Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[Coito ergo sum]

Bickering over trifles?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Bickering over trifles?

Yeah, but we're used to it from you.

[Coito ergo sum]

Repugnican bad, umgowah. Democrat, good, umgowah. Picture big, gunga-galunga...err... gunga la-gungah....

[Schneibster]

OK, it sounded to me like a lot of Republican rants I've heard. Glad I gave the space for you to respond reasonably, but you have to admit I couldn't expect it.

Lol, I'm FAR worse than a Republican, I'm a fiscal conservative, social liberal, otherwise known as a small "L" libertarian. Hope this doesn't mean we can't discuss things, I've enjoyed it so far.

The only question of note is whether you understand the power of money or not. The problem I have with big "L" Libertardians is they ignore that in the absence of government money will rule, and historically that has not worked out well. It's why there were a bunch of revolutions starting in the seventeenth century where they cut all the rich peoples' heads off. I'm not sure why they think going backwards is going to work.

I'm fiscally conservative, too, but you have to know when it's time to spend the money. It's there for a reason. It's good to be conservative with everybody's money, but the middle of a recession is not the time. We supposedly learned that in the 1930s, but the Republicans and Teagaggers and Libertardians all seem to have forgotten somehow. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it; I'm perfectly content they should do so, but without the rest of us. Maybe we can put all the "rugged individualists" in fucking rockets to Mars where they can be as rugged as they like without fucking things up for the rest of us.

But I'm not crazy, I swear. I'm not a Tea Bagger, I don't believe all taxation is theft or we should abolish the FBI or the FAA. But I do think the Federal government is taking too large a roll in daily life and is getting into areas best left to the individual states. I opposed the bank bailout,

No choice. I don't think it quite got across what was going to happen if there wasn't a bank bailout. The problem with it was that there wasn't a penalty to the banks for fucking up, which there should have been; but that wasn't the Democrats' or Obama's fault. The Republican Teagagger Party insisted there be none, then blamed it on the scary black man in the White House.

think there should be some sort of public option health care but not single payer,

Most people did. The Republican Teagagger Party had a temper tantrum to make sure there wasn't one.

think Obamacare is fatally flawed,

It's not "Obamacare." If there was Obamacare there'd be a public option. Oh, and "Obamacare" is propaganda. You're permitting contamination of your mind by the Republican Teagagger Party.

support abortion on demand and legalization of drugs, and believe in a modified free market.

I don't believe in anything except my own existence in something we can call "consensus reality." I know enough economics to know that trying to control every little thing is doomed to fail, and that letting it deteriorate into a free-for-all is doomed to fail as well. Our biggest problem is the destruction of regulation by Shrub and the Republican congresses during his administration who also fucked up the budget and brought about the recession we're currently in. They were a disaster and we're going to be paying for it for decades.

I also think they should take most of the AIG and Bank of America executives out and stand them up against a wall. I think the Patriot Act is the single biggest threat to individual freedom in the history of the nation,

No argument with either of those. Though I'd add some oil barons as well; the Kochs and Prick Cheney, for starters. Actually, Prick should be turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, and maybe Shrub as well. For sure those two assholes who wrote the torture memos, to go on with.

think we should pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan,

Ummm, you don't read very much non-US news, do you? We'll have to discuss that.

and I own a bunch of guns

I won't have handguns in my house because of the actuarial statistics. I keep a couple long guns around.

and a pit bull.

I'm cat people.

There are those that think positions like that are de facto evidence of insanity.

Not me. A couple of 'em are de facto evidence of unclear thinking and/or lack of research, easily rectified if you don't cling to god guns and gays. And you don't look like you do.

We'll get along. Sorry I was so rough on you to start with; I'm pretty irritated, for most of the same reasons as OWS.

[Schneibster]

Right now the Republican Teabagger Party has stated multiple times in front of TV cameras that "job number one" (quoting Mitch the Bitch McConnell of the Deep South) is to get the scary black guy out of the White House. They say it's more important than jobs, despite having run on jobs in 2010.

This is typical. The Republicans are the party that gets the stupid vote; all the people who can't figure out how economics works and are scared of the scary black people. This is not insult; it's fact, proven by research, and supported by documentary evidence of peoples' intelligence, using proxies like salary, work history, and school history for intelligence.

CES can whine about how the evul libruls are putting it down all it likes, but the fact is the smart people are all Democrats, if they're not even farther left than that like me.

[Warren Dew]

The stability of FDR in the White House helped as much as anything else.

The stability of FDR certainly helped make the great depression great, yes.

What makes the most sense to me about the Great Depression is the view that Federal Reserve policy caused and worsened the depression. There was a loose money supply in the 1920's which caused an unsustainable boom. By about a year before the stock market crash, the Fed tried to tighten the money supply, but the economic crash was already inevitable. The stock market crash followed in 1929.

You might want to look more closely at the differences between Coolidge and Hoover. Hoover was very much into central planning and public works, just like FDR. It's very likely that those policies under Hoover caused the depression to start, just as under FDR they caused the depression to continue until it lasted a decade.

[Warren Dew]

CES can whine about how the evul libruls are putting it down all it likes, but the fact is the smart people are all Democrats, if they're not even farther left than that like me.

Democrats are an excellent demonstration that intelligent people can still grossly mistaken when they stay purposefully ignorant of the facts.

[Ian]

Right now the Republican Teabagger Party has stated multiple times in front of TV cameras that "job number one" (quoting Mitch the Bitch McConnell of the Deep South) is to get the scary black guy out of the White House. They say it's more important than jobs, despite having run on jobs in 2010.

This is typical. The Republicans are the party that gets the stupid vote; all the people who can't figure out how economics works and are scared of the scary black people. This is not insult; it's fact, proven by research, and supported by documentary evidence of peoples' intelligence, using proxies like salary, work history, and school history for intelligence.

