The Next Four Years

[Torchwood]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... _2012.html

Don't panic, Republicans. By historical standards you are doing quite well, electorally.

[monster_gardener]

Otherwise, what we have is a situation where someone in the administration, maybe even the President, chose not to send in armed forces when there seems to be a big enough window of opportunity to do so.

That there was insufficient security is a given, the only question is why. Given a choice between some hypothetical Presidential scheme to benefit his political campaign somehow on one hand, and the fact that Republican-controlled Congress refused to provide more funding for diplomatic security on the other, most sensible people have a clear choice. Otherwise you're in "Bush did 9/11" territory.

In the case of the attack itself and in the case of the alleged lie it is a matter of cui bono. How does it benefit the administration to have their ambassador killed? And how does it benefit the administration to lie about the nature of the attack for a few days? There is no motivation in either case, but obvious motivation for the other political party to exploit the attack for their own benefit.

Thank You Very Much for your post, Ibrahim.........

Given a choice between some hypothetical Presidential scheme to benefit his political campaign somehow on one hand,

The problem is that something VERY VERY similar to this has happened before under people in the Obama Administration, Hillary/Billary Clinton .

The Clintons refused to allow the American Soldiers on the Somali Pizza Run Project to have the heavy tanks that they wanted because that would have looked too warlike and aggressive on what was supposed to be a humanitarian mission........

Trouble was we clumsy uz fools got caught up in "nation building"..... Backing one Warlord as being better than another Warlord.......*

And when the heavy tanks were needed to back the rescue of a helicopter crew, the tanks weren't there......

Result: BlackHawk Down Somalia........ IMVHO This is BlackHawk Down Libya..........

It is Barely possible that Barry Obama is NOT the most Culpable Clown in the Obama BADministration ........

It could be Hillary/Billary and if it is I will be just as Happy to see her Political Head on a Pikestaff outside the White House.......

No renewed Presidency for You!

But I doubt it.....

AFAICT the Clintons seem smart enough to learn from mistakes....... Triangulation etc..........

I'm not as sure about Present Dunce Choom Hog the Son of a Bitch Eating Liar & Narcissist Obama........

We have had other security lapses like Underwear Bomber in which we were saved more by luck than competence......
Plus the stupidity of Fast & Furious.....
When it comes to security as opposed to getting elected, IMVHO Choom Hog is not that bright.........

Doesn't he know that Al Queda LOVES doing attacks on September 11....... It's a Special Salafi Slay Infidels Day
Malignant Muslim Martyrs who die in attacks on September 11 get an extra Virgin & Party Pack of White Raisins to munch while they Ravage her/him ......

Besides AIUI Hillary Billary has proof that she requested security upgrades.

the fact that Republican-controlled Congress refused to provide more funding for diplomatic security on the other

AIUI that has been dismissed as Real Reason for the lack of Security there...........

Besides even if funding was a problem there were LOTS of options........

One I have heard mentioned was shifting resources from the Embassy in France.......
Ask the French for some extra security if it really needs as much as is there........Much more than was in Libya

And there is the most Obvious Option....

If it is too dangerous DON'T BE THERE!.....
The British had already pulled out but Barry Wasn't as Bright as a Brick oops I mean Brit........

Make a political issue out of embassy security if you think it can fly... "Because of Budget Cuts by Republican Rascals, I have had to withdraw our mission from Libya"....

That ought to get Rednecks like me O'Riled if it is Really True....... Factor that in Barak........

most sensible people have a clear choice. Otherwise you're in "Bush did 9/11" territory.

Yes.... that Present Dunce Barry Obama is as Bad of an Incompetent as Bush W. But With less excuse......... ** Bad Bum Barry is supposed to Be Bright.......


* Leave that to Xena She and Gabrielle are much better working in a Lawless situation.......





Though I suspect even Joxer might do better than Barry the Bozo........




**Our preparedness on September 11, 2001 was Shamefully Sloppy.....
The only Americans to take effective action against the Malicious Muslim Salafi Slime Hijackers were the Heroes on Flight 91 using improvised weapons.....
I Hope they were able to pour that boiling water from the coffee pots into the faces of the Hijackers before the plane crashed......

