Food for Thought Not Theatrics
1. We are advised to not judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.
2. Seems we constantly hear that Social Security is going to run out of money. Why don’t we ever hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money? The first group worked for their money, but the second didn't. Don’t you find that discrepancy odd?
3. Why are we cutting benefits for our veterans, not giving pay raises to our military personnel, and cutting our armed services to levels lower than we had before WWII, while at the same tie we are not stopping foreign aid to rogue nations or benefits to illegal aliens?
4. Why has the enemedia focused almost exclusively on one admittedly sad, but very small-scale event in Ferguson, Missouri, when the Middle East is erupting with widespread atrocities that led yesterday to the beheading on camera of an American Journalist. Myriad acts of barbarism continue in Africa, Putin is running amok unchallenged in Ukraine, our southern border is still under siege, the IRS Scandal has had no resolution, unanswered questions on Benghazi still abound, Obamacare is a flop and remains a festering thorn in our side, and the VA has yet to improve one iota, and still Ferguson eats up the lion's share of media attention. Does any of this make sense to you?
4. Why has the enemedia focused almost exclusively on one admittedly sad, but very small-scale event in Ferguson, Missouri, when the Middle East is erupting with widespread atrocities that led yesterday to the beheading on camera of an American Journalist. Myriad acts of barbarism continue in Africa, Putin is running amok unchallenged in Ukraine, our southern border is still under siege, the IRS Scandal has had no resolution, unanswered questions on Benghazi still abound, Obamacare is a flop and remains a festering thorn in our side, and the VA has yet to improve one iota, and still Ferguson eats up the lion's share of media attention. Does any of this make sense to you?
Because we are the stupidest, brokest country on earth
ReplyDeleteHead games:
ReplyDeleteany deceptions or tricks designed to confuse or manipulate a person.
Putin is running amok unchallenged in Ukraine
ReplyDelete---------
Huh?
Have you been following events at all? No? Didn't think so.
the IRS Scandal has had no resolution, unanswered questions on Benghazi still abound
ReplyDelete---------
Again, someone hasn't been paying attention.
It's one thing to manufacture these so called scandals but it's quite another thing to expect rational people to care about your agenda.
1) SOME PEOPLE, but not everyone, judge all gun owners by the actions of a few. So the first item is a generalization, not an accurate statement.
ReplyDelete2)On Social Security funding.
And there's is this: MORE HERE on SNAP eligibility.
They're both more complicated than saying some people worked for their money and the people accepting food supplements didn't, since a majority of those who receive assistance on SNAP are children. The others include seniors, veterans, and the disabled.
And the county in the US receiving THE MOST BENEFITS in food stamps is all white and all Republican. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just sayin'.
3) Who cut benefits to our veterans?
4) What happened in Ferguson is newsworthy. There is always unrest in the Middle East and there will always be horrible events happening all over the world. The fact that terrible things happen all over the world does not mean we shouldn't pay attention to a rioting American city. Don't you believe the American people can focus on more than one thing at a time?
PS. States that have embraced the A.C.A. have seen a significant drop in uninsured citizens. That was one of the goals of "Obamacare," and in states that implemented it, it has succeeded. Other GOP-led states? Not so much.
You bring up Benghazi again even though the GOP's own report out of the investigating committee stated quite clearly there was no cover-up involved.
Perhaps you failed to read that?
Ferguson MO is bread and circuses.
ReplyDeleteMisdirection is both a magician AND newspaperman's job.
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ReplyDeleteDucky, those investigations have been stymied by persistent stonewalling and because subpoenas have been ignored by key members of the administration. You know it as well as I.
ReplyDeleteThere has been no interest in getting at the truth in this administration -- and many others in the past we admit. Shameless obfuscation, avoidance of confrontation, mulish lack of cooperation by witnesses, destruction -- or the virtual burial -- of evidence have balked all attempts to achieve justice.
There has been NO RESOLUTION merely ABANDONMENT in DISGUST, I guess.
Your old-fashioned bomb throwing and street fighting diversionary tactics don't work here. Because of your naked, shameless and avowed radical leftist partisanship, you have no credibility on political issues.
