust after something that someone else has earned. They deny morality, principles, and the very source and work it takes to produce that something so they can convince themselves that its just “fair”.
what an echo chamber-fuck!
we all know dis’ shit! try to convince ur family members!
at least a thanksgiving i could wave a drumstick in their face/too bad the election’s beforehand
but halloween?
there’s only so much almonds to spread abouts…
joy to the world
Eh, I dunno. Pre-Columbian cultures didn’t have much beef with agriculture; the Mississippians had a loose “empire” that spanned the (duh) Mississippi valley plus quite a bit, largely based on corn. The last of the Mississippians (the Natchez) were able to fight off DeSoto during his entrada, but were wasted by imported disease. They survived, though, up until the early 1700s when the French exterminated them.
And, of course, the Aztecs, Incas, etc. could never have accomplished what they did without agriculture.
The Indian Wars were more the result of population pressures and relocation policies pushing the Indians onto land more suited to herding than the mixed farming/gathering they had been doing. After they adapted, Europeans moved onto that marginal land and made a living farming it anyway. Rather like the range wars of the late 1800s: cattlemen vs. sheep farmers vs. sod busters, it was competition for the same resources the different groups used in different ways.
Ain’t that the truth. I’m constantly amazed at the sheer ignorance and unconcern some people express for what it takes to maintain civilization. They assume that things have always been as they are, or that if it was ever different, it was because people were less intelligent.
It’s also stunning to see how often this ignorance is matched with a fervent belief that humanity and its lot can be perfected.
Well, yeah, but that ain’t the point. There are many, many instances of people doing things for one purpose — but actually accomplishing something quite different, and sometimes unimaginable (to them). This is one case.
What I was trying to do was illuminate the difference between personal property — my spear, your loincloth, his drinking-bowl — and what the common law calls “real” or “freehold” property. In the crudest case it’s a matter of defensibility — if somebody tries to take my spear, I can stick him with it. But if the tribe across the hill, which hasn’t taken up agriculture, rolls up to take “my” crops on the ground that food is where you find it and they found it here, I’m going to need help driving them off. The quid pro quo is: so long as I pay tribute to the Leader as representative of the whole tribe, the others will help me defend “my” property.
The system works because it’s an end-around on the Tragedy of the Commons. If the tribe decides that, despite my tribute, the crops I grow are available to all on the same basis as if they were simply found in the wood, having grown there naturally, that reimposes the Commons and the system falls apart — and nobody eats at the next harvest-time.
Regards,
Ric
Rob: Oh, yeah. Ric’s Rule #1: It ain’t that simple. I was deliberately oversimplifying the situation to make a point. American Indian culture was far richer, and far more complex, than my deliberate strawman.
Regards,
Ric
Ric, have you ever considered starting your own blog?
Your stuff is way too good to be buried in the comments (not that we don’t all appreciate it).
that’s why we’re number one-agriculture base/[depleted by asinine ethanol policies]
natural resource[not takn to their true potential]
military[nuff’ said!]
protestant work ethic
it’s amazing to think
A some people want to take us down FROM WITHIN
B that i can vote
C I CAN WALK IN ANY DIRECTION IN 2 MILES AND FIND A STORE W/ AISLES DEDICATED TO FOOD CATERGORIES![i.e/dairy/meat/paper goods!
btw-fuck all u fuckers who disagree..
gotta pee…
ohhh-toilet paper!
Still reading all the comments
One thing not mentioned [yet]:
Socialism is eminently fair and logical if you exclude the elements of time, birthrates, human choice and endeavor, and inflation.
Its true, you know: Everybody can be happy at stasis, frozen in time. All the money is redistributed and nobody raises prices. Problem is, happy secure people have kids, further burdening the system, which then demands higher taxation of ‘the rich’ who then stop producing b/c they’re going broke or they’re seeking betterment for themselves and their kids, so they leave.
Inevitably, as wealth flees, the walls come down to entrap ‘the rich’, who are of course no longer rich. ‘The rich’ are replaced as a target by class distinctions over time b/c the system itself worked so well, in living memory even. Obviously, these greedy hereditary greedy hoarder scum must be punished for wrecking the system.
Why, why won’t they work?
