Gotta love the ol’ bait-and-switch.
Promise them medical treatment (free medical treatment – or at least “affordable,” as the Obamanauts style it) and then force them to buy insurance.
Hilarious!
So why aren’t you laughing?
Perhaps you are one of the not-dullards who understands that being forced to send an insurance company hundreds of bucks every month – and thousands every year – is not quite the same thing as securing the services of a doctor (or even a nurse). Much less not having to pay for them.
Awareness is beginning to dawn. People who already had insurance they bought on their own (or secured via their employer on a voluntary basis) are discovering they’ll soon be paying a lot more for it now that it’s been made “affordable” by dint of being made mandatory. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Alas, this awareness has not dawned in time – for it is already too late.
Obamacare is going to be repealed. Because it was meant to fail. That’s just what was intended. All part of the plan, folks.
Baby steps. Never all at once. That’s how things get done in the USSA. The average American wasn’t going to buy into outright government control of medical treatment. The Soviet model.
Not at first, that is.
Sell him “market based health care reform” – Obamacare – as a starter. Get those nasty HMOs (who, curiously, ardently supported Obamacare) in line. Then, when this “market” based on coercion and crony capitalism fails spectacularly, raise high the curtain, turn on the klieg lights and take a bow, Single Payer!
The key is to get the middle class to beg for it. That’s the true object of Obamacare. The sole purpose for which it was designed. To kick out the last rickety support for a total, inescapable government lock-down – not merely of “health care” – but of everything. The smartsters in DC are not incompetent at what they do (manipulate, control). Never make the mistake of thinking otherwise. If they were incompetent, they’d fail sometimes.
They rarely do. Not when it matters.
The underclass is already boxed up. Their primitive mentalities will be – already are – happy with the level of “care” they receive from the good offices of the state. To them, endless waits, accepting whatever they’re given, being talked down to … these things are the norm. Massa in the great house. Shuck ‘dat corn and throw it in the barn. The company town. The ghetto high-rise. One day fades into the next. Pass the Ripple.
And of course, they don’t pay for any of it.
Obamacare’s individual mandate applies to them as much as the estate tax.
It’s the middle class that must be broken. Financially ruined – and disabused of any notion that they ought to have any say whatsoever about their “care.” How much (or little) they get. Of quaint notions about choosing their doctor, their plan of treatment. They must be acclimated to lines and forms and endless waits. To passivity and resignation. They must, in brief, be reduced to the state of the underclass and subsumed within. For there cannot be a middle class in the New America.
It is all of a piece – and the pieces are coming together.
Break the financial back of the country via inflation, speculation, bubbles and bailouts. Tax the people into penury in order to reduce them to a state of dependence. Discredit freedom by selling fear. Convince people (enough of them) that “the market” has failed – by increasing the pervasiveness and coercion of government. Use words like “customer” to describe people who cannot say no. Then blame “the market” when the whole thing crashes and burns – and present the solution, the inevitable solution… .
TANSTAAFL, folks. Much as some like to daydream otherwise.
But instead of manning up and paying our bills, some of us – all too many of us – still believe it is someone else’s obligation to pay our bills. Who might that be? Who cares! So long as it’s not me. I want “free” (or at least “affordable”) health care. Don’t bother me with the details. Just so I get what’s coming to me.
But the joke’s on them.
And unfortunately, on the rest of us, too.
Throw it in the Woods?
PS:This site is almost entirely reader supported now. No Google. (They blacklisted us – so we dumped them. See here for the full story about that.)
So, please: We need your support to make a go of it and keep EPautos rolling. If you like what you see, consider supporting this site. The link to our “donate” button is here. You can also mail stuff our way – if you prefer to avoid PayPal and all that.
Mi’kMaq identity – First Nation people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGIw25_ML3U
A Mi’kMaq Creation Story (1 of 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQvup95nhvk
“Micmac” are a First Nations people, indigenous to Canada’s Maritime Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec.
They call that region Mi’kma’ki. Others today live in Newfoundland and the northeastern region of Maine. The nation has a population of about 40,000 of whom nearly 11,000 speak the Míkmaq language.
http://novascotia.ca/museum/mikmaq/default.asp?section=thumb&page=1
Ann, I cancelled your date to be on Fox news. This just in from the newsroom, Ann R. Key is OWS scum. Call her back and tell her to come in, we’ll crucify her.
It should be absolutely clear to everyone that Obama’s re-election means America will never be free again. America has been conquered by the terrorist money-counterfeiter (Stop calling these terrorists “Bankers”!) scum that claims to own us all.
Hi Ann,
True enough – but America was in plenty of trouble under The Chimp – and will not be improved by the election of another Republicon to replace Obama.
Team Red, Team Blue – they win, we lose.
What I meant was…It is a proven socialist terrorist with a 20% unemployment rate and it still won re-election. This proves America is a nation of bratty parasitic retards and will never be free again. We are all Europe now.
True – but the same can be said just as accurately of those Republicans who supported Romney (or McSame). They want their government, too – just their own form of it.
Throw Team Red and Team Blue in the woods!
It’ll be a start….
Mentions of Obama on twitter by individuals
CALLING THIS #TYRANNY NOT ENOUGH
Obama’s AFA Oath Omissions
….Obama explained (picture of Obama w/ extra-long pinocchio nose)
Beer taste like Shit… thanks obama”haha
….All the terror is being done by you Barack Obama.
666 Poster Appears At Local Obama Campaign Center
….I C U Obama, where’s my candy?
i just remembered that gilmore girls literally ended with rory running off to iowa to follow the obama campaign and my night is ruined
….Top generals: Obama is ‘purging the military
GOP Candidate Claimed Obama Would Force Schools To ‘Teach’ Homosexuality. Psycho!
….Told y’all mfs Obama wasn’t the truth
I’m Michelle Obama for Halloween!!
….Michelle Obama Responds to Kanye West’s Recent Comments
REMINDER Obama “joked” about auditing enemies
….Seriously All the terror is being done by you Barack Obama.
Con un negrito obama!
…. Nesquik is good. But is it $2.00 for a little bottle good? Go Get the chocolate syrup and white milk. Tough times. Thanks Obama.
Obama don’t respect knowbody so knowbody don’t respect him.
….obama nation and abomination are pronounced pretty much the same
Obama Heckled on Keystone During Healthcare Speech
…. Barack Obama is an Ass Hole ! Putin & Merkel are making an ass out of Obama ! LOL ! Fun to watch ! Hope & Change is BS !
From William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch:
Mary is strapping on a rubber penis. “Steely Dan III from Yokohama,” she says, caressing the shaft.
“What happen to Steely Dan I?”
“He was torn in two by a bull dyke. She could cave in a lead pipe.”
“And Steely Dan II?”
“Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole. And don’t say ‘wheeeeeeee!’ this time.”
___________________________________________
1972 Rolling Stone article about Steely Dan
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/cant-buy-a-thrill-19721123
___________________________________________
Obscure Steely Dan Lyrics
Way back when in 67 I was the dandy Of Gamma Chi
Sweet things from Boston So young and willing
Moved down to Scarsdale And where the hell am I?
I’ll learn to work the saxophone I’ll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long And die behind the wheel
Are you reelin’ in the years Stowin’ away the time
Are you gathering up the tears Have you had enough of mine?
Jo would you love to scrapple She’ll never say no
Shine up the battle apple We’ll shake ’em all down tonight
We’re gonna mix in the street Strike at the stroke of midnight
Dance on the bones till the girls say when
Pick up what’s left by daylight When Josie comes home
When Josie comes home So bad She’s the best friend we ever had
She’s the raw flame The live wire She prays like a Roman
With her eyes on fire
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world That’s when you turned the world around
Did you feel like Jesus Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes On the hill
the stuff was laced with kerosene But yours was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home
Every A-Frame had your number on the wall You must have had it all
I like your pin shot I keep it with your letter
Done up in blueprint blue It sure looks good on you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nehulN3qddo
– Vintage pinup old school monarch mind control
Hidden life of Marilyn Monroe
http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/the-hidden-life-of-marilyn-monroe-the-original-hollywood-mind-control-slave-part-i/
Hand Job wrote:
“99%.on here just circle jerk each other and whine about WHY stuff is the.way it is,”
Bullshit. Most of the regulars here write about how this situation we have with government came about instead of asking ” WHY stuff is the.way it is,” , as you so inarticulately put it. Face it; you’re the one jacking off here. That’s why I call you Hand Job.
The actual contributors to the discussion on this site are long time students of libertarian thought. The jack off artists, like you, post put-downs of the rest of the people posting here and whine about nobody being serious or committed, or whatever it is that has your panties in a wad today.
Here’s what’s obvious to everyone but you (and your new found pal): The regulars here have put in the years of study on subjects that you are just beginning to discover. Consequently, we don’t have to dwell on the elementary aspects of our philosophy. We communicate easily with each other and let the discussion drift off topic, wherever it may lead, and we have fun with it.
You’re stuck at the newbie level and you’re going to stay there because you insist on dominating the discussion, instead of learning from what the old heads say about what we already know. Your control freak personality doesn’t allow for any admission that you’re a babe in the woods. You want to be the center of everything and the arbiter of how any discussion should go.
That would be bad enough, but you have to try to insult and talk down to people who are just carrying on discussions that have been proceeding for years before you showed up. If you can’t handle not being the center of attention here, there are probably still a few sites where you haven’t already ripped your ass. Go find one.
Dear Ed,
I must say, you really handed “Handsome Jim’s” ass to him on a plate!
I was going to respond to a recent post of his which accused people here of the very sins he is guilty of. But you saved me all that typing.
Anyone with any sense can tell that the people here at EPA are hardly noobs. Anyone who keeps his ears open and his mouth shut for even a minute, knows that people here have been around the block.
“Handsome Jim” really doesn’t get it. INTJs dominate here if I recall. INTJs are indifferent to being “Alpha males.” INTJs merely want to be left alone to live their lives without interference.
http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2013/1/15/myers-briggs-personalities-and-the-peaceful-voluntary-world.html
“Handsome Jim” is truly amazing. Utterly tone-deaf to any of that. Totally preoccupied with boasting about his own imagined prowess. Utterly indifferent to brainstorming libertarian strategies and tactics.
Anyone who is so preoccupied about being the cock of the walk, the “alpha male,” is barking up the wrong tree.
People here are individualists. Individualists aren’t impressed by either “leaders” or “followers.” Individualists refer to the former as “fuhrers” and the latter as “sheeple.”
Anyone who is preoccupied with being “special” should be following Ah-nuld’s path instead.
In 1976, Arnie told Rolling Stone: “I feel you only can have a few leaders… and then the rest is followers. I feel that I am the born leader and that I’ve always impressed with being the leader. I hate to be the follower. I had this when I was a little boy… I didn’t think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus.”
http://www.infowars.com/schwarzenegger-wants-constitution-changed-for-a-2016-presidential-run/
Bevin, great find that Rolling Stone interview quote. I was a theater projectionist when I was 16, and one of the C- movies that showed up for a weekend matinee triple feature was Ahnuld’s first film, “Hercules in New York”.
In the credits he was billed as Arnold Strong. The film was really poor, and Ahnuld was the weakest actor in the cast. All anyone needs to know about him can be seen in that film. No acting talent, no talent for languages, no intellect to speak of, which is typical of megalomaniacs, isn’t it? Isn’t it amazing what a deluded self image ol’ Ahnuld totes around with him?
Dear Ed,
It’s amazing how many Amerikanische Schafenmenschen are enamored with the Governator. I suppose it makes a perverse kind of sense for a Nazified Amerika to become enthralled by an Austrian Amerikan Nazi. If “Das Volk” are going to adopt a fuhrer, might as well get the Real Deal, right?
The Alex Jones article goes on to say,
His Nazi ties are also well documented. Gustav Schwarzenegger, the actor’s father, was a member of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing. News reports about the elder Schwarzenegger’s Nazi links first surfaced in 1990.
Film producer George Butler, who chronicled Schwarzenegger’s rise to fame as a champion bodybuilder in the 1970′s, circulated a book proposal in the late 90s that quoted the young Schwarzenegger expressing admiration for Hitler.
The producer wrote in his book proposal that in the 1970′s, he considered Mr. Schwarzenegger a “flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler.,” the New York Times reported in 2003. In the proposal, Mr. Butler also said he had witnessed Schwarzenegger playing “Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home” and said that the actor “frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer.”
Schwarzenegger was also best buddies with Kurt Waldheim, the former secretary general of the United Nations who had a past as a Nazi who participated in atrocities during World War II.
Ah-nuld is the perfect embodiment of the primitive worship of brute force coercion, of “might is right.” It’s what he’s about. it’s what his films are about. He and his films are never about justice. He and his films are invariably about power. Ah-nuld is always right because he has more might. Bigger muscles or a bigger gun.
Ah-nuld himself is not that important. What is important is what he symbolizes. A fascistic celebrity for a fascistic volk.
Dear Ed,
“… No acting talent, no talent for languages, no intellect to speak of… ”
This I believe that is absolutely correct.
Some may argue that Ah-nuld is “smart.” Otherwise he could not have made a fortune in SoCal real estate deals. True. He possesses a certain kind of intelligence, but as you correctly note, he lacks intellect. He lacks the capacity for discerning higher level abstractions, such as the distinctions between good and evil, or democracy and freedom. Frankly, he doesn’t even care. His priorities are openly narcissistic. He doesn’t even feel the need to disguise them. Yet many eat it up.
Ah-nuld’s intelligence is that of the ambitious politician, i.e., the “socially sanctioned sociopath,” whose sociopathology has the approval of society, and which passes the test of consensus reality with flying colors.
This is where Ah-nuld diverges from Jesse Ventura. Despite their superficial resemblance, Ventura is apparently able to make such distinctions and apparently cares about them, a lot.
Funny, isn’t it how dimbulb politicians manage to stumble into lucrative deals in markets where they have no experience? Remember Hillary Clinton’s amazing scores in commodities markets? California politics being Chicago politics writ large, the Governator could have been handed those profits in payment for services rendered as governor.
Can you imagine Hillary, or Arnie, or Al Gore actually making any kind of business decision which would result in wealth creation? I can’t.
Bevin, I was disappointed Jesse was even in the movies with him. You know Jesse had to be thinking the whole time “pussies”. So many glaringly bad technical things in those things but smoking a cigar in the jungle, his ass would have been mine. You’d think HW could finally find some technical direction from somebody who has just common sense along with some real life experience….I guess not.
Dear Ed,
Amen to that. “Crows everywhere are just as black.”
Wu Shu-cheng, the former First Lady of the ROC here on Taiwan made a fortune in the stock market from insider knowledge.
The Democratic Progressive Party faithful rationalized it away as “The First Lady was stimulating the economy!” I kid you not.
Clarification: So-called “insider trading” would not be a crime under a genuine free market. But under cronyist mercantilism, privileged pols enjoy a legally mandated advantage.
Dear Ed,
But didn’t Algore invent the Internet?
LOL.
Dear 8SM,
Agree!
Ventura should have been the lead, not Ah-nuld.
Did you know Ah-nuld wanted the Michael Biehn role in “The Terminator?”
What a laugh. Dirty Harry’s observation about how “A man’s got to know his limitations” comes to mind.
Thank god Jim Cameron knew better, insisted on his own casting decisions, and was able to talk Ah-nuld down.
Can you imagine Ah-nuld struggling to convey the emotional nuances of a professional actor? Biehn may not be Laurence Olivier. But he is at least capable.
Morning Bevin!
I hadn’t heard that about Ahhhhnoold!
Gawd. He would have ruined the movie as the Kyle Reese character.
Arnold is basically furniture. He is quite something to look at. He evokes emotion by his presence. But when he opens his mouth…
The only time it ever worked was when he was supposed to be a robot!
Ed, funny as hell. If nobody was ever brought up on bullshit charges of insider trading, like creating a fund isn’t an end in itself, then the little guy might get shy of investing in a “fixed” house. Fry old Martha…not on what you charged her with but some totally other bullshit charge. Now there’s the federal justice system in all it’s glory.
Hi Eight,
Poor ol’ Martha has keelhauled on charges of “impeding an investigation” (or some such) after they were unable to nail her to the floor on the trumped-up insider trading charge. They were determined to get her – by hook or by crook.
And, they did.
Bevin, your mention of someone having intelligence but no intellect made me think of the Clintons. I guess they must be super smart, but I have never heard either of them express an original thought or make any thoughtful connections between various facts and ideas. Methinks they are on the intellectual level of the typical earthworm.
Hi Mike,
The Clintons are no doubt “smart” in terms of IQ – but also intellectually corrupt (and morally indifferent). They survive and thrive via being expert gamers of a system designed for people of their sort.
Bevin, my mind won’t quit reeling. I think about him with a non-speaking role….and then realize that’s basically what every role he had was, he just wasn’t in on it. So how did he get in movies again???
Speaking of technical direction, back when Lethal Weapon came out a city guy friend of mine was telling me how good it was(I was leery). He bought the tape and brought it over. The first scene was Mel handling a 9mm ball round and talking about “a 9mm hollowpoint, the deadliest gun blah blah blah”. I had only been reloading 20 years at the time so it was a bit ridiculous for me and many other people I knew. I’m surprised you couldn’t hear us whooping when he said “9mm hollowpoint”. If HW can’t even get that right, what can they get right in an action movie? Everybody loading into a chopper with their muzzles pointed up? Some of the stuff I’ve seen when somebody would try to get a little technical with car knowledge. I was reloading one evening and the wife had that Tim Taylor? show on and I hear him say he’s got a shortblock Chevy so I looked up, sure enough it was a complete engine, a small block Chevy. Uma Thurman snorts heroin and bleeds from the nose? That stuff’s too hard.
Dear Mike,
I agree, completely.
It takes a special kind if low cunning to argue “It depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHlt1W83JFU
It’s funny. Mainstream “intellechewals” are ostensibly “The Best and the Brightest.”
Take Clinton.
Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became… a student leader… He is an alumnus of Georgetown University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Kappa Kappa Psi and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton… Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School…
These sorts of “qualifications” are typical. Yet think about it, nearly all of them are Keynesians. In other words, they believe that wealth can be created out of thin air!
All these Fulbright Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, Phi Beta Kappas, who become “presidential timber” can’t (or won’t) see through the fallacy of something for nothing, can’t (or won’t) acknowledge that government equals brute force coercion and therefore cannot be an instrument for “freedom and human rights.”
Dear 8SM,
It’s mind-boggling how technically ignorant Hollywood film makers can be.
You gave some great examples. Another that comes to mind is from “Die Hard 2.”
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Die_Hard_2
Glock 17
Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) and the mercenaries under his command use Glock pistols as their sidearms. This is one of the earliest appearances of the Glock in a major Hollywood film (it had just been featured in 1989’s Johnny Handsome). While the handguns seen in the film appear to be the Glock 17 model, in a now-notorious scene early in the film, McClane (Bruce Willis) identifies the handgun to Chief Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) as a “Glock 7,” (no such model exists) and recites a string of inaccuracies, describing it as “a porcelain gun made in Germany that doesn’t show up on your airport metal detectors and costs more than you make in a month.”
The most glaring misconception is that the weapon is undetectable to the X-Ray machines at the airport, while in reality, Glock never produced such a handgun. In fact, 83.7% (by weight) of the Glock pistol is normal ordnance steel and the “plastic” parts are a dense polymer known as “Polymer 2”, which is radio-opaque and is therefore visible to X-ray security equipment.
In addition, virtually all of these “plastic” parts contain embedded steel not to make the firearms “detectable”, but to increase functionality and shooting accuracy.
Contrary to popular movies like Die Hard 2, neither Glock nor any other gun maker has ever produced a “porcelain”, “ceramic” or “plastic” firearm which is undetectable by ordinary security screening devices.
Even if a pistol that was completely undetectable by either X-ray machines or metal detectors were to be developed, the ammunition inside would still be detectable.
Another mistake is the claim the Glocks are made in Germany when in reality, they are manufactured in Austria.
When Glock pistols were first introduced to the U.S. market, they were promoted as being because of their extensive use of non-metallic components. This generated controversy from people fearing that this would make them easier to conceal from metal detectors and X-ray devices – hence the scene in the movie.
However, as described, the scenario shown in the film is pure Hollywood fiction. Armorer Mike Papac, whose company Cinema Weaponry supplied all of the firearms used in Die Hard 2, has commented, “I remember when we did that scene, I tried to talk them out of it. There’s no such thing as a gun invisible to metal detectors, and there shouldn’t be, but they wouldn’t budge. They had it written into the script and that was that.”
That last part is too much. Even after learning it was BS, they refused to change it.
Dear 8SM,
Re: Lethal Weapon
To its credit, Lethal Weapon 1 was impressive for Mel Gibson’s performance as a borderline suicidal maniac.
As information about Gibson’s personal life emerged later, it turned out he was actually “playing himself.” Method Acting ya know?
But that doesn’t take away from his performance in my book. The scene where he almost blows his own head off was genuinely gut wrenching, and showed off Gibson’s acting chops.
RE: Mel Gibson.
The film I always think of with that guy is, Conspiracy Theory.
The other films he made were not bad, but that one,… watch it today and see how “Conspiracy Theory” it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_Theory_%28film%29
I tried telling a friend of mine about how the world works, about how, when gold was $250 per ounce, that gold was, ‘The Thing’ to buy. He kind of mocked me and told me he thought I was like that character.
He was into stocks, or any other get rich quick scheme, typical american.
Well, who is laughing now, mother fucker?
[Yeah, well, I’m not laughing, that’s for sure. It’s a damn shame the way things are working out for the world.]
He gave me hell for not having been invested heavily into 401 K’s, back before they were 201 K’s. …And, don’t I like his leveraged house?
He never returned my last phone call.
…I do not wonder why.
The last memory of him I have is of a strange far off look, as if he were hypnotized, or transfixed, after I said the word, ‘chemtrails’ and pointed at the sky.
That word sure does spook the heck out of some people. …
Cognitive dissonance is a bitch, I guess.
Dear RAH,
Yeah, exactly.
Same today with 9/11, Sandy Hook, Boston.
As the saying goes,
“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”
Or,
“Even paranoids have real enemies.”
Another good performance depicting paranoia was Ray Liotta’s cokehead monologue while cooking pasta. Hilarious.
And, addendum in re Jesse:
He’s more real.
Arnold posed as a He-man. Jesse is a He-man. Not only is he a former SEAL (that is some tough training; look into it if you’re not familiar with what it takes to make the cut) he is also a real 1 percenter. He rode with the Mongols. Professional wrestling is no easy trick, either.
But what makes Jesse stand out head and shoulders relative to Arnold is his pretty consistent advocacy of liberty while Arnold is another completely interchangeable GOP glad-hander. Take away his physique (time is already doing that) and what have you got?
Another nothing.
Dear Eric,
Exactly. When Ah-nuld was playing a Cyborg, he was “playing himself.” He was merely following his “programming.”
What a sad commentary on a nominally “human” life, no matter how “successful” it might seem on a superficial level.
When I was younger and more foolish I might have envied it. But not after years of studying Jungian psychology.
Eric said “But what makes Jesse stand out head and shoulders relative to Arnold is his pretty consistent advocacy of liberty ”
No loss out here in the West Eric. Arnie is really another democrat with his own 737 and the ability to read a teleprompter.
Dear 8sm,
Re: Martha Stewart.
I really think she got a bum rap. The PTB merely decided to “make an example” of her.
Meanwhile, look at what the Bush/Cheney regime insiders have gotten away with.
Call me crazy, but I always thought Martha Stewart was kinda hot. Then one day, I stumbled across a old photograph of her.
She was not merely “hot.” She was sizzling. Apparently she was a professional model when she was younger.
Don’t believe me? Check this out!
Martha Stewart’s Modeling Career Photos Will Make Your Jaw Drop
Posted: 02/28/2013 3:20 pm EST | Updated: 03/01/2013 1:43 pm EST
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/martha-stewart-modeling-career-photos_n_2783506.html
Bevin,
“Some may argue that Ah-nuld is “smart.” Otherwise he could not have made a fortune in SoCal real estate deals. True. He possesses a certain kind of intelligence, but as you correctly note, he lacks intellect. He lacks the capacity for discerning higher level abstractions, such as the distinctions between good and evil, or democracy and freedom. Frankly, he doesn’t even care. His priorities are openly narcissistic. He doesn’t even feel the need to disguise them. Yet many eat it up. ”
For more on why that is, look up Roissy’s “Dark Triad.” I’m at work, the site is blocked – but basically, it was high levels of narcissism, psychosis, and Machiavellianism. What you do is good becuase YOU did it. What matters is YOU. Everyone else exists to be used by you and exploited by you.
Pretty much every version of Economic Man there is. (In this case, that’s the parasite class, including politicians. I believe we have another instance where the term Economic Man was used and was a positive; in that case, it was a producer. I’d never heard it used that way, and want to make sure it’s clear here.)
Dear Jean,
Roissy’s “Dark Triad.”
Thanks!
I’ll look it up and get back to you.
Dear Jean,
Dark Triad. Checked it out.
Yes. There is a lot of that going on with many, albeit not all, women.
It’s an internally contradictory, self-destructive mindset.
Actualy, Dark Triad refers to the traits that women find attractive.
Summed up: If you treat them like equals, or even like human beings, you’ll get f*cked (in the bad way.) They walk all over you and have nothing but contempt.
If you’re an egotistical a-hole, they need to WORK to get your attention – THEN they perceive you as higher value, and will put out.
It IS contradictory, as it’s premise is an abusive relationship.
But it works…
BTW, it IS about the same as your typical female mind – self-absorbed thinks what she has is made of gold.
Even if it WERE made of gold – EVERY WOMAN HAS ONE.
So who cares?
Thank you Ed for your comment.
I am new to this website, but I learn so much every day because of the great conversations which go on here. This is not like a written article which has no discussion, and only states facts and conclusions. Eric’s site actually has a back and forth quality which helps newbees like myself explore links and get a better understanding of the libertarian basic principles.
Discussions between the regulars to this site and Gil (among others) have helped me correct many of my clover tendencies. But i must admit to being totally bored (very rare for me) and thoroughly confused by HJ’s incoherent comments. as a newbee here, I can say that HJ has contributed exactly “0” to my understanding of first principles.
Hi Linda,
Welcome, first of all – and thanks for taking the time to post!
You’ve touched on one of my primary goals for this web site: To encourage the intelligent (and civil) exploration of ideas. Lots of smart, well-informed people here – but very few arrogant know-it-alls. HJ, unfortunately, is not among them. I’d like for him to be part of the discussion, but for whatever reason, he seems to be more interested in deliberately annoying people. My finger (as I have informed him) is poised over the “Clover” button!