Miss Shaw, you raise interesting points, but singling out a place like Owsley Kentucky with its tiny population of 5000 down-on-their-luck white inhabitants, as an accurate reflection in microcosm of what's happening nationwide seems a bit of a stretch to me.
ReplyDeleteBesides, who has been largely responsible for so many coal miners suddenly being deprived of their livelihood an cast adrift in recent years?
HINT: It wasn't George W. Bush ;-)
You are very quick and ready with your responses. I am less so with mine. So, I hope you will forgive me for taking time in trying to answer your assertions.
I AM glad you posted here. It gives us good reason to think through and either justify or possibly revise our position on various issues.
Keeping the witless barbs, mindless expressions of hatred, and BOILERPLATE at bay can be a formidable task, especially since I can't afford to sit here all day and watch over the playpen, so please bear with me.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteAs for the solvency of Social Security, etc. the very LAST place I would go for reliable information would be a government bureau. I'm sorry, but the greedy, corrupt, power-mad, compulsively mendacious, self-serving, skf-pepetuating, self-protective nature of the bureaucratic culture in the District of Columbia, and the lawless, Totalitarian Aims and Activities of the current administration are hardly capable of inspiring trust and confidence in anyone with a modicum of awareness and common sense.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTo misrepresent the motives of Republicans by claiming they "cut benefits to veterans," when all they were trying to do in all likelihood was deter excessive spending in what was undoubtedly a pork-laden bill, is unworthy.
ReplyDeletePutting the most dismal interpretation possible on political opponents is an obfuscatory-diversionary tactic as old as Time no doubt, but that doesn't make it honorable.
This badinage is all gamesmanship that accomplishes nothing of value. All it does is "kick the can farther down the road" and make sure our looming crises have no possibility of ever getting resolved.
Of course more white people are on food stamps. they make up about 80% of the population,but minorities percentage wise have more people on them.
ReplyDeleteRemember when the republicans were trying to fix SS the dems used the scare tactics that the republicans wanted to push granny off the cliff?
Although the ACA has some fixes but granny will be surprised by it when it actually does push her off the cliff. But of course the dems are holding off till after the next 2 elections and of course will blame the republicans for it even though it was their policies. No transparency here.
AOW was right Head Games
By the way, just who ARE the "SOME PEOPLE" who would deprive ALL gun owners and potential gun owners of their Second Amendment rights -- a position that certainly implies that ALL gun owners are potentially unreliable, dangerous and likely to wreak havoc sooner or later?
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you who:
LEFTISTS who are eager to "use" every sad, tragic incident involving the use of a gun to further their determination to gain a death grip on DICTATORIAL power.
What's next -- depriving citizens of the right to own and operate automobiles, because people get killed and maimed in traffic accidents every day? Taking BUTTER, EGGS and CHEESE off the shelves, because some people's arteries get clogged by cholesterol? Banning RED MEAT and rationing CHICKEN for the same reason? Rationing the purchase of STARCH in all its man and varied forms because it exacerbates symptoms of DIABETES?
There is NO LIMIT as to how far this determination to MONITOR, SUPERVISE and MICRO-MANAGE every move we make and every breath we take "for our own good" could go if unchecked.
Most movements "start small." This COMPULSION to use the power of government CONSTRAIN all undesirable activity is EXACTLY what Orwell evoked with such dramatic, terrifying power both in Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
I KNOW that YOU don't advocate anything so Draconian as all that, Miss Shaw, but I most earnestly and fervently believe that Orwellian Dystopia would be the inevitable result of a full, unopposed implementation of the Leftist Agenda.
All excellent points, Lisa.Thank you.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you here.
Obamacare may have helped some people get coverage who didn't have it before, but it has made even more unable to pay for the coverage they previously had and diluted the quality of care in the bargain. It has also forced people to pay for benefits they neither need nor want. Maternity care for single men or elderly, post-menipausal women for example.
ReplyDeleteALSO to my mind the most SIGNIFICANT of the many depredations brought about by Obamacare has been the bald-faced LIE: "You can keep your doctor."