SBP, I’ve considered it many times, and even gone so far as to set up accounts. The problem is that I’m a reactor, not an actor — if I’m not stimulated I produce nothing. Without Jeff’s lead and the other comments here, I just mutter fragments to myself and never even organize them, much less express them.
Regards,
Ric
euro-weenies ain’t haven’t kiddies
john travolta just had to cancel his movie that he was makin in the french suburbs cuz o “utes”i’d say “think about it” but mark steyn wrote a book-he’s so with it…man!
i don’t fear the 4 yrs of the flying manger
it’s the 60 yrs of post democratic
house buildin
UN -coddlin’
MLK widowin’ funeral
america bashin
class/?…
any ex repub prez’s got the “rag” mouth?
NO!
that pisses my pants!
You know what would be really cool? If Kate would find a persona that can type a coherent sentence. That would be a marked improvement.
yes.
i perdict-ur traffic goes down/gas prices up after election
sentences-I got a sentence/ but I challenged it at the Anneberg/kiddie school
guilty as hell
free as a bird
only in AMERIKKA
– I predict your presence here goes down.
#171
I suppose if you are stoned out of your mind on peyote that post would make sense. For the rest of us, not so much.
In other words nish, step away from the keyboard until you sober up…or grow up, whichever comes first.
– As I posted over at the Pub, now that the Ohio supremes have endorsed Obama, does any one seriously believe the widespread voter fraud being perpetrated by the Democrats, through their illegally tax payer funded group ACORN, will be corrected to any great extent before the election?
Giving up half a sandwich isn’t the worst of it… it is the flat screen TV and the case of beer back at Kenny’s house. Because sharing those things runs against the grain.
Cock is my life. I am liberated by talking and worshipping cock. ACORN and cock….fraudulantly cockalicious.
Ric, I really appreciate your comments here as well. I always make it a point to read them. I tried to connect with a ‘Ric Locke’ on linkedin, but it either wasn’t you, it was you and you haven’t noticed the request, or you just don’t wanna. Oh well. I suppose I can be happy with the edification I derive from your comments. Like that South American economist you mentioned in another thread; great stuff; gotta go find it again so I can google that guy.
Scratch a socialist…find a fascist.
– shut up thor.
Jeff
I put a lot of cock for Thor to lick about ACORN Under Dan’s 32 million of taxpayers dollars to ACORN post, including the hush hush shady loan the ACORN founder paid to cover-up his brother embezzlement from the authorities and board for years that has just come to light in a whistle blower lawsuit.
“Scratch a socialist…find a fascist.”
That’s the ones without the “Inter”
See #42
I haven’t approached ST much in this thread, mostly because I don’t know where ST’s coming from. Assuming ST does.
Maybe that just changed:
Obvious bullshit on both counts: (1) The S-word has come tragically late to the national political discussion. Given the mammoth size and reach of social government, it was appropriate fifty years ago. (2) I highly, highly doubt you can define failures and “conservatism” in the same paradigm.
So. Define conservatism as you use it, itemize those failures, and then explain why “conservatism” is a failed point of view from which follows a tangible failure to mankind.
If you’re good, maybe you can then join the ranks of all those moonbats who pass by here who are invited to perform a similar service finally explaining why leftism makes a good philosophy.
You’ll be the very first if you can pull that off.
“Taxes are forced exactions, not voluntary contributions, and no man is obligated to pay more than is demanded.”
Oh, I know tht.
But there ARE legitimate functions for government to perform.
National defense, for example.
I like to think that my taxes are buying my sons rifle.
And bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.
“I don’t pay enough regard to your posts to know precisely what this is, ‘cleo, but if it’s a mark of low esteem in your eyes, I’m honored.”
No reflection on your powers of deduction when I say I was talking to Pink. Not sure how you feel the need for TrollHammer, but you haven’t gotten it from me.
I’m sure if Kenny were really starving, you’d happily give him part of your sandwich. yWhat you describe is not “socialism”, it’s a Thatcher/Reagan situation: Kenny simply stole your sandwich. In a social democracy Kenny would not have to beg for a sandwich.
“People like Semanticleo, and Obama (and his followers), don’t understand any of that because, to them, abundant resources are simply a given.”
Abundant resources WERE a given before credit became our primarye product. The Digital World has been a boon to those who merely wish to game the system, rather than elevate the human condition by innovation.
