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Anyway, wasn't at all being critical of you, personally, Alice. That wasn't at all what I was thinking (although I was suggesting you change your focus a little from reaching Obama to reaching the public) I don't doubt you do all you can.
I am, however, very critical of the Left in the United States for their self indulgent and self marginalizing behavior. They seem to think it's enough for them to be "right", to have moral rectitude. They must think that there is a God in heaven that will assure their success regardless of what they do or don't do or of how they conduct themselves. There's a fair amount of privileged entitlement there as well as an intellectual elitism. They musn't wonder - and don't genuinely much seem to care - that they don't get the American blue collar worker down with their cause.
Again, I don't mean you, Alice, I'm really surprised you took it that way, I expected you to agree with me. I thought you must've felt similarly.
Good article in Mother Jones, Mark! And it was written in 2006 before the Tahrir Square uprising. While US dodo heads are fearing Muslim terrorists..little do they know that the US has been funding and supporting them all this time. That's part of the reason why I believe that 9/11 was an inside job and the alleged 'hijackers' were merely patsies set up by the wealthy princes in Saudi Arabia and perhaps even Osama bin Laden... who was still a CIA operative... convincing suckers to play the part of the patsies.
Mark S – You are describing the building of pressure on capital to leave the US (high median wage, environmental regulations, Carter’s oil embargo etc.). You are not describing capital leaving the country. To keep capital in the country even when there is so much pressure for it to leave, the government needs to build a “dam”, that is, tariffs, no tax credits for moving factories out of the country, all government expenditures go to USA companies etc. Even with all these “dams” I am sure capital leaks out of the country when the pressure is great enough. Hopefully, that would be only a little. I think the reason Thom says it began with Reagan is that Reagan started tearing those dams down.
ken ware: yes, that's fine...you have your opinions and I have mine. That's ok with me. ;-}
chuckle8 # 27: So true...but that is what it is going to take before anything really does change for our better. I think that they very much do fear the possibility that the people will turn on them and get violent and that's why they have monopolized the news media which keeps people from rebelling.
chuckle8 #28: Could go either way couldn't it? And either way would not be very good for us.
Pal--ary -- I am more scared that they will throw us in jail for not having a bible.
Pal--ary -- I think the program exists to keep those dollars rolling into the military-industrial complex. For the left, it is a jobs program. I don't think the ruling elite fear us; they just control us through the media.
2950-10K -- I just wanted to emphasize that even if the spending was reasonable, the repugs would still be applying full throttle to Jude Wanniski's two santa claus theory.
The other "more" I want from you and I think everyone else on this blog is a recognition that cutting the deficit as Obama is doing is perilous to the economy. As my favorite saying goes (I am the only one saying it), increase the deficit, lower the debt. Of course, the debt I am talking about is the percentage of GDP one. Additionally, if one sings the praises of the reduction in deficit, the repugs will take credit for it by saying it was their sequester and their refusing to pass any of Obama's job bills etc. Although the cause may be subjective, Ravi Batra has pointed out the facts are whenever the deficit is made small the market crashes (a leading indicator of the economy in peril). For example, when Clinton reduced the deficit to near zero the DOW fell precipitously in 2000. Of couse, dubya jumped on and destroyed the economy. We will never know if the economy could have recovered from Clinton balancing the budget.
(The following bold type was the hitting of some key accidentally. I do not know how to get rid of it) Looking at revenue being lost over time, IMO, is looking at the wrong thing. IMO, the thing to look at is the building of the US economic machine. A prime example of looking at revenue as misplaced is the fact that when Reagan cut the top tax rate (78% to 35% or was it 75% to 38% or something similar) the tax revenue provided by top earners increased 200 to 300%. This was followed by the greatest recession since the Great Republican Depression. Even when JFK (actually LBJ executed JFK's idea) lowered the top rate from 92% to 78(5?) the economy was slowed. JFK said he was making the tax cuts revenue neutral by eliminating some loopholes. I am guessing those loopholes forced high earners to invest in the US economic machine.
I would like very much to find out what happened to that $18 billion. Maybe we could finally put some members of the dubya administration in jail.