It has always been vitally important to be able to establish an ingoing relationship with a doctor or set of doctors whom one likes, and in whom one feels instinctive confidence and trust.
To leave that choice up to the whims and caprices of government bureaucrats verges dangerously close to giving the government the responsibility of selecting your spouse for you based on THEIR reading actuarial stables and THEIR interpretation of statistical probabilities.
Frankly, I'd rather go back to letting Grandma and Grandpa make ARRANGED MARRIAGES for their progeny.
We are NOT merely a compendium of Facts, Figures and mindless Chemical Reactions. Neither are we ROBOTS t be taken apart and reassembled -- or discarded - at someone ELSE'S behest.
Does any of this make sense to you?
ReplyDeleteYep...
Would you care to elaborate a bit, Les?
ReplyDeleteLisa is a voice of sanity in this thread.
ReplyDeleteLisa is a gentle-but-firm Voice of Sanity wherever she goes, AOW.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, you will LOVE tomorrow's post. I got it from Lisa, ad I hope she won' mind my playing copycat, but if anything deserves to "GO VIRAL", it has to be the material in tomorrow's post.
Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick ...
Lisa, when did Republicans try to "fix" Social Security?
ReplyDeleteThey tried to initiate privatization and I suspect you don't mind your benefits being eaten by Wall Street management fees but others are more savvy.
Now, after you caught the banksters' act in the melt down are you sure you want to give them access to Social Security funds?
Why do you say the system is broken?
John Locke Private Properties, Ltd. said
ReplyDeleteKanardo the Komical Kommie Klown Kwacks Again.
He answered his own kwestion kwite elokwently, but is so blinded by his beloved Marxist ideology, he'd prefer to get sucked down and die in quicksand than accept help from a conservative.
Again, FT, when I'm presented with Locke's cult of property I have to remind you that you seem to ignore man's group origins.
ReplyDeleteA common error among the "society doesn't exist" Libertarian set.
"We are advised to not judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics."
ReplyDeletePOINT, GAME, SET, MATCH
"In spite of the prevailing stereotypes and assumptions about who uses SNAP Food Stamp benefits the most in the United States, the highest usage is not in Compton, Queens, nor the South Side of Chicago. Instead, a city that is 99.22% white and 95% Republican comes in the lead. Owsley County, Kentucky is a community of about 5,000, residents earning the lowest median household income in the country outside of Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Census."
ReplyDeleteYou'll notice they don't give the percentage of people in Owsley on food stamps but for the sake of argument let us just assume it is 100%. I'll also overlook the fact that "THE MOST BENEFITS in food stamps" is only one aspect of government benefit and doesn't necessarily imply that the folks of Owsley are receiving the highest per capita total benefits.
So, there are 5000 people in Owsley on food stamps.
In Los Angeles County (home of Compton, mentioned in the article), only 9% are on SNAP...but that is 1,015,481
people on food stamps.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/04/food_stamp_recipients_by_county_an_interactive_tool_showing_local_snap_data.html
So as Mark Twain so astutely observed, their are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
I might also add I looked it up on the Slate link and the number is 2,483 or 51%
ReplyDeleteCompare that to say, Central Falls, Rhode Island population 19,367 where 40.3% or 7808 are on SNAP or say Woonsocket population 41,186 where 33.8% are on SNAP (13920) and you can quickly figure out where most of the money is going.
"A common error among the "society doesn't exist" Libertarian set."
ReplyDeleteOnce again Ducky demonstrates that he doesn't know the difference between society and government
WARNING Graphic Images
ReplyDeleteHave you seen this???
The police need to CHILL!
Thanks again, Finntann. The application of logic and all that good solid information makes me feel like the Marines have landed, ;-)
ReplyDeleteDucky, ALL the great advances in Civilization -- ALL Art, Music, Sculpture. Literature, Poetry, Drama, the great Inventions that made the modern world, the great discoveries in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Engineering -- EVERYTHING -- were made by INDIVIDUALS.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we know the implementation, mass production and later refinement of these great seminal inventions and discoveries HAD to be produced by organized groups, but ALL of it had its ORIGINS in the mind of INDIVIDUALS. That's true even of your precious Marxism.