Linda, glad you’re here. The conversations here are allowed to run wherever the participants wander, thanks to the even tempered site owner. Eric just lets it roll, never jumping on anyone for going “off topic” and never trying to steer anything.
That’s the mark of a real liberty-minded host, IMO. That’s what keeps me coming back.
So the metatags or whatever should say autos, bikes, libertarian, clustfuckfreeforall? What can be done to make the ad payers happy?
Does each page need a theme that is adhered to. It sure seems that way. So really, the demand that people stay on topic, is more completely: “stay on topic so the shills know what to sell to us and the site stays solvent.”
Funny how everyone acts like that’s what they like too. A page with only one topic. Talk about programming!
I know nothing about ad revenue on websites, so I’ll just keep speaking from a position of ignorance.
I think Amazon is out, because they have strict rules.
Adsense, Chitika, Bubblews and Infolinks all earn ad revenue.
So this chick says, she uses those three plus the
G***** search engine that must not be named…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzFPSb5rgeg
…to earn sustainable income–as in enough to pay taxes on and qualify as a home business- writing online and blogging.
Ad supported Yahoo chick
http://voices.yahoo.com/best-ad-revenue-sites-earn-income-monitize-blogs-12302983.html
Don’t Say the B Word (or the G Word)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln3WkzH_Jmw
The internet – how do you know if you’re reading shill speak and special advertorial content?
Adsense
I’ve been blogging since 2008. I run Google Adsense on my 55 niche Google Blogger blogs. I was earning hundreds of dollars a month in ad revenue. Until combination of updates caused earnings to drop 80 percent. Lots of bloggers experienced this. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but in weeding out offending blogs, some good blogs got hit. Google changed the way it indexed content and I was never able to figure out how to change to recoup earnings. That’s how internet search indexing rolls. A format may be touted one day, then completely change the next. Plus, more people are running ad blocking software now.
Chitika
Chitika ads can be run simultaneously with Adsense. I earned decent revenue at first. Now it’s fallen off. I net a few cents daily. I tried Chitika’s enhanced products, but it didn’t help earnings. And too many ads make blogs look spammy. Also, Chitika seems to be tied to Adsense, so if Adsense drops so does Chitika.
Infolinks
Infolinks is keyword linked ads more than picture or flash ads. It’s easy and less invasive. It doesn’t seem to slow page loads as much as other ads. It can be run with Adsense and Chitika. Infolinks accepts only certain blogs based on hits generated. Some of mine were accepted and others didn’t. Infolinks seems to be tied to Google search results, too. So when revenue is low on Adsense it is on Infolinks days. I suggest enabling the entire collection of Infolinks ads on blogs.
Bubblews
I recently found a different ad revenue model that I’m playing with: Bubblews. Users write blog-style posts (up to 10 400 character+ posts daily) on any subject and split ad revenue 50-50 with site. I’m doing pretty well there. It’s a very social site. Users, as well as general visitors read, comment and share on each other’s work. It’s easy. I’ve made over $10-$15 in one day just writing basic posts. Bubblews is a good way to get started blogging and writing online.
Someone is making a few bucks with the ads. I suppose they all affect the surfing experience to one degree or another though.
Tor wrote, “Does each page need a theme that is adhered to. It sure seems that way. So really, the demand that people stay on topic, is more completely: “stay on topic so the shills know what to sell to us and the site stays solvent.”
Funny how everyone acts like that’s what they like too. A page with only one topic. Talk about programming!”
I’m not sure that I agree with that perspective.
If you’re in a conversation with someone about cars and all of the sudden they start talking about baby strollers, you might be like, WTF?
At the same time, I like a range of topics, conversation can flow and ebb, there’s nothing wrong with that – per say – but at the same time, I have no interest in baby strollers, even if they are 4×4.
Bevin, I can’t even find the end of the thread so here goes in another spot. Mel’s role in Conspiracy Theory had to be difficult. I thought he did a dandy job with it too. If everyone’s character had been that intense it would be a real block-buster for all times. Patrick’s role was very intense too. I’d watch that movie right now.
Bevin, I could write a book on how much danger paranoid people can be in. I have gone from town to town in Tx., long distances, stopped at places like Lowe’s and similar to get parts and see the SAME people just happening to be in the dept I’m in. Pulling an RV with a one ton truck is not exactly the stealth vehicle to lose them and duh, it finally became evident it was my phone. Throw away your phone(s).
Dear 8sm,
You probably forgot to put your tinfoil hat back on, and they read your brainwaves!
Me, I keep my NY Yankees baseball cap lined with tinfoil to maintain a lower profile.
LOL.
Good advise, Eightsouthman.
Only, what do you do if you don’t have one, and that kind of shit still happens?
Smile for the cameras?
…Did I tell you the time(s) about… oh never mind, what difference does it make?
So won’t you smile for the camera
steely dan – peg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5yqf4P6r4
Don’t know what agency it was but to have them follow you from San Angelo to Odessa doesn’t do anything positive for your state of mind.
Dear Linda,
“But i must admit to being… thoroughly confused by HJ’s incoherent comments.”
That is hardly surprising.
“Handsome Jim” himself is thoroughly confused by his own incoherent comments.
Why should they make any more sense to you or anyone else here?
Yup.
Well, heck. I didn’t know my post would wind up here at the bottom. I was agreeing to Ed’s take way up yonder. But I see it fits here at the end just the same.
Guess you have to start at the bottom, eh?
Dear Bevin,
I submitted this
http://aisforanarchy.blogspot.tw/2013/01/minarchism-always-becomes-maxarchism.html
Under this title
Minarchism=>Maxarchism – from A is for Anarchy.
listed in reddit anarchy which has only 968 subscriber/readers
~2 users are there now
And this
Chinese Liberalism vs. Western Authoritarianism as originally titled
http://aisforanarchy.blogspot.tw/2007/09/chinese-liberalism-vs-western.html
to reddit libertarian
Hope this isn’t a problem, and gets more traffic to your new anarchist-heimat!
Dear Tor,
As they used to say BPC (Before Political Correctness)
“That was might white of you!”
Thanks!
LOL!
My pleasure. You are highly skilled at writing in a wide range of domains. Thanks for carrying the torch all these years. I do what I can, but I really shouldn’t be trusted with torches.
I’m what you might call an outside white guy. Not the guy who’s welcome in all white neighborhoods. Not even the guy welcome in the back rooms with the servants and the advisers of a house in a white neighborhood.
More like a white guy found in a soon-to-be white neighborhood when it’s still a bunch of unfinished homes and vacant lots.
Or like a white guy who’s welcome to bring stuff to white neighborhoods as long as he stays in his truck and doesn’t approach anyone’s front door.
High Tech Redneck – George Jones Cover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIXaTNSmTSc
In that vein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGZDP0716lk
Amazing Rhythm Aces, of course.
“Drinking to excess is a statist behavior, because it makes one out of control, which puts you at the whim of others.”
No, it isn’t. You’re using the word ‘statist’ in the way an Obama voting democrat uses the word ‘fascist’, simply as a pejorative with no understanding of the meaning. Getting drunk doesn’t benefit an all powerful state, nor does it make the drunk a supporter of that state.
That entire rant about what this site should be shows your desire to control other people. If you want a site to be the kind of site you envision, put up your own blog. Oh, wait. You already did that and found you couldn’t draw any viewers.
I feel I should mention, since I’m the drinker we’re all talking about (popularity, yay!), that I had a grand total of 5 beers Friday night. 5. (and it was Blue Moon, for anyone curious) Over the course of maybe 4 hours of actual drinking. That said, I probably could have “legally” driven! It wasn’t “in excess” by the definition of the state, so in yo’ face wannabe douchebags that can’t handle someone preaching their mind while admitting they’re “under the influence”.
Goddam, Jacob. Here I was thinking you woulda just beat the piss outta Hand Job and ooze both at the same time, but you passed out and bonked your head on the keyboard. ahaha.
That ain’t a bad strategy, you know. If you’re in a beer joint and you make out like you’re drunk, you can kind of ease up to some asshole and just plum bust his ass before he knows he’s in a fight.
‘Course, I don’t know how that would work online, but it’s a smart strategy in a beer joint. Shit, son. You coulda been a contender. 😉
Just so “they” can piss their pants in anger I’d like to say I can certainly drink more than 5 beers and hold my own… but it’s just hilarious that “they” would go for the low blow punches of shouting “alcoholism” without knowing how much I drank……The fuck did I just type? Of course “they” have no idea who I am, or who “we” are, that’s the beauty of the internet. I’ve said some stupid ass shit online before, but luckily enough “they” weren’t there to critique it. Of course everything I’ve done online is in “their” databases but they can suck my flaccid whiskey dick if they think I can’t analyze some quick witted response, and hell, even read through the rough draft and edit it before I post it for “them” and “their” dumbass bosses to read.
To the government reading this: have fun when it all comes crashing down upon you. You think I’m the only smartass who like to fuck with you? To quote the fat bitch from Total Recall “get ready for a surprise”
http://youtu.be/CQ_7k0PpcUo
Jacob, Blue Moon, wheat beer, not really for me but it’s good if you like that sort of beer. 5 beers? I had 5 also last night…..at some point.
5 beers at some point? Ride on. (“Right” on, “ride” on, “rock” on… you’ll see me interchange those responses as I deem fit).
What’s your beer of choice?
House beer is normally Miller in 40’s because of the smoothness. Quit kegging because big glass bottles were better(in nearly every brand, probably every brand)but we drink various things. Fri. night I had a six of Shiner Bohemian Black Lager, excellent brew, esp for the price. A few years ago I stopped in with a friend to a Buffalo Wild Wings being out of towners and needing a beer. They had a really good selection of draft as well as bottled I drank an Old English Black Lager, good stuff normal I noticed looking over the list again Shiner had their own so I ordered one, not a hard choice to make switching to Shiners. More body, robustness but smoother for what they were trying to achieve. It’s good from nearly frozen to room temp like Fri night when I kept forgetting I had a mug of beer. (I was tired, 120 M trip at the end of the day to the doc….and to get some beer for the trip back and a bit more.)
I had to stop… the beer, that is.
I have weird tastes. I like this stuff the monks in Denmark make. It’s a stout that’s almost as thick as a Wendy’s frosty – with three times the calories. Twice the alcohol content of standard beer, too. It comes in these big brown bottles – and one will make you feel all right. Two will put you right out for the night.
Dear Jacob, Ed,
I just have on thing to say about beer.
“Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!”
Scene with from “Blue Velvet”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhiofL2Rh4
Bevin, that is my favorite scene from Blue Velvet. I was just watching it several times earlier today… so good…..
“HEINEKIN?!?! FUCK THAT SHIT!…. PABST….BLUE…..RIBBON!!!!…”
Such an amazingly well done scene.
….If you like, Frank….Here’s to your fuck! *raises eyebrows*… Cheers…..Cheers…wow, sauve man!…You are so fucking sauve!!…
Dear Jacob,
A buddy of mine watched the movie when it first came out.
In the months that followed, he and I would randomly quote lines form the movie and crack ourselves up.
” Suave! Goddamn you’re one suave fucker!”
“it’s a strange world.”
His wife would just roll her eyes! LOL.
It’s too bad that Dennis Hopper is now gone… his quotes from that movie will live with me for the rest of my life… “MMMmmm…Mmmmm…..Baby wanna fuck!….MMmmm….I wanna Squeeze em’!!…..”
It’s too bad that other than a handful of scenes, the movie overall, is total crap. (especially the ending where the cops come in and save the day despite there being nothing in the movie to explain how the cops knew to come to the apartment to “save the day”….) typical hollywood “good” ending…
Hopper had his moments: The scene with Christopher Walken in True Romance, for instance.
Dennis Hopper is dead? I didn’t even know he’d been sick.
Dear Ed,
Yes, sad to say, he’s gone.
The epitaph on his gravestone reads,
“Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!”
“Yes, sad to say, he’s gone. ”
*sniff* 😉
Yeah, he turned in a perfromance or two during his career, such as the role of Moon in Wallis’ “True Grit”, and that of Clarence’s dad in “True Romance”. Those two little performances, both ending with the murder of the character he played, were his most memorable to me.
For me favourite beer is Belgian or Czech. But then I like most kinds of beer anyway including most ales.
eric, so what’s the name of that beer, er, stout? I love stouts and Porter’s and both will curtail your drinking into the double digits if not more than 3 max.
Lookee here!
http://www.chimay.com/en/bieres-de-chimay.html?IDC=287
Oh love Chimay!
Well….. I ain’t had a beer since August 9th, 1984 in Longview Texas. Funny thing is, I don’t recall finishing that last one. Maybe I spilled it, who knows? 😉
Chimay website may be my new desktop. I can almost smell it, hope it tastes like Miller since that’s all I have right now.
The stuff (Chimay) is out-of-the-park outstanding. But, be careful. Each one is almost a meal in itself. There’s a reason why I got up to 223 pounds… and a reason why I’m back down to 195 now!
Ed,”Well….. I ain’t had a beer since August 9th, 1984 in Longview Texas. ” That would mean I have been dead for 29 years if that could be said about me. You ain’t been gettin a contact high have you? Wind’s been blowing like it’s west Tx. all day but it died out to just a bare breeze a while ago. I was sittin here and the dead smell nearly knocked me over. I knew I put a couple pig ears out in the top of the kennel but that’s the wrong direction unless the wind was switching so along about that time CJ has a big explosive bark at something in the dark so I get the old 20,000,000 CP spotlight and we go outside. The smell nearly knocked me out. What could it be? I butchered a hog in the barn yesterday but buried all the remains including the 9 rattle and one button snake Mama Kitty alerted me to at the breezeway door when I was headed back out, good Mama Kitty. What could it be? And then I realized the 40 gallon trash can I’d used I washed out but left a bunch of water in to soak the blood out on the bottom. I limped that bad boy well to the east so the south wind would take it elsewhere, dumped the water and turned that bad boy upside down. Rednecks indeed. I had to butcher the pig, go get firewood, split it, build a fire after cleaning the pit, kill the snake, bury all the remains in the garden, cut the hog up and then cook the rest, 9:43 when I got back in the house for the last time last night. Right in the middle of all this the wife tells me while the sweat is dripping from my hair I look like a redneck. Ok, I’ll bite. How’s that I say. Well, you’re sitting there at the computer with nothing on but warm-ups, a camo gimme cap and sunglasses with your gray hair sticking out everywhere, a beer in one hand and a pipe in the other and a cat’s on your shoulder. I’ll take that as a compliment I retorted. I would have said “I said” but that’s too redneck. Maybe I should have had that bloody rattle and pig ears on a string around my neck too.
8, I had to drop the alcohol because I couldn’t seem to drink without takin on something awful and fuckin up everything I got near. I don’t miss it, and haven’t even wanted any of it since the day I stopped.
Some people can handle drinking. I ain’t one of them.
Ed, I understand completely, probably Indian blood that does it, not joking there. I have now been able to drink whiskey moderately and not turn into Bad Superman cause I drank the whole bottle, oh, for the last week or so ha ha. BTW, New Years eve of ’81 I drank my last bottle of whiskey(it was planned and not one of those friendship ruining escapades) and except for friends coming around with some strong hooch like tequila we knew we were gonna get wasted on, I didn’t drink hard stuff for 20 years.
In regards to your reply to HJ, I second that. Had he been through what we have, he’d be all ears.
8, yep it’s indian blood (Micmac and Cherokee) as well as Irish ancestry. Once I found out that it was apt to kill me or ruin my life, the choice was easy. 29 years off of it has given me a little breathing room and some perspective. 😉
Ed, I have known people with Indian blood and the old alcohol stereotype is actually fact. We all have the power to change almost anything except genetics. You did the right thing as you well know, just wish some other people could have seen that too but they’re dead.
Dear ozymandias,
I’m here to entertain the most generous to the least generous in descending order. What should I be doing to bring revenue?
I have this tyrant in my pre-frontal cortex that often thwarts my goals. Maybe I lash out at the wrong person. Slaughter someone’s sacred cow needlessly that it isn’t my place to do. Often, an unexpected phrase sets me off and I dash off a comment I never rationally mean to say.
I mixed my message by adding the blurb about Bono’s stock profits. Should have left it with just his quotes, which are sourced and rare to hear, given who he is expected to be.
The big thing at my house. Playing Bingo. (In Vegas, that means up to $100,000 in stakes). The documentary Blackfish. SeaWorld is verbotten.
The phrase that sticks with me by Mises or Hayek: “the worst get on top.” Often, the worst of me gets on top which makes no sense here. Why not let the quality here bring out the best in me? Why not emulate the best when it’s in front of my face?
Ya, Tor. I can relate to that comment. Very imperfect human.
It was good to read.
If I shit the bed on reddit or whatever, I get instantaneous “conspiritard” or other negative feedback from a moderator. Bringing up Mars One for example invites a flurry of downvotes.
Here, “where I eat” so to speak, it is slower and less direct. If it goes twenty posts with no response, I’d take that as a bad sign.
Better to hear I’m bigoted, chauvinistic, god-bashing, anti-christian, partisan, off-topical, thread-derailing, incoherent, snitching, infiltrating, sectarian, freeloading, looting, racist, sexist, homophobic, demented, atheistic, intimidating, profligate, traitorous, filth-spewing, dogmatic, demented, jingoistic, creepy, disturbing, demonic, sinister, weird, hair-raising, brain-damaged, menacing, threatening, logorrhea-ing, monotonous, popinjay, fop, poser, schizophasic, blogspamming, cluttering, perverted, thought-disordered, disgusting, offensive, wall-of-texter,anti-semitic, unlabeled NSFW posting, overly graphical, and longwinded.
Hmmm, never knew you to be traitorous. 😉
RE: Your last paragraph, Tor:
If you weren’t those things, you might as well not have lived…
“The unexamined life”, if you will.
So, you’re doing something right, keep truckin’. 😉
HJ’s re-entry here reminds me of a bit of Seinfeld dialog, from “The Stranded”:
Ellen: Yeah, I think I’ve seen you in a club. You talk about a lot of every
day things, right?
Jerry: Right.
Ellen: Yeah, I remember you.
Ellen turns her back and the camera pans out …
🙂
The entire point of their public school and television is to turn homo sapiens into programmable bonobo monkeys. Bono – Bonobo, coincidence?
If you remove “Logic” from Trivium, them you can manufacture pliable and violent collectivist monkeys. This is evident in the infantile parasitic twits that call themselves “Liberals”.
Bonobos are morally superior to human beings. In the wild they don’t kill each other. They don’t form into gangs and kill the weak using strength in numbers. As an evil cannibalistic human, you have no standing to accuse them of anything.
I’m currently studying Orcas. It seems they are also morally superior to humans.
B1ackfish
http://viooz.co/movies/21942-blackfish-2013.html
Orcas – Documentary
B1ackfish – Killer Whales at SeaWorld
Humans have misguided conceptions of morality. If you willing participate in a gang (a nation) and benefit from its murdering, that is of paramount importance. What are you to do when you are an American Bonobo that steals from and often murders the weaker Bonobos of the world?
If you lie to others about how tall the tree you live in is. If you have two bonobo wives and a bonobo mistress and they don’t care but your neighbor bonobos disapprove. If you push your fellow bonobos buttons just to rile them up. If you steal your fellow bonobo’s banana when he isn’t looking.
How is that morally significant in light of you considering yourself fortunate that you belong to a gang that murders other bonobos? In light of your working to make your murdering gang more efficient?
I don’t know, Tor…Force Democracy/Socialism on Bonobos or any other animal and they will start murdering each other as well…It is just the outcome of the entitlement/criminal/infantile mind demanding that every other animal live for you. Democracy always produces cannibals/parasites…It can produce nothing else. I guess self-awareness and a mindspace for “thinking” would be needed before you can force Democracy on bonobos.
Bonobos in captivity do display aggression.
Bonobos rate food on a five-point scale.(voting)
http://rangevoting.org/Bonobos.html
Figs got a perfect score, with raisins a close second. In order from most to least favored, the rest of the list read: grapes, bananas, popcorn, apples, oranges, biscuits, celery, melon, lettuce, yams and peppers.
It appears that energy-rich succulent fruits were the most favored of foods, a bit like us, they weren’t so keen on their vegetables.
If an experiment were performed, and the bonobos could be made to understand that they were being fed a diet based on their collective group vote, I do think some would respond with anger at the others who voted “wrong.” Maybe even respond with violence.
Imagine a neighborhood power group of 500 wives and girlfriends who voted as a group each night whether they were in the mood for “relations” or not.
Would there be lobbying by men? Would men eagerly watch the groups nightly telecast of their meetings where they considered their vote for the night? Would an abstinence committee of men rise up in retaliation and response?
Scientists think there might be a somewhat universal primate language when it comes to food.
Rather than loathe humanity as irredeemable, perhaps successful activity that lessens human’s unwilling captivity will make the world a happier and more rewarding place.
Also, as an apology Ann, I meant to respond to ozymandias’ use of bonobo. I figured trying to explain my mistake would further confuse things.
Jacksonville Zoo Bonobo Conservation
http://www.jacksonvillezoo.org/index.php/animals/bonobo_conservation
Bono is the shortened version of Paul’s “stage” name which is Bono Vox.
Bono means good. Vox means voice.
How does one be a bonobo and not a chimpanzee? The chimpanzee statists intend to take millions from Bono to fund their violence. An important issue for a decent human is how to, at minimum, keep your millions away from the violent chimpanzee nations of the world, and at least funnel your required protection payments to charities which you perceive to be chimpanzees of lesser evil.
bo·no·bo
/bəˈnōbō/
noun: bonobo;
1. a chimpanzee with a black face and black hair, found in the rain forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).
Origin 1950s: a local word.
German anatomist Ernst Schwarz is credited with having discovered the bonobo in 1928, based on his analysis of a skull in the Tervuren museum in Belgium that previously had been thought to have belonged to a juvenile chimpanzee. Schwarz published his findings in 1929. In 1933, American anatomist Harold Coolidge offered a more detailed description of the bonobo, and elevated it to species status. The American psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes was also one of the first scientists to notice major differences between bonobos and chimpanzees.
DRoC – largest city Kinshasa – official language: French
from DRoC search engine (democratic republic of congo)
https://www.google.cd/
Bonobo
Primates
Pan paniscus, appelé bonobo, mot découlant de la déformation du nom de la ville de Bolobo, est une espèce de Panines, membres de la famille des hominidés et de l’ordre des primates. On l’appelle aussi chimpanzé nain. Wikipédia
Rang : Espèce
Classification : Pan
Evil UN Gang of Chimpanzees Make Violence Against DRoC Bonobos
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/08/201382761918639520.html
I am surprised that citizens in the USA and Canada have had their freedoms taken away for more than 60 years by governments forcing them to consume tap water which has been chemically altered by the addition of hexafluorosilicic acid fluoride.
No freedom of choice! This chemical is a waste by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry. It is totally different from the naturally occurring calcium fluoride which is very insoluble. The so-called nutrient/medication/ supplement fluoride which is being slowly bled into municipal water systems is the cause of dental fluorosis, brittle bones, thyroid and kidney problems. Fluorine is the most reactive element known to mankind. All ethical, moral and human rights objections have been overruled by those who mandate that this poison be force
fed to the general population.
Only 5% of the global population is being exposed to this method. The countries which have the most of this are the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Europe the last country where the people are fighting it is Ireland.
Strange how people object (perhaps with the good reason of insisting on freedom of choice) against being forced to buy medical or fire insurance while at the same time being oblivious to having NO choice when it comes to drinking water!
Those are very good observations, Werner. There was resistance to the conspiracy to poison people. Here in the US it came from the John Birch Society, among other groups. The CIA’s “Mighty Wurlitzer” of the media easily drowned out all objection and tagged the resistors as lunatics.
Dentists are still in thrall to the nonsensical idea that drinking flouridated water and using flouridated toothpaste and mouthwash are necessary to prevent cavities. When I told a dentist that my child was not to be subjected to flouride varnishes on her teeth, the dentist asked if we had well water at home. I said that we did and the dentist said, “So where do you think she’ll get her flouride?”
There’s just no arguing with such studied ignorance as that displayed by the dentist. Thanks to the advance of socialized medicine here in the US, soon we’ll be reported as unfit parents for resisting flouride treatments on our children’s teeth. I suspect to see that kind of thing happening soon enough. It’s already happening to parents who resist the massive vaccine cocktails administered to children.
Ed, I bought a “pump-house” off a torn down cotton warehouse. There was a big cast cup with a hole in the bottom that attached to a 1/2″ line in line with all this bs along with an injector for dispersant for the water. I still have the thing and never had a clue what it was. Then a few years ago I was living at my nephew’s trailer park and the “last” pump of seven went down so I helped him (in the middle of the night natch since he and his running buddy has just gotten in from hunting)change 4-5 submersible pumps, having to rig up a trailer with an a-frame, break it all down, you know the routine, plus pull part of the roof off the main pump house. Anyway, we’re working in there, he and his bud are very “on top of things” and I’m just slugging it out(they could have offered although I would have turned them down). About half way through this episode at about 4 am I notice the same cup in his pump house. All his water went into a 40 bbl tank with a jet pump taking it to park itself. I asked him what it was for and he said “Oh dammit, it’s out”, reached into a box and drug out one of those chlorine/fluorine tabs and threw it in there. I was aghast and started telling him how bad that stuff was. He said he was aware but the city forced him to use it and would fine hell out of him if they went in there and the cup was empty. I talked him into putting a lock on the door eventually only he had a key to. I’d go in about once a week and ease that tab up to the very edge so the water circulating would barely get to the edge….hey, it was in there. I only used it to bathe, been drinking distilled and RO since ’82 and intend to start using triple distilled(I can remember when distilled was pure H20).
Hi Ed,
good points! Here where I live the fluoridate the tap water since 1954, without a referendum. When it became the law to hold a referendum the province passed a new law eliminating that requirement for our city! We are the last big town in the entire province which still resists the trend to stop. The province is actually 97% free from the poisoning of tap water!
Adding this stuff to the water if like forcing a person to drink sun screen lotion in order to prevent sunburn!
This industrial waste by-product can not be dumped in a lake or a river, it can not be buried or dumped on the ground and its gas is not allowed to be vented into the atmosphere! It would be a costly nightmare to figure out how to get rid of it!
Solution: Bleed it very slowly into the city tap water and claim that it is a harmless healthy nutrient! And get paid for the stuff by the cities who buy it!