Take a Pillar of American Ingenuity like the Auto Industry.
Because PROTECTING their turf, (IOW Defense) as a response to global competition, they missed a key opportunity……
E.G. Going above and beyond on merely MEETING CAFE requirements and going on the OFFENSIVE. Is there anyone
who forsaw the end of cheap oil? I think they did, but they decided to play it safe and produce cars with innovations such as TWO moonroofs instead of just one, or 500hp rather than just 425. There was no vision. They weren’t required to have vision, so they didn’t develop any.
big d- ur rite/ apologies
it’s that damn jim morrison poster i put on my wall
i put it up/but i can’t take it down/
and the peyote
again
in the cups
peace[btw-I’m a taper!-can’t spell]
Pardon, but that isn’t me.
I haven’t commented here since Jeff told me to go.
~fin~
and look! im not banned.
lol
i hadn’t even tried actually because i thought i was banned.
“The Great Depression was the consequence of a massive shift of income shares to profits, away from wages and thus consumption, at the very moment  the 1920s  that expanded production of consumer durables became the crucial condition of economic growth as such. This shift produced a tidal wave of surplus capital that, in the absence of any need for increased investment in productive capacity (net investment declined steadily through the 1920s even as industrial productivity and output increased spectacularly), flowed inevitably into speculative channels, particularly the stock market bubble of the late 20s.
….[Likewise], a shift of income shares away from wages and consumption, toward profits, has characterized the pattern of economic growth and development over the last twenty-five years….The offset to this massive shift of income shares came in the form of increasing transfer payments  government spending on social programs  since the 1960s; these payments were the fastest growing component of labor income (10 percent per annum) from 1959 to 1999. The moment of truth reached in 1929 was accordingly postponed. But then George Bush’s tax cuts produced a new tidal wave of surplus capital with no place to go except into real estate, where the boom in lending against assets that kept appreciating allowed the “securitization†of mortgages  that is, the conversion of consumer debt into promising investment vehicles.
….And while consumers were going deeper into debt to service the current account deficit and finance economic growth, corporations were abstaining from investment: “The recent household deficit more than offset the persistent financial surplus in the business sector. For a period of six years  the longest since the second world war  US business invested less than its retained earnings.— (FT 8/22/07, p. 13)
http://hnn.us/articles/55614.html
My Friend, Kenny – Redux:
After slicing the sandwich and taking the biggest half for himself, Kenny said, “It’s not that I want to penalize you for bringing your own lunch…It’s just, well…you know.”
Jeff finally looked up and with mock sheepishness he said, “That’s mighty White of you, Ken.”
hi nishi. I knew it wasn’t you cause you are you and you’re just distinctive like that I think. We’re having an election now for real huh? Democracy! I wonder who’s gonna win… I bet it’s that McCain one, but we’ll just have to wait and see I guess.
Irony is strong with this one. But at least it can cut and paste.
oh. Then things should be all wonderful in stupid socialist Iceland now then, huh Semanticleo person? And the France and the Germany and the other socialist Europey places. But … they’re not. It’s very confuzzling. It seems like socialism is the answer no matter what the question is I guess. NPR is so excited and who can blame them. SOCIALISM SNOOPY DANCE!!
That’s kinda funny. Kinda, considering you had a stream of people here last night correcting your delusions and you decide to respond when they’re all gone with still more socialist nonsense.
They weren’t required to have vision
Lordy, just when I thought cleo couldn’t be more stupid.
This is like Obama declaring “You WILL have flying cars in 10 years! I WILL it!”
It can selectively cut and paste alrite. What it cannot do, clearly, is associate ideas.
Anymore than it can grasp the stabilizing mechanism of economic negative feedback. And therefore, the very essence of free markets.
Rather trade, being intrinsic to commerce and wealth, confuses it, making it uncomfortable by way of the cognitive dissonance of reality contrasting projected reality. It then searches out isolated snippets of apparent wisdom, all the while missing the big picture. It misses the real workings because, probably, it cannot grasp ideas, only the predigested rote responses once fed it that led to it now feeding itself.
The closest it gets to connecting the dots is its accidentally pasting an inkling of the problem of market manipulation, all the while missing the ferocious effects of, in this example, FDR’s widespread mistakes doing precisely that.