You're too generous. - AIW
AIW, lighten up, I didn't say "you", I said "we" gotta think about movement building not about making our own marginalized personal opinions known to Obama. I was born at a worse time than you. People my age are the ones aping the '60s not realizing it's a different world now. Writing letters is real good but building a movement what has to happen if we want to make the change. It would've been great to live in a time when you didn't have to be Saul Alinsky to get something changed, I don't fault you for that!
Mark, on more than one occasion I have posted letters written by me to the president, encouraging others to do the same. I don't know exactly what else you want from me but I wish you'd lighten up. We are all, to an extent, the product of times we've lived through, particularly in our youth. I make no apologies for that.
I don't know what makes you think I'm pandering to "adolescent minds" while "ignoring everyone else". It's occurred to me though, I may have mistaken a general statement of yours for something aimed at me. If this is so, my apologies. But if you don't mind, I could do without the lecture. Thank you. Have a lovely weekend.. - AIW
That was another Mother Jones story from the early to mid 2000s, about how the US., the C.I.A., under Eisenhower, created radical Islamic fundamentalism, Wahabeism, the madrassas system, the whole bit, to fight Soviet influence in the Mid East that had Arab nationalists like Egypt's Nasser and eventually Saddam Hussein on their (the Soviets') side.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/01/cold-war-holy-warrior
You're right that the "War on Terror" against radical Islamic fundamentalism is what the Cold War used to be, a pretext for American empire (or imperial hedgemony over the world by means of indigenous puppet governments and overt military force when necessary).
When gasoline costs 15 cents a gallon all you gotta worry about is getting high and getting laid.
Capital flight, the flight of manufacturing, in the United States began in the '70s (well before Reagan) for a number of reasons. Among them were high taxes, environmental regulations, union collective bargaining contracts increasing the cost of labor, etc. but they all added up to a "per unit cost of production", or the cost of manufacturing goods, here in the United States that manufacturers felt was too high for them to make the profits they wanted. The final push, however, was the sudden skyrocketing of the price of oil.
First, in the '70s manufacturing began to move out of the U.S. cities and into the suburbs and suburban "industrial parks" because the taxes were higher in the cities than in those suburbs and many suburbs tried to lure manufacturing by promising low tax rates. Industry, until then. had been the tax base of the cities and when it moved out property taxes became the tax base. Thus the numbers of the homeless exploded by the '80s not only because living wage jobs for the uneducated and unskilled were gone but the property taxes' exponential increase brought about rapid gentrification of the cities steadily eliminating any affordable housing (Reagan helped by deregulating the housing industry and eliminating housing subsidies. He always greased the skids for what happened but he didn't initiate it.). Thom likes to blame homelessness on Reagan's closing of mental hospitals, and so, dismissively stereotyping the homeless as all being mentally ill - not unlike H.W. Bush while president, tried to do when he said, to paraphrase, that the homeless were all "undereducated and crazy". (Don't get me wrong, I agree with Thom 90% of the time BUT not this time.)
What Reagan and Thatcher represented was the wealthy elites in our civilization preparing to have us, their working class fellow citizens, for lunch instead of the coolies of the "underdeveloped world" that hitherto kept them satiated. England was far more feeling of the economic pressure from declining imperial hedgemony as it, a small island nation, was far more dependant on it and had been steadily losing colonies to their indigenous nationalist movements (whereas the United States, with its duplicitous method imerialism and colonialism of pretending to respect the independence and self rule of less powerful, less developed nations all the while establishing and maintaining puppet governments in these nations that keep their economies in an export, service role to ours - and which received many of our factories thus making them more of the service role - effectively making their populations our coolies, was greatly aided by the Cold War as it gave us a pretext to actively oppose the indigenous national liberation movements as they naturally gravitated to Leninist Communism because of its doctrines for the inalienable right of self determination for all ethnicities.). The current "free trade agreements" also exemplify this as does, in general, "globalization", i.e., dropping the pretense of national divisions being a significant, compelling and just cause for exploitation of other humans and a more open and frank class exploitation of one's fellow citizens.
What you should do is try to get EVERYBODY to write a letter to Obama because if he thinks you think one way but most other people are okay with what he's doing he'll keep doing what he's doing. Your efforts won't bring many results by themselves.