Stalin used it in his prison camps to keep the prisoners from revolting! It is the perfect stupefying agent: Invisible, odorless and tasteless!
Can’t believe that the general public does not complain about denial of the freedom to choose what it puts into their bodies!
Living in an urban setting it is not possible to have a well!
Yep.
Not to mention how disgusting the idea is that in major cities (like where I live) the water is also just recycled toilet waste. What a lot of people forget about toilet waste is all the other things (other than poop and pee) getting flushed down the “recycling bin” like pharmaceuticals and cleaning supplies.
Or people like me, who work outside a lot… I drink about 3 gallons of water a day during the summer time and at least an average of a gallon a day the rest of the year… so if the government recommends people drink 1 gallon of water a day that means during the summertime I am consuming 3 times as much flouride as the average joe.
Also, in city water supplies where maintenance has to be done, “they” over chlorinate the water at least twice a year to “flush out” all the bad stuff from the lines… guess where this bad stuff is getting “flushed out” to… yep, our homes and businesses! Yummy!
All that right there is a big reason why I plan on moving out of the city.
Jacob, 30 years ago I used to work on a nearby city’s water system. I’d get a killer headache and nausea from their over-fluoridation breathing the fumes from the water. Water availability here has gone to hell after a 20 year drought as well as a climatic change drought(what the hell ever that is)where we only get a few inches of rain and have 115°+ temps in the summer. Now most of the water comes from wells and really low lakes so they have gone overboard on fluoridating it. I can’t stand to even smell it while I see other people drinking it. I’m amazed…but not amazed by all the bottled water that’s sold.
Jacob, and anybody else who lives in town hear this. A friend’s dad, a damned American Airlines pilot who flew big jets thought nothing of flushing his used motor oil down the drain in San Diego where he lived. It boggles the mind to think how much stuff is flushed down toilets and agri-chemicals would be a breath of fresh air compared to them. I cringe every time I think about that…..and throw the filter in the garbage.
Crikey, Eight!
“A friend’s dad, a damned American Airlines pilot who flew big jets thought nothing of flushing his used motor oil down the drain in San Diego where he lived.”
I don’t doubt stuff like that happens routinely. As you (and others who live out in the sticks) know, even a little bit of oil leached into the ground can do a number on an aquifer.
Per the Greaseman:
We have so many maggots… so many, many Maggots….
eric, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve worked in the oilfield and seen horrible unnecessary pollution and have seen it from 70 year old wells where the casing is virtually gone and it’s being used for salt water injection(includes all sorts of other chemicals)so the injected brew ends up in the water table. I’ve seen it destroy thousands of acres of land around one single well. I have watched farmers and others dump countless thousands of gallons of used waste oil of all sorts on top of the ground, watched commercial sprayers dump literally thousands of gallons of pesticides of various sorts generally in a canyon nobody will see. As a pesticide application licensee, I’ve had to take countless classes mandated by the state water control and the epa. Now I had state oversight but that program has brought back bullfrogs and horned toads to our area. Ask a cotton farmer why that is? I don’t know. No, hell no, it’s doesn’t put money in your pocket to know. I used to do some cotton farming but once it turned to chemical farming I quit. I realize it’s cheaper(and much easier on lazy farmers) to spray Roundup on everything instead of cultivate but that doesn’t make it right and the laws governing the use of pesticides changed mid-stream once chemical companies decided they could produce mass amount of crap like Roundup and eliminate cultivating for weeds. Countless places that were old homesteads in the country when I was growing up now stand bare with dead trees and bushes everywhere because it all gets Roundup along with the cotton fields around it. I had a big oil pipeline break about 3 years ago half a mile from me. The Koch plane saw it, radioed it in and trucks with equipment showed up left and right with dozers, graders, backhoes and whtnot to contain and cover that spill as quickly as possible. Now I could have called agencies to report this, the very ones they didn’t want to have find out, but it would have been a negative in the long run. Scooping up countless truckloads of dirt and hauling it to god only knows where to find a big jet burner that would process it and haul it back is not saving the environment in any way and crude oil is a natural contaminant to a great degree since it does naturally pollute the ground without drilling for it. If plain old crude were the only thing that ever spilled on the earth, we could count ourselves mighty lucky. I used to be the victim of a salt water injection well only 3/8 mile upstream from us. It caused our tank to have 6-8 feet of pure white on the ground around it, salty as hell and I”m surprised the fish could live. The state paid oil companies to plug all those old wells and that removed the salt water injection site. The best money my tax dollars every spent in my view. It wasn’t just my ground water being ruined with that thing. I could write till the sun went down about all the things I know have been done and a great many have been rectified. I’m not big on govt. oversight but when entire industries have no moral oversight it seems like the best thing to ever happen.
I’ve seen stuff like that myself, Eight. Growing up, it was common to see people dump old motor oil in the woods, etc. But it was done mostly out of ignorance, and an understandable reflexive mistrust of ANYTHING the environmentalists said. Plus, oil recycling was pretty much unknown, at least in my neck of the woods. So most people just didn’t know what to do with the stuff.
Dear 8SM,
That’s a shame. My understanding is that used motor oil can be burned effectively in a DIY space heater and generate lots of winter heat for free. Reports are they burn quite clean.
Here is one example.
Make a Waste Oil Heater
With this waste oil heater you can heat a shop or garage, or even your home. The fuel is “free for the hauling.”
By Richard Freudenberger
September/October 1978
http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/waste-oil-heater-zmaz78sozraw.aspx#axzz2iw4jPuQm
Link to diagrams for DIY motor oil space heater
To help with the assembly, refer to our Waste Oil Heater Diagrams and Photos.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/~/media/71C90913893146CF9D5AEE8A82CFE817.ashx
Waste oil is a great heat fuel. I have installed units that were made to use any flammable liquid or gas. They work great and generally your only cost after installation is the electricity for the blower assembly. Shops where equipment, autos/trucks are repaired commonly have this type of heat. Many people with businesses that produce waste oil use this in their house, no different from using any other fuel. They burn hot enough to not even see exhaust. Wish I could afford one on my barn. Ten years ago one to heat my barn was about $6,000 + installation. A few of us got together and knocked it all out in one day on a friend’s shop. Now in the winter when it’s really cold, he’s standing there in jeans and short sleeve shop shirt….all for the price of electricity and he still has waste oil he has hauled off or give away.
Dear 8SM,
Good to hear that.
Considering how this kind of heater has been around for decades, I’m surprised that more people aren’t taking advantage of this totally free source of heating fuel.
Hi Werner,
You’re absolutely correct in re the pernicious effects of fluoridated water. However, it is possible to “opt out” – by having a well (we do). Our water is free – and free of fluoride, too!
I’ve got a series of waters filter hooked up to my sinks. The maker claims it will remove 99% of the fluoride from the city water. I’m happy with it so far. It used to be my water had so much chlorine in it the silverware would shine and sparkle as if I’d cleaned it with gasoline. I cannot detect any chlorine with the filter, so it might be taking out the fluoride too. ?
R.O. is tempting, but pricey, maybe someday?
I only found one company that sells a shower head filter which they claim removes fluoride, but I never could get it to work correctly, it just spewed out tons of black carbon no matter how long I primed it or ran water through it.
After trying two filters, I gave up on that company. Omica was the name. If that matters to anyone.
I’ve read that those who use distilled water are lacking in minerals and need to find a way to get them.
That reminded me of some city near Dallas, they have lots of magnesium in their water, there was some study done about how healthy they were. I think it was also about a lack of bone fractures, or … I can’t recall, and I don’t have the link. But I remember thinking, that’s the kind of water to have.
Roth, there are RV water filters that take virtually everything out so they say. I have my doubts about removing all the fluoride since I don’t think even the RO membrane removes it and you need a couple other filters for that. I have used the more expensive($20)RV filters and they work very well, no smell of anything and good tasting water, which I don’t drink, but continue to buy RO or distilled for drinking. I do feel they do a good job for dish washing and bathing and probably drinking too since they do make the claim. You can rig one up in your water closet if that’s where both cold and hot water inputs are just by changing threads from water hose to NPT which is just an adapter. They do make these dual filters for houses though that go there and do a very good job, say they’re good for 10,000gallons. RO systems are not that pricey if you find the correct ones and since I know a couple people who use them, I’ll find out if you want. I think the town you’re trying to remember is Mineral Wells, near Ft. Worth, and people do swear by the water, not just for drinking but for healing. They do a big business there selling that water. As for minerals, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be unless it’s the right mix. I have enough minerals in my water to knock the bottom of a plastic bucket out but it ain’t good for you. Since we’ve had so many dry years, almost no rain, our water has turned to iron and sulphur(recently with sulphur)((scuse my spelling). I’m about to do “something” for sure. Our water has started stinking like hell(literally if you believe in it)in the last year. Ah, the good old days when it rained.
Thanks for the offer, but no need to ask others. I could probably do R.O. here, but I’m not planning on staying. I will look into the RV slant. I haven’t heard or thought of that before.
Also, I’ve had Texas water in a couple of places, and is it ever nasty, and that was years ago. I can’t imagine it being worse. Maybe that’s why I was surprised to read about (probably, yes) Mineral Wells, Tx.
Dang wine is giving me a stomach ache, I think I got a bad one. That’s what I get for trying cheap ones. Might have to drag out the whiskey or something? As I’m out of takillya. …Great@! now my power adapter just went bad. …And I was having such a good day. What’s next? When it rains, it pours, and they always come in threes.
Roth, while I’d like to have a good cabernet sauvignon, I’m not near decently priced good stuff although we do produce as good as there is not over 140 miles from me. I made the switch to Wild Turkey and branch water a few hours back. I just sip it slowly since I can actually fly, jump long distances, run down wild animals and have x-ray vision when I drink large amounts of bourbon. Being Superman at night is hell the next day though, sometimes turning into weeks or months of hell. I hope your stomach gets better soon.
“I’ve read that those who use distilled water are lacking in minerals and need to find a way to get them.”
I’ve heard that too and it makes no sense to me. We usually get our minerals from food, not from water. Distilled water is usually the best bet if you live in a city. It’s the best buy, anyway. I use distilled water for brewing my kombucha, even though I have a well.
I sure nough didn’t like the taste of the well water in East Texas. It was plumb fuckin pukey.
Ed, best water I ever had was 40 years ago in Meridian, Ms. There actually was good water in my part of Texas even when I was a kid but it’s been gone a long time now. You can get some good water in east Tx. but it’s hit or miss, a well here or there. When I think of east Tx and water the town of Sulfur Springs comes to mind. Drink beer.
I don’t know, Ed. Have you ever had tropical fish in a fish tank?
If they switch water sources, they don’t do well. Water from ten miles away, even.
It’s not due to PH, it’s due to other things.
People can’t be all that different.
I seem to recall reading similar ideas with plants and water.
…I’m pretty certain I’ve read bad things about distilled water from a lack of minerals standpoint (by Mercola even?) but I’ll be danged if I can recall exactly what it was, or where.
Ha. It’ll probably come to me when I’m covered in grease and wrenching something loose two weeks from now.
No, I haven’t ever had a fish tank. What I’m saying is that water isn’t the sole source of our mineral intake. We can drink water with no mineral content and never have a mineral deficiency because we have other sources of minerals in our diets. The danger of getting minerals we don’t need, or that would be toxic in the amounts found in some water sources would seem to me to offset any harm that would come from drinking water with no minerals at all.
The fear mongering over distilled water lacking nutrients, is exactly that, fear mongering. To keep the uninformed away, and keep them trusting in the oh-so-clean government water supply.
Plants and fish “like” nutrients in the water. Human beings and other mammals can get all those nutrients from food.
Well, not exactly NO choice. I’ve lived for 67 years and never in a place that had fluoridated water. The required living in out of the way rural areas, of course, instead of the city. Even there, I know many people who seriously filter their water to remove as much of it as possible.
It’s like nutrition. We could blame the FDA, USDA, etc. for the poor state of nutrition in this country, but we are the ones who put the fork into our mouth. Young mothers today so often don’t know how to cook – because THEIR mothers didn’t teach them, not because “home economics” are no longer taught in “school.”
We always have choices. Some of them are very hard, and some are extremely costly… but every action or inaction is a choice when you get right down to it. Terrible as the coercive bastards are, they can’t “do it to us” all by themselves.
Lets keep it hypothetical then.
Atlantis has a 10 trillion in revenue economy. Its industrial sector is brings in 100 billion and makes cars, furniture, and advanced aerospace products.
Its entertainment sector bring in 100 billion, while costing Atlantis 10 trillion in losses. It provides entertainment at a loss to influence the world.
Its military and government sector costs 10 trillion, including millions of secret agents placed domestically and worldwide to control its image and keep its citizens in compliance.
Atlantis loans out 100s of trillions of dollars, interest and losses net to zero. The bankers their profits and operate the financial system at breakeven. These bankers demand other nations model their legal systems after Atlantis.
Atlantis imports 10 trillion dollars worth of goods, to support a lifestyle far beyond its own abilities and productiveness.
Atlantis has 50 countries that are semi-autonomous, but are contractually colonies of Atlantis. They contribute 39.8 trillion to Atlantis’s economy through various schemes and protocols.
These citizens are 50 times more numerous than Atlantis, and nearly all of them live modestly and hand to mouth, because their surplus is taken by their governments to give to Atlantis.
Atlantis is a Vampire Economy.
– – – – – – –
Shambala has a 2 trillion dollar economy.
Its industrial sector bring in 1 trillion and makes religious artifacts, textiles, and construction products.
Many Shambala citizens work abroad, they are the most intelligent people on the planet and are responsible for all kinds of scientific discoveries that greatly enrich the Earth and provide unknown trillions to many future peoples.
These citizens are some of the most wealthy in the world, but do not contribute their income to their government.
Some of these hyper-intelligent Shambalans use their knowledge to trick their neighboring nations. They bamboozle and scam 50 trillion from their neighbors. They use some of this wealth to change the laws in their victims countries so they legally can’t defend themselves.
The Shambalans are shrewd traders. They buy and sell 500 trillion in goods more than anyone else in the world and obtain needed goods this way while also keeping a 2 trillion profit for themselves.
The Shambalans are hyper-religious. They spend 53 trillion domestically and worldwide on temples, religious education, religious entertainment, and on promoting its religion and gaining converts.
Shambala is a Parasite Economy.
…And they both have housing bubbles about ready to pop.
And in both nations the locals think the natives of the other will come and buy their house and save the day.
It’s likely they are both cargo cult nations.
cargO cultS
helotS
twO thingS i haD neveR hearD abouT beforE i starteD readinG anD postinG herE.
#whYhereSmYfavoritEplacE
Kewl. Me too.
I learned about helots at Pro Libertate. Will Grigg has a number of excellent and detailed comparisons of helots with modern americans. It just blew me away.
It seemed like a Giant step beyond what you’d find on Wiki.
I learned about the cargo cult at TheHousingBubbleBlog. They had many entries where they compared the cargo cult to the people reacting to the home building boom and bust.
I saw a TV commercial long ago about a website, the ad said, “Build it. And they will come.” I think that was the mantra of the tech boom of the 1990’s. It was cargo cultish as well, especially after the tech crash.
This comment seems to sum up the results of modern cargo cult behavior, it is in response to this:
“While this lag in new home construction is partially because of the abundance of unoccupied homes, it also goes back to the jobs problem.’”
Comment by Housing Analyst
2013-10-25 11:57:39
Isn’t it disgusting that the liar who made this statement gets away with it?
There wouldn’t be;
a)unoccupied houses
b) Lag in construction
c) a “jobs problem”
…..if housing prices weren’t so massively inflated.
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=8010
Housing, automobiles and motorcycles wouldn’t be so expensive if not for The Fed trying to re-create the boom – cargo cult style – (which its easy money policy had created and then destroyed by withdrawing that easy money, among other factors) much of the rest of the population just fell in line behind that idea and became cargo culters as well.
That’s also how we got the Free Shit Army and Obombacare.
Some of the things I learn on EPA stick with me for awhile too. Some technical, some legal, and some cultural (like Tor’s video about the god of Iran, or Ed’s and Eightsouthman’s comments about BBQ. I still can’t forget either of them. The BBQ, maybe because it’s too cold and windy to BBQ here?) I’m just glad I could contribute two bits also.
Many people say the desire to be controlled, and to control others, is learned in schools. That’s true, but today I re-learned how corporations reinforce that conditioning. And that may be an even worse thing.
Two, for examples:
In one corporation, asking a co-worker out on a date is forbidden, do it twice, and it is considered sexual harassment.
[So forget going out to lunch? And, wow, a Lot of couples wouldn’t be married if that were a law.]
No one at that corporation seemed to mind this policy.
They had a long list of similarly bizarre policy demands, which no one seemed to mind, much worse than that. I should have written them down, I forgot the specifics, however; the take away was: they reinforce the conditioning people receive in school (and see on the TV). That in turn leads people to such things as thinking Obombacare is a good thing. After all, they hear similar crap all day at work, when they encounter it elsewhere, they are predisposed to simply agree because it sounds, “just like at work”.
At another corporation, Gander Mt. I was asked for my ID to purchase pellets for a pellet gun.
I told them that was ridiculous, and asked, “are you serious?”
The answer was, “Yes.” With a smirk.
I told them they could keep them. And walked out.
I’ll not shop there ever again.
The clerk had no problem demanding an ID to buy pellets, didn’t see anything wrong with it, even seemed to enjoy demanding an ID.
Compliance is mandatory.
Perceived safety is paramount.
Under any circumstances, you shall not risk.
It’s the american’t corporate way.
@Roth – You just described the the new Common Core curriculum being installed in all public schools. It is designed to prevent critical thinking while using words that illicit communal cooperation that prevents dissension.
RE: Common Core curriculum.
Whenever I see that phrase from here on out, I’m going to think of the word, ‘leash’.
…Or maybe, ‘choker-chain’?
Choker chain.
You did the right thing by leaving and never shopping there again but the clerk would have been fired if he allowed the purchase, without seeing ID, and his manager found out about it.
Until recently I worked at gas stations doing maintenance. The clerks at gas stations and other businesses are victims of undercover stings where the cop faggots pay 17 year olds who look old (have full beards, piercings, tattoos, etc.) to go into the business and attempt to buy things without showing ID. If the sale is allowed, the clerk (who is just trying to make an honest god damned living) is walked out in handcuffs and heavily fined. I totally understand being pissed off about it in your situation, but these people are basically forced to follow orders. Granted, these people could just leave these jobs and find a better job, but when you’re an unskilled worker it looks terrible to have a resume where you only worked a short time at your previous job.
“We”, those of us who are “awake”, are living in hard times and the times are only going to get much harder thanks to the government stifling positive role models (aka, law breakers) to show these low skilled workers that there is a better path (freedom).
Yup – to the point of absolute absurdity, too.
I’ve told this story before, but:
I was heading home from a car journalist press event, stuck at an airport in between flights. I decided to have a drink (coffee – remember, I’m a weirdo) at the bar, where I could sit and work on my laptop. A guy – an older guy – sidles up to the bar shortly after I arrived. He asks for a beer. The bartender asks for his ID. The guy is clearly, beyond any shadow of any doubt, well over 60. In fact, he was in his 70s – as he explained about his having fought in Korea. The bartender wouldn’t budge – and the old guy had to produce his ID. This sort of degradation is the “freedom” he fought for. My guts were churning – and it wasn’t on account of the coffee…
eric, I had that happen 3-4 years ago at a Taylor’s convenience store. When I pointed out the absurdity of it the clerk said it was company policy and of course, we were both on video with sound and it was playing right above us. It was just a matter of principle with me. I knew SHE wasn’t the stupid one and she knew I was old enough to be at least her daddy. I sat my beer down and went on down the way, plenty beer to be bought anywhere and I can remain not only anonymous but quite possibly not even be on video(probably not but at least I didn’t have to watch myself by beer that being enough to make me quit drinking). Same price, colder even and a good friend to sell it to me too, I just hadn’t wanted to venture that far down the road. I quit going to that convenience store, realized my friend valued my business even if I did have to drive further…..and that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? I mean, we should support the people we know and like and not a corporate entity who might have different people there every day.
No argument with any of that, Jim. A sensible post. Keep ’em coming!
@Roth – I think you have it. What “communitarian cooperation” thoughts come to mind when you hear the words “climate change”, “global warming”, “save the planet” etc. All given to us by the mind masters, whose believers will argue their “beliefs” because of the “thought” information they were fed. You don’t want to be left out of the “social” media club do you?
Reality is only for the free thinkers or the mind masters running the system.
I refuse to use the euphemism “single payer”. This term is meant to hide the true nature of this beast from the low-information types: that the system is RUN by the government, and your doctor will in effect be working for the government rather than for you.
More accurate to say: State Run Medicine. Dictatorial Medicine.
Hitler Learns about Obamacare Problems
Government Snitches Infested Tor Project’s Silk Road
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/10/government-informants-were-all-around.html
I agree, EES. Such euphemisms are used as a means of controlling dialog. Abortion promoters would rather discuss the merits of “choice” than of abortion. Gungrabbers would rather have the discussion center on eliminating violence rather than disarming a populace prior to genocide.
Refusal to play along can keep their intentions front and center where their intended victims can see what they are proposing.
Hi EES,
You are absolutely right; I am kicking myself for not having done the same. It won’t happen again. Hat tip to you, sir!
Canada medical care is free…Free access to waiting lists, that is.
Collectivist monkeys will always want the terrorist gang that calls themselves government to put guns to everyone elses head. Why do you even try to convince a monkey to be a civilized human? It is like screaming at the rain to be ice cream. Do you see how the government terrorist gangs have managed to murder 200M people in the last 100 years? The collectivist monkeys are extremely violent even though they try to appear civil and compassionate…Using other people’s money, of course.
I am commenting from Canada. Here we have universal healthcare, which of course is not free! Nobody has ever claimed that it is free. Provinces collect a provincial sales tax on consumer goods and the federal government collects a goods and services tax as well. Each province has its own system, but no matter what it is a person has to buy health care insurance. If one is on welfare the government makes sure that the person has coverage automatically. The employer I worked for paid the premium for my spouse and me, and still pays it in my retirement. It is a taxable benefit and I pay income tax on the amount. If we would not have this universal coverage we would be living in a tent now, because we both have encountered the big C during the last three years. Everything was looked after in a most admirable and swift manner, all the chemo and radiation, all of it free of charge and with additional assistance from the government for travelling and accommodation expenses.
Nobody gets left behind, no matter what the financial circumstances.
So far it has not cost us any appreciable amount and the healthcare system works very well.
Thank you.
Hi Werner,
I’m glad everything turned out well in re the big C.
I’m not a collectivist, however – or an authoritarian. Therefore, to me, the utilitarian arguments are beside the point. I take the position that no one has the moral right to force me to buy health insurance – or to compel me to pay for the health care of other people. I believe these things are my business, to decide on my own, without people threatening me with violence to coerce me.
And that’s the bedrock issue, really. Do others have the right to do me violence, simply because I wish to be left in peace to live my life as I see fit? How is it that I “owe” random strangers anything – beyond common courtesy and respect for their equal right to be left in peace?
Hi Eric,
when you buy fire insurance for your home you usually do not do that because you expect your house to catch fire, in fact you buy that insurance to protect you just in case it does happen, heaven forbid! So, when someone else’s home burns down you are in fact contributing to the insurance companies fund out of which they pay for the damage, like it or not! You may be paying for someone carelessly falling asleep on the couch with a cigarette smoldering between the cushions!
It’s the same with universal health care! One pays into the pot with the expectation to have a long and healthy life, the best outcome being that one is always healthy enough never to use any of the money one paid into it!
By the way, because almost all so-called Canadian home insurance companies are American owned we have seen our rates double and triple since Katrina and the other hurricane and twister damage payouts in your country!
One must see the greater national and global picture!
Love your great car stories!
Hi Werner. I worked in the insurance industry for years (mostly on the property and casualty side), and I was taught that the purpose of insurance is to cover large and infrequent, unpredictable losses. I was also taught that health/medical insurance isn’t really insurance, because health insurance is designed to reimburse most if not all expenses. If your fire insurance company had to pay out every time you burned a piece of toast, they’d be out of business very quickly. Instead, they pay only if you have a loss above your deductible and that falls within the scope of the coverage. They’re not set up to cover small, ordinary losses; the administrative overhead to do so could make the premium unaffordable.
So in short, I don’t think the insurance analogy is a good one. Health insurance isn’t really insurance — it’s socialized wealth redistribution. Now, that isn’t necessarily bad; in some, more homogeneous societies (like Switzerland, or even Canada), it seems to work, and you can argue that the good outweighs the bad.
But for those with a more libertarian point of view, this is stealing. And stealing is stealing, no matter if it’s done by a common criminal or a criminal in uniform. Regardless, they’re taking your money at gunpoint. You can say that the government is stealing for a good purpose. But what’s good to you may not be so to me. And even if we agree on the purpose, does that change the nature of the crime? If I rob you at gunpoint and give the money to Habitat for Humanity, does that change the fact that you were robbed? Am I not still guilty of a crime? So why should the state be treated differently?
Hi Werner,
It’s not the same thing – because I am not forced to buy fire insurance for my home. In fact, I recently cancelled our policy because of a rate increase for no reason (related to me) that I objected to.
I have no issue with health insurance on that basis – i.e., when it is voluntary and I can choose to buy it or not.
That is the issue.
If I can be forced to buy health insurance – threatened with arrest/imprisonment if I do not hand over my money and assaulted, perhaps even killed, if I attempt to defend myself – then there is no logical reason why I ought not to be forced to buy life insurance, too. Or all sorts of other insurance. How about gun insurance? (That is on the docket, I assure you.) Why not? Where does it end?
And if I can be forced to buy into all those things, then so can you. So can everyone. We can all use the organized violence of the state to force others to submit to the great collective.
It may start out “soft” – but it will end up hard, Werner.
History bears this out.
I’d rather not have to live through the same lesson humanity should have already learned well a long time ago.
“when you buy fire insurance for your home you usually do not do that because you expect your house to catch fire,”
Due to the nature of the insurance scam, buyers of fire insurance are betting that their house will burn down. The insurer bets that it will not. The insurer gets to attach conditions and qualifications to the bet, and in the case of losing the bet is allowed to welsh on the bet in part or totally.
“It’s the same with universal health care! One pays into the pot with the expectation to have a long and healthy life, the best outcome being that one is always healthy enough never to use any of the money one paid into it!”
I can’t see it that way. Now, if one was to pay into his own pot and get to keep the money in the case that he never needed any medical treatment, That would qualify as a “best outcome”, in my view.