There is no such thing as a Collective Mind.
The great creative geniuses and those with entrepreneurial skills and leadership qualities MUST be on TOP and the rest must work UNDER them.
ALL PEOPLE ARE NOT EQUAL, except in the sight of God. That means we must RESPECT each other in all the different roles we given to play, but creative genius trumps everything else. Without it we'd still be scratching in the dirt and swinging from the trees, eating only grass, leaves, bark, nuts, berries and whatever uncooked food we could kill, while communicating with grunts, screeches and rudimentary sign language.
What you say relative to "individuals" may have been true once. Before the advent of the "salaried bourgeoisie" and the advent of "intellectual property".
ReplyDeleteIf the old capitalism ideally involved an entrepreneur who invested (his own or borrowed) money into production that he organised and ran, and then reaped the profit from it, a new ideal type is emerging today: no longer the entrepreneur who owns his company, but the expert manager (or a managerial board presided over by a CEO) who runs a company owned by banks (also run by managers who don’t own the bank) or dispersed investors. In this new ideal type of capitalism, the old bourgeoisie, rendered non-functional, is refunctionalised as salaried management: the members of the new bourgeoisie get wages, and even if they own part of their company, earn stocks as part of their remuneration (‘bonuses’ for their ‘success’).
This new bourgeoisie still appropriates surplus value, but in the (mystified) form of what has been called ‘surplus wage’: they are paid rather more than the proletarian ‘minimum wage’ (an often mythic point of reference whose only real example in today’s global economy is the wage of a sweatshop worker in China or Indonesia), and it is this distinction from common proletarians which determines their status. The bourgeoisie in the classic sense thus tends to disappear: capitalists reappear as a subset of salaried workers, as managers who are qualified to earn more by virtue of their competence (which is why pseudo-scientific ‘evaluation’ is crucial: it legitimises disparities). Far from being limited to managers, the category of workers earning a surplus wage extends to all sorts of experts, administrators, public servants, doctors, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals and artists. The surplus takes two forms: more money (for managers etc), but also less work and more free time (for – some – intellectuals, but also for state administrators etc).
(cont)
ReplyDeleteThe evaluative procedure used to decide which workers receive a surplus wage is an arbitrary mechanism of power and ideology, with no serious link to actual competence; the surplus wage exists not for economic but for political reasons: to maintain a ‘middle class’ for the purpose of social stability. The arbitrariness of social hierarchy is not a mistake, but the whole point, with the arbitrariness of evaluation playing an analogous role to the arbitrariness of market success. Violence threatens to explode not when there is too much contingency in the social space, but when one tries to eliminate contingency. In La Marque du sacré, Jean-Pierre Dupuy conceives hierarchy as one of four procedures (‘dispositifs symboliques’) whose function is to make the relationship of superiority non-humiliating: hierarchy itself (an externally imposed order that allows me to experience my lower social status as independent of my inherent value); demystification (the ideological procedure which demonstrates that society is not a meritocracy but the product of objective social struggles, enabling me to avoid the painful conclusion that someone else’s superiority is the result of his merit and achievements); contingency (a similar mechanism, by which we come to understand that our position on the social scale depends on a natural and social lottery; the lucky ones are those born with the right genes in rich families); and complexity (uncontrollable forces have unpredictable consequences; for instance, the invisible hand of the market may lead to my failure and my neighbour’s success, even if I work much harder and am much more intelligent). Contrary to appearances, these mechanisms don’t contest or threaten hierarchy, but make it palatable, since ‘what triggers the turmoil of envy is the idea that the other deserves his good luck and not the opposite idea – which is the only one that can be openly expressed.’ Dupuy draws from this premise the conclusion that it is a great mistake to think that a reasonably just society which also perceives itself as just will be free of resentment: on the contrary, it is in such societies that those who occupy inferior positions will find an outlet for their hurt pride in violent outbursts of resentment.
...violent outbursts of resentment.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. Sounds like Ferguson, MO.
There is a "Collective Mind". It's called "The Internet".
ReplyDeleteControl access, and control the world.