The irony is strong in this one, unfitting for an actual semantic leo.
Sadly, no. I mean, there’s no evidence of that. Not little evidence, no evidence.
But let’s be fair: Write about the inherent elegance of liberal systems, chimp. Do it. Sell that there new deal. Floor is yours. In a few months, assuming a Fairness Doctrine, maybe literally.
So “outwrite” all of us in broad daylight, before said unfair and mandated advantage, while engaging the power of your fully operation battle station.
Do it. I dare you.
JHoward
“It” also purposely doesn’t study the huge successes of Soviet 5-year plans.
But surely those weren’t associated with the purest distillates of soviet thought, Darleen! Assuming Jeff allows, let’s allow SemanticLeo the time and space to do what thor politely declines, no matter how many times he’s prodded by his closest friends:
Compose the leftist primer and/or manifesto, finally and perhaps for the first time since Marx, exposing for all to see the very inner workings of the protracted, stabilized, ongoing leftist community, full of prosperity and light and managed markets and
forcedracial and gender tolerance, all humming along like pure, crystal-clear synthetic 30-weight on the finely ground and polished platinum hypoid gears of actualized humanity, like the giant machine once envisioned in the stars by the very gods but hidden for what seemed an eternity, having been imbued and undergird by the very metaphysical foundations of the Universe itself speaking through the hallways of time into the human psyche and heart.Surely SemanticLeo, like all good leftists, suffers not from the dark, sticky envy of the lesser collectives of the distant past. No, SemanticLeo burns with a quiet white passion, too polite and too sensitive to the feelings of nutjobs, snowbillies, and wingernuts to burst their WalMart balloons pointing out the inherent fallacies and guaranteed failings of, gasp and dare I utter them, the free market economy that built the West, private achievement and self-actualization in the American tradition, the self-responsibility of the dreams of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin, and what had been thought to be the vastly superior function of the private, civil charity, family, and organization that had, in the pre-SemanticLeoian Age, performed the rudimentary task of seeing to the very merest of survival for loinclothed humans on planet Earth.
This shall take time, Darleen. Given it’s importance, I’ll join you in a reverent patience as the gestation proceeds.
Oh, and hi thor, dear friend. May I ask that you too indulge the delusions of your inferiors? My deepest thanks.
Should you ever deign to utter the words of collective light and peace, might I perch myself likewise on your kind and benevolent knee?
JHoward
It’s just a matter of will! I mean, if the king had just given her ten years to spin straw into gold rather than one night, there would be no need for Rumplestiltskin (Deus Ex Machina)
Yours reeks of a politically biased assessment suffering similarly to Darleen’s IQ delusion.
Yes, semanticleo has buckets of writer’s talent, very expressive, happyfeet, Lisa and cynn do as well. It’s easy to recognize Ric and you being well formulated, but what was your point again?
Ah yes, the laughable delusion that somehow-someway your politics is going to make your words sparkle above cleo’s shine. Don’t think so, asshole. Literary style does not subjugate itself to politics – live it, learn it, love it.
I live in a very very blue town full of social engineers. Our city council and mayor are true blue, the token “Republican” would be considered a raving liberal anywhere inland of here.
What I have noticed is the bent toward socialism here seems a bit skewed towards what I alluded to earlier… they demand a legal right to half my sandwich, but have it figured out so I get nothing from their stash. Maybe it is that sense of entitlement that gets so nurtured in the progressive circles, that even when they are themselves rich, they find a way not to share, or they find a way to profit from the programs that are supposed to help the truly needy.
An example here is a well known young 30’s Obama supporter. This person is in environmental work, makes over six figures. This alone would amaze folks scrabbling out a living in the hinterlands of California like Barstow, but this person also owns two homes here. When real estate was going up they got in the market with 10% down with one home and leveraged the paper profits on that one to get a second as an investment.
Now the person wants to know when their bailout is gonna arrive.
This scenario should result in the foreclosure of the investment property and taking whatever loss.
If the payments can’t be restructured on the primary home, then that investment should be a loss also, and this person should rejoin the rental market and set about saving enough to try again.
But this person rages all day long against Bush and evil greedy Wall Street as a “victim”. This person is as elite as it gets, but wants a share of the public pie to make him whole…. but where is the contribution this person offers?
There isn’t one.