They also do not have the right to tax you, tell you how to drive, tell you what to eat, tell you what drugs you can take, that you must try a license to get married, that kids must go to school, that kids have to live with their parents, that you can or can’t build whatever you want on your property, put flouride in your water, license you to go to other “countries,” tell you what you can say on radio or television, what you can take pictures of, who can come into this “country,” put you in a cage, steal your money through inflation, etc…etc…etc.
But they get confused that they are not supposed to do those things when people ALLOW them to do those things. Hopefully you can understand their confusion. Thus the only LOGICAL conclusion, so as not to cause confusion, would be to make it CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD that they can not do those things to you.
“that they can not do those things to you.”
Yeah, so long as you ignore that whole, might makes right deal, sure.
That they have a gun pointed at your head, just ignore that minor detail?
Not to say you shouldn’t do your best to ignore the sunsabitches as best you can in every way. But when The Man points a gun at your head and says, “Show me some ID”
At that point, you either go limp, or comply.
That’s what it means to be an american Helot. Duh.
Jim,
Of course. Everyone here shares those principles, subsumed under the NAP and self ownership. Anarcho-Libertarianism 101.
Where we differ, I think, is your endlessly condescending view that we “allow” ourselves to be violated (and that you somehow do not).
We all have the ability to dodge, bob and weave to some extent. We can do (or not do) various things to assert our rights and deny the authority of the authoritarians among us (i.e., the government, its enforcers and supporters). But none of us has any real option when directly confronted with the necessity of complying under duress – a very different thing from allowing.
For instance: I do not wear my seat belt (and “run” pointless red lights) whenever I can get away with it. But if a cop pulls me over, I have no real choice but to submit. To “buckle up” – and sign the ticket. Oh, certainly, I can resist – and go to jail (or the morgue).
That is not a choice, Jim.
And I’m not “allowing” my rights to be violated because my realistic options have been taken away from me. I have no ability to freely choose.
You face the same Hobson’s Choice as the rest of us. To a lesser (or greater) extent, certainly. But nonetheless. Don’t try to claim otherwise – or talk down to the others here by accusing them of “allowing” their rights to be violated or not having “discipline.”
Yes, at some point, it may become necessary to literally put one’s life on the line. That point is not for you to decide for others, especially in view of the fact that you are just as “guilty” as everyone else of “allowing” your rights to be violated (using your absurd terms of discussion).
End of transmission.
The difference is that I do not complain about my yoke, like some people. You are like the slave who complains of the whip and the cheap gruel, but he does have a choice, stand up for himself, and yes possibly die (but with self-confidence and under his own terms), or continue to live under someone else’s terms and with the humiliation present daily.
Jim,
You equate declining to go out in a suicidal blaze of glory with acceptance of slavery. It’s not even worth the keystrokes to continue.
Jim,
It’s no revelation that there are “degrees of compliance.” Depending on one’s situation, one may be more – or less – able to avoid/end-run the system. And we all ought to try to evade/avoid the system to the extent we reasonably can.
What I object to is your characterization that people who “give” more are ethically/morally/philosophically inferior to those who “give” less.
The fallacy here is obvious – or, ought to be.
No one freely gives – irrespective of the amount. All of us are under duress. The degree is incidental.
To argue that Person A is “superior” somehow because he “gives” less in taxes is ridiculous. He’s as much a victim as anyone else.
And vice versa.
Handjob Jim,
I wanted to stay out of your self-love, but…
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams
Killing the Massa’ might play well in TV dramas, but int he real world, you want to survive if possible – whcih means picking when to attack.
Eyes down the rest of the time, though. Don’t draw attention, and quietly eat the cheap gruel and handle the lash when you must. There WILL be a reckoning.
Suicide isn’t the plan; VICTORY is the plan. Sometimes waiting is the correct course of action.
To translate it: This course of action you suggest, is walking up to a cop, slapping him in the face, and drawing a knife to try and kill him. If you succeed? You’ll be arrested, or more likely, die in a police chase or shootout. If you fail? He’ll likely kill you at the scene. Finding out where he sleeps at night, and burning it down? Much more effective.
Like running down a machine gun: We’re not cooperating with the ebast, we still intend to kill it – but we’ll stay out of sight until they run out of ammo or are shooting something ELSE. doesn’t mean we’re chained and subservient….
OTOH – YOU _ARE_ the House Nigga, gon’ be nice to Massa’, get some scraps off Massa’s Table, ’cause you is good with you yoke (chains.)
think about it…
I like you jean. Finally someone who breaks things down correctly. Thank you. Finally. Fire fire. Yeah.
Werner: I too am glad you’re getting good treatment for C. And no doubt it would be catastrophically expensive to pay for that treatment out of pocket, in the current market. But why is this so? Is “universal healthcare” the cause of the problem, or the answer to it?
I believe it’s the former. Before health insurance became commonplace in this country, getting a terminal disease wasn’t usually financially ruinous. Most people could afford to pay their doctors and hospitals, and where they couldn’t, the doctors and hospitals covered the losses. I believe the reason that’s different today — that someone without insurance would go bankrupt paying for treatment for cancer or diabetes, say — is because of the pricing distortions caused BY the insurance industry. The “standard prices” that doctors and hospitals charge are really their high-end bids to the insurance companies, and they don’t expect to get that amount from insurance, and they don’t. But the poor sucker without insurance doesn’t have the leverage of the insurance company, and so has to pay the “list price.”
Dear Werner,
Please indulge me, I realize how scattered this must seem. Why were the Jews hated by Germans? Mathematically, the reason was they enjoyed high living standards in spite of their relatively low productivity and contribution to the German lands.
Right now, Canada itself is greatly contributing to the world economy through mineral extraction and other productive enterprises.
The same cannot be said of your controllers in England. They contribute very little industrially or resource-wise, yet they enjoy extremely high living standards and exert a great measure of control over 2.2 billion members of their Commonwealth.
The evil occurring in Canada, is you contribute far less than you would otherwise because of behind the scenes machinations by the United Kingdom. You allow John Bulls puppet hand up your trousers with nary a squeak.
Who do you find more admirable? The hard-working Germanic huns of Germany and the US. Or the vampiric pedophilic wizardry and trickery of the UK Hogswarts Magicians?
Just something to consider.
Hi Tor,
I was born in Germany (my mother was Jewish, my father a Catholic) and left when I was a teenager. I have no idea about what kind of political machinations brought on the persecution of the Jewish people but I do know that MY family had nothing to do with it, in fact in the city that I was born in the Jewish people were never mistreated or hated before a certain thug and his enforcers made their arrival. In fact they had a beautiful synagogue and the land it was built on was given to them by the Catholic church and the citizens contributed en masse to the synagogue building fund!
I don’t believe that it is very nice to call German people huns. It is a derogative term and one should not use it, even in jest or carelessly.
I am not able to figure out what you are hinting at as far as British history goes but after all the dust had settled Britain had lost its famous empire forever.
I don’t know exactly what I’m saying. I’m a huge fan of Jewish folklore and history, but it pains me to see the modern Jew’s love of artificial order and overusing force; to be fair, which tribes aren’t distorted mockeries of themselves nowadays?
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2013/02/making-money-living-large/
Great writing by a Jewish writer, with a stab in my heart throwaway line: “It was all the porn places before Disney cleaned it up. Some people are nostalgic for the old days. I’m not. Once I saw a guy running and screaming with blood all over his face.”
By and large, it seems Jews enjoy the sanitized and cleansed world of the ruling overlords. I wonder why?
I Used To Rule The World – London Mercantile Music. (Viva La Vida – Coldplay)
I used to rule the world. Seas would rise when I gave the word. Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own.
I used to roll the dice. Feel the fear in my enemies eyes. Listen as the crowd would sing: “Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”
One minute I held the key. Next, the walls were closed on me. And I discovered that my castles stand
upon pillars of salt, and pillars of sand.
I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing. Roman Cavalry choirs are singing. Be my mirror, my sword and shield. My missionaries in a foreign field.
For some reason I can’t explain. Once you know there was never, never an honest word. That was when I ruled the world.
It was the wicked and wild wind. Blew down the doors to let me in. Shattered windows and the sound of drums. People could not believe what I’d become.
Revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver plate.
Just a puppet on a lonely string. Oh who would ever want to be king?
hashtag
#BritishCommonwealthMelancoly&Loathing
#IUsed2RuleTheWorldNowI’mSimonCowellAndANationofQuisingCircusJudges
“I’m a huge fan of Jewish folklore and history”
I’ve always enjoyed Jewish humor. Such as:
” If a Jewish husband expresses an opinion, and nobody is there to hear it, is he still wrong?”
” The Jewish grandmother, known by all for her incessant complaining, is on the beach with her grandchild, watching the waves roll in.
Suddenly, a huge wave engulfs them and sweeps her grandson away. Grandmama wails, “Oh please G-D, return my grandbaby and I’ll never complain about anything again.”
The next wave that rolls in deposits her grandson in her arms, safe and sound, not even wet at all. Grandmama looks him over, raises her face to heaven and says, “He had a hat”.
Ed = Hear the one about the old Jewish woman crossing the street in NYC. A delivery truck came by knocking her down. The driver stopped, leaned out the window and yelled “watch out” at her. She responded with “what. You coming back?”
Good one, Gary. I like that.
“after all the dust had settled Britain had lost its famous empire forever.”
No, actually the Brit ruling class had merely shed itself of the onerous costs of administration connected with empire. The extraction of wealth from that empire continues still.
I agree with you that calling German people Huns is inaccurate. The Hungarians, or Magyars, are Huns. I’m also of German descent, though my immigrant ancestors arrived here (the US) in the late 17th or early 18th century and only one German surname survives in my family tree.
“Mathematically, the reason was they enjoyed high living standards in spite of their relatively low productivity and contribution to the German lands.”
tor, you’re a generalizing idiot, when it comes to “jews”.
The only Jews I have seen enjoying a high standard of living in spite of their low productivity are those working as politicians, and that’s not unique to Jews.
The Jews I’ve met and dealt with out in the real world, aka private sector, are the most intelligent and hard working individuals you’re going to find. Like Asians, they value education and diligence and pass that on to their children; the kids will excel in school, end of discussion. Now of course that can make other groups look bad which tends to piss off the members of those less successful groups.
fred…
true.
also’s been no shortage of non-gov jewish gangsters.
but on avg, they’re just people, albeit often a little, to a lot, iq-smarter, than average. there is a huge reservoir of brilliant creativity from the cohort.
religion-wise (which is what we’re talking about, not ethnicity, or race) a lot of them are nominals, at best.
“Deadwood: Something Very Expensive (#2.6)” (2005)
Al Swearengen: I hope you’re getting paid for the pussy. Don’t put a price to it, you’ll lose their respect.
Trixie: He’s teaching me accounts.
Al Swearengen: That’s all right then. Learnin’ is like currency to them.
Trixie: He stares in my eyes when he f***s me, longing-like.
Al Swearengen: Jesus Christ!
who did most of the writing of “deadwood”? david milch.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact_singer?currentPage=all
Hi Fred,
Here’s my crackpot 37 cents on this one:
Jews, on average, score higher on IQ tests than gentile whites (and much higher than blacks, with Asians scoring a bit higher than whites – again, on average).
High/higher IQ correlates pretty directly with success in life.
But with Jews, both their high IQs and their relatively low numbers overall causes their success to stand out relative to whites and Asians (and blacks especially). Think about it. You have a city in which the Jewish population is 2 percent. But that 2 percent is – on average – smarter than 50 percent of the majority gentile white population (and smarter than 90 percent of the black population).
It will appear, to the causal observer, that “the Jews” are succeeding out of all proportion to their numbers.
I believe this is why they’re so often resented, while smart gentiles, Asians and blacks aren’t (or are resented less).
Enlighten me then.
I am speaking about governments and not individuals mind you.
Christian Chris works in his father’s coal mine. They sell 1 million in coal at the state market price set by King Kevin, whose election was funded by the Jonahs.
Jewish Jonah works in his father’s energy company. They makes 210 million in profits from the Christian’s coal which they sell at the world price.
Their expenses are 2 million. Their workforce is paid 2 million. They give 4 million to the state and 2 million to various politician’s state campaigns.
Jewish Jonah is interchangeable with Communist Chang, Japanese Jin Rumi, Muslim Mike, or Singapore Sue.
The Chris family might be low class belligerent drunks. The Jonah family might be highly respected comedic authors and philanthropists.
From a class theory perspective, the Jonah family is unethically taking the Chris family’s hard earned production through state force in a stealthy underhanded manner.
Energy companies in this example are a facade of crony capitalism, and contribute little value of their own.
Eric:
You got me again with another fine summation:
“The underclass is already boxed up. Their primitive mentalities will be – already are – happy with the level of “care” they receive from the good offices of the state. To them, endless waits, accepting whatever they’re given, being talked down to … these things are the norm. Massa in the great house. Shuck ‘dat corn and throw it in the barn. The company town. The ghetto high-rise. One day fades into the next. Pass the Ripple.”
It’s time to open our eyes. Permanent so-called “underclasses” are never going to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon ideals in the short term. Additionally, millions of low-performing genetically white “Anglo Saxons” are far gone from attaining the ancient ideals their ancestors took as a given.
Only many instances of long-term individual cooperations and voluntary individual divisions of labor will slowly progress toward some new harmonious ideal, however slowly.
Trans-National America – R. S. Bourne 1916
The melting-pot theory must be rejected. Immigrants do not assimilate easily to another culture. Nationality is related to the connection between a person and their “spiritual country”. This spiritual country refers to a person’s culture rather than where they lived.
People most often hold tightly to the literature and culture of their native country even if they are living in another. This holds true for many immigrants that live in the United States. Immigrants from all different parts of the world will not assimilate to the Anglo-Saxon traditions, which were viewed as American traditions.
America offers a unique liberty of opportunity and can still offer traditional isolation, which can lead to a cosmopolitan enterprise. With this great mix of cultures and people, America will be able to grow into a Trans-National nation, which will have interconnecting cultural fibers with other countries.
America will grow more as a country by broadening people’s views to include immigrants ways instead of conforming everyone to the melting-pot ideal. This broadening of people’s views will eventually lead to a nation where all who live in it are united, which will inevitably pull this country towards greatness. This is the lesson of World War I.
All our idealisms must be those of future social goals in which all can participate, the good life of personality lived in the environment of the Beloved Community. No mere triumph of a single trans-nationality should satisfy us. It must be a future America, on which all can unite, which pulls us irresistibly toward cooperative productiveness, as we understand each other more warmly and completely.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Bourne.html
Democracy Versus the Melting Pot
A Study of American Nationality 1915
By Horace M. Kallen
What is inalienable in the life of mankind is its intrinsic positive quality its psychophysical inheritance. Men may change their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, their philosophies, to a greater or lesser extent: they cannot change their grandfathers. Jews or Poles or Anglo-Saxons, would have to cease to be.
The selfhood which is inalienable in them, and for the realization of which they require “inalienable” liberty, is ancestrally determined, and the happiness which they pursue has its form implied in ancestral endowment. This is what, actually, democracy in operation assumes.
There are human capacities which it is the function of the state to liberate and to protect; and the failure of the state as a government means its abolition. Government, the state, under the democratic conception, is merely an instrument, not an end. That it is often an abused instrument, that it is often seized by the powers that prey, that it makes frequent mistakes and considers only secondary ends, surface needs, which vary from moment to moment, is, of course, obvious; hence our social and political chaos.
But that it is an instrument, flexibly adjustable to changing life, changing opinion, and needs, our whole electoral organization and party system declare. And as intelligence and wisdom prevail over “politics” and special interests, as the steady and continuous pressure of the inalienable qualities and purposes of human groups more and more dominate the confusion of our common life, the outlines of a possible great and truly democratic commonwealth become discernible.
Its form is that of the Federal republic; its substance a democracy of nationalities, cooperating voluntarily and autonomously in the enterprise of self-realization through the perfection of men according to their kind.
The common language of the commonwealth, the language of it great political tradition, is English, but each nationality expresses its emotional and voluntary life in its own language, in its own inevitable aesthetic and intellectual forms. The common life of the commonwealth is politico-economic, and serves as the foundation and background for the realization of the distinctive individuality of each natio that composes it.
Thus “American civilization” may come to mean the perfection of the cooperative harmonies of “European civilization,” the waste, the squalor, and the distress of Europe being eliminated.
A multiplicity in a unity, an orchestration of mankind. As in an orchestra, every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody, and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization, with this difference: a musical symphony is written before it is played; in the symphony of civilization the playing is the writing, so that there is nothing so fixed and inevitable about its progressions as in music, so that within the limits set by nature they may vary at will, and the range and variety of the harmonies may become wider and richer and more beautiful.
But the question is, do the dominant classes in America want such a society?
Randolph Silliman Bourne (1886–1918) was a progressive writer and “leftist intellectual” best known for his essays, especially his unfinished work “The State.”
This little sparrowlike man, tiny twisted bit of flesh in a black cape,
always in pain and ailing, put a pebble in his sling,
and hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with it.
. . . If any man has a ghost, Bourne has a ghost,
a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak
hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets
still left in downtown New York, crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:
War is the health of the State.
To most Americans of the classes which consider themselves significant World War I brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and surprising alteration in their habits of thought.
Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a legitimate object of criticism and even contempt.
With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war.
The moment war is declared, however, the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves.
Government on the other hand is synonymous with neither State nor Nation. It is the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions. Government is a framework of the administration of laws, and the carrying out of the public force.
The classes which are able to play an active and not merely a passive role in the organization for war get a tremendous liberation of activity and energy. War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.
Thus arises conflict within the State. War becomes almost a sport between the hunters and the hunted. The pursuit of enemies within outweighs in psychic attractiveness the assault on the enemy without. The whole terrific force of the State is brought to bear against the heretics.
War is a very artificial thing. It is not the naive spontaneous outburst of herd pugnacity; it is no more primary than is formal religion. War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. In this great herd machinery, dissent is like sand in the bearings. The State ideal is primarily a sort of blind animal push toward military unity. Any difference with that unity turns the whole vast impulse toward crushing it.
Democratic control of foreign policy is therefore a contradiction in terms. Open discussion destroys swiftness and certainty of action. The giant State is paralyzed. Leaders claim to make the world safe for democracy as well as safe for diplomacy. When the two are in conflict, their clear political insight, their idealism of the State, tells them that it is the naiver democratic values that must be sacrificed. The world must primarily be made safe for diplomacy. The State must not be diminished.
Propaganda was put to great effect for the “great war”. Its only been refining its bullshit to higher and higher doses of lethality since then.
World War I – 1st Zeppelin Raids Over East Anglia 1915
There were 208 raids, dropping 6,000 bombs. 500 people were killed and 1,100 injured. Zeppelins could fly very high and it was difficult to find methods of defence.
American WW1 films in France with songs from Edison cylinders from 1914-18.
WWI 1914-18.
http://www.worldwar1.nl/
The Germans vast technological superiority is prima facie evidence that they deserved to be victorious. To claim otherwise is dishonest sophism. The more powerful Americans should have used their superior strength to negotiate a quick end to the hostilities. Pleasing either side should not have been their concern.
Taking sides of the weaker, less productive side was a either a grave error, or a cynical calculated attempt to remove a competitive rival.
Parental nations mustn’t roll up sleeves and start swinging when faced with sibling rivalry. They make a decision they find reasonable, and enforce it with threats of punishment that make continuing the fight again uneconomical in the minds of the children.
The Americans weren’t more powerful, not then. In fact, their strength – actual, realised military strength – barely matched that of minor allies like Italy. The thing is, their economic strength only overtook that of Germany around 1905, and the lead times needed to build up military strength meant that they would only have got there in 1919 or 1920 (they could have contributed faster, but only by putting the material and manpower resources into existing units rather than a distinct A.E.F., and that wouldn’t have translated into strength for the U.S.A. rather than the existing allies – which is why the U.S.A. insisted on doing it the slower way). Even in the Second World War, the U.S.A. didn’t have as many troops in action as the British Commonwealth clear up until D-Day, as Churchill noted in his history of that war. Lead times matter.
The allies weren’t the weaker, less productive side; although Germany was economically and militarily stronger than any single one of the allied countries, the existing allies were still stronger than all of the Central Powers put together. That was why the allies won, as much as anything (no, the U.S.A. didn’t tip the balance, for the simple reason that the matter was settled by the middle of 1918 while the U.S.A. was still only building up; if it had taken longer, the U.S. contribution would then have ramped up enough to settle things, of course – barring an allied screw up).
I agree with you, I was wrong about US superiority. It sounds correct what you are saying about who the US was during the time-frames you gave.
From an off-planet vantage point, Using a metaphor that humans live in hives and produce either consumer goods – honey. Or war goods – venom. I’ll attempt to recap what occurred.
Germany produced far more honey than anyone. Germany produced far more venom than anyone.
They had a lot of enemies for various reasons.
A slavic hive from the East played a cruel trick on the Germans, killing their queen. The Germans greatly overreacted and diverted all production to venom.
Its German bees suffered greatly, everyone was slaving away making venom because of wrath.
The other hives all banded together and reluctantly banded together to make venom to fight against the Germans. Though they were not as industrious or value-productive as the Germans, as a political block they had the upper hand.
The American Wasps and Jewish Hornets didn’t let this go to waste. They were opportunistic Honey Bankers, and Venom Dealers. They wanted to sell their honey and venom at highly inflated prices.
Everyone ganged up on the Germans, who admittedly were in the wrong. They decimated everything the Germans had worked for far beyond necessary reason. Soon the Germans surrendered.
The crafty Honey Bankers and Venom Merchants heard whispering in their ears. Join us in demanding the Germans give us 90% of their Honey Production to compensate for all their destruction we did to them.
Thus another mixed and muddled metaphor is set in motion. Does it make any sense to you?
Fast forward to today. Britain is running Big Brother, X Factor, and other defacto media control programs and rules much of the freeworld.
I just want everyone to realize how little industrial production England does. And unsurprisingly, they have unleashed this green revolution and global warming scams that make production difficult.
Easy for Britain to meet its carbon trading goals, when it doesn’t produce much carbon in the first place.
Good bee analogy, Tor. 🙂
” Britain is running Big Brother, X Factor, and other defacto media control programs and rules much of the freeworld.”
Good point. The bee/wasp analogy is good as well. British banks seem to have supplanted their navy as the enforcers for the empire. Their empire soldiers on, still wielding undue influence over all the former colonies, including the one in which you and I live.
Bevin,
we need to know our class allies and class enemies. she’s a canadian commonwealthist, who oversteps and insults sometimes, but she is moving to argentina even.
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/34691/Wendy-McElroy-Know-Your-Class-Enemy-Know-Your-Class-Ally/
this article is a good intellectual starting place. i intend to modify a version to fit my needs.
wendy is anti-IP so no harm there. I myself am closest to being an agorist, I’ve come to believe. Freedom through defiant production, both white market and grey market. Even a little black market, as long as no one is gravely injured.
Dear Tor,
Agree.
I like what McElroy advocates, most of the time.
I doubt I could ever be “friends” with her however. And that’s okay.
Libertarianism and market anarchism is not utopian. It does not mean love and kisses all around.
I’m amazed with the possibilities before us.
Antiwar . com is one project of our parent foundation, the Randolph Bourne Institute. Antiwar . com is a ward of the nonprofit Randolph Bourne Institute. Your contribution to Antiwar . com is tax-deductible.
Antiwar
http://antiwar.com/who.php
http://newstrust.net/sources/anti_war
Bono
Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.
The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you. (that’s a feature, not a bug, Bono)
I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.
For the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, their was always resistance to U2. And that’s why we came to America.
Wendy – on why Ron Paul was powerless as an elected official
Consider another example. A self-declared libertarian joins ranks with the state, perhaps by running for office or by working within a government agency. The man sincerely intends to produce freedom rather than statism.
But, as Oppenheimer observed, the essence and purpose of the state is to steal wealth and power from society. The rules of the state are defined by that purpose; at their root, all the rules express this purpose by being backed up by the use of force rather than the need for consent. As long as the ‘libertarian’ works according to the purpose, rules and procedures of the institution that he has decided to make function, his intentions are irrelevant. He will produce statism and not freedom.
– The truth of that statement is why to my knowledge, only Jesse Ventura had even the slightest impact on US politics. He pushed the immovable object of the State of Minnesota institution backwards a few inches. That is a unique accomplishment in America as of late.
Wendy
The libertarian politician or the libertarian whose livelihood depends upon wealth and influence that is stolen from society is the class enemy of everyone who produces. The state-aligned libertarian may be a pleasant person with good intentions but the intentions do not change the outcome of his actions.
The institution that he makes function is the opposite of and anathema to freedom. Only by gutting the institution of the state, by dismantling its every rule or procedure and salting the ground upon which it once stood can voluntary exchange emerge.
– Does the $17 million endowed Mises institute only produce, or does it also indirectly profit from the wealth and influence that is stolen from society? Is it salting the ground on which it stands, or does it unwillingly assist the state against it
s will. (I don’t know the answer)
Wendy
Those who produce are natural partners who weaken their power by turning against each other. My father who had a 6th grade education and hands that were calloused from work had the same political interests as a venture capitalist who has no connection to the state. Because of them, the productive, peaceful network of institutions called society can function. The network of coercive institutions called the state is the common enemy.
In short, there is no rich versus poor in terms of the class affiliation and the class interest of productive people. The true division is between the ruled and the rulers. My father would shake what he called “honest hands” with anyone who did not use force against him or others. He did not need to see their bank book to do so. Those of us with honest hands should join them together. (does Elon Musk have honest hands? Does Bono. Jet Li. Ron Paul. Rand Paul. Lew Rockwell. Mark Zuckerberg.Sergei Brin?Henry Ford? Charles Koch?)
As Donald Trump puts it succinctly:
Obummer kept up a stranglehold on his “plan” during the shutdown in order to make the Republicans look bad and continues to blame America’s woes on them. We had some leftist idiot on our biased ABC here during the shutdown claiming the Tea Party were a bunch of maniacs.
Well, we all remember Nancy Pelosi (correct me if I’m wrong) saying “You can’t see what’s in the bill until it’s been passed”. Corruption from the top down.
@ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N – I guess that is what a “fourth turning” technological slave plantation looks like for those of us living it. Next they “take you to war” as Gerald Celente says.
Bono Speaks at GU Global Social Enterprise Event
http://vimeo.com/53945169
I don’t mind being arrested for putting on a free concert.
It’s an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly.
Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don’t have is the will, and that’s not a reason that history will accept.