CES can whine about how the evul libruls are putting it down all it likes, but the fact is the smart people are all Democrats, if they're not even farther left than that like me.

I tend to agree. I'm a bit more diplomatic about it, but there's an uncomfortable truth for the handful of smart Republicans: many of their fellow rank-and-file GOP are proudly insular and ignorant. The anti-intellectuals among the conservatives are the ones who've been grabbing the reigns of the GOP. Where are the most affluent and educated states in the union? Generally in the northeast, upper midwest and west coast. Where are the least affluent and worst educated? The South, plains states and interior mountain states. In the current era, it's not a coincidence that the former are blue states and the latter are red ones.

Top ten states in terms of educational attainment: Massachusets, Colorado, New Hampshire, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Virginia, Minnesota, California. All blue or purplish states.
Bottom ten states in terms of educational attainment: Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia. Lots of red there.
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_ba ... percentage

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The stability of FDR in the White House helped as much as anything else.

The stability of FDR certainly helped make the great depression great, yes.

Bullshit.

[Schneibster]

I tend to agree.

Racism, just as an example, is far more prevalent among the uneducated.

It worked for Hearst, and it's worked for Murdoch.

The smart Republicans are the flacks; that's what Republicans are good at. Lying.

Mitch the Bitch ain't up there to be a do-gooder. And he'll tell you so, because they don't even have to hide it any more; they can get into power and be as big assholes as they want because they've convinced all the stupids and enough of the rest to get elected that all politicians are fucking thieves and liars like they are. They're not. Some of them actually are there to try to fix things. Those are the Democrats. Not all of 'em; we got a name for the ones that aren't, though, we call 'em "blue dogs."

[laklak]

Ummm, you don't read very much non-US news, do you? We'll have to discuss that.

Pretty up on it overall but I've a strong isolationist streak. Comes from living the majority of my life overseas and taking a whole lot of shit for carrying an American passport. Bribed my way into and out of more 3rd world shitholes than I care to remember. Thinking of moving back to Swaziland, Mrs. Lak's mum owns a hotel we could run. Things here are getting a bit dicey, but we'll see what happens in the next year or so.

We'll get along. Sorry I was so rough on you to start with; I'm pretty irritated, for most of the same reasons as OWS.

No worries. I was married to a certified psychopath for 20 years, I have a thick skin.

EDIT. Shit, I was actually married to Satan's sister for 27 years. Tempus fugit, eh?

[MattShizzle]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyxoLqbF ... ture=share[/youtube]

and the classic

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPrSVkTR ... ture=share[/youtube]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPrSVkTR ... ture=share[/youtube]

I wonder how many paychecks he actually got with that attitude.

[Schneibster]

Ummm, you don't read very much non-US news, do you? We'll have to discuss that.

Pretty up on it overall but I've a strong isolationist streak.

That was pretty much over on 9/11 I'd say.

Iraq was a cluster fuck; never shoulda happened. Just as glad we'll be outta there by Christmas. Afghanistan is entirely a different story.

Pakistan is under enormous pressure, from us, from the UN, from their own people, and from terrorists. We need to do handholding to make sure we don't wind up with another clusterfuck on our hands, one that will make Iraq look like children making mudpies. Otherwise I'd be all about let's get out of Afghanistan.

Comes from living the majority of my life overseas and taking a whole lot of shit for carrying an American passport. Bribed my way into and out of more 3rd world shitholes than I care to remember. Thinking of moving back to Swaziland, Mrs. Lak's mum owns a hotel we could run. Things here are getting a bit dicey, but we'll see what happens in the next year or so.

46% HIV infection rate? 35% unemployment? 70% live on less than a dollar a day? This is better than the US? Really?

OK.

[charlou]

You ever wonder where the "local businessman" went? Where did the "family owned mom and pop store" go?

That's another aspect of capitalism. When I was a child, just about all our food was bought at shops across or a little along the street we lived in. We had two grocers, a baker, a Konditorei, and a tailor within five minutes' walking distance, or less. This was in a residential area, and there was nothing extraordinary about our street. Unless my father had to buy a new car, decided to buy one of those newfangled amplifiers, or something like that, we simply had no need to go shopping for our needs anywhere else.

Then this huge store opened in the city. The owners opened similar establishments in other cities around the same time, and due to their buying power they were significantly cheaper than our local shops. All of a sudden we made weekly trips to the Kaufhalle. It took a few years, but eventually there was not a single shop left in the street I grew up in.

Small businesses have a much smaller chance of succeeding today because the chains of supermarkets (mhhh, supermarkets) smother their chances of succeeding with their buying power. That's capitalism at work again. No longer does a shopkeeper pump milk from his bulk container into the two-litre container you brought along. Now you reach into a chiller and grab a carton containing the stuff yourself. So efficient. So labour-saving. So small-business killing. So, no, I don't wonder where the local businessman and the family-owned shop went. I know what happened to them. They've been pushed out by bigger fish. At best they have become a franchisee. More likely though, wage earning or salaried employees of Coles-Myers or Walmart.

The supermarkets were and are successful because the consumer is interested in saving money ... that along with the convenience of shopping for grocery items in one place ... We even have kitchens that reflect this change ... larger fridges, freezers, more storage ... We as consumers are just as responsible for what is happening.

I'm concerned about our reliance on a system that relies so heavily on things we as individuals have no control over ... and I wonder how things might change in the future if/when it all collapses ... fuck, that worries me ... but I think if we survive it, eventually we may return to a more localised way of catering for our needs because we'll have to. We'll have to regain the knowledge and skills for localised community, family and individual food production that have been lost.