The worst "self indulgent carrying on" is when people think their personal opinions are so important because they're young and so "tragically hip and painfully cool" that they can ignore movement building and behave in whatever profane and offensive ways and still expect to succeed in their demands of the power elites. This self indulgent, undiscilplined behavior causes us, our movements, to lose the blue collar worker. Then some Bill O'Reilly type comes along, who speaks the working people's language, and they join the Republican Party.
It's not the '60s, we don't have a Baby Boom afoot. We can't break all of Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and still expect to succeed. We can't just appeal to the adolescent mind and ignore everybody else like we could in the '70s and still expect to succeed.
I don't mean to dis the '60s but young people of the time could afford to ignore some basic rules of movement building because just through their sheer numbers they could overthrow the old order. People trying to make change today can't and those trying to ape the '60s don't seem to realize that.
Here's a novel approach to stopping the nefarious NSA:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=em-subs_digest&v=e9bhlwPxgCU&desktop_...
Turn off their water.
Thank you, Michael Moore! I stand corrected. And I am a huge fan of Mr. Franklin.
As to the Soviets, our "commander & chief" recently came close to making them enemies once again with his push to invade Syria. I swear, these goddam idiots will be the death of us yet. I'm no fan of Putin's, but Putin was right in this instance. - AIW
It was Ben Franklin, long, long ago who said, in effect, that those willing to give up liberty to purchase security, deserve neither.
http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
And Al Queida is a creation of the CIA. We lost our old enemy, the Soviet Union, and needed a new one on which to squander trilluons of dollars in the military-industrial oilagarchy.
The states will see the tax dollars and legalize because of greed.
As usual, we disagree. But frankly, it amazes me that you would defend Roosevelt's treatment of Japanese AMERICANS. Patently racist. He would have been equally justified (or unjustified) doing the same to Americans of German descent, who were not shoved into camps like the Japanese. Regardless, these people - whether Japanese or German - all were scapegoated for no good reason.
Technology changes. However certain truths remain constant, such as the basics of living in a civilized world; for example, respecting the soverignty of other countries. And how about not stealing what doesn't belong to you? As to your assertion that Chelsea Manning & Edward Snowden were only seeking fame for themselves... well, good luck supporting that theory.
Like I keep pointing out, U.S. foreign policy is what creates these enemies you speak of. Keeps the weapons manufacturers and death merchants happy. - Aliceinwonderland
AWL - Manning is getting what he deserves and Snowden will get his trial once he is captured. I am not convinced they gave up everything for their convictions, more likely they wanted the spot light on themselves and it back fired. You are quoting Roosevelt during an era where the threats were different and the technology was basic. Had he had the technology of today, he would have used it to gather information in and outside of our country. Roosevelt had the Japanese Americans put into camps because he did not trust their loyalty and the FBI trailed all German Americans for the same reasons. I do not think it is logical to apply what they faced in 1941 and what we face in 2014. As one person has mentioned on earlier blogs, we live in a new epoch and things have changed in the manner in which we deal with our enemies that would do us harm. Good Night...K.W.
Palin - We live in a new era of technology and those sites you quoted are social media sites and people are aware that the information is saved somewhere. People are smarter then you give them credit for. I am sure if you went back even further in time we would all be called witches! Come into the modern era, if you are so worried about entities in our government using our words against, perhaps you should be real careful about what you say on this website. Who knows how long Hartmann saves these comments we make here about our government. And once you have made them it is impossible to edit them out after a very short period of time. I just do not accept your theories about the boogey-man who is around each corner waiting to bring harm to us if we think differently than our government. K.W.
I think it was Rooseveldt who said those willing to give up freedom for safety deserve neither. I wholeheartedly agree.
If our so-called representatives are sincerely committed to protecting us from another 9-11, they might begin by re-examining their foreign policies. I'm talking about unprovoked aggression against other countries whose only "offense" is sitting on land rich in oil and other natural resources this Almighty Corporate Fascist Empire is hellbent on stealing. It is these policies that have made us the target of so many whose rage against the U.S. is entirely justified.