We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies. But will we be that generation?
In the United States, you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I’m going to get that bastard.
Me, I’m in love with this country called America. I’m a huge fan of America, I’m one of those annoying fans, you know the ones that read the CD notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn’t live up to that…
I’m that kind of fan. I read the Declaration of Independence and I’ve read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes, dude.
The idea that anything is possible, that’s one of the reasons why I’m a fan of America. It’s like hey, look there’s the moon up there, lets take a walk on it, bring back a piece of it. That’s the kind of America that I’m a fan of.
The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.
If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there’s a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe.
God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.
Imagine this last global recession, but without the economic growth of China. Without the hundreds of millions of newly minted middle class folk. Who now buy American and European goods.
Commerce is real. Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce. Entrepreneurial Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid. Of course we know that.
Paul David Hewson, “Bono”, musician, singer-songwriter, activist, philanthropist, and investor was born in Dublin in 1960. His initial large investment in the Facebook IPO in an investment group he formed has him owning over $1 billion worth of Facebook stock.
“…owning over $1 billion worth of Facebook stock.”
that’s one big chunk of faceism…prolly more than all those rushmore faces, combined. lol
private equity placement in late ’09. in facebook for red flag’s sake! (ipo was may, ’12.)
a bit-angle from a nyt advertorial in early ’10 (linked)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/bono-hates-poor-people/
bono says a lot of things. most of it in bonobo. if he were infinite, he’d eventually utter the complete works of shakespeare. out of finitude has randomly coalesced a short, market-y, paragraph….
“Commerce is real. Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce. Entrepreneurial Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid. Of course we know that.”
Did Bono really say that? If so, he’s grown up a lot. Fucker sounded like a communist the last time I read an interview with him. Good for you, Paul. Glad to see you among the awakened.
Dear Tor, Ed,
Wow, if Bono actually said that, then my estimation of him just shot up 1000%.
I thought he was a typical limousine liberal out to redistribute middle class tax dollars to the Third World.
Bono is both a doer and a non-affiliated pro-individual independent thinker
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bono.html
Like Jet Li.
I wouldn’t trade him or Jet for a million Jacob Huebert Think Tank dime a dozen lawyers. Theorists are very valuable, but as yet he’s no Mises.
http://jhhuebert.com/
More Bono Vox quotes
To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.
What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.
You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It’s very real. It’s very strong.
Dear Tor,
Good to hear.
Past experience with rock stars left a negative impression.
For example, Sting preaches population control. Meanwhile, he has six children.
Early in his career, he expressed the opinion that “I just don’t agree with (procreation) any more.
“I think it’s bull****, and I think if we carry on thinking like that, we’re doomed.
“We have too many people – we’re not the most important thing on the planet, and until we realise that, we’re in deep s***.”
How ironic then that Sting has six children, from two wives, ranging in age from 30 to 11.
There’s nothing wrong with that – he’s long since earned the right to live just as he likes – but, taken as a whole, it would seem to suggest that Sting’s campaign against Western excess might not always be a priority in his own day-to-day life.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-481865/Superstar-hypocrite-Meet-Sting-master-contradictions.html
@Bevin – Hiding in plain sight again. Look at his career and behind the scenes promoters.
yeah, right. so add him, the dozen dimes entertainer, nsa partner, to your list tor. the one that included kim dot com. (wasn’t that your post?)
sometimes consistency is the hobgoblin, etc…& sometimes its just logical. & correct.
Bono has always been the typical “limousine liberal,” which is why I have always paid ZE-RO attention to anything that comes out of his mouth other than his singing. Maybe he has “awakened,” or maybe he hasn’t. I’m skeptical that he’s really a believer in free markets. He and those of his stripe will belch out all the right verbiage when it’s to their advantage to do so (like when they’re trying to con money for their favorite “charities” out of well-heeled capitalists), but when the rubber hits the road, he’ll take the typical left-wing neo-Marxist artist’s stance and proclaim an obligation to spend everyone else’s money on some pet ideologically-driven imperative: everyone’s money but his own millions, that is.
Is it fair to say you operate from a class theory perspective?
1 limousine riders yes or no
2 liberals yes or no
3 those who believe ends justify means of force
A those who are asleep
B those who have awakened
E ones I pay attention to
F ones I ignore
I free market believers
J free market deniers
Liberanter Conclusions
1 – Bono is a neo-marxist in capitalists’ clothing
2 – Bono is an altruist who will impose obligations backed by force to “feed the hungry” or else!
3 – Bono’s forced redistributions will not apply to himself or other World Cosmopolitan Ultra Rich
– – – – – –
Logical Conclusions To Apply To Liberanter’s Premise
1 Bono is saying something unpopular
2 Bono is making a difference and doing things
3 Bono is not doing anything unpopular
Liberanter, I agree and remove Bono from the same class as Charles Chaplin. He is helping people through his own efforts.
But unlike Charlie, who “suffered for his soup” and was ousted from the US in disgrace:
Bono is not taking any big risks or antagonizing any entrenched tyrannizers. He’s using populist rhetoric to encourage the common man to engage with his tyrants and ask them for things.
Bono seems to be pimping the idea that venom producing alpha bees will switch to making honey for us beta bees if we just ask them forcefully enough.
just in: today, bonobo’s private equity firm bought a 2% stake in the good ol’ boys “defense” industry fund of fundamentalist fundalyzers fund.
not to worry. all part of the plan. for the people. etc. power to the peeps. (raise clenched fists, cheer…).
i could be wrong. bono could be a rule-provin’ exception. but i doubt it. butand i do know how to bet. butand i don’t bet with good ol’ boys, no matter how much i might like their singing (or how much $ is often innit).
Obviously it will require a bit further “outside the box” thinking that I am sure all of you are not prepared for.
I know it, Hand Job. We’re such an unprepared bunch of nosepickers around here. Lay it on us, enlightened one. A couple of us might be drunk enough to get it this time. 😉
Ha.
What’s amusing about seeing this dude’s posts again is that I took a few months off from this site and it must’ve been around the same time he did. Not sure what that coincidence means, if anything, but yeah “we” are a bunch of idiots around here.
I like how a few months ago it was “You’re all a bunch of morons, I live on cash, don’t pay taxes, and cruise around in my Jaguar” to “I occasionally drive the Jag…” Super cool shit for me to envy, lol.
Jacob, I can’t remember whether it was me or you who hung the moniker “Hand Job” on him, but it fits. The guy just can’t resist handing out fuckin underhanded insults.
He’s a funny dude. It’s just that he doesn’t mean to be funny. 😉
Ed, I can’t pass it by again. I’ve read this comment about us unprepared bunch of nosepickers so many times I had to quote it to the old lady and even she laughed….now that’s funny.
Thanks, 8. I’ve been making wisecracks all my life, and I’ve got the broken nose and scars inside my lips to prove it. 😉
Jim, your first post was ok… and now this one.
Sigh.
Here’s your link, HJ/Handsome Jim, it is an easily insulted choice of namez, no?. We are older guyz that grew up in the pre zee dayz, so forgive us.
http://rathbonezvizionz.wordpress.com/
You have a good eye for pics which is important. 70% of each piece you write seems promising, but the other 30% destroys it for advanced libertarians here who expect a certain caliber of execution.
Are you in a position to pay for display space, you certainly are persistent and prolific, can you make a small recurring payment to this site, in return for a front page hyperlink and pic. Why not seize the day and go pro. More insults to endure is a given, but at some point, you’ll find yourself swimming instead of sinking, I have no doubt.
You are the number 2 submission, and will be sinking fast without votes, so check it now if you want.http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/new/
“Resisting? Why? What if you are innocent? Why shake the tree?” Rathbonez 9.3.13
Otherwise, try submitting some of your best to reddit.com/r/libertarian. You can also comment on your articles there, with the standard reddit peanut gallery. Make several reddit logins and stack the deck if your ego desires, no one will mind.
Thank you Tor.
3 minutes in no downvote
http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/new/
This is the point where the rule against troll feeding would probably be a wise thing to consider.
His post still has 2 upvotes, he’s on Hemingway’s path.
Father Mckenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near. Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there. What does he care?
Eleanor Rigby – Paul McCartney and Mates
VicSteel’s written 20 times more words than Eric over 4 months. And gotten less views of them in all that time than Eric gets in a few hours. I look at him as an archetype, assumedly in good attendance here as on much of the net.
All the lonely people where do they all belong?
I am mentally incapable of remembering and adhering to rules and orthodoxies, as popular as that approach may be. Am clever but not wize.
#BartlebyTheScrivenerIpreferNotTo
I work extremely hard Tor. I write constantly. Schopenhauer said to some effect that “writing one’s thoughts helps give one a road map to the mind.” I have realized that my way of expression however does not appeal to the political correctedness of many supposed libertarians. The sticking point for me against the popular libertarian crowd is that so many today are willing to compromise here or there, whereas compromise has no place in freedom, which means true freedom is probably nowhere to be found upon this planet.
Thank you for the suggestion for reddit, as I had never heard of it. My views have taken off, however it appears most are just there to “hit it n quit it.”
Jim,
One can have principles and be forced to compromise them without being guilty of either hypocrisy or ethical (and even physical) cowardice.
Force being the operative thing, Jim.
Our freedom to choose is limited. Because force is imposed upon us, either actually or implicitly. This is as true for you as it so for me and for everyone else not yet in their graves.
Of course, you can insist on absolutism – on no-compromises adherence to Libertarian notions of self-ownership. But you know as well as I where that will inevitably lead. A Pyrrhic “victory” that will leave you either dead or in jail. Are you in jail, Jim? Clearly, you are not dead.
Ergo, you’ve compromised with the system to some extent – as we all have and must.
But that doesn’t mean we accept it – much less sanction it.
We are fighting a war of ideas. Per John Adams, who was asked in later life about the American Revolution and replied that the revolution predated the fighting – and made the outcome inevitable.
Liberty will emerge victorious, eventually. But not before people’s minds are ready. Meanwhile, attacking people who are on the right path, who reject in principle all collectivist authoritarian principles, isn’t helpful.
Lib, Hand Job ain’t a troll. He’s just a little deranged. He only disrupts his own conversations, in almost the same way I do. 😉
Anyway, though. You’re right.
2nd posting of your article. First post got downvoted to obscurity in 1 minute.
This just went up on Reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1p734d/better_to_have_an_awakened_mind_or_unaware_bliss/
Reddit is one of the top 100 sites in the world and not under our control.
Number 4 libertarian reddit posting is just a jpeg
http://i.imgur.com/XLdEisW.jpg
“You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”
John Quincy Adams
It received
5,885 upvotes 3,175 downvotes
It has 221 comments
Funny thing is, many of us here have not only seen videos by Higgs, but also read his books, like “Crises and Leviathan.” You’re either preaching to the choir, or just trying to be a smartass. Trouble is, if you try to be a smartass, you better be sure you are smart, otherwise you’re just an ass.
Funny thing Phillip the Bruce, is I have read that book and Higgs’ other books too. The real funny thing though is that I am not trying to start a book club or be sarcastic. I was responding to Eric, with a video that clarifies that because the state has encroached so much into everyone’s lives, that it is become nearly impossible (while one continues to reside in this area of the world called amerikkka) to withdraw completely from the tentacles of all that is politics ( in a purely Plato sense). But there are gradations of greater and lesser, and the less one participates in the politics of society, less taxes, no voting, etc…then the better one is in being closer to liberty.
But you would have had to have followed the conversation to know that Philip the Bruce.
James,
“But there are gradations of greater and lesser, and the less one participates in the politics of society, less taxes, no voting, etc…then the better one is in being closer to liberty.”
No issue there at all; I agree!
I have always believed that you have believed that, but at times when you have gotten caught up in responding to me, the words that have been written have not reflected your true beliefs. Maybe they were different times….and I am not going to rehash all the taxation talk again so I can be labelled a cop and a troll again, but know I am firm when I say, the less you give your captors the better, even if they can take money from you through inflation and the printing presses…
Hi Jim,
“the less you give your captors the better, even if they can take money from you through inflation and the printing presses…”
Again – amen! Yes!
What I took issue with before was your (as I read it) assertion that I was somehow deluded or not fully actualized (or whatever it was). I could not make heads or tails of it.
I’m glad we’re back on solid ground – let’s try to stay there!
H.J. Said – …and the less one participates in the politics of society, less taxes, no voting, etc…then the better one is in being closer to liberty.
From Karl Denninger – October 25, 2013
“Folks, if you have read me recently you know that I’ve said that you are the problem and that the reason this is true is that you won’t go on strike, you won’t picket DC and refuse to leave until the government stops stealing from you and debasing the currency, you won’t reduce your spending and income to only that which provides necessities, and most of you go on to justify your behavior with “my kids (and/or family) deserve what I can provide.”
You’re fools and I’m going to prove it.
Further, I’m going to prove — by arithmetic — that if you follow the above path you will destroy yourself along with your children and grandchildren.
Here’s why.
There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers.
None of the people getting means-tested government benefits will ever vote to reduce them, nor vote for any politician that will reduce them.
But it’s factually much worse than it first appears because federal government workers will not vote to fire themselves either, just as the 17th Amendment (ed: The worst thing to ever happen to this country) is inviolate because The Senate will never vote to fire itself.
So we must in fact subtract 21,880,000 from the full-time worker count.
In other words you’re outvoted by 36%.”
Gary said…..”?” What?
Say what you mean man?
Within all that gibberish, and I read it twice, I could locate no refutation whatsoever.
@H.J. – Try it again. But this time read slowly and try to comprehend the content instead of saying the words.
Or you could just say it, instead of trying to use analogies.
I think my writing speaks for itself… as does yours!
Dear “Handsome Jim,”
On the less than 100% certain premise that you are the Real McCoy and not a shill, let me say this.
Not being in a position to avoid taxation and regulation does not make one an accomplice. It makes one an unwilling victim.
The key to the fight is not suicidal action. The key to the fight is internal psychological transformation. Every individual who transforms his or her own consciousness, as described in this short 4 minute Larken Rose video, moves him or herself into the plus column for liberty, and out of the negative column. Over time, this will transform society and lead to the dissolution of the Leviathan State.
Larken Rose on the Belief in Authority mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYbpICtfFwo
HJ(don’t expect me to call you the H word), I’m like Bevin in that I think there’s hope for everyone. Why you want to pick a fight is something only you know. Everybody here is here to help each other, to teach as it were. Bevin and I both believe there’s hope for everyone, anyone. I tried to get the libertarian message across to some old college pals for years and they were eaten up with collectivist Republican think, thoroughly brainwashed by Bushco. The last election two of them voted Libertarian even though they have plenty of the right wing left in them. Several months ago one of them bought a new smart phone and found a Libertarian thread, a quite good one evidently. I’m amazed at how much his posts have changed and now he spouts the mantra of equality, NAP and all the other basic Libertarian ideals. I don’t know that anyone is ever perfect anything but all we can do is try to help one another see….and we’re all learning……You’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
Dear 8SM,
“Bevin and I both believe there’s hope for everyone, anyone.”
Amen to that.
Here’s a recent response to a viewer by Larken Rose:
Larken Rose 1 day ago
If the belief in “authority” was actually rational, the control freaks wouldn’t have to spend YEARS pounding the looney superstition into the heads of the peasantry, starting before they can even talk. “Government” is a trained-in, blind faith belief, which logically makes no sense, but which most people have a really hard time letting go of. I know it took me years to escape the “authority” delusion, so I try to be patient with others as long as they show SOME willingness to think rationally.
That is the right attitude. I can’t say I’ve always been as patient as I hoped to. But one should do one’s best.
Incidentally, the video in question addresses the very issue raised in this particular EPA post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzmOzQRq0ak
It will come in “hand”-y someday, the thickening of the skin.
When you die, all manner of spirits will descend on you promising to take you to the clouds, to the light. Demanding you give an accounting of your earthly deeds. Others will threaten you with fire and pain. They will try to scare and subjugate you mentally.
Carl’s death – Ghost – Fantasma (scena in cui Carl va all’inferno)
The truth of life is, you can be a complete jerk like Carl, and still enjoy a fantastic afterlife as well, but you have to really understand the seen and the unseen. That’s the tl;dr version of the talmud and kabbalah.
You’re a good person. You’re a bad person. There’s very little to be gleaned from all such dialectical parsings.
Myself, I drive a 2005 Honda Accord most days, it’s bright ass red with out of state plates, probably not the smartest ride, but it is what it is.
Try this nugget. Deflate yourself in bar talk. Say, I don’t even have a car, I take the bus. I live in a small efficiency with two illegal mexican roomates. Funny thing is, people will look up to you for doing so well under the circumstances. (which are a lie, but never let them know)
You’re not landing even light blows on anyone here. Give ’em a jab in guts, hit them in the back of the head when the ref looks away. Smuggle a sharp object in the thumb of your glove and use it to open up their eye.
Own you name, get to scrappin’, life ain’t easy for a boy named sue. Especially a boy who picked the name himself.
Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BJfDvSITY
Hey Eric,
I am the guy a while ago who talked with you on here about less taxes versus more taxes. I am the guy who OCCASSIONALLY drives the classic jaguar, works for cash, lives in an apartment. Anyways, your perspective was to the effect of something like: “you’re either pregnant or not pregnant, you can’t be more pregnant,” when speaking of people who pay less taxes. Well, recently on mises, in the bastiat section, from a guy who HAS written many books on the state, leviathan, and the consequences of big government, Robert Higgs discusses anarchy and how it is not what people think it is. If you want to scroll to the last five minutes, there he discusses how the state has butted its head into so many aspects of the individual’s life that is is virtually impossible to extrapolate oneself completely from its grasp, but that it comes down to a greater or lesser point of view.
Please view it: http://bastiat.mises.org/2013/10/the-state-is-more-dangerous-than-anarchy/
Oh, yeah. Hand Job. I remember you.
LMAO, so do I!
Dear “Handsome Jim”
A note to the wise. Failure to use proper capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar seriously undercuts the credibility of one’s intellectual arguments.
It’s “occasionally,” not “occassionally.”
It’s “extricate,” not “extrapolate.”
It’s “Jaguar,” not “jaguar.”
It’s “Mises,” not “mises.”
It’s “Bastiat,” not “bastiat.”
More to the point, you have clearly not bothered to understand where people here are coming from before speaking.
You are preaching to the converted. Almost everyone commenting here is hard core free market anarchist, not “limited government” in orientation.
I forgot why I quit coming here. Thanks for seeing the message. Good luck y’all.
Dear “Handsome Jim,”
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
— Confucius, as quoted by Buckaroo Banzai
It’s got nothing to do with EPA per se. You are taking your internal programming with you wherever you go Jim.
I’m willing to bet this is not the first time you have offended a group by adopting a “more enlightened than thou” posture.
You will simply replicate the same experience elsewhere. In fact, you came back here for seconds. Confirmation bias.
Take it from someone who has made similar mistakes. You bring it upon yourself, just as I brought it upon myself.
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
That is awesome!
Jim didn’t last long in the shark pit.
Dear dom,
No he didn’t, did he.
Here’s hoping “Handsome Jim” awakens to his internal life scripts and self-fulfilling prophecies. Otherwise his life is going to be pretty monotonous. A broken record.
I say that as someone who has been there, done that. Over two decades of therapy and personal growth workshops finally snapped me out of it.
Cue Cher slap in the face from “Moonstruck.”
Saw this article in a Jewish paper, followed it to the ROC version.
Family of ‘Taiwan’s Schindler’ unable to clear his name with Control Yuan.
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1101&MainCatID=11&id=20131030000104
http://www.cy.gov.tw/dl.asp?fileName=353113352771.pdf
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/photo-album-cnt.aspx?id=20131030000128&cid=1401
Jim,
You’re welcome to stay – and post – but I (and others) would be more interested in thoughtful posts as opposed to being lectured (without supporting evidence) that we’re somehow less enlightened than you seem to believe you are.
Thanks again eric for finding the easy thing to respond to, rather than taking the time to watch the video and respond to the original post. I figured you would respond exactly how you did.
Jim,
If you say plainly what it is you’re trying to get at, I will do my best to respond.
I work very hard at trying to get a real grasp on the purity of liberty. I also work very hard at understanding the nuances between individualism and “society,” and trying to separate the two, how impossible that becomes in a ever growing collectivized world.
I felt I was plain with what I said, in first post on here: Eric you said in response to my paying less taxes, that I still paid taxes and the amount made no difference, that it was like one could not be “more pregnant.” And a while ago I had said that there are obvious gradations, that any less one can give to the states coffers the better, no matter how much. I said that many stern defenders of liberty including Robert Higgs had said as much.
Well, it was left at that, after I got called a clover, a troll, and no one read the exact words, allowed the proper communication before jumping to conclusion.
I am showing you exactly where Robert Higgs says what I have said. It’s not a “so I told you so,” but is meant to merely offer a better point of view for you on liberty and it’s association with thievery, I mean taxes.
I do not write of liberty from a political standpoint, I write of liberty from an individual behavioral and mental perspective, and how, from said perspective the individual becomes what he finds himself to be now, as well as how he can change his self and become something that he never thought possible: self-Actualized.
bevin…
tsk, tsk, tsk…king slayer, but dare not be ye’ a king’s english nayer. heaven forfend that. it’s gotta melt in your pez-grammar loaded mouth, not in your cleandirty hands. i may be politically incorrect …but, at least, i’m grammatically “purrrfect”. & therefore “credible”. or, as a fetishist of shoes would say, therefore “sexual”. (are you an anarchist fellar, or just a reseller?) rules & conventions. clothes make the man. style, of a peculiar, prussians-imposed, sort, over substance (especially attempted substance), form over function (content). marquess of queensberry goes into ee cummings’ bar, orders a shot of ad hominem. bartender sez we don’t have any of that snootycheap stuff, all we have is cheapcheap shots. when in rome, sez the marquess. set ‘em up. but the marq is a lite in his britches brit, when it comes to grog – not irish, not a scot, nor a german, not an Italian, not even a french – & particularhe cain’t hold his cheapcheap shots. afore he’s had three, his pez-pointy tounge gets the better of he (even as he’s congratulatin’ hisself over his credabilitee) – & the brawl is on. he seen the first one, but the rest was unseen, & when he regained consciousness, out in the thoroughfare, he heard some bastiato yell out, “ya’ see that busted window i threw ya’ thru? that ain’t no fallacy, fauntlaroy!”. followed by uproarious laughter. yeah, big marq got his hat, find out where it’s at, & it’s not hustling people strange to you, even if you do got a two-piece custom-made pez tonguecue…& all the kings horses/men couldna’ put him back together again. knew a guy. lukey. black kid with fine/slight features. and a speech impediment. so he didna’ say much. but real fast hands. pretty sure he was golden gloves, at least once. prolly coulda got golden boots, too, if ring rules allowed for such – heard he kicked a punchbag infrahuman type right in the face once. used to close my eyes & just listen to him work the heavy bag. sounded like machinegun ballet. the reds of that neck of the woods learned not to shark tank him over k-k-k-k-ing’s en-en-english, after lukey dolphin’d ‘em. handsome jim doesn’t have lukey hands/feet. just the speech impediment. (probably one or two other impeds.) that’s enough to get him pecked to pieces in any hen house fern bar. but nobody gives a shit about that down at ee’s.
Yes, “the tragedy of life always hasn’t been and . . . isn’t that some people are poor and others rich, some hungry and others not hungry, some weak and others strong. The tragedy is and always will be that most people are unable to express themselves.”
to which I would add, “without being expeller pressed by anal retentive grammarians, of one sort or another.”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/151811
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/180437
somebody recently expressed admiration for heinlein’s comportment in sovietland (where it used to be, before relocating to amerika). think is was pmlawrence. i’ve reservations about the broad applicability of h’s comportment in that kompartment, but not for ee’s. perfect pitch & resonance. surely there’s some in here who’d enjoy getting acquainted with ee cummings.
Dear oz,
I freely admit that sometimes I play the “language Nazi” card.
But as you can see, that was only one comment. I made many more comments that addressed content not style. Content is always the key.
In “Handsome Jim’s” case, the content was a serious problem. In his case, the content was the huge chip on his shoulder. It was the “You are all dummies, I’m more enlightened than thou.” boasts.
Anyone who understands anything about human nature, knows that such an approach can only alienate people and invite counterattacks.
Being rude to others is obviously not a rights violation. But shouldn’t libertarians be polite as an adjunct to their live and let live philosophy?
bevin…..
what i saw was an inept attempt to get higgs, bastiat, introduced. better speakers/writers doing a better job of saying “this is what i mean”. grammar, spelling, isn’t content, so i call that da-style indictment-packing.
aside: i spent a lot of time with people who had a lot of south in their mouth…i even ran my refined tongue once, to the wrong group, in savannah. if you cain’t learn whats what, among other things important to the subjects at hand here, in savannah, you’re in real trouble. ☻
don’t know what went on before, don’t think i’d landed here then, but there was also the clique-clack of a beloved grudge. & human cliquery is fundamentally intertwined with what you like to call, or borrow-call, the myth of authority. if the time comes when there’s nothing but choir-ized harmony here, i’ll be off to find new sparring partners.
but the other thing that happens, now & then, is someone who just might have something interesting to say, albeit not of the local catechism, gets intro’d to the clique & sez, “who needs it?”. scott, who went expat for a time, popped in, got the grillled cheese treatment, is an example. haven’t seen him back since.
as for shoulder chips, them’s epaulets, one rank or another, all anti-auths carry. atlas had the whole damn chunk on his. right up til he got smart, shrugged it off.
Dear oz,
I can only say that I’m happy that this firefight was merely rhetorical.
Contrast this with the usual thugscums in which unarmed people get 127 rounds fired at them.
Also “Handsome Jim” and Eric appear to have reached an understanding of sorts. That has to be good news.
“It was the “You are all dummies, I’m more enlightened than thou.” boasts. ”
Yes, that’s it exactly. During Hand Job’s earlier visits here, what brought him into conflict was the haughty insult, not the few references to better writers that he’s now claiming was the source of the arguments he stirred here back then.
The regulars here are mostly veterans of online discussions of libertarian principles and writings. Responses to insult can vary from sardonic returns of the insults to patient deconstruction of the content of the posts containing the insults.
It’s perfectly acceptable to quote a recognized author. What stirs anger is the addition of a demeaning comment along with the quote.
Dear Ed,
I don’t remember the previous encounter, but I’m glad you do.
As you rightly note, it’s not complicated. One reaps what one sows.
As I freely admitted, I had to learn similar lessons the hard way myself. Nothing wrong with that. To err is human. As long as one is willing to learn from one’s mistakes.