I Hope it Hurt the Hijackers like Hell on Wheels......Wheels of a Serving Cart

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

NYT's Ross Douthat, continuing his recent tear:

The Liberal Gloat

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten. This is an inescapable aspect of democratic culture: no matter what reason tells us about the vagaries of politics, something in the American subconscious assumes that the voice of the people really is the voice of God, and that being part of a winning coalition must be a sign that you’re His chosen one as well.

This means the losing coalition must be doomed to wander east of Eden, and liberals have been having a good time with this idea of late. “Those poor, benighted Republicans!” runs the subtext of their postelection commentary. “They can’t read polls! They can’t reach Hispanics! They don’t understand women! They don’t have a team of Silicon Valley sorcerers running their turnout operations!”

Back in 2011, the Obama White House earned some mild mockery for its “win the future” slogan. But now that the president has been re-elected, the liberal conventional wisdom is that the Democrats have done just that — that Republicans are now Radio Shack to their Apple store, “The Waltons” to their “Modern Family,” a mediocre Norman Rockwell to their digital-age mosaic.

Maybe it’s too soon to pierce this cloud of postelection smugness. But in the spirit of friendly correction — or, O.K., maybe curmudgeonly annoyance — let me point out some slightly more unpleasant truths about the future that liberalism seems to be winning.

Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear.

Consider the Hispanic vote. Are Democrats winning Hispanics because they put forward a more welcoming face than Republicans do — one more in keeping with America’s tradition of assimilating migrants yearning to breathe free? Yes, up to a point. But they’re also winning recent immigrants because those immigrants often aren’t assimilating successfully — or worse, are assimilating downward, thanks to rising out-of-wedlock birthrates and high dropout rates. The Democratic edge among Hispanics depends heavily on these darker trends: the weaker that families and communities are, the more necessary government support inevitably seems.

Likewise with the growing number of unmarried Americans, especially unmarried women. Yes, social issues like abortion help explain why these voters lean Democratic. But the more important explanation is that single life is generally more insecure and chaotic than married life, and single life with children — which is now commonplace for women under 30 — is almost impossible to navigate without the support the welfare state provides.

Or consider the secular vote, which has been growing swiftly and tilts heavily toward Democrats. The liberal image of a non-churchgoing American is probably the “spiritual but not religious” seeker, or the bright young atheist reading Richard Dawkins. But the typical unchurched American is just as often an underemployed working-class man, whose secularism is less an intellectual choice than a symptom of his disconnection from community in general.

What unites all of these stories is the growing failure of America’s local associations — civic, familial, religious — to foster stability, encourage solidarity and make mobility possible.

This is a crisis that the Republican Party often badly misunderstands, casting Democratic-leaning voters as lazy moochers or spoiled children seeking “gifts” (as a certain former Republican presidential nominee would have it) rather than recognizing the reality of their economic struggles.

But if conservatives don’t acknowledge the crisis’s economic component, liberalism often seems indifferent to its deeper social roots. The progressive bias toward the capital-F Future, the old left-wing suspicion of faith and domesticity, the fact that Democrats have benefited politically from these trends — all of this makes it easy for liberals to just celebrate the emerging America, to minimize the costs of disrupted families and hollowed-out communities, and to treat the places where Americans have traditionally found solidarity outside the state (like the churches threatened by the Obama White House’s contraceptive mandate) as irritants or threats.

This is a great flaw in the liberal vision, because whatever role government plays in prosperity, transfer payments are not a sufficient foundation for middle-class success. It’s not a coincidence that the economic era that many liberals pine for — the great, egalitarian post-World War II boom — was an era that social conservatives remember fondly as well: a time of leaping church attendance, rising marriage rates and birthrates, and widespread civic renewal and engagement.

No such renewal seems to be on the horizon. That isn’t a judgment on the Obama White House, necessarily. But it is a judgment on a certain kind of blithe liberal optimism, and the confidence with which many Democrats assume their newly emerged majority is a sign of progress rather than decline.

[Ibrahim]

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten.

Liberals feel that way 24/7, no matter who wins.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten.

Liberals feel that way 24/7, no matter who wins.

I guess both sides feel that way all the time. And we even have an interesting and very effective defense mechanism whereby our righteousness can be vindicated by either a win or a loss.