Obviously I assumed that the new socialists would at least make a stab at some sort of collective effort and am sadly very wrong.
Oh go pleasure yourself, thor. You’ve failed on so many levels it’s embarrassing to us normals to have to stoop to gin up the litany any more.
I don’t give two shits about the prose; not mine or anybody’s. And I know just enough to see some of what doesn’t work, speaking of humanity.
In light of both admission, what’s staggering is that someone with your abysmally low self-esteem and perpetually high ratio of smoke-to-reason can’t give up merely jamming spokes into even the average set of spokes.
See, you’re outed. You’ve been outed. You haven’t a single point to make and insufficient sense to stop peeing on yourself. And you can’t stand so much as the competition of one average Joe having a Saturday afternoon go at the lunacy of the left-going bobber.
You’re a fool. Worse, you’re a coward.
Hey SteveG,
Same here, but even closer to home.
I’ve got family who, frankly, made some pretty dumb decisions with their money, (like taking out third and fourth mortgages on their homes starting in the nineties, and then upping their lifestyles big-time based on the debt) and now they’re hitching their ships to Obama, too.
It’s as if they think he’s gonna bail them out or something.
But, aside from simply forgiving Americans’ debts, I don’t see what it is that an Obama presidency can ‘give’ them anyway. Their O!-vote is a perverse reflex to me – knowing what I know about the causative details, and very frustrating when the issues of the day come up in our family discussions.
Freud would have a field day with ’em.
“What you describe is not “socialismâ€Â, it’s a Thatcher/Reagan situation: Kenny simply stole your sandwich.”
Which makes Kenny a free-lance socialist.
Comment by Semanticleo on 10/18 @ 10:42 am #
Do you speak English?
You could at this snapshot in time have your friend Kenny reprimanded for stealing your food at work, of course in the near future “you” could be reprimanded or fired for not politely serving up half of your sandwich to Kenny before he even sits down….that will be a sandwich of the people after all.
hey cleo
Does anyone check your income level at the grocery store and adjust the price you are going to pay for the gallon of milk accordingly?
Comment by Semanticleo on 10/18 @ 12:17 pm #
Could someone translate that?
Something about “outwriting” someone?
Second paragraph of #202, WordLion…the very same post you lifted the quote from. Then again at the second paragraph of #204.
But remember that thor couldn’t. So you go knock yourself out.
Do let me know if you need it repeated again.
um, I don’t see Kenny begging.
“Social Democracy” …kind of like all those People’s Democracies — thuggarian rule.
“Sclerotic”. Whatever. “Diffuse”. Yeah, maybe kinda.
At any rate, then I guess I’ll just have to beg that manifesto out of you. Oh my. You tease. But really, go ahead: Deign to really let me have it for a change.
We’ve already seen thor’s finest efforts: “The Belgian writer Angina Cardiac! You simply must read him!”
Besides your touching faith in the ability of engineers to overcome the laws of thermodynamics, you have decided to ignore something. Remember your hero Ralph?
The Corvair was something new and different for American industry. It was an adaptation of German technology, specifically the Volkswagen. It had numerous deficiencies which it shared with its progenitor, particularly the rollover problem when the rear suspension was unloaded. Modern modeling technology wasn’t available to them in 1957; all they had was ground testing, which is slow and expensive. The only really thorough way to test any design in those days was to put it in the hands of consumers and watch what happened.
By the time Unsafe at Any Speed came out, GM engineers had corrected ALL the bad problems with the design. 1964 and later Corvairs had unequal-length A arm rear suspensions, beefed-up front suspensions, and better materials for oil sealing; the 1965 models introduced Mercedes-style front-end impact absorption. They got no credit for it. The book sold like hotcakes, destroyed GM’s entire investment in the new design, and inspired a series of lawsuits that cost them tens of millions.
Later, Nader published Small–on safety: The designed-in dangers of the Volkswagen. Every single deficiency of the Corvair was shared by the Volkswagen Beetle, in even higher degree — rollover due to swing-arm suspension unloading, a front end that broke easily, nonexistent front-end crash protection, the lot, and preserved them to the end of the production run without material change. That book sank like a stone. The people who delighted in trashing GM had all bought Beetles to send their daughters off to Bryn Mawr in, and did. not. want. to. hear. it.