Well said, Ed. (rhyming!)
What I distinctly remember from his past posts dating months back, was him encouraging the rest of us to post “our” illegal activity, like not paying taxes.
Those of us who have been on other online forums know that as soon as you start boasting about illegal activities, the shit hits the fan. Either the website gets shut down or people get their doors kicked in. I, of course, am a good little boy who isn’t going to give the “faggots” aka “the authorities” any convenient excuse to kick in my door, blow my dog’s brains out, and then take me away (much to the applause of the sheeple public). So even if the bullshit HJ says about “not paying taxes” is true, I’m betting my integrity that he is either 1. A complete fucking moron or 2. A government agent looking to stir the shit.
In a previous post I mentioned that I had taken a break from this website around the same time HJ did, and that I didn’t know what that coincidence meant. Now I’m thinking that “coincidence” is that I’ve got some government douchebags tracking my online movements and they are using their fucking moron agents in a pathetic attempt for me to type something that will get my ass hauled off to prison, in solitary confinement, only to see the light of day again when I admit that I am a woman trapped in a man’s body like they did with Bradley Manning.
*chugs beer* Fuuuuuuuuuuuck the government.
Hey Jacob,
I’m here swilling coffee (not beer) which is my (still legal) drug of choice… it kickstarts my heart, clears away the morning fog… .
On HJ: Yeah, I remember now.
He denounced us for paying taxes and doing As Ordered – while asserting that he was (somehow) free. Which of course he isn’t – unless he’s living the life of a wild man in the woods (and even then, he’s still not free).
He recently posted that it’s desirable to pay the least amount in taxes you can (legally, I assume) and so on… which of course I agreed with.
It’ll be interesting, I suppose, to see what tack he takes next!
jacob…does that mean you’ll be screen testing one of the roles from “to wong fu, thanks for everything, julie newmar” in your next video? ☻
I’ve never seen that movie except in pieces. That said, I’ve got dibsy doo’s on playing Patrick Swayze’s character. My feet are already in pain thinking about those heels I’ll be wearing…
I thought it was because HJ was talking about taking up arms, or something to that effect? That was the kicker. And the reason for the copper label.
I am drinking way too much beer to keep posting, but whatever HJ was posting, it was just to get “us” all to say “fuck yeah! That’s how we motherfuckin’ roll!” then pause for 5 seconds….after the pause a flashbang gets thrown in your window, your door blows open, your dog gets shot, there’s a knee on your back, your arms are being forced behind you. A penis penetrates your butthole, you close your eyes in pain, when you open your eyes again you have a bunch of shitty makeup on and your name is Chelsea Manning.
I crack myself up.
Great stuff, Jacob!
You remind me of me… about ten years ago… before my testosterone began to wane!
“after the pause a flashbang gets thrown in your window, your door blows open, your dog gets shot, there’s a knee on your back, your arms are being forced behind you. A penis penetrates your butthole, you close your eyes in pain, when you open your eyes again you have a bunch of shitty makeup on and your name is Chelsea Manning. ”
Got-dam, Jacob. You’re back! ahaha
RE: “Now I’m thinking that “coincidence” is that I’ve got some government douchebags tracking my online movements”
I get a similar creepy feeling occasionally when I post something in other blogs that I think might be having an effect on the average person. The follow up comment to try and refute me uses my name or some close variation.
The first time, it could be called coincidence, after the seventh or eighth time, spread out over many blogs, I wonder.
I seem to recall reading those Fusion Centers assign a p.i.g. to a small area in each region?
Dear oz,
I’m volunteering for the Wong Fu character.
“To Wong Fu: Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar.”
What the “everything” Julie Newmar was thanking Wong Fu for was I can only guess at. But as long as Julie Newmar is doing the thanking, I’ll take it.
What does this back and forth rhetoric have anything to do with liberty? Like I’ve stated a million times before, if y’all were hiding anything, had done anything, etc…etc..I’m sure y’all wouldn’t be hanging out on a Friday night drinking beer and wondering who is going to get you to say what before the swat team breaks down your door.
My “return” only coincides with the day I saw the video that I posted. Nothing more, nothing less.
Dear Jacob,
Not at all!
LMAO.
As they say, “In vino veritas, in cervesio felicitas.”
High-fives all around.
@Roth: “We” would have to be very naive to think that these fusion centers (that very much exist) full of employees who track “domestic threats” aren’t in some bullshit bureaucratic competition to see who can get the next promotion. To get that promotion, these people need to show evidence of how they “infiltrate” the “domestic threats”… every time “we” slip up in public (especially online where the shit we type, the mouse clicks we make, is saved forever in their Super Faggot Fortress of “Freedom”) “they” get a promotion. The people watching over me are still grabbing their sides in pain over how fucking witty I can be once I have the right amount of alcohol and testosterone in my system. Demotions will be happening first thing Monday morning but my picture will get moved up the “domestic threat ladder” because “they” will be god damned if anyone will make a joke about the “freedom protection” they engage in on a daily basis.
Fuck those pussies, long live being a dick!
Excuse me. I meant to say “fuck those assholes, long live being a dick!” But I suppose “they” show the attributes of being an asshole and a pussy at the same time….Hmmm…. being an asshole and a pussy at the same time? “They” are the real Chelsea Mannings.
bevin…
now that’s purrrfect. and close enough to proof that batman & robin were an anonymously gay duo. bat-plugs, indeed……
Dear oz,
It’s amazing how often writers have embedded homoerotic innuendo in TV and film.
Quentin Tarantino cracked everyone up with his riff on “Top Gun.”
Clearly the writers of Top Gun had a good laugh at the Pentagon’s expense.
Someone once wrote, “Don’t touch the keyboard while you drink.”
Or something like that.
Seems like a good plan.
It’s too easy to slip up.
Problem is, it’s so dang fun.
To drink and surf, that is.
…Sometimes.
@ HJ: I am so convinced you’re a government agent, but just so I have something to gossip about let me pretend that you’re some naive “liberty lover”.
I’m going to give you a noogie when I meet you in real life. Then I’m going to dunk your head in the toilet, every day, before recess. At lunch time I’ll lick my hand then stick it all over your food…. The bus stop, after school, me and you. Mano a mano.
Let’s see you make a youtube video where you show who you really are. You have to admit in this video that you work for cash as an excuse to not pay taxes. Until then, smell my finger.
jacob…episiotomy-cutting pays pretty well, i bet. if you can get one of those jobs, you’ll have your singlewide, out on the edge, in no time. ☻
Just as now I am as easily convinced that you were the little boy who was picked on, who had an older brother or brothers, ones who were better at you at everything, because they were the first born and they got all the good genes, and you were so mad at everything, school, family, but you sucked it up because you couldn’t fight back because you were weak. And the you realized that libertarianism was all about leaving people alone, so you embraced that philosophy, because you just wanted to be left alone.
And you wanted friends, had to have friends, but since you had no social skills, because any confidence you could’ve had when you were younger was stifled, wasn’t allowed to grow, so you developed this “cool guy” persona on the internet, one of a brash tough guy who says things straight from cool movies, and blends irony and insults, just like they do on the television.
You’re no tough guy buddy. And the only thing I’d smell on your finger is your own asshole, after you inserted them in there while you jacked off to the thought that you really had friends.
Im not going to make a video for you so you can jack off to that too.
Jim,
Just when I thought it was safe to log off for the night… .
What is it with you and the vicious personal attacks? Bevin – a regular contributor to these pages – is among the most reserved, civil people here. Not once have I had to deal with congeries of low-rent psychobabble from him. You imply he has “issues.” Here’s a psychological term for you: projection.
I welcome you to post here – provided your posts add something to the discussion. Abusing the regulars here – who’ve established their bona fides on multiple levels – is not welcome.
Please stop.
“Hand Job” said “Jack Off” LMAO
@dom, Ha ha ha ha
@Eric – Your site sure attracts them, huh? Luckily they are few, a little entertaining, and are dealt with severely. 🙂
Dear Eric,
Thanks for the generous affirmation. I try.
I usually stick to “just the facts, m’am.” Admittedly I “psychologized” a bit with Jim, but only because he went waaay beyond the line.
But even then, I was careful to qualify my remarks. I wrote,
As I freely admitted, I had to learn similar lessons the hard way myself. Nothing wrong with that. To err is human. As long as one is willing to learn from one’s mistakes.
I admitted that Jim was not the only one guilty of self-destructive behavior. I admitted that I too was once guilty as charged. I even added,
Also “Handsome Jim” and Eric appear to have reached an understanding of sorts. That has to be good news.
I guess my optimism was premature.
That said, it is still not too late. I’m of the view that as long as one has breath, it is never too late.
Morning, Bevin!
“But shouldn’t libertarians be polite as an adjunct to their live and let live philosophy?”
Indeed.
HJ – allegedly – agrees with core Libertarian notions of self-ownership and the NAP, yet attacks (viciously) people who espouse the very same ideals. It’s odd, to the say least.
And his lecturing/condescening tone is impolitic and silly. I’ve never heard or read first-rate Libertarian writers who attack and demean fellow Libertarians or even people who are on their way to becoming Libertarians. And HJ is … who, exactly? Certainly not a Bastiat or a Rothbard (let alone an HL Mencken). Maybe he has something to say – and maybe he is capable of saying it well. I hope so – and am willing to give him the opportunity.
But so far, he hasn’t improved much with the passage of time.
Dear Eric,
Thanks. Long story short?
Basically you extended an olive branch to “Handsome Jim,” but instead of graciously taking advantage of the opportunity to save face, he slapped it away.
(Sorry about the scare quotes around “Handsome Jim,” but honestly, I can’t bring myself to type his handle without them. At least, not without bursting into laughter. I mean really, who in the world calls himself “Handsome” this or “Handsome” that?)
Eric? Do you not read other people’s posts before mine? Have you not heard of a response before? My conjecture had nothing to do with Bevin whatsoever. If you read a bit more closely, it was probably in response to drunk typing Jacob, the guy who said “smell my finger.”
Projection is the easy diagnosis given by low level psychiatrists
I could not care more for what Bevin writes.
For what it’s worth, HJ, I was pushing your buttons in an attempt to get you worked up, and I obviously succeeded. If you are truly just someone with poor social skills, I am sorry for being a dick to you.
I am a highly opinionated person, an asshole at times, but dude…the fact you are complaining that I, someone probably half your age, told you to smell his finger on the internet….well, dammit, that’s just hilarious.
Jacob wrote, “the fact you are complaining that I, someone probably half your age, told you to smell his finger on the internet….well, dammit, that’s just hilarious.”
Yes – it – is.
bevin….hilarious quentin t
eric….cross-threading screws the bolt, the hole, or both. h(andsome) j was responding, in kind, to j(acob).
jacob…. selling subscriptions to ‘heads i win, tails you lose’, “all proceeds to the younger by half”… is that a variation of “its for the children”? in a sporting one-on-one, that’s an uncle, or a thrown ref towel… you think one on four is a dogfall?, said the ned pepper…usually it isn’t.
I wasn’t complaining at all. Eric said I said what I said to Bevin. I didn’t. I said it to you. Push my buttons. Nice. I love how this is supposed to be an exchange, whether critical or flattering, of how the individual achieves freedom, and instead it has turned into a drunk saloon where for hours on end the ideas of freedom are nowhere to be found.
Ozy, I managed to type coherent things last night while drunk, but I’m a little lost as to what you just typed. What is it about me that you have a problem with? The past few comments you’ve directed at me have been pretty lame. Come on out and say it.
I wasn’t complaining at all. Eric said I said what I said to Bevin. I didn’t. I said it to you. Push my buttons. Nice. I love how this is supposed to be an exchange, whether critical or flattering, of how the individual achieves freedom, and instead it has turned into a drunk saloon where for hours on end the ideas of freedom are nowhere to be found
Jacob, I musta passed out, don’t remember all that…but it’s great reading today. Sometimes when I drink I can get on a roll, other times, just get rolled.
@HJ: If your goal is to preach freedom and you’re not seeing any freedom discussion here, watcha’ doing then bro? Stirring the shit to disrupt any conversations? Wow, that’s just like the faggots the government sends in to biker rallies and street protests. I see straight through you, dude.
Noogie, toilet dunking, a finger smelling….and now I’m adding “wet willy” to the list of things you will be receiving from me. Also, a copy of the declaration of independence, just so you can’t bitch that I’m just being a bully and not intending to spread the message of freedom. Lolz
Jacob, my son (cuing my inner Thulsa Doom):
One of the few things that makes me think – makes me believe – that liberty may have a shot is the fact that there are people your age who see.
Yet, you grew up in an America almost totally bled white of the relative liberty that existed when I was your age. Imagine a world without random checkpoints. When that sort of thing was looked upon as Soviet (or Nazi) by most people. A world in which you could travel by air without having your ball sack fondled – or even having to show ID. Where cops were still pigs but – mostly – had to act with restraint because that’s what most people (and so, the system) expected. Imagine driving your truck with shotgun rack – and shotgun – onto school property… and no one batted an eye. A world in which people with war boners (think, Neidermeyer in Animal House) were looked at by most people as severe anal retentives and likely closeted, extremely repressed homosexuals with major psychological issues not to be trusted around things that go boom … No one outside of the nuttiest far right circles would ever refer to “the troops” – much less lick their boots. There was the Army – and it was considered by and large a gigantic waste of everyone’s time. A sort of overlarge buffoon one had to keep an eye on.
That world existed 20 years ago – when you were just a toddler and so cannot remember at first hand.
Yet, you recognize this world is not right – not the way it ought to be.
And that makes me want to keep on trying!
“it has turned into a drunk saloon where for hours on end the ideas of freedom are nowhere to be found”
HJ, I have had some of my best ideas of freedom, and felt a great deal of freedom too, while getting drunk in a saloon. Never been in a saloon when somebody spoke loudly of freedom and had everybody in the place backing him up? You need to come to Texas…..or just show up Friday night on EPA. Damn boy, get a sense of humor. Did you miss my honey, vinegar, fly comment?
jacob…pointing out your desire to have cake, & eat it too. can’t have it both ways. as in throwing punches & then mock-blocking the responsive incoming as being inappropriate due to your tender age. entering the ring is voluntary. “i was just pushing your buttons; how silly of you to react”.
i don’t have a problem with you. just calling you on a bit of bs, is all. alcoholic typing has loosened me into bits of wobbliness, a time or two, too.
had you at wong foo, lost you at episiotomy (guessing). if you look up that term, you’ll see how it fits with what you posted about combo orifices.
handsome j…its a gymnasium. has bars in it. chin-ups, parallels, & booze. soap goes missing, from time to time. proceed accordingly.
Guy, here is what I get a bit confused about, as well as what I think you misunderstand about “freedom.” I understand Eric is now a pay site, so he needs all the paying people he can get so he can pay his mortgage, servers, etc. but I would also expect him to want this to be a place of idea that are based solely on liberty, individualism, and anarchy, and of course bad mouthing anything state-related. But, and I have been on here enough to know, I do not see why people come here to chit chat, push other people’s buttons, talk about pusses and dicks, whatever, even if you do feel mentally slighted by others, I would think you all would want to work to find out WHY you feel slighted, what it is that you can work on to become smarter, better, stronger, faster, more free, and where to go from there.
I have said it before, I am here solely because I think Eric is smart enough, but I think he tends to lose his focus of what liberty is about. It’s about liberty for him, not for a bunch of people, just like my liberty is about my liberty. If we all take care of our own liberty and work with others how to develop our own individual self so we can achieve true freedom, then that is what it is all about.
Hate me, whatever, but this place should not be about showing others how this is a drunk tank? Drinking to excess is a statist behavior, because it makes one out of control, which puts you at the whim of others. If freedom is about contemplation, reflection, and making yourself better everyday, then there should be no room or time to push buttons, whine, or worry about spelling errors. Read the messages, and start a rhetorical dialogue with those others who are wanting to share their hard worked ideas of freedom with you.
And yes, at times, those that work harder, perfecting their minds, bodies, and ideas on freedom, are going to be more knowledgeable than others. But that doesn’t mean they don’t also learn from you all as well. Maybe if more freedom ideas were developed they wouldn’t be so haughty.
Jim,
In a very important way, my desire to be free is intertwined with your desire to be free (and everyone else’s desire to be free). We all have an equal right to freedom. If someone else’s freedom, anywhere, is under assault, it is an assault upon our freedom. For this reason, I care very much about freedom generally – not just mine.
But, I have no interest in going beyond acceptance of and respect for the NAP and self-ownership. This is where I differ from, say, Ayn Rand. She expected others to live their lives according to her value judgments, even as they related to such things as a person’s musical tastes. If you preferred the Rolling Stones to Rachmaninoff, you had (as she saw it) an “anti-life” mindset and were an implicit (if not explicit) endorser of collectivism.
It was bizarre, to say the least. And this sort of nonsense undermined the many worthwhile things she said and wrote. It made her look like a kook. But not the harmless sort.
I am all in favor of harmless kooks. Weirdos, too. Big fan of Charles Addams here.
Part of the individualist philosophy is respecting the almost limitless capacity of people to be individuals. More than that, their right to express that individuality, however they see fit (provided no one is harmed thereby).
Ergo (to get fancy-pants) it’s entirely cool with me – in the sense that I would never interfere or condemn a person for it – to live in a house full of iguanas (if that floats their boat), have a harem of wives (provided everyone’s willing) announce they are in communication with ET (Riley Martin, et al) and so forth and so on and things of that nature.
It is a beautiful thing. Heterogeny, not homogeneity. The great, endless panoply of human expression – given liberty to express itself.
That, friend, is the ticket.
Not lecturing others. Not trying to tell them what the good life consists of.
But, instead, leaving them be to find out for themselves – and leaving others free to do so, too.
PS: EPautos is not a pay site. It’s open to everyone, without charge. Those who freely wish to support us do so, with our thanks.
Ozy: Hiding behind my age? I was simply pointing out that for HJ to consider himself holier than thou, he should not let the comments of some 25 year old jackass (that’s me!) get to him.
I will continue to throw punches at him, and now you, because after reading through some of your other posts directed at other members here I see that you and HJ just love to not offer anything of substance, just stir the shit.
Your “episiotomy” comment to me was just rude. And now you’re throwing in low blows about my “alcoholic” comments. You’re a government shill, just like HJ. Nice try, now go run away and return under a different username, pretending to be some other person, and see if anyone here is stupid enough to fall for it.
oy…
punching your weight is suggested, but not mandatory. do as you will, jacob.
HJ you weren’t posting here every day for the last few months as many people have been doing. As such, many people know each other fairly well. More to the point though, a great many things have been discussed. I, for one, have learned quite a bit in just the past week. Virtually everything here that’s been discussed went for quite a while as a serious discussion. Sometimes discussions go on for quite the while on one subject and finally devolve into a bit of humor to break things up to some degree.
After days of serious conversation and a long week at work, the people who post here are getting tired, not of the ideas, just getting tired. This is the human condition and often, humor is the very thing to respond to the entire situation with. I’ve experienced this many times at conferences and days long or week long meetings when you have a great deal of ground to cover, much work to do and yet, sometimes at the very height of seriousness things get to be almost too much to continue without some sort of break, almost always humor.
I’m hard pressed to explain the human condition to you in a single post. I would think you’d have a bit of comprehension without my having to “learn you up” on it.
Friday night, everybody was ready for a break. Eric really can’t take one since he’s the moderator but he can enjoy a laugh and everybody else here damned sure can too.
I’m sorry if we all didn’t live up to your expectations. I guess we just didn’t realize you’d come loaded for bear and we’d hunted ourselves silly all week and were low on ammo.
Please forgive us. We didn’t know we all had to be on “point” 24/7. As libertarians, we’re ripe for humor since we see so much around us that’s anything but.
I’m not sure why you say this is now a “pay” site since it always was if you could or would contribute. I didn’t get a bill or blocked for non-payment so I think you mis-stated that case just a bit.
You might want to rethink your position since several people took umbrage to your outburst and accusations as if your showing up was a sign for all of us to “get our act together” as I’m sure you’re thinking we should have….or that’s what it seems like.
Now it’s Saturday night, a night that could go any direction including some people “drinking too much” in your opinion, but hell, I drink too much every day “in your opinion” but nobody’s given me shit for it….until you….and it wasn’t even me you gave shit to, mainly Jacob….and he’s got every right to drink as much as he wants. Just so you’ll know, he had me ROTFLMAO…and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I didn’t notice eric on his ass either.
We didn’t all show up here just to please you….think about it.
Well said, Eightsouthman.
And now that the video is showing for me, I now know who Julie Newmar is.
I may just have to watch that Batman clip.
Why, I may even have a drink too. Seeing as how I didn’t partake yesterday. Some Cab. sav. for the heart, I think.
Jacob I also vote Ozy and HJ as being government Fed infiltrators. Their message is inciting criminality and immorality. Believe me this site is crawling with instigators, what they fail to understand is we wouldn’t think of breaking the law. They dream of leading us to take their fake bomb to Times square and press the detonator button. There is also another guy on here that I strongly suspect is an government infiltrator, but I won’t give names.
HJ seems to think he’s the only one who has thought of dodging taxes. I thought about it too, along with suicide once or twice. Somehow neither one of those two thoughts seemed liberating long haul though. Should a person dodge their taxes? Someone already asked Rothbard on that one and I have to agree with him. One shouldn’t evade taxes unless they want to make it their whole cause for existence.
I’m glad your prescription works for you HJ, please feel free to keep coming back stating how you beat the government by withholding payment to it. Please also offer how you would avoid being tracked on internet and on non-cash payments since most of us on here have business with the internet, or do you simply tell business men they have to be janitors for your prescription to work? You’re bound to get quite a few passively agreeing on here, but I doubt you’ll get them to push the red button on the detonator while your running your promotional advert.
The fact is that we actually don’t find cheating taxes that liberating is because we have a mind that can extrapolate cause and effect and possible and reasonable outcomes of actions. Especially when being steered by government con men.
Again nobody minds HJ is a tax evader, we just don’t feel its the only way to try to limit government overreach. Further, we suspect an agenda because if it smells like a turd then it most likely is.
Also I want to make others wary of the pro war revolutionaries I see on here occassionallly. I speculate they are bad news for freedom makers and peace lovers like ourselves.
Ditto, amen – and roger all that, HR!
I wouldn’t step into the ring with Brock Lesnar (sp?) either. If I did, it would not be brave. It would be suicidally stupid.
But I will (metaphorically speaking) debate Brock. Point out to others that beating up people isn’t cool. Or right.
In the end, an idea is the most powerful thing in the world. It outguns any battleship, routs armies.
Dear oz,
That rant by Tarantino on “Top Gun,” from the comedy “Sleep with Me” was one of his best screen performances!
“Jacob I also vote Ozy and HJ as being government Fed infiltrators. Their message is inciting criminality and immorality.”
No doubt! One needs to watch the fuck what they say on the net whether it be on this site or anywhere else. Freedom of speech is strictly limited these days. I run this site and I’m almost certain our shit is either monitored by, infiltrated by, mirrored, or even hosted on government machines. Since I came on board about five years ago I’ve seen shit happen to this site that I can’t explain. Now crazy shit happens on a daily basis. I got mad love for all you doods out there, but watch your ass. The only thing I know for certain is Eric and I aren’t government operatives. Please be mindful what ya’ll say on here.
RE: “Drinking to excess is a statist behavior, because it makes one out of control, which puts you at the whim of others.”
Perhaps that depends on what you mean by “to excess”?
And I wonder, what does doing so, make one out of control of?
Yourself, or the cage called P.C.?
I’ve known lots of guys who’ve gotten drunk beyond what I would call “excess” but there was no way I would say they were at the whim of others. I guess YMMV.
Anyway, when I drink, I keep this in mind:
‘Cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women’
Henry Allingham, now the world’s oldest man, on the secret of a long life
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cigarettes-whisky-and-wild-wild-women-1710744.html
…It all seems very libertarian to me.
dom wrote, “Please be mindful what ya’ll say on here.”
No doubt.
Only put down what you would like to see on your Stasi, er I mean, NSA personal file.
I wonder how many pages mine is?
I wonder if NSA people find it interesting?
I wonder if any of them are swayed by it?
I wonder if they even can think for themselves?
Nahh. If they could, they’d quit.
hotrod…
how long you been waiting for someone to lead you in the charge, good christian?
you’re not just a quart low in comprehension, per your summary conclusions about me, via my posts, you’re also a coward. real oxbow incident, french revolution material.
and there’s nothing that voting can do to change that. it can make it “legal”, tho.
@Roth “Only put down what you would like to see on your Stasi, er I mean, NSA personal file.”
No shit. I’m centered directly on the center of the edge. I beez watchin’ muh mouf and shet. Gnomesayin’
dom, yes I do.
I wonder if I’ve crossed “that line”?
It’s not like one in the sand.
Or the one at the one yard line in football.
Or the one the virgin girlfriend in High school had.
Things are never clear, for Helots.
That’s on purpose.
[Note to self: I’ve got to put more effort into this READ ONLY deal.]
Oops, that comment probably didn’t come across exactly the way I meant when I said, the virgin girlfriend in High school.
Her line, was the bra strap.
It was always pretty cl;ear with those girls.
Dang, it’s been a long time since then.
@Roth
“I wonder if I’ve crossed “that line”?”
We’ll all know when it’s time..
Roth, been trying to find it, may be on tenthamendmentnews, blacklistednews or some other but NSA centers, and it mentions their locations, require over 1.5M gallons of water each day and nearly ever center is being supplied by a state water source. Cut it off, it’s all over in this country, have to look somewhere else and that’s don’t look too good right now.
bevin….
tarantino. part of it is his intensity. part of it his deft shock vectoring. the rest of it may be the way he looks. ☻
complete lol package…..
Dear RAH,
Julie Newmar was one of those tall, statuesque Amazonian actresses from the 50s who could get your heart racing, your palms sweaty, and your glasses steamed up without even trying.
Tastes differ, but I suppose Jayne Mansfield and Mamie van Doren would fall into the same category.
Why am I reminded of this famous scene from the film, DieHard:
But, you have me at a loss.
You know my name, but who are you?
Just another american who saw too many movies as a child?
Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s: John Wayne, Rambo, Marshal Dillon?
I was always kind of partial to Roy Rogers, actually.
I really liked those sequenced shirts.
Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?
Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker!
Ya, Bevin. You got that right.
I remember watching that Batman episode in the 1970’s.
That was quite the performance for that time period.
Some might even say, it was a powerful scene.
It seems to me, the disappearance of the Amazonian actresses corresponds with the appearance of the emasculation of male actors.