[Ibrahim]

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten.

Liberals feel that way 24/7, no matter who wins.

I guess both sides feel that way all the time. And we even have an interesting and very effective defense mechanism whereby our righteousness can be vindicated by either a win or a loss.

Absolutely. I think the style of self-righteousness differs between conservatives and liberals, but that's cultural. The basic attitude is going to be the same.


At least the losers get to watch the winners become disillusioned with their winning candidate as a consolation prize.

[Azrael]

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten.

Liberals feel that way 24/7, no matter who wins.

I guess both sides feel that way all the time. And we even have an interesting and very effective defense mechanism whereby our righteousness can be vindicated by either a win or a loss.

Indeed. Human Nature 101

[Mr. Perfect]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... _2012.html

Don't panic, Republicans. By historical standards you are doing quite well, electorally.

Yeah, a lot of this analysis completely misses the point, assuming the country stays together the GOP as it traditionally presents itself has better odds than the Democrats going forward (majority of legislators, govs + the house, a dozen electable Republicans in 2016 vs 0 on the Democrat side, the Senate is a big worry though), as I said it is completely beside the point.

Our debt and the SCOTUS will go beyond the point of redemption by the time Obama leaves office, Romney passing Ryan budgets and picking up another seat or two on the court was vital for the survival of the Republic as laid out by the founders, and that opportunity has passed, for good.

[Ibrahim]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/r ... 56_5536403

Father Douthat Explains It All
By Charles P. Pierce

I would dearly love it if people who weren't alive in The Sixties would drop some brown acid, listen to the first Quicksilver album, or at least read more than two books before they start telling the rest of us how everything they would have loved about America, had they been alive then, went to hell in a handbasket the first time Ken Kesey sat down at a typewriter. Case in point is young Ross Douthat, a conservative affirmative-action hire at The New York Times who yesterday favored us with yet another rendition about how unauthorized sexytime is draining our precious national body fluids away from the Republic the way that the blood ran in rivulets down the slopes of Golgotha. Or something.

(The usual Douthat Disclaimer — Douthat is a convert to Holy Mother Church. Take it from a cradle Catholic, converts can be the absolute worst. They are dogmatic drones who believe that the Church was founded expressly to take the knots out of their own personal ropes. This all started with St. Paul, the original sanctified convert pain in the balls, and has only gotten worse through the millennia.)

People who fk without Ross Douthat's permission have been expressing happiness over the results of the recent political election, and Ross Douthat is simply not going to stand for that sort of thing much longer.

[Alexis]

Our debt and the SCOTUS will go beyond the point of redemption by the time Obama leaves office, Romney passing Ryan budgets and picking up another seat or two on the court was vital for the survival of the Republic as laid out by the founders, and that opportunity has passed, for good.

I don't know what would have happened had Romney been elected.
That being said, if the Grand Old Party is serious about reducing US public deficit, it can very easily help that situation.

All Republican leaders have to do is to refuse any compromise with Democrats aiming to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff", except if such compromise result in at least as great a reduction of public deficit as that which would result from the "fiscal cliff".
Or even simpler: they go in holidays with mobile phones shut down, and come back January 1st, 2013.

If Republicans compromise about the size of the fiscal cliff, it means they are just as big spendthrifts as the Democrats are, or as the 2008 Republicans were.

[Mr. Perfect]

Not really, the fiscal cliff entails serious tax increases which will cripple and kill off the economy at this point.

No one will disagree with you more than Democrats, who for not just generations but for the last 4 years have been frothing about the bloodthirsty GOP ready to meat cleave the budget and whatnot, most recently with the Ryan budget. You can argue with them about how serious the GOP is. America is not serious, that is for sure. And those not prepared will pay, and pay dearly.

[monster_gardener]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/r ... 56_5536403

Father Douthat Explains It All
By Charles P. Pierce

I would dearly love it if people who weren't alive in The Sixties would drop some brown acid, listen to the first Quicksilver album, or at least read more than two books before they start telling the rest of us how everything they would have loved about America, had they been alive then, went to hell in a handbasket the first time Ken Kesey sat down at a typewriter. Case in point is young Ross Douthat, a conservative affirmative-action hire at The New York Times who yesterday favored us with yet another rendition about how unauthorized sexytime is draining our precious national body fluids away from the Republic the way that the blood ran in rivulets down the slopes of Golgotha. Or something.