The automobile industry got the message: INNOVATE AND WE WILL CRUSH YOU, BURY THE WRECKAGE, AND DANCE MERRILY ON THE GRAVE IN TRIUMPH. Foreigners, on the other hand, were free to do as they pleased, with any deficiencies laughed off or denied by the Chattering Classes. So American automakers shrugged and went back to making tarted-up buckboards with oversized engines, which they could do without attracting the attention of the trial lawyers. And just at the point where fuel started to be a problem, the insurance industry and the trial lawyers dumped bumper standards on them — a purely cosmetic issue mischaracterized as “safety”, which required them to add weight to the cars just at the instant they needed to lighten them.
Innovation costs money. The Europeans and Japanese, both heavily subsidized in different ways, could afford it, and any mistakes they made were ignored. American automakers, regarded as cash cows by Unions and Government alike, had less margin, and knew that every real innovator since WWII — Tucker, Kaiser, Nash/AMC, the Corvair; the list is long — had been crushed without mercy. So their managements shrugged and decided that if the Government could tax them without mercy and the Unions could have whatever they wanted, they might as well dip their hands into the till as well.
Safety? Ford Motor Company went on a safety kick — seat belts, crushable steering wheels, padded interiors, front ends designed to absorb impact — in 1955. They were laughed at by the entire punditocracy. Gas mileage? Kaiser and Nash both produced highly fuel-efficient cars (for their day), and got ridiculed unmercifully for it.
The American auto industry can be fairly criticized for a lot of things. At the top of that list has to be sending J. Edwards Deming to Japan, which they were glad to do at the request of the Occupation Authority because his theories tended to upset some very comfortable apple-carts. But before you rag on them for failing to innovate, you need to look at what happened to the people who did.
Regards,
Ric
Right on Maggie, Kenny simply “took” the sandwich, he took the very sandwich finis needed to keep his blood sugar up because he has diabetes and can’t seem to get a doctor appointment to address his illness until March 17, 2013 because some bean counter in Washington deems it uncalled for.
So Kenny will just keep on taking his sandwich and finis will die and socialism will have worked as it always has…poor guy.
Disclaimer:All people and ailments in this post are fiction, this didn’t happen in this country……yet.
btw-what’s a bookstore?
Words mostly. Ideas and inspiration if you are lucky.
“I bet it’s that McCain one,â€Â
Anecdotal definition of insanity;
Keep doing what you’ve always done, pretending there will be a different result……………..
What kind of poll numbers did Gore and Kerry have three weeks before the election, Cleo?
What were you saying then?
Good stuff about the auto industry, Ric. Another important point is after WWII Japan wasn’t allowed to have a military, or space program, so while all the super elite, cutting edge engineers in the US were trying to get into military and space research, building jets and rockets, in Japan they were building cars. Our jet fighters have no peer.
– Ric had it pretty much dead to rights. Theres a certain segment of our population that just couldn’t cut it, for all sorts of reasons, mosy of witch boil down to delutions of hyped self worth, or just asocial ideas.
– they are forever a dollar shy and a day short in a competitive society, so they wish to tear it all down and start again, hoping they score more pie in the redo.
– Its not going to happen. Losers always find new and more inventive ways to lose. Just as long as they can avoid long hard work. So the “outcome” is always the same, even when the deck is stacked.
You should have told Kenny that you will gladly share with him one half of the sandwich in about four hours time, and that he should meet you inside the company’s men’s room where you will transfer a crap sandwich to him with relish, though not with arugala.
“This person is as elite as it gets, but wants a share of the public pie to make him whole…. but where is the contribution this person offers?
There isn’t one.”
You have to understand, Socialism is a master/slave thing. He sees himself as one of the socialist Master class. You belong to him, lock, stock and barrel. What you have is only what he and the others in the Master class allow, in their beneficence, you to keep.
Socialism is the political system which is run by and for the benefit of those of a thuggish persuasion. The bigger the thug, the higher they rise.
Comment by Semanticleo on 10/17 @ 7:14 pm #
Property before people…….no explanation needed.
Life, Liberty, and the ability to aquire and dispose of real property without the heavy hand of government are part of our founding documents.