Funny, that.
Maybe even, diabolical?
eric, gee my scroll finger is “wore out” as my grand dad would have said. In you reply to Jacob you refer to liberties lost. I can remember when the word “pig” didn’t exist in relation to cops(which were few and far between in my world). When I got my license to drive at 14 years of age, even asshole state troopers had to be civil to you and would mainly lecture you and not just use you for fodder for a machine that really didn’t exist at that time. Enter LBJ and the war and things devolved if you were in certain stratas of society, i.e. the long hair crowd. But those truly were the good old days compared to what the lying Tricky Dick did and then we truly had “pigs” as even the old guys who belong to LEAP(Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, drugs)will tell you. For those who don’t know this, it’s worth your time to visit their website and hear what happened to their police dept’s after Nixon declared his “war on drugs”. It was virtually an overnight change…but go there and hear it in their own words.
@Eric – Or the days when my younger 18 year old ass went into a Gemco (like WalMart) in Los Angeles with $100.00 and left with a shiny new rifle and box of bullets. Nobody gave a damn or thought twice about it. All I had to prove was that I was 18.
Garysco, although I already had a couple guns, I ordered my first handgun from Herter’s FOB…now I think I’ll see if I have one of those finger covers for handling paper or counting money, maybe just a thin glove for my scrolling finger. I remember the only qualification for buying a guy was having the money….and that wasn’t written in stone if you were on good terms at the hardware store.
Or hell, buying a gun either ha ha ha ha although buying a guy does have a certain appeal right now. I need a stand in as it were, somebody with two good legs to “step” in and be me for a while. Here’s a little ditty I just read, know it should entertain all those who like to do a little “Jewish” counting.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blacklistednews/hKxa/~3/wAPYPh7SwB0/M.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
What a sweet deal, get the bully of the world to nuke your enemy, then lay back and say when anyone points out who benefits “Why, whatever for are you looking at us? There’s only one country that’s ever used a nuke.” Reminisces of Sargent Schultz.
Eric, your post to Jacob was right on in so many respects. I especially like what you said about the Army. It reminded me of the movie “Stripes.” Much of the reason movies like that and “Private Benjamin” were funny was because the idea of joining the Army was so LAME then. And back then, the Army, though hardly harmless, was much less dangerous, to us and the rest of the world. Now that our military is the deadliest it’s probably ever been, it’s considered heroic just to be a part of it, regardless of what you’re doing — ordering toilet paper, humiliating prisoners, or murdering strangers with flying robots. That’s how far we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.
Forgoing taxation and breaking the law is not what I espouse in the least. What I have talked about is how does not doing either one of those things support an agenda of liberty?
How…and I mean really, how…does you paying taxes, following the speed limit, stopping at red lights, buying pasteurized milk, and voting for the tea party, make you as an individual better, more free, with true meaning? Remember, freedom isn’t just about prison vs not in prison.
I don’t know how you would do non reportable stuff with your online business, but I’m sure it’s possible, probably asking your state licensed accountant how though would probably get you nowhere.
Well, I don’t know about All the stuff you wrote, but I avoid speeding these days and I stop at red lights so I don’t have to send them any money. That’s money they can’t use.
I don’t always not speed.
I don’t always stop for red lights (sometimes I stop and go, or maybe California roll) if it seems there’s no pigs about.
Someone once said it was ok to collect unemployment, or to get other gooberment services they’d paid into, because that was one less Dollar that was available to fund a drone.
Does it really make a difference? I don’t know, but I feel better about it. Not sending them money.
Also, I don’t buy milk, and I don’t vote.
Again, does it really make a difference? I don’t know, but I feel better about it. I’m ok with Opting Out. My conscious is clear.
Another Example of the Dangers of Taking the Direct Approach Against Government
“Be careful out there. Don’t take yourself out of the game. The idea is to make things difficult for the coercers, not the other way around.”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/10/another-example-of-dangers-of-taking.html
Breaking: Adam Kokesh Denied Bond Again
“This direct confrontation in your face attitude with government is not the way to go. As Noam Chomsky once put it: “I don’t want to speak truth to power, I want to speak truth to the public.” ”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/08/breaking-adam-kokesh-denied-bond-again.html
Americans Suffer From Baby Elephant Syndrome
Take a look at this picture: …
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/10/americans-suffer-from-baby-elephant.html
Roth, having a good dose of what the gummint can and will do, I tell those who want to do something to use caution. The entire time AK was doing his thing I was writing to my old college buddies I had sent him advice and it involved not messing with that big dog. Throw that stick away and don’t poke him with it. That kennel is not the protection you think. I’ve seen plenty bad dogs get riled enough to go through, under and over that kennel and what you thought was protecting you was an illusion. I kept trying to tell the boy not to make that bad dog mad but he just wouldn’t let it go. He might could have done “some” of the things he did in a different way or only part of what he did and gotten away with it. But never pull a gun and threaten that big dog if you’re a felon and that’s what he did. He was living dangerously, taking illegal drugs and pissing in that drug dog’s face. I can’t believe he let himself in for so many charges when he was dancing on the edge. Go ahead, reach in there and keep slapping that bad dog and see what happens. It’s bad enough when you’re keeping out of sight from the dog and doing everything you can to mollify him when you know he can see you. Don’t ever try to tell him what he “can’t” do. Don’t try to stare that bad dog down.
Eightsouthman, kennel? I think it was the chains which he was hoping had a hold. As if he’d never seen a big dog break a chain before. (The chains of the Constitution?) I know I have, and it scared the shit out of me and I ran like hell. Of course I was only ten, but still… that’s not something a person soon forgets, if ever.
Eightsouthman wrote, “Don’t ever try to tell him what he “can’t” do.”
Words of a wise man. Too bad it seems AK thought that applied to himself as well.
Shit, well, there goes my happy frame of mind after viewing that Batman clip. WHoa, did that catwoman ever strike a pose.
Roth, you can print that post of mine and put it on your mirror so you read it every day. I have lived it. I know it’s a fact. If I ever see that bad dog coming again I won’t stand a chance cause he knows all about me now and he’s coming for it all.
I guess it comes down to what YOUR definition of freedom is rothbardguy? Is freedom the definition they have supplied you through schooling and your interactions with others throughout your life? Or is freedom going to be defined how the real you sees it? Because right now you live in the reality that has been constructed for you, rather than the reality you built for your self.
Jim,
The only “reality” that ought to matter to a liberty advocate is that one respects the NAP and self ownership – and that others do the same. I, for example, have no interest whatsoever in your “reality” – just as you ought ti have none in mine. So long as we both respect one another’s right to be left in peace.
Simple.
Ya, you do come off as a condescending jerk, Hand Job.
“Because right now you live in the reality that has been constructed for you, rather than the reality you built for your self.”
Now how the hell do you know that?
Do you got a freakin’ crystal ball or something?
If, as you write, it comes down to what MY definition of freedom is, then what the heck are you doing lecturing anybody about Jack shit?
One last bit, for Hand job.
I did say, you come across as a condescending jerk.
“Come across” being a key phrase.
You may be a nice person?
You might be an ok guy?
I don’t know.
I doubt it, but if you are, you sooo need to work on your delivery.
Dear RAH,
“Handsome Jim” wrote,
“Because right now you live in the reality that has been constructed for you, rather than the reality you built for your self.”
The handle “RothbardianamericanHelot” clearly implies an awareness of anarcho-capitalism and the fact that Americans today are treated like the Helots of old.
Why would anyone assume that someone adopting such a handle is
“living within a reality that has been constructed for him?”
Seems to me there’s a peculiar tone-deafness to such charge.
One possible explanation is that “Handsome Jim” is a statist troll who has seen other cover stories blown one after another. In response he has adopted this admittedly bizarre “I’m one of you, only much better” guise.
Bevin,
I could make my handle superbigdick john, but in no way does that mean I actually have a big dick,just the same as my handle handsome jim, really mean I am.handsome, quite possibly it is ironic, just as rothbards handle in no way makes me believe he knows anything about rothbard, except that he knows he is a libertarian.
I find it hilarious that Eric says I.can.stay if I.only post something thoughtful, and 99%.on here just circle jerk each other and whine about WHY stuff is the.way it is, rather than.how his this world got to the way it is. HOW is the question to answer, not why?
And rothbard I.asked you HOW doing those things makes you more free, not a list of stuff you do and how it makes you Feel.
Jim,
C’mon… my finger’s over the Clover button.
You can do better…
As Albert Jay Nock said, “freedom either is or isn’t,”
Don’tchya think that in discussing why things are the way they are, the question of ‘how’ gets answered as a result?
From there, as is discussed often on this blog, THE question to answer then becomes:
What Should Freedom Lovers Do?
“There is no way to know in advance what is right for any person in particular.” …
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09/lew-rockwell/what-should-freedom-lovers-do/
Some people seem to want to force ‘what to do’ upon others. In that way, they become like tyrants.
If, from my list of things I did and why, you only see the one aspect of how it makes me feel, then I think perhaps you cannot see the forest for the trees.
Also, it seems like you’re going the opposite direction with your delivery skills. You might want to consider doing a U-turn there.
It’s up to you.
As Albert Jay Nock said, “freedom either is or isn’t,”
Don’tchya think that in discussing why things are the way they are, the question of ‘how’ gets answered as a result?
From there, as is discussed often on this blog, THE question to answer then becomes:
What Should Freedom Lovers Do?
“There is no way to know in advance what is right for any person in particular.” …
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09/lew-rockwell/what-should-freedom-lovers-do/
Some people seem to want to force ‘what to do’ upon others. In that way, they become like tyrants.
If, from my list of things I did and why, you only see the one aspect of how it makes me feel and ignore what it represents, then I think perhaps you cannot see the forest for the trees.
Also, it seems like you’re going the opposite direction with your delivery skills. You might want to consider doing a U-turn there.
It’s up to you.
“99%.on here just circle jerk each other”. Circle jerk eh hand job? From your posts it seems you thought you had the back of the daisy chain and you’re too good to give a reach around now and then.
Answering the question why in no way answers the question how. If all that gets talked about is “the armed forces used to be no big deal back when I grew up, but look at it now, it’s supposed to be given ‘hero’ status,” then sure if you answer why that has occurred, then you surely will be asking a much different question than How that mindset occurs.
Why, would receive answers such as because the government is now involved in more wars, it has the internet and whistle blowers to deal with, so it says let’s try and turn this into a positive somehow….or something like that.
But in no way does that answer “how” does a country that is based on freedom come to the decisions to start being the world police, what was it that changed in the climate here, and how would those in the government go about altering the minds of the masses to make this allowable? Answers would range from education, to monetary, to propaganda tools, etc…but it is once you work out the how’s, which is when you will start to get at real answers.
And the question: “what should freedom lovers do?” Really? I’m going to make a guess and ask, have you all always been libertarians? For those of you that answer in the affirmative you all rock, but for the others, please, if you used to be politically inclined some other way, tell how it was that made you all of a sudden a freedom lover, and what is it about freedom that you love so much? Freedom to do what? And please no one say, “anything I want as long as I’m not infringing on others…”
There has to be more to it than that, from a philosophical point of view, and there must be a firm definition of what “freedom” means to you that is lodged in your brain.
I am not some liberty tyrant, but I don’t see any firm definitions on here, no discipline that says under any given situation you will respond in x manner every time, not from a predictable sort of behavior but from a behavior that has a firm foundation and knowledge of what it is and how it must act.
Ideas are not “bigger and more powerful than armies,” because if they were our armies would not be in more countries in the world than they have ever been! Explain how all these ideas of peace and liberty continue to get trampled on?
How is the key answer. Like also, how, if any of you have kids, is it that you still send them to indoctrination camps if you believe in “freedom.”
How is it that answering how is so difficult?
HJ, how is NOT the key question. How follows why and here’s why: Politicians are greedy or they’d be doing something constructive instead of wanting to take your money, my money and every damned cent they can. They need minions to do their work, add to their cry for money so they spread some around. After a while, it starts to add up to something a person gets used to but to get more money, they need to convince other politicians and the “public opinion” that mo money is the answer. There is your answer, follow the money. It’s really no more complicated than that. How do you stop it? The age old question and the age old answer, a bigass revolution so you can start all over again. Hey, I just need a few bucks for horse fare…..and a little for lodging….plus some to eat on……..
Sorry man. You can’t simplify it like that. It ain’t that simple. That what they want you to think, that it’s greed and money, but how is it that you let them do it? Liberty ain’t easy, it ain’t simple, and real liberty requires contemplation and strict discipline.
Jim,
You have this grating habit of writing in circles and with great condescension.
“…real liberty requires contemplation and strict discipline.”
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but it reads as though you believe the people here do not “contemplate” much – and lack “discipline.”
The first notion is hilarious; the second incredibly presumptive, in addition.
Notice that no one here accuses you of anything (other than producing prolix, impenetrable prose).
Stop talking down to people whom you’ve got no basis for talking down to.
Dear Everyone,
Here’s a timely and relevant exchange between Lew Rockwell and Joe Salerno about government shills infiltrating libertarian websites.
Does it necessarily apply to anyone in particular? Of course not. That is sometimes a tough judgment call.
But the phenomenon of government infiltration of pro-liberty websites by agents provocateurs is all too real, one we must be alert to.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/no_author/war-terror-and-banking%E2%80%A8/
ROCKWELL: And, of course, any police state, like the U.S., employs a vast number of agent provocateurs. This is true. This is not invented by the U.S. Ancient Rome had them.
SALERNO: Yeah, right.
ROCKWELL: And I’m sure ancient Babylon or whatever did, too. So if you’re ever in any kind of a group, any kind of a Libertarian group — this happens even in reading groups — and there’s somebody coming in there advocating violence, toss him out.
SALERNO: Yes, exactly. Right.
ROCKWELL: Because even if he’s not an agent of the state, he’s evil. But you want nothing to do with him. But typically, these people are agents of the state. They’re paid to go in and try to smear people by getting them to start talking about acts of violence. So these things are wrong. And, again, the state is the locus of violence in society, not private crime. And so we should just not have anything to do with anybody who advocates that kind of thing. But use the truth. Get everybody to read Rothbard –
SALERNO: Yes, right.
As many of us have been saying, again and again, how one thinks determines how one acts, and in turn what shape the man made world will take.
Want to radically change the political landscape?
Simple! Radically change how people think. Note that I said “simple,” not “easy.”
I agree. But Bevin, thoughts encompass a hell of a lot more than regirgitating on the internet some stuff someone has read. Changing thoughts more than anything actually means changing how one acts. Plenty of people think they have changed their minds upon a number of situations, but when the shit hits the fan they act just like they had when they were more naive. And why is that, because they thought becoming different just meant saying different stuff.
Which is why, if in order to change minds, there is only one to concern oneself with: ones own mind. A great place to start is by learning to define everything in your world, including the terms you use, so one does not become just like everyone else who can introduce an arbitrary idea, but has no idea what he is talking about.
Take it as grating then. You run basically a chat site eric. Which I don’t know why there needs to be a “clover tyrant” monitoring this chat room, as if all of the chatters here really are as adult and learned as you say they are, then I am sure they would give examples of their contemplation and discipline and definitions of freedom, because they have given ooogles of examples of their non-discipline and non-contemplative actions, or else I wouldn’t have brought it up dude.
Sure, take offense, think my delivery is all wrong, but at least perform some sort of self-analysis, and picture the message being delivered eloquently, with a finishing hand job if you want, but just try and look at the how’s you all come to believe changing people’s “minds” can be done in a chat room with no reference to action whatsoever. Because essentially the non aggression principle is non-acting, but freedom is so much more than a passive search for meaning, it requires an actor, you, and requires certain actions, namely how you respond to the world around you, in hopefully a questioning manner, rather than an accepting manner of 97% of it! the only part that sux is the big old bad government.
Oy vey with the “self analysis”!
Who the hell are you, Jim, to lecture on such a subject?
I’ve tried, really tried, to be civil and inviting; to encourage you to discuss whatever it is you’d like to discuss. Instead, you hector and condescend. Which might be tolerable if you were clearly possessed of superior knowledge, insight and delivery of same.
But, alas, you are not.
It’s of a piece with Clover pontificating about driving (and engineering) and… well, everything else.
People – smarter people than you appear to be – come here to discuss, not be talked down to. Especially by someone who has no apparent standing to do so.
If you disagree with something said or written, say so – and why. But don’t dismissively tell people they’re not “disciplined” or need to do “self analysis.”
It’s pretty weak – and it’s getting old.
Seems to me, HJ is trying to confuse the the non aggression principle with total pacifism.
Is that on purpose?
[ Did he say he was a libertarian once? If so, I don’t see how, after saying that.]
I like how Laurence M. Vance clarifies the difference between the non aggression principle and total pacifism here, in it, neither one appears to be non-acting:
Am I a Pacifist?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/laurence-m-vance/must-a-christian-be-a-pacifist/
HJ sure does seem hung up on the definitions of freedom, why is that?
It’s as if Wesbter is meaningless?:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freedom
Is it just me, or does it seem like HJ doesn’t read this website much when he says, “they would give examples of their contemplation and discipline and definitions of freedom”?
And here I thought that’s exactly what I’d been reading?
And I really get the impression he’s pissed because others won’t “perform” for him like some kind of pet or something. Odd, that.
I have a hard time making sense out of any of HJ’s recent posts. It’s as though he’s trying to explain The Force.
Study harder, you will – only then will you know the power within!
Eric, in all your sarcasm and facetiousness, you somehow got it. That is precisely what I have been trying to define, the Force. Honestly. Unlearn all that you know, then start over.
Other dude. I have fifty dictionaries and obviously access to the internet, but I want to know what freedom means to YOU. How do you define freedom man?
You take it for granted that everyone chooses to use words as defined in the dictionary, but remember, many words have more than one definition, and even if one used the definitions listed there, then using the #2 definition vs the #5 definition would change the entire meaning of the sentence. Because there is one more thing in a communication you seem to have forgotten, the message the sender means to send, and the message received how the receivers takes that message. Unless things are strictly defined, two peoples completely different understandings of terminologies and realities can cause an impasse to any sort of effective comunique.
Jim,
The presumption is you have something to teach us; that we’re naifs and you’re the master. I have seen no evidence to warrant that.
A line from a song comes to mind:
You’ve been telling me you’re a genius since you were 17, in all the time I’ve known you I still don’t know what you mean.
Stop the bullshit. End the condescending babble.
Say what you want to say using plain English.
Roth, even though 100 years ago the difference had been noted many times by others, Normal Angell put it into terms for every man in his book, The Great Illusion that led to countless debating clubs and societies being formed in Europe and the US. He was of the mind society and the countries involved would be irreparably hurt by war, a truth everybody but those in on the scam know to be true….but, he invoked the wrath of the pacifists when he said “I believe that aggression should be and must be resisted, and I would vote any sum necessary to that purpose….to the last penny and the last man”. Sounds like a libertarian being a realist living in that moment. Oh, did I say that?
I know a cat named Way Down Willie
Has a cool little chick named Rockin Millie
He can walk and stroll and Susie Q
And do that crazy hand job too
Hand job…hand job….hand job
Doin that crazy hand job….D’oh!!
eric, gonna have to ban me…daring to interject humor
Why it must fail —
How Badly Will ObamaCare Screw You? Answers Here!
That’s a link to the unsubsidized data dump — all 78,437 records — for each county and State under the Obamacare exchange program. I can verify that for at least my state and county the table is correct, since you can now look it up on Healthcare.gov without creating an account first.
There are several very interesting statistical facts that come from this.
First, if you’re “27”, the average premium is $266.20/month or $3,194.40 per year. How many 27 year olds have an extra $3,200 to spend on this? Remember, this is the price that virtually every uninsured 27 year old must be willing — and able — to cough up in order to prevent the model this system is predicated on from collapsing.
If those 27 year olds don’t show up, and they won’t, then the system collapses instantly. If they do show up because the government threatens them with fines the economy collapses as $3,200 a year exceeds the average 27 year old’s disposable personal income after mandatory expenses (e.g. food, shelter, etc.) Remember, there are always exceptions but these premiums are averages and over large pools of people the statistical averages are what matters — not the ends of the barbell.
It gets better. The “average” 50 year old premium, again, for single coverage, is $452.87, or $5,434.44/year. How many 50 year olds will find that attractive compared against what they’re paying now? Probably more of them, especially if they’re already sick. But how about the healthy ones?
Note two things as well on this account — these premiums are for non-smokers (smoker premiums are grossly surcharged with reports being 2x the above) and they do not account for anyone other than one person. If you are a single parent with kids (rather common) the premium on average is $610.23/month or about $7,300, and if you’re a couple it’s $647.86 (again, $7,774 annually.)
Now let’s look at the government’s own claims. First, the CPI index claims that health insurance is 0.656% of the family budget. What percentage of couples make $1.185 million a year? Why do I ask? Because that’s the alleged median income for a couple if you believe the government’s CPI numbers.
Yeah, right.
Next, while some people will get “tax credits” to offset these costs all that does is lard it up on the federal budget, because someone else has to pay that bill. In other words this is the true cost that will come out of your hide one way or another — either directly by paying, indirectly by taxation, or indirectly by destruction of your purchasing power.
Next, note that this is the “50 year old” premium but you have to be 65 to qualify for Medicare. The price will rise each year after 50 that you happen to be and there are already reports that if you’re 59 these premiums are understated by half. How many couples who are 59 and cannot qualify for Medicare yet have not $7,700 a year of extra money laying around but north of $15,000?
That’s what I thought.
Are there people for whom these are “good deals”? Oh sure, if you’re fat, sick and nearly dead they’re great deals. The person with HIV who is guaranteed to suck out $30,000 or more in treatment costs each and every year has to be ecstatic at the premise that they can pay $3,200 and get back 10x what they spend on an indefinite forward basis, forever, or at least as long as the drug cocktails they’re taking let them live. Likewise someone with other diseases such as diabetes or cancer have to love these plans; they pay an effective nothing compared to what will be spent immediately and permanently (as long as they live) on them.
But for virtually everyone else these “plans” are nothing more than financial rape. Not only are the premiums outrageous for most but the limits on coverage, including deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums means that if you get sick the so-called “price” is half or less of what you will actually spend, and this assumes you can find a doctor.
Oh, yeah, about that — most of these plans absolutely exclude payment of anything to out-of-network physicians and facilities. “You can keep your doctor” eh? Uh, no.
This “program” is nothing more than the imposition of force to support a medical “system” that has systematically and intentionally destroyed the health of millions with government assistance and prodding. You think that’s overstating the case? Well maybe it is and maybe it’s not — but what we are now learning is that the claim that you should not eat saturated fats because they’re bad for you is being proved scientifically false and that one of the drug company’s biggest “blockbuster” categories, statins, worth some $30 billion a year in extraction from you, are thus utterly worthless at best and might be actively harming you.
You have been told and sold otherwise by both the left (in the case of Obamacare) and right (in the case of uncompensated care and tort reform) and both sides of the aisle have knowingly lied and committed fraud against you to the tune of nearly $3 trillion dollars, or 17% of every dollar spent in the economy last year.
If you caught someone stealing that sort of money from you in the middle of the night in your house you’d shoot them, and with good cause. So why haven’t we politically shot these jackasses and then indicted and locked them up on fraud charges?
More to the point, why aren’t there a few million*****ed-off Americans in Washington DC right now who are surrounding the Capitol and refusing to leave until the lies stop and the scam is excised from our economy?
Probably because nobody, other than a few such as myself, have put these numbers before you and I’m willing to bet that not one in 100 of the people who read this were aware that all three of the above factors combined, were they to be completely eliminated from the health system, would shave off less than four percent of the problem.
But now you don’t have that excuse because here it is in black-letter facts and figures.
So where’s all the money going when we used to spend less than 1/3rd of this much in the 1970s (as a percentage of GDP) on health care, and why is it so damned expensive that you need “forced insurance”?
That’s simple: The entire health system is an organized racketeering outfit that has gotten laws passed to make their conduct legal — conduct that in virtually any other field would be an outright criminal felony.
Think I’m kidding? The Sherman and Clayton Acts, US Code 15 Section 1, say this:
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
The industry doesn’t even try to hide their conduct. Indeed, there are even specific laws in many states, called “Certificate Of Need” (or “CON”) laws, that are formalization of cartel behavior otherwise prohibited by The Sherman Act. This leads to utterly common situations where the price for a given procedure usually varies by as much as 400% from one hospital in a region to another and in many cases varies by more than 1,000%, and it is virtually impossible for you to determine the price before you are treated.
How else do you get a situation like the Phoenix woman who was billed more than $60,000 for two vials of scorpion antivenom that sell for $100 each in Mexico where they’re made over the counter in a pharmacy, not far from Phoenix. If you get into your car and fill the trunk with said drug you are breaking the law as soon as you cross back into the United States (and if caught will be jailed.)
You want to fix the problems with Health Care in this country and solve Federal, State and local budget problems all at once? Break up all the monopolies by declaring unlawful all such conduct that restrains trade or fixes prices and void those laws that have made this behavior legal, mandate public disclosure and level billing of procedures, drugs and devices to all persons and prosecute and imprison violators — all of them, starting with every single one of the health insurance, pharmaceutical and big “managed care” executive
The whole article here October 24, 2013
http://market-ticker.org/
ok. i declare it….nada.
declarations of coindependency & nadatostadas just seem to go together. give me control of a nation’s coin-clippers and I care not who makes it’s laws, said rothschild-is-father-to-“the man”.
(same ol’ same ol’) long story short: the company store does gladly extend credit.
and wimpy will gladly pay tuesday, for a bit of mystery-meat burger today.
but, wimpy has creutzfeldt–jakob disease ever since hannibal lecter converted the intimate dinner table into an industrial institution, turning mere self-cannibalization into a cross-feeding cafo operation…do you hear the screaming of the lambs, clarice?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nb6hxh1G4o
i divorce thee, i divorce thee, i divorce thee…damn, still wagon-hitched! ☻
You know I was just like Pelosi and didn’t know what was in Obamacare until this last week. Didn’t really need to know, already knew I was going to pay the penalty instead. I like the purposeful death spiral that is guaranteed with Obamacare. Of course they have to make up all the partisan, he said-she said to make it like there is some opposition.
But everytime I see the republicans they are betting on stupid stuff like the website not working. I want to believe that both sides really are this stupid and its not planned and scripted , at least that would give me some hope that indeed Obamacare will serve as an example why corporatism and government as a boss of medical is worse. But like Eric I’m speculating that the whole thing is rigged to fail. Republicans keep saying the reason that Obamacare will fail is because it wasn’t bi-partisan. Or the website failed was because it wasn’t managed well. In other words let us help you implement an alternative Romney Care socialism so that both partisan republicans and partisan democrats can shake hands and make something worse but 60% will be happy because of bipartisan compromise.