(The usual Douthat Disclaimer — Douthat is a convert to Holy Mother Church. Take it from a cradle Catholic, converts can be the absolute worst. They are dogmatic drones who believe that the Church was founded expressly to take the knots out of their own personal ropes. This all started with St. Paul, the original sanctified convert pain in the balls, and has only gotten worse through the millennia.)

People who fk without Ross Douthat's permission have been expressing happiness over the results of the recent political election, and Ross Douthat is simply not going to stand for that sort of thing much longer.

Thank You Very Much for your post, Ibrahim.

converts can be the absolute worst.

True...... IIRC Recalling a Euro bitch who became a Muslim suicide Bomber......

But.........

This all started with St. Paul, the original sanctified convert pain in the balls,

My My how people misunderstand that flaming liberal progressive Paul.....

Didn't even believe that you needed to be circumcised to be saved.....

[Simple Minded]

At least the losers get to watch the winners become disillusioned with their winning candidate as a consolation prize.

Good point, schadenfreude loves company!!!

It is satisfying to see those who vote for magicians slowly come to the realization that their candidate was also selling snake oil.....

reality is a tough schoolmarm.....

[Alexis]

Dmitry Orlov's take on the best approach to national politics, modeled on that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

A time - tested, time - saving approach to national politics, guaranteed to work for any collapsing superpower

1.Don't pay any attention to national politicians - it only encourages them. They are a colossal distraction. Stay focused.
2.Don't even make fun of them (tempting as that is). If you completely ignore them, they will fade from view faster.
3.Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature) developed a handy saying which helped him survive the Gulag. It may help you too.

"Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them."

(He's the one who took on the Soviet government single - handedly, and won!)

(from slide 21 on that link)

Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It's as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/r ... 56_5536403

Father Douthat Explains It All
By Charles P. Pierce

I would dearly love it if people who weren't alive in The Sixties would drop some brown acid, listen to the first Quicksilver album, or at least read more than two books before they start telling the rest of us how everything they would have loved about America, had they been alive then, went to hell in a handbasket the first time Ken Kesey sat down at a typewriter. Case in point is young Ross Douthat, a conservative affirmative-action hire at The New York Times who yesterday favored us with yet another rendition about how unauthorized sexytime is draining our precious national body fluids away from the Republic the way that the blood ran in rivulets down the slopes of Golgotha. Or something.

(The usual Douthat Disclaimer — Douthat is a convert to Holy Mother Church. Take it from a cradle Catholic, converts can be the absolute worst. They are dogmatic drones who believe that the Church was founded expressly to take the knots out of their own personal ropes. This all started with St. Paul, the original sanctified convert pain in the balls, and has only gotten worse through the millennia.)

People who fk without Ross Douthat's permission have been expressing happiness over the results of the recent political election, and Ross Douthat is simply not going to stand for that sort of thing much longer.

Hmm... and yet Douthat is typically reflective, cordial, and though a conservative, frequently critical of Republicans and other conservatives for their intolerance and failure to keep up with mainstream progress. This Pierce fellow, on the other hand, seems like a douchebag with a keyboard who has convinced someone to pay him for insulting people. Looks like a weak attempt to make a name for himself by picking a fight with an established and popular writer. Like some upstart making a Dr. Dre diss album.

[noddy]

Dmitry Orlov's take on the best approach to national politics, modeled on that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

A time - tested, time - saving approach to national politics, guaranteed to work for any collapsing superpower

1.Don't pay any attention to national politicians - it only encourages them. They are a colossal distraction. Stay focused.
2.Don't even make fun of them (tempting as that is). If you completely ignore them, they will fade from view faster.
3.Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature) developed a handy saying which helped him survive the Gulag. It may help you too.

"Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them."

(He's the one who took on the Soviet government single - handedly, and won!)

(from slide 21 on that link)

Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It's as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.

amen.