I'd be hard-pressed to name anyone on this blog, or anywhere else, with one tenth the courage of Snowden or Manning. Those two should get Nobel prizes for their amazing acts of courage. They've sacrificed everything for their convictions. They deserve all the acolades they've received, and I am in awe of them both. - Aliceinwonderland
Palin - I highly doubt the two brothers who committed the Boston bombing used any type of telecommunications while working out how they were going attack Americans. If they would have I believe they could have been stopped before they committed this crime. I disagree with you that the NSA is there to spy on Americans so the ruling class is not rebelled against. They are there to gather information on groups and people who would subvert the government and harm the citizens of our country through acts of terror. I am sorry but I do not agree with your conspiracy theory. The government has the FBI to monitor the population for criminals both citizens and non-citizens within our borders. The NSA has the same type of job using whatever means they have at their disposal and the technology they are presenting using makes it easier to track people who would commit terrorist acts against our nation. I simply do not buy into your logic about governmental plots against us, such as the 911 terrorist act against our country being committed by our government. We all have a right to our own opinions about what is going on, mine is just different than yours. When it comes to security measures I tend to support the government on these issues. Do not get wrong I do not believe all parts of government can be trusted to be looking out for benefit of all our citizens, especially the Repub.'s when it comes to programs that benefit the middle and lower class on the economic scale. When it comes to security I would rather place my faith in our government to try to keep our citizens safe then to believe they are out to get us all. Better to have too much security in this era then to have to little. Have a good weekend. K.W. ( I hope this comment made sense I am as tired as all hell and I just happened to glance at my computer because I left it on and got up for some water )
Our Future: https://www.aclu.org/ordering-pizza Cute dramatization of how our surveillance state will be soon enough.
By the way, ken ware, many social media web sites, even this TH blog still has records of what we have typed going back years. TH looks like it goes back to about 2009. Before that they just put up show notes. And any one of us can do a selective search on key words to see what someone had said back then.
But making our opinions and even, in many cases, our personal information public like that...well, we know that others will read that stuff. But when you talk on a telephone, you at least have an expectation of privacy. And if the NSA or even private corporations working for the NSA are listening in then there is just no privacy...we may as well be living in the old Soviet Union. The US has it's own KGB and STASI now monitoring everything we do and say.
And although they have special computers (eg: dictionary computers more advanced than the decades old ones from Echelon) that listen for key words and flag select key words for an analyst to listen to the whole conversation and most of the conversations will just sit in some mass storage in Utah, perhaps, that data will still be searchable and called back up for analysts to listened to or read in the future.
American jingoists would have considered this a horrible crime against the people if they were considering, decades ago, what the Ruskies were doing to their people. That's the kind of thing we all, who served our country, believed we were fighting against. Yet, now it's happening in the US. Many people fought and died defending against such a horrible thing. And now some right wingers just want us all to roll over and ignore it. But many of those currently in power (both Democrat and Republican puppets for the ruling elite).. politicians..are chicken hawks anyway...never having served but more than willing to send other people's sons and daughters into war.
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"Our storage is outpacing our ability to produce information. We are sending more emails than we were years ago, but at a certain point, I can only bang out emails so fast. But the ability to store those emails? That continues to increase exponentially."
"Do you see a future where entities store all the information we produce?
It's not the future. It's the present, and it’s called Google, it's called Yahoo, it's called Facebook. Facebook already has every IM you've ever sent [through Facebook]. Google has saved all those emails you've been sending [through Gmail]. They have it, they've indexed it, and they’ve generated models on you. This isn't the future; this is the last few years.
Is that data collection for advertising purposes?
Definitely"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-are-the-nsa/
But, it's not just for advertising purposes when the NSA gets it. Already, the TSA..Homeland Security..abuses their original mission they sold the country...originally to detect and prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11...but they go far beyond that mission snagging people that have nothing to do with terrorism. One day in the future, what's to say that those powerful people won't ban the bible and religion? If you're caught with a bible or caught praying or holding covert services then they will throw you in prison? It could happen here! I think that was a television program back in the 50s when they tried to propagandize us against the Ruskies. It could happen here! It IS happening here!