The great algebra master Semanticleo has spoken! Remember, a positive plus a positive is a negative, you mortals! How dare you question the mathematical brilliance of Cleo? His intellect is only matched by the profane Thomas Mann reading genius, thor!!
Oh, yeah. Kenny shows promise and some initiative but has a ways to go.
He needs however to learn to take all the sandwich and then graciously allow you to have the crust after he has eaten the center. Making you beg for the crust first would be even better.
In real life I expect Kenny would get a quick lesson in submission holds, a painful one.
Here’s hoping.
DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’!!!
BWAH HA HA HA haaaaaa
Some would disagree with you, FerociousWordLion:
-Michael Hodges (who appears to have done the research: http://mwhodges.home.att.net/1980-88.htm)
Oh, and wasn’t there a Pubbie congress during The Adolescent Presidency? One with an approval rating above, say, nine to twelve percent?
What’s impressive, Cleo, is the staggering incomprehension of mathematics you blythly display yet wishing to be recognized by all and sundry for your brilliance and insight.
Seriously, ‘tic.
You’re Bill Keller, correct?
um, Semanticleo, dear, you do know there’s a difference between “plus” and “times” don’t you? let’s review your comment….
so, just admit you flubbed it and we’ll all move on.
*snort*
oh, no, I seriously doubt this will teach you to be any more careful with your statements. please, carry on.
but then I would miss the comedy gold.
maggie
cleo gets historical facts from the movies, so why he also get his math facts from Bazooka Joe?
why[?]
Because this:
reads like a NYT editorial.
I see someone’s been into the fugu today.
[…] Jeff Goldstein On “Sharing” I’m hungry. I’ll take half of your sandwich now. […]
Give up vilifying Reagan, WordWarrior? Maybe go give hapless thor a hand on the other thread mentioning Reaganomics. Between the two of you surely good things will happen.
Although he has lost his sense of humor, having been challenged on the only view he’s ever developed from inside that miniature universe of his.
[…] Published October 20, 2008 Uncategorized “My friend Kenny, the socialist†(a protein wisdom micro fiction) â€ÂSo. You’re eating a sandwich,†Kenny said, sitting down in the chair across […]
Cleo – here’s a basic formula you might understand since 9th grade algebra is beyond your comprehension: you = idiot.
Any reasonably educated 9th grader will inform clueless, brainless morons like you that a negative plus a negative is a negative. A negative TIMES a negative is a positive if perhaps that is what you in your clueless, dense idiocy was aiming for in your laughable point on Just One Minute when you first asserted your colossal stupidity. It’s quite amusing that you actually still adhere to your elementary error, opening yourself up to the tremendous ridicule that you so richly deserve. But keep acting like your point of view on issues warrants any merit whatsoever when you prove that you are so aggressively stupid and uneducated. You provide amazing comedic entertainment.
HA! Wow you are a fucking idiot, Cleo. You post a link to allegedly prove your completely erroneous point and it reveals that you don’t even know the difference between a + and a x in mathematics! You really are a fucking moron!
SemenLikkker is hitting the bottle early this morning.
oh, is that the name given to people that have better reading comprehension than you?
cause I don’t think you read the thread. PLUS!!!!
KKKleo – Thanks for the humor this morning. I am still laughing at your inability to understand basic mathematics.
“Kenny smiled, grabbing one of my napkins. “Cool,†he said. “I’ll take my half now, then. I’m freakin’ starving!—
Followed by Kenny having to visit the dentist, to have a lunchroom chair removed from his mouth…
As with almost every other aspect of modern life, cleo is completely clueless as to how the free market works, particularly when it comes to cars. the manufactureres build what the market (“customers”) want. With the demise of the traditional staion wagon (thanks to the original CAFE standards), people went to SUV’s. Gas milage was not an issue, so even if they couldn’t fully justify an SUV, people bought them anyway, for convenience sake. Now, with the (unjustified) panic over fuel prices, many want better milage. The auto industry simply can’t switch what it builds overnight; it takes years. Bottom line: making things you can’t sell is a sure-fire way of going out of business. Unfortunately, the built-in rigidness of auto manufacturing may result in companies disappearing, even though gas prices are now falling like the proverbial rock. Where is the hysteria over this development? A large chunk of our industry is going to disappear because too many idiots (fed by a mendacious press) make decisions based on momentary conditions, not long-term ones.
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