[Ibrahim]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/r ... 56_5536403

Father Douthat Explains It All
By Charles P. Pierce

I would dearly love it if people who weren't alive in The Sixties would drop some brown acid, listen to the first Quicksilver album, or at least read more than two books before they start telling the rest of us how everything they would have loved about America, had they been alive then, went to hell in a handbasket the first time Ken Kesey sat down at a typewriter. Case in point is young Ross Douthat, a conservative affirmative-action hire at The New York Times who yesterday favored us with yet another rendition about how unauthorized sexytime is draining our precious national body fluids away from the Republic the way that the blood ran in rivulets down the slopes of Golgotha. Or something.

(The usual Douthat Disclaimer — Douthat is a convert to Holy Mother Church. Take it from a cradle Catholic, converts can be the absolute worst. They are dogmatic drones who believe that the Church was founded expressly to take the knots out of their own personal ropes. This all started with St. Paul, the original sanctified convert pain in the balls, and has only gotten worse through the millennia.)

People who fk without Ross Douthat's permission have been expressing happiness over the results of the recent political election, and Ross Douthat is simply not going to stand for that sort of thing much longer.

Hmm... and yet Douthat is typically reflective, cordial, and though a conservative, frequently critical of Republicans and other conservatives for their intolerance and failure to keep up with mainstream progress. This Pierce fellow, on the other hand, seems like a douchebag with a keyboard who has convinced someone to pay him for insulting people. Looks like a weak attempt to make a name for himself by picking a fight with an established and popular writer. Like some upstart making a Dr. Dre diss album.

I don't know who he is, but the full piece pretty much chops up the Douthat article. The dull moralizing combined with a kind of backhanded scapegoating of ethnic minorities for the Republican loss is pretty pathetic, when you get right down to it. The authors sums up Douthat's basic dehumanization and condescension towards Hispanics masquerading as outreach at the end of the article.

You need to watch out for this stuff because if the GOP doubles down on... well whatever it is that totally alienates all non-white-male Americans then they are going to keep losing.

[Simple Minded]

C'mon Dudes & Dudettes... Cheer up!!! It ain't gonna be all that bad.

In the coming years, a lot more of those who have been disinterested for decades are gonna acquire some sensitivity and appreciation for economics and physics.

We didn't get to live thru the tulip bulb mania, or the South Sea Bubble, but we did get to live thru the man made global warming hysteria, the peak oil hysteria, the sub-prime solution, the dawn of the Information Age, the roaring 90s, and the real estate bubble.

Lots and lots of people all across the Western hemisphere are just starting to wake up to the realization that free stuff is really, really, really expensive. That is not a bad thing to learn. Realization of knowledge should be celebrated.

Like I told my bro the other day, how many decades of peace and prosperity did you expect to experience during your lifetime? What's the historical norm? 2 or 3 decades? Isn't expecting 4 or 5 decades just plain piggish?

When life gives you lemons, take the tiger by the tail, and enjoy the ride......

[Dioscuri]

C'mon Dudes & Dudettes... Cheer up!!! It ain't gonna be all that bad.

In the coming years, a lot more of those who have been disinterested for decades are gonna acquire some sensitivity and appreciation for economics and physics.

Ah yes, the age-old belief that a society-wide plunge into poverty produces fortitude and virtue.

No surer sign of a fatuous imbecile who's spent most of his life being overpaid.

[noddy]

C'mon Dudes & Dudettes... Cheer up!!! It ain't gonna be all that bad.

In the coming years, a lot more of those who have been disinterested for decades are gonna acquire some sensitivity and appreciation for economics and physics.

Ah yes, the age-old belief that a society-wide plunge into poverty produces fortitude and virtue.

No surer sign of a fatuous imbecile who's spent most of his life being overpaid.

i was under the impression that the twiddling poop fightery was actually in agreeance that the current status quo is a tad too shallow and infantile and expliotive for happy humans and most of the squabbling is about how to make it less so.

so its quite droll to belittle simpler village life with cooperate communities as a dumb thing but why do the loony libertarians and the loony greens both seem to want that... why is it they only argue on the means, not the ends.

much the same as the previous left/right glorified the larger collectives (corporate vs government) and only argued about the means and not the ends.

their is a dynamic going on i think, best not to ridicule it too much lest you stop paying attention.

it appears the west has to get used to living with less, this seems to be expressing itself via all sorts of random brain farts from all sorts of supposedly different people.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I don't know who he is, but the full piece pretty much chops up the Douthat article. The dull moralizing combined with a kind of backhanded scapegoating of ethnic minorities for the Republican loss is pretty pathetic, when you get right down to it.