One thing is for sure the handwriting is on the wall that Obamacare will fail quite quickly. I encourage most people who are uninsured to take the penalty. I hate insurance and used to get catastrophic but why? Why not wait for a pre-existing symptom? Better yet why deal with death doctors and chemicals they prescribe that kill you. I’ve got my ski machine, bike, potent vitamins, and a business that doesn’t cost me my health. I hoping that I never have to set foot in any semi-quasi government medical office. And that is what it has been in American medical since longer than I can remember.
@HotRod – You can’t listen to the republicans, they sleep in the same bed. All funded by UN NGO’s and globalized corporations who have no loyalty to the United States of America. We are all corporate serfs now.
Gary I am with you all the way on the whole political thing being a fraud. People ask me well if you think its scripted wouldn’t one of the senators talk? My answer of course is that the conspiracy isn’t a group effort and meeting except at the top most levels of the few.
Answer: The senators just do what they are paid to do, the teleprompters play out what needs to be said by the highest bidder. And the highest bidder is the men with the money. And the men with the money actually derive it out of thin error (banks) and taxation (police state). Of course people want to believe that some senator knows all the details, of course that is silly. Only if the senator has no scrupples and sells to the highest bidder does he get his vote decided and vocal bits written for him but he doesn’t know who or how his colleauges are being bought out. This amounts to about 98% of congressional critters, both repubs and dems with the same message but scipted to sound just like opposite but actually being the same end result.
Even with the abject technical failure of ACA, they will salvage it and the repubs will be part of the salvaging. I’m pretty confident that this is just a temporary set back. Sure the death spiral will probably kill the current platform, but the meddlers will not stop meddling. McCain will declare war on the uninsured with his compassionate plea and Boehner will get all sympathetic along with the repubs which will give us a “well managed” health plan like RomneyCare.
I did mean thin air and not thin error, but it is erroneous money so maybe a Freudian slip there.
Hot Rod, it is rigged in that corporations are not really separate or totally alone and they will negotiate to do what’s best for all of them. Once the Supremes ruled corporations had the same rights as people, were, in effect, the same as an individual with the same rights, it was OFFICIALLY over. Of course it was actually over before then but now they have the ultimate endorsement. What that ruling meant in effect was corporations, by their sheer size and monetary power were much more powerful than an individual. When the supreme court of the land is bought and paid for by Monsanto, the rest is history as they say.
@HotRod – The system is rigged. No one gets to be US Senator or senior Congressman without morality skeletons in the closet in exchange for that power.
If they don’t play their activities are squashed by party procedure and rules. They are the ones we never hear about because they have no say in the daily operations and their legislation never sees the light of day. http://definingthemachine.com/
But sadly the majority still hold to the school and media indoctrination lie they grew up with that the system works for the public. That is the magic the mind controllers have had for a few generations now. We are all just cows to be milked. And the ACA is just another big milking machine. If people don’t see that now they never will.
I agree again Gary. I’d even go a step further that there are a few (corporations aside) that use the IRS and Fed Reserve as their own personal bank account and piggy bank. These coincidently are the same people that own 50,000 and more acres of land and pay no property tax, while you and me pay $1500-$2000 for an average house on 1/4-1acre land. Aaron Russo pretty much spelled it out for me what I always suspected that the few who own the IRS and Fed are above the law. The Rockefellers get to hide their wealth while the rest of us most fill out our forms to them. Sadly even as a renter I’m indirectly paying the property tax.
To me the tentacles are so deep that anyone who wonders why Ted Turner pays no property tax but assumes that he just happened to find a tax loophole exempting him, they are not connecting the dots properly. Sure their are tax loopholes and yes medium wealthed people take advantage of them, but that is just a slip cover for all the big wigs who don’t file any tax forms. The tax loopholes though good for small business are purposefully there and by design, so that people don’t get to questioning too much how the rich afford their lavish ownership without paying a dime.
I also agree with 8 on the corporations. Mob mentality is best employed by group think and corporation are group think. But I think again the corporations give the few on top (above the law who use the IRS and Fed Reserve as their own personal account) another means of not having all their wealth under their own name.
Then of course we have the permanent government and corporation lobbyist which everyone else already knows about. Though this wasn’t what I was trying to imply earlier. I seriously believe their is a much more sinister group behind the scenes. The government is their big business and as Gary states we are the milk cows.
HR
Nancy Pelosi Pass the Bill to find out what’s in it.
It’s like the prize in the Cracker Jacks Box.
We all got Cracker Jacked!
@Dom – Jacked. What an appropriate gangsta word.
I have a hard time believing that ACA has so many suprises that we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. I wouldn’t know but maybe there is some hidden line of law in there giving Obama a way to indirectly subsidize the insurance companies on the health exchange. I’m wondering if there is some clause that the government must supply so much young and fresh meat for a given insurance rate, or else have to supply the difference in taxpayer money.
I seriously doubt that there isn’t some way they will get their hookers in on a death spiral without somehow using the crisis to manuafacturer an even larger takeover. I’m absolutely certain that they have plenty of holes in that garbage bill to still breath under water.
I’ll be pleasantly pleased if I’m wrong of course.
I was quite pleased with the government shutdown and I was suprised to hear that American’s had turned on the Republicans (yeah right). I mean I can’t believe that. The whole idea that American’s (including so called republicans) would blame the republicans for ransoming the economy (their words) is beyond bullshit. Definitely a push main stream media statistic, but then again the whole voting thing is a hoax anyway. Its rigged as shit too. The people really don’t vote this assinine shit into law even though they are that capable of it all by themselves. Met some democrat here in NV that was laughing about how the republicans got “toasted” with the shutdown of the government. I’m thinking to myself this guy really buys this script, but didn’t have the energy to confront any dummies. What the point I want to see Jimmy the grasshoppers in the winter thaw.
The best part have you ever noticed how stupid call intelligent stupid? I’ve got this advanced engineering degree and I get janitors arguing how free lunches exist and calling anyone who disagree with a free lunch stupid. Why I just give up as some people aren’t playing stupid, they are the real thing and they think by calling the other guy the name quicker that makes them smart. It doesn’t. Let us count how many people believe the MSM script? Then we will know how many stupid people exist.
Morning, HR!
There is also this:
Almost no one – Team Red or Team Blue – would go over to their next-door neighbor’s home in person, knock on the door, and say: “My kid needs a new computer (or I need to pay for a root canal), how about $500?” Much less produce a gun and insist the neighbor “help” out. Virtually every human being not an outright gang-member or street thug recognizes this to be wrong and would never do such a thing themselves – and would be appalled to hear of anyone else doing it. And yet, virtually every one of them will vote for exactly the same thing. To have their theft rinsed clean by the transfigurative power of The Vote and sanctified by Majority Rule. To send proxies out on their behalf to do the wet work.
It is not unlike eating meat.
Most people would not be able to personally kill a cow and butcher it. Or even a chicken, for that matter. What they want is for someone to put a nice steak in front of them. They absolutely do not want to know or even think about where that steak came from, what it took to make it appear. Much less to contemplate the living (and capable of feeling fear and pain) animal that had to be killed for their benefit.
This is not a vegetarian rant. I eat meat. But I also understand – personally – where meat comes from. We raise chickens. I have “processed” them for the table.
Is it not interesting that the same kinds of euphemisms apply?
Team Red and Team Blue talk of “taxes.” But this is of a piece with my processing chickens, is it not?
I assert ownership over the lives of the birds. I use them for my benefit. They may try to escape, but I will corral them, eventually, and take what I want. Their eggs. Their lives.
Just as Team Red and Team Blue assert their ownership over – well, over one another. Over everyone. Chickens, at least, don’t normally use each other in this way – and when they do steal another bird’s egg, or peck one of the flock to death, it doesn’t occur to them to call it by some oily name designed to help them avoid feeling bad about it by characterizing it as something other than what it is.
I suppose that the whole idea that weak, cheating, evil people (same thing) can use the guns of the state to force us to “share” is why I like the fable “Jimmy the Grasshopper”. I also like the Time Machine by HG Wells because if you ask me the Eloi got what they deserved. Of course in real life the government makes it hard for the ants to tell Jimmy he can’t come in for the winter. I remember my mom reading me all those nice bedtime stories, makes me feel all warm and soft inside just thinking about it.
I knew as kid that these bedtime stories had to be the truth. I wonder if any parents bothers reading their kids heartening stories these days (people here don’t count), probably not since the state is the real parent. There were others too like the “Little Red Hen”. I bet you that most everyone that understand no free lunches had parents smart enough to actually know the value of reading bedtime stories to their kids.
I also believe that the reason that numerous derelicts exist in life is because they missed the critical stages of development by not properly excercising their brains. Its not hard to see that if a baby doesn’t open its eyes in a given time frame it will be blind. Quite frankly too many people never even got the “Object Constancy Stage”, they have brains that are going to be forever muddled at the 1-2 year old stage. Nothing sicker than seeing some 50 year old with a 2 year old soul. I just don’t expect these people to be taught anything, its too late for them. The government they depend on will fall someday and the freeze will set in. Its overdue actually but we keep asking how much longer can this go on? I don’t think much longer. Reality is going to be stark and hars for the believers of witchcraft, magic, and lies.
That is my take on the guns of government and weak and dumb people.
HR
Roger all that, HR.
I was on the phone last night with Dom – talking about the same stuff. I told him I try to go outside and do something – like chop wood – when I get to feeling bleak about the way things are (and are likely headed).
It helps, a little.
The best part have you ever noticed how stupid call intelligent stupid? I’ve got this advanced engineering degree and I get janitors arguing how free lunches exist and calling anyone who disagree with a free lunch stupid. Why I just give up as some people aren’t playing stupid, they are the real thing and they think by calling the other guy the name quicker that makes them smart. It doesn’t. Let us count how many people believe the MSM script? Then we will know how many stupid people exist.
Cops do that shit all the time. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so 1) pathetic and 2) dangerous (those assholes are usually armed).
Hot Rod–about the stupid calling the intelligent stupid, I deal with this all the time, how people will argue and even fight you from the limitations of their own perception. Your being beyond their level is to put you into a realm that is entirely invisible to them. It seems obvious that stupid people would have this limitation, but to the intelligent, it is almost unimaginable that people really DON’T UNDERSTAND beyond the limit of their stupidity!
Just what this level of stupidity really is, I don’t know. Is it laziness, is it people don’t read anything once they are past high school or college, is it that people simply don’t think critically or make judgments about what is true and what is false, or don’t check in with their inner selves all the time to determine how this particular thing “smells” or “feels” to them, is it that people don’t go beyond what they think they already know, don’t attempt to learn anything new, or take the trouble figure out something they don’t understand, or do they simply have a brain that is incapable of working beyond a very elementary level? So many people I know don’t think at all, but merely parrot back some kind of sound bite, as if they were all jurors from the OJ trial, so that one simple phrase was the entire sum total of a whole year’s worth of legal presentations (“If the glove don’t fit, then you must acquit”).
All I can say is that I just don’t get it, but I sure am aware of the existence of it.
Tomoz those are my thoughts exactly. Though worded much better than I could’ve put them down. I’ll call you a friend, intelligent, and a liberator using knowledge as your weapon. The good news is that we are finding the full extent of the truth and each other with the help of the internet and the ericpetersauto site.
There is hope for people to wake up and I do recognize that many people are capable and intelligent but just haven’t applied themselves. This gives me hope actually as the brains may not be the problem here but rather the lazy souls inahabitating them.
Many of people say I should have been a college engineering professor, because they say I like to explain concepts and how things work. I find it surprising that anyone wouldn’t get excited knowing the truth and embracing it. Why the world is just full of all kinds of wisdom and power of knowledge. The truth is Godly but also liberating.
I think most people however are conditioned to be like electrical current, they always take the easiest and shortest path to ground. It is sorrowful existence not to question everything, even that was given by your parents, minister, and politicians. Thinking as you say critical of everything just isn’t easy enough for most. Finally, we live in a blame society. Most people really believe its not how bad or good they do, but how they relatively perform to their neighbors. Kind of a way to destroy by coveting thy neighbor is simply to attack the person rather than the truth or falsity of the message. I’ve done it too unfortunately. Thus they wish to lower others with labels that most often than not are a self projection. And I’ll leave it at that since I don’t want to sound like I’m self projecting as well (smile).
Regards HR
That’s a revealing article, Gary. As eric mentioned in the OP, Obamacare is indeed a bait&switch. The facile claims are only appealing to the freeloaders who already are paying nothing. I’ve even heard many of them claim that certain doctors “don’t take my insurance” meaning whatever welfare card they carry. These are the ones who think they will benefit from the scam.
The roots of the scam are fascistic. The legislation is set up to benefit the “healthcare insurance ” industry by making it the sole provider of all medical care and forcing everyone to buy their policies. Those policies, as pointed out in the article you posted, would be an instant “NO SALE” if offered to anyone already insured or those who choose to self-insure. Only government force could create such a market for an industry to exploit. That’s fascism, government enforcing schemes that benefit a cartel or a single entity.
The ridiculous “Hillarycare” was an earlier attempt to get this kind of silliness into practice. One provision of that 1st lady promoted plan was the establishment of criminal penalties for doctors who refused to participate, or who participated but still accepted cash payments from patients.
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Benjamin Franklin
sez loss leaderer ben.
only ‘virtuous’ individuals are capable of freedom. “peoples” tend more toward ouroboros viperousness.
Free is never free.
Look at Google. They say their motto is “don’t be evil,” yet lately they’ve been pushing out more modifications to their “not evilness” that seem to be more about getting more ad views and Hoovering up information than providing service. It’s almost like a bunch of Institutional investors got them on the phone and told them if they want to keep playing with self-driving cars and jumbo jets they’d better start earning that $1000 stock price. Just today they started showing banner ads on search results, something they said they’d never ever do.
Personally I switched to Mac OS after becoming more and more disappointed with Linux. Again, you get what you pay for. But now even Apple is being dragged down to the “free” model, at least when it comes to software. Only Microsoft is left when it comes to consumer/desktop software to pay for, and they’ll be under tremendous pressure to lower prices to remain “competitive.”
The downside of free is that there’s no value in the ledger. This tends to make programmers a cost instead of a profit center. You can guess what happens next: a bunch of good people are shown the door because they’re too expensive, bugs don’t get fixed, and quality suffers.
Sorry, I know this is a car forum, but there’s not really a “free” model in the automotive world, except maybe warranty and recall repairs, which don’t go over too well with the dealers, at least from what I’ve heard.
free is a loss leader. with no loss to the leaders.☻(remember “crack the whip” kids game? which end got cracked?)
as taleb would say, “what we’ve got here, is a sucker problem.”
and as the captain would say, to those who haven’t gotten their minds right, “what we’ve got here, is a failure to communicate.”
and as tennille would sing, “muskrat love will keep us together…” lol
All the hype about the problems with HealthCare.gov, all the talk of delaying the individual mandate a year — it’s amusing at times to watch, but in the end, it’s just a distraction. We will get ObamaCare, and as you say, Eric, it will fail. In fact, Sebelius is already saying that single payer was what they really wanted. That’s been the end game all along, and still is.
The key words in ObamaCare are ‘marketplace’ and ‘market approach.’ Of course, ObamaCare is anything BUT an open market approach to healthcare. But they’re billing it as capitalistic, and the media is buying that BS. Bush claimed it was the failings of capitalism that made the Wall St. and bank bailouts necessary — an utter lie, but people bought it and he got his way. Once Obamacare fails, Obama or his puppet replacement will claim that the ‘capitalistic’ approach to healthcare just didn’t work, so the socialistic approach will be necessary. NHS (and do-it-yourself home dentistry), here we come!
You are totally right Robert. Crony Capitalistic. Crony Socialistic. Crony Scorched Earth Rewildded. Crony Agenda 21 Low Fertilic Do Nothing Media Viewerific.
A three hour football game has 10 minutes of play per 200 minute long telecast. The doctors office will likewise involve 5% actual medical content, and 95% advertisements, indoctrinations, and hardcore peasant idiotification and subjugation.
The solution might be to somehow not need them. Something like having our own method of commerce outside of them, and for them not to know.
Even if we impeached Obama and he left in Nixonian disgrace, it would hurt more than help
Bloomberg leaves, Cola Wars Are Just Beginning
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-bloomberg-soda-article-1.1490333
I can already see the High Fructose Syrup Breathylizers at 7-11 and Mickey D’s already.
All healthy drinks free from the state. All carbonated sugarladen intoxicating stimulating beverages, $1000 an ounce.
I’m sure Watergate was a huge victory for the PTB. The more things fail and we get plucked, the more we have little alternative but to cling to the their legs.
Goodbye Uncle Sam, hello Uncle Joe.
Hey Joe, Heard U Shot Your Nation/Woman Down – Jimi
Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand???
You know I caught my old lady messin’ ’round town with some Communist Clown, and I gave her the gun!!!
Yes, Tor. In the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” That quote is probably engraved and on display somewhere in the headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations. 🙂
I have no doubt. The Rahm-comm is especially sinister, because it is meant in a multinational bipartisanal sense. Fukushima is an opportunity for the CFR-Cartel to show that its world governing bodies are indispensable institutions.
If instead, Japan Tepco Nagasaki had just brought 20 3rd generation Nuke Plants on the grid, that are also compatible with all Asian specs.
That these plants were offering the as much power as a 90 percentile Japan Household uses to all 4+ billion Asians at every connected home.
All for only 200 yen a month(~$2) that wouldn’t be good news for the Govt at all.
– – – – –
Rahm Emanuel, Nov. 19, 2008: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.
I think America as a whole in 1973 and 1974, and not just my view but obviously the administration’s, missed the opportunity to deal with the energy crisis that was before us.
For a long time our entire energy policy came down to cheap oil. This is an opportunity, what used to be long-term problems, be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area, things that we have postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with.
This crisis provides the opportunity, for us, the government and ruling class, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.
The good news, I suppose, if you want to see a silver lining, is the problems are big enough that they lend themselves to ideas from both parties for the solution.”
Rahm Good Crisis Speech
– who needs electricity reliably and cheaply delivered to their home, when they generalized speeches about future developments in electrical policy?
#ObamaTraumaRahma
#CityofBigEricHolders
#tiltingAtWindyCityWindmills
“silver lining”
silver fillings are 50% neurotoxic mercury…..
In dentistry, amalgam is an alloy of mercury with various metals used for dental fillings. It commonly consists of mercury (50%), silver (~22-32% ), tin (~14%), copper (~8%), and other trace metals.[1][2] Dental amalgams were first documented in a Tang Dynasty medical text written by Su Kung in 659, and appeared in Germany in 1528.[3][4] In the 1800s, amalgam became the dental restorative material of choice due to its low cost, ease of application, strength, and durability.[citation needed]
yes…i am an anti-dentite. ☻
Tor: Re this part of Rahm’s quote:
“The good news, I suppose, if you want to see a silver lining, is the problems are big enough that they lend themselves to ideas from both parties for the solution.”
That’s the GOOD news??? Actually, that’s the heart of the problem to me, and the core of their strategy: that no matter who’s in charge, the “solution” will be implemented. The trimmings might vary, but it’ll be the same “solution,” regardless of who’s at the helm
Re Fukushima, I agree — it’s the perfect kind of crisis to effect a totalitarian takeover. Nothing scares the sheeple as much as nukes. As the Church Lady on SNL used to say, “How conveeeeenient!”
If The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is fake, only one look at Rahm and I think it must be real. Satan incarnate.
Robert, I agree with you to a great extent. I see the entire BO debacle as a bi-partisan thing(sorry, I have to laugh my ass off when I say “bi-partisan”(, what a friggin joke yet no joke at all, it really is both parties). This is another increasingly “big” step in taking the country away from the citizens and doing them the worst harm. WTF does everyone think all those fortified housings in DC and Denver are for? Those fuckers don’t intend to stick their heads out till the people they have paid to be slaves tell them it OK. Of course, the slaves with any sense will simply off the whole damned bunch, turn and look at each other and say Hey, It’s ok…..now. Meanwhile, the entire point is the elites will be able to send their minions out to collect all our stuff(actual valuables), dig many big holes and shove us and all our shit into them. There will be that hideout thing in rural areas for the most part that will make it all drag on for quite a while(in their estimation). What they won’t know is their hired minions will be making a deal with all us good old boys who tell them they can live if they are part of the solution. It’s going to look a lot different in a few years, maybe in a just a couple. Think a varied look but similar to TWD.
“what they really wanted”
checkmate comes after a series of incremental moves.
but…the glacial game board, & all the glassy-eyed game pieces, balance atop even slower moving tectonic plates.
gaia’s a chiropractor, you know. or a rack operator. depending on where you happen to be standing. internal spinal contradictions will be adjusted. or just ripped out.
no such thing as ‘no fault’ in fault zones. moral hazard oozes around the game board, but metamoral hazard, that’s deep underfoot – & seeing to it that your own spine is not plumb line with it is the best you can do.
In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway american dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin out over the line
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
Its a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while were young
`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
ozy, that NYT Bono top 10 list you posted a link to somewhere is the most infuriating thing I’ve ever attempted to read. A true literally unslayable chthulhu!
Thanks for the anguish. Keep it up!
your r&r facebooker wrote it, tor. take it up with him. &/or your other short-lister, kim.com whichever one you’re rooting for today.
What a fool still blaming Bust…. what a dip shit
Eric..am I correct that you’re saying this debacle is intentional? If that was your intention I must disagree. Sociopaths do what they do because they are always correct regardless what they can plainly see in front of their faces. They are not entirely stupid though, they did have some “smartz” and name it “Affordable”. As far as ruining the country I am 100% convinced this is an intentional act. The North American Union mandates one currency between US, Canada and Mexico and to achieve that the dollars value needs to be reduced. We are currently on par with Canada and now we are both headed to Mexico’s’ peso status.
… “So many actions and omissions of madness…it leaves us with the reasonable conclusion that Obama’s Presidency was designed from the outset to flame out and fail.
And the principal target was the economy.” …
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/how-many-lies-can-the-white-house-tell-before-the-walls-collapse/
Some awful, racist columnist on LRC
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/thomas-sowell/race-hustling/
linked to two books by this awful, racist man, whose website is here:
http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/
Warning: this stuff is just awful, and racist and anti-progressive and may fail to use properly PC terminology, and may even be sacreligious to the Obomber-as-God POV.
“Let’s Roll!!!”
[“joke” premise]
Two chinamen walked into a bar.
“Why the same face?” asked the bartender.
1 is this hateful, not-funny, parochial, bigoted, racist, inflammatory, low-class. Probably, if you end there and offend/get cheap laughs and move on.
2 The Han Chinese are an ethnic group that constitute about 20% of the entire global human population. They are far and away the most industrious group in the world right now. (Germans are 30% less industrious than Hans in second place, Americans are 2% less industrious than Germans in third place.)
3 This is “funny” because Chinese in general, and Hans especially all “look alike.” This is more a feature of the beholder than the beholden. There is more than enough facial variation to distinguish them, to pretend otherwise is ridickaless. (More aggressive false humor for another rant)
This equally applies to Americans abroad, not because of their face. But as a whole.
Americans mostly watch the same lockstep media machine and use lazy methodical plosive dumbed down English, and are impatient, and horribly uncivilized people in the eyes of others that highly values elaborate societal courtesies.
http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-Mexico/Local%20Assets/Documents/mx(en-mx)Global_Manufacturing_Competitiveness2013.pdf
4 If you break down American’s disparagements of China, you see they’re of the same caliber as the socialist/communist arguments against Western Capitalism. Be a man, and admit you lost in some respects.
Japan, South Korea, Greater China, Singapore, have demolished America in the industrial battlefield. Don’t quisling quibble about it like a Commie or a shitbag Commonwealther. The victory of America is its still highly productive without being a clone hive.
Switzerland/Nordic/Dutch/Germany are also pulling away from America. Are we really going to go down the Jolly Old England shit road? The UK industrial sector is less than 200 million pounds a year in value creation. That’s utterly pathetic.
Imagine those poor Red Coated nobodies from the 18th Century onward. They stuck their fangs in the necks of their colonies and hopped on their backs, and have been riding and sucking on them like Broke-Back-Vampires ever since.
If America is to drop a few pegs, do it with a measure of manliness and aplomb. The French are far and away the most admired and the among the most Authentic peoples in the world. For good reason.
The French do their own shit their own way. When they called us Stupid Americans, we should have listened. It would have been much easier to stop being stupid back then.
5 Ideally, Americans can dismantle this Soviet Nightmare and pull out of the decline. If not, then let’s decline with dignity like the French.
Or even through honest and pleasant parasitism like the Spanish or the Catholics.
6 Americans truly are muggles compared to the Hogwart Magicians of the UK. I hope that remains the case. They possess an awesome fear-inspiring power that has led them to successfully colonize and now vampirize 2.2 billion people.
If America balkanized, the East Coast and West Coast will remain Neo-Hogwartian, and that is OK. Just don’t let them poison every square inch and leave us no recourse or escape, as is becoming the case in Canada.
7 The PTB are pulling out all the stop to make an American Equivalent race of low production/high witchcraft type peoples. That’s why the nefarious destructive inversion of placing the stupid, the black, the hispanic, the gay, the women, and all the other less productive than American white/yellow people are being placed at the top.
Don’t let it madden you. Don’t be like Hitler at the Olympic Games. Screw fake ass Demagogue Hitler. Screw the fake Hyper-Nationality of the Olympics. Don’t discount or overblow the achievements of less productive/yet still contributing groups.
8 I’m all over the map with this anarchy/statecraft thing. But I trust that it will congeal into useful strands of possibilities with time.
9 Boycott Beijing 2008
http://www.themanyfacesofspaces.com/made_in_china.jpg
10 Over 68,000 Single Women Starve to Death Every Year
http://www.funpic.hu/en/categories/demotivational-posters/46604_over-68000-single-women-starve-to-death-every-year
– Who wants to get rolling on women jokes? A) find something disparaging that makes you laugh. B) determine why its funny to you and those you consider your audience in the big picture. C) find the ways the joke is really on you, and do other things to philosophically arrive at an existential higher lever because of the joke. Not in a solely self-depricating, dis-empowering way though, that’s self-defeating.
Wtf. Stfu.
Wtf. Stfu. Stupid f’in idiots. Believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see.
Ed,
The real truth will set you free………