Itinerant Air-Cooled

Lanval wrote: I didn't he wrote it, I said he used it; which he did. Reagan, being an actor, was probably illiterate. Here's the link from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_in_America
L.

Good link.

I shouldn't have intimated that you said he'd written it. Bad writing on my part.

Also, I was being facetious about the socialism part.

That's it for the clarity updates.

glasseye wrote:
That's it for the clarity updates.

Lanval brings up a very good point. Michael Moore did too in his movie "Capitalism".


I am done with drooling parrots who caw "socialism" every time they hear the selfish bastards claim "socialism" whenever this country needs to do unified national work.

Obama is caving in down there in Washington.
Somebody needs to hand Boehner a hanky so he can wipe away his crocodile tears long enough to focus on the latest Congress popularity poll. It is at 13%.

That is less than the Taliban. Despicable little creeps whoring themselves out to despicable self-interested corporate masters.
Oh, crybaby Boehner's golf fees last year? $83,000.00

glasseye wrote:Also, I was being facetious about the socialism part.

It's difficult to be subtle in writing; I run into the same issues often, and I spend a LOT of time thinking about how to write clearly. I suspected your response was in the vein of 'tongue-in-cheek' but played it safe.

It's often hard, in a world that includes people like Glenn Beck, to be sure when some over-the-top statement is actually meant as sarcasm, and not as "serious political rhetoric". Those two coincide more often than they should. It's not all one way either, but the conservative movement(s) in the US seems to have a larger number of people willing to exist on the fringe.

L.

May we all have the fortune to live in the country our founding fathers dreamed of, rather than feared.

Lanval wrote:May we all have the fortune to live in the country our founding fathers dreamed of, rather than feared.

Have the fortune?

May we all get off our asses and call out the small-minded ignorant little thugs who get away with sleight-of-twisted-logic in the service of their mean-spirited selfish accumulations of cash and power.

There is no excuse for the mendacious mediocrity flooding our country.
How many off us utilize our intelligence and tools of communication to offer feedback to our representatives and even criticisms to our news organizations?

We get exactly what we deserve. I am in Arizona, and sometimes I wake up in a beautiful vista of trash dumped by people who care exactly . . . THAT . . much.
Same with our Republican leadership in Congress, with a cohort that allows congressmen like Joe Wilson yell out "you lie!" to the President during a State of the Union address. We dump trash all over the landscape, all over the air waves, all over EACH OTHER RIGHT HERE, and we then bitch about the litter????

Comfort comes at a cost.
I find that I am the most vital and free when I'm not spoon fed tomorrow on a bland platter of iceburg lettuce. Alice must fall thru the hollow tree, but with a relaxed air.
Imagine the cost to maintain ivory towers built of suburb and brushed stainless. I think we cloak our fear of death in our material lives, hoping to drown in them. Impossible, as the universe does not reward inaction. Sooner or later we are forced to dance with the demon, death, and make peace. Life occurs as on an airplane, transatlantic 2 AM hurtling forward.

Ted Rall.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20110112/c ... thanothers

"I'm going to climb out on a limb here: The guys I've quoted are all smart. They know exactly what is causing this relentless increase in income inequality. Ruling elites have exploited globalization and technological advances to increase corporate profits through deregulation, union busting, and lobbying for federal subsidies and tax benefits. We're witnessing exactly what Karl Marx predicted at the dawn of industrialization: capitalism's natural tendency to aggregate wealth and power in the hands of fewer people and entities, culminating in monopolization so complete that the system finally collapses due to lack of consumer spending.

The pundits are also smart enough to know that there's only one way to equalize income: revolution."



neal

Why don't you go to the streets and precipitate your revolution. I think it will require some incendiary rhetoric. So, this terrible society-wrecking inequality you speak of. You know any of these folks you despise so much? Just curious. They are the same folks that kept yer daddy down? That it? They keep amassing more and more of your wealth. I want to hear your story. Or see you on the streets revolutionary.

Go to the streets and get beat up by the police working for the elites? I think not. Incendiary rhetoric is for the weak, along with calls to violence, just the exploitation of fear. Just because you are in the minority is no reason to kill for your cause. That would be a dictatorship, not a democracy. No, I don't mingle with the elites. I can't afford the country club dues, higher than my annual salary. Well, my Dad was a librarian. That would be a labor of love, not one pursued with expectations of vast wealth and power. Revolutionary though, maintaining a source of information and knowledge for the people. Very little of my labor has helped the uber rich, just my taxes. No need for me to go to the streets, my work is already revolutionary. Anything else you'd like to know about me turk? My favorite color is green. I'm fond of the number eight. I've never owned a gun, and certainly hope I will never see the need to.

neal

Okay. When the word revolution is bandied about, what comes to mind? The revolutions of marxists and anarchists (no connection implied) and hippies of the counter-culture etc.. We saw what good things those revolutions brought. Free love and that. Broken windows and fights with the pigs. Riots in Detroit and Chicago, and L.A. and so on. Now the Detroit Riots happened all of a sudden during routine police activity in the ghetto. Not supporting or condoning the police activity but not the aftermath of the "liberating riots" either. I dunno how much knowledge and compassion the white folks displayed or didn't, but the whole place kinda went south so to speak, after 67. Now look at it. In the crapper 100%. Is it racial? I think it is mostly because of government.

The Hippie riots of the '60's where to end the war in Vietnam which it helped to do....Also the Peace and MLK Movements brought about changes in laws..ending the draft, discrimination etc.

Revolution without violence is possible.

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: "A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay a hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war."

April 4th, 1967


Sadly, a very slow revolution.

neal

Yes, following the GOP example, let's pour more money into military spending and cut wasteful social program spending I'd "Welfare moms", "Drug rehab" :dink:

Dr. King was a brilliant speaker and a revolutionary but I'll take the other side for rhetorical purposes today. What about the good things those capitalist westerners helped to create and achieve? They don't count? It's all or nothing? Think about it and have a peaceful MLK Jr. day.

It's all or nothing for the corporations. They only compromise when a court of law forces them to.

No profit is too big.
No environmental cost trumps commerce and growth.
And social causes are supported only if they have strategic or political value. If they touch the bottom line, no dice.

Of course the private sector has done wonderful things. And of course there are exceptions to the corporations are dastardly rule. But there's no need to play devil's advocate on this one; we have already seen what happens when the people make too many compromises.

I'm trying to think of any good things capitalist westerners helped to create and achieve beyond opportunities to exploit resources for profit, be they natural resources or cheap labor.

"The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just."

Take Haiti or the climate summits. In Haiti we are letting the misery continue until we can place our corporations into the profitable contracts. Same thing with the climate summits. We're not there to provide or suggest a single solution, but only to maximize profit making opportunities for corporations.


neal