One man's scapegoating minorities for a Republican loss is another man's crediting them for a Democratic win. I guess it all depends on who you're trying to piss off.

You need to watch out for this stuff because if the GOP doubles down on... well whatever it is that totally alienates all non-white-male Americans then they are going to keep losing.

56% of white women voted for Romney. Obama got 42%.

[Ibrahim]

I don't know who he is, but the full piece pretty much chops up the Douthat article. The dull moralizing combined with a kind of backhanded scapegoating of ethnic minorities for the Republican loss is pretty pathetic, when you get right down to it.

One man's scapegoating minorities for a Republican loss is another man's crediting them for a Democratic win. I guess it all depends on who you're trying to piss off.

Douthat's just pissing off the people already alienated by the Republican party, but he seems to think he's helping out by repeating the same far-right whine from 2008. "We lost, but we lost because we're pure and good and the other side panders to sluts and homos and single parents, like the Hispanics." Way to win back those votes, Ross. Build bridges, big tent.

You need to watch out for this stuff because if the GOP doubles down on... well whatever it is that totally alienates all non-white-male Americans then they are going to keep losing.

56% of white women voted for Romney. Obama got 42%.

So? Women as a whole went %55 for Obama. The GOP lost women, and lost all minority groups.

[Dioscuri]

C'mon Dudes & Dudettes... Cheer up!!! It ain't gonna be all that bad.

In the coming years, a lot more of those who have been disinterested for decades are gonna acquire some sensitivity and appreciation for economics and physics.

Ah yes, the age-old belief that a society-wide plunge into poverty produces fortitude and virtue.

No surer sign of a fatuous imbecile who's spent most of his life being overpaid.

i was under the impression that the twiddling poop fightery was actually in agreeance that the current status quo is a tad too shallow and infantile and expliotive for happy humans and most of the squabbling is about how to make it less so.

so its quite droll to belittle simpler village life with cooperate communities as a dumb thing but why do the loony libertarians and the loony greens both seem to want that... why is it they only argue on the means, not the ends.

much the same as the previous left/right glorified the larger collectives (corporate vs government) and only argued about the means and not the ends.

their is a dynamic going on i think, best not to ridicule it too much lest you stop paying attention.

it appears the west has to get used to living with less, this seems to be expressing itself via all sorts of random brain farts from all sorts of supposedly different people.

This "living with less" is indeed necessary, but it is mythology and moralism so long as you operate by the present monetary system. When has money ever "learned to live with less"?

No, until there is an intervention against how you assess value, y'all are on the road to fascism and terror. Which is not necessarily a completely terrible thing. It all depends on what the death lists look like.

[noddy]

This "living with less" is indeed necessary, but it is mythology and moralism so long as you operate by the present monetary system. When has money ever "learned to live with less"?

No, until there is an intervention against how you assess value, y'all are on the road to fascism and terror. Which is not necessarily a completely terrible thing. It all depends on what the death lists look like.

aaah, but who amongst any of the loony groups somewhat represented here is happy with the present monetary system - i submit to you that the middle class baby boomers are the only ones desperate for that particular show to stay on the road... they are pretty much the only ones with something to lose.

i mostly believe the gop/democrat thang is the previous generation teams for the previous generations problems... that quaint time when the west still controlled all the worlds resources and industrial production required large workforces and only the west had these factories.

the battle was between the corporates and the government as to who was the best mechanism for providing endless growth and comforts.

from gen-x down to the youngens i dont find much interest or belief in this paradigm or these politics or the systems that built off them... all this talk about gop or democrats being demographically destroyed, i personally think that both of their days are numbered depending on how they react to the passing of the boomers as political players.

the new war is how to split the less goodies between more people.. a nasty nasty war, their will be 2 teams.. the libertarians who accept less goodies in exchange for more control over their own lives and the greens who want more control over distributing the goodies and the lifestyle rules required to get them.

[Ibrahim]

y'all are on the road to fascism and terror. Which is not necessarily a completely terrible thing. It all depends on what the death lists look like.

How's that for optimism?