Aristophanes, "The Birds"
EPOPS We birds? But what sort of city should we build?
PISTHETAERUS Oh, really, really! 'tis spoken like a fool! Look down.
EPOPS I am looking.
PISTHETAERUS Now look upwards.
EPOPS I am looking.
PISTHETAERUS Turn your head round.
EPOPS Ah! 'twill be pleasant for me, if I end in twisting my neck!
PISTHETAERUS What have you seen?
EPOPS The clouds and the sky.
PISTHETAERUS Very well! is not this the pole of the birds then?
EPOPS How their pole?
PISTHETAERUS Or, if you like it, the land. And since it turns and passes
through the whole universe, it is called, 'pole.'(1) If you build and
fortify it, you will turn your pole into a fortified city.(2) In this
way you will reign over mankind as you do over the grasshoppers and
cause the gods to die of rabid hunger.
f(1) From (the word meaning) 'to turn.'
f(2) The Greek words for 'pole' and 'city' only differ by a single
letter.
EPOPS How so?
PISTHETAERUS The air is 'twixt earth and heaven. When we want to go to
Delphi, we ask the Boeotians(1) for leave of passage; in the same way,
when men sacrifice to the gods, unless the latter pay you tribute, you
exercise the right of every nation towards strangers and don't allow the
smoke of the sacrifices to pass through your city and territory.
f(1) Boeotia separated Attica from Phocis.
EPOPS By earth! by snares! by network!(1) I never heard of anything more
cleverly conceived; and, if the other birds approve, I am going to build
the city along with you.
f(1) He swears by the powers that are to him dreadful.
PISTHETAERUS Who will explain the matter to them?
EPOPS You must yourself. Before I came they were quite ignorant, but
since I have lived with them I have taught them to speak.
Now, Prepare yourself for assimilation!
ReplyDeleteOnce again Ducky demonstrates that he doesn't know the difference between society and government
ReplyDelete----
You can have one without the other, Rothbard?
Anarcho-capitalism. You answered your own question, duckman.
ReplyDelete...but then, I'm more of a minarchist.
ReplyDeleteSomebody has to outlaw "corporatism".
...and keep the government "cupcake police" from regulating high school bake-sales in the name of implementing the First Lady's latest "school nutrition" initiative,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Corporatism ( i.e. Crony Capitalism) is THE menace today, and has been for a ling time, but I would still insist that as Marxism developed as a plausible response to the downside of Industrialization, so Corporatism emerged as a DEFENSE on the part of Private Industry to the depredations of the Marxian-Fabian Labor Movement and the vigorous "Rights Revolutions" visited on us by the Left.
ReplyDeleteIn the end it's all about POWER, and by default also about MONEY. Certainly the two go hand-in-hand and may even be Siamese Twins joined at the hip, as it were.
I disagree. It wasn't a "response" so much as an usurpation of the "fruits" of industrialization.
ReplyDeleteThe pollution, destruction of the environment, etc., was all still present in Soviet and Chinese models, only the "beneficiaries" of the resulting difference in systems were the regulators/ bureaucrats in the public sector instead of the robber barons of the private sector.
In other words, it formed the underlying basis for the public-private "partnership" of the crony capitalism that has emerged today, but was perhaps always present in the British "merchanilist" form of capitalism from which it originated.
Laissez-faire was an "American" development... a "twist" that transformed 13 formerly British "corporations" (colonies) into an independent nation bent on establishing B Corporations with more limited socially-oriented "charters" (a hospital, a fire company, a water works, a library), not unlimited profits in every form imaginable.
Duckys Here said:
ReplyDeleteOnce again Ducky demonstrates that he doesn't know the difference between society and government
----
You can have one without the other, Rothbard?
Ignorant quacking and quibbling.
Can you have breathing without a heart rate?
Leftwing pronouncements: Pithy on the outside, soft and squishy on the inside.
"You can have one without the other, Rothbard?"
ReplyDeleteOf course you can have society without government, government is a tool of society, the question remains which is subservient to the other?
And its Locke, not Rothbard
KPCOFGS
ReplyDelete