Nurse Ratched at Thomland! Hahaha...

I am going to call you boys on it, because it is bordering on the absurd. I could go and delete all these threads right now, but I actually find them to be far more of a statement about the "mentality" of the authors of these posts than about Thom himself.

Sure, you can come here and disagree with Thom. This is a fairly free form message board, and far more is tolerated on this site than on 90% of progressive or conservative message boards. But when you continue to write thread after thread about what a terrible host Thom is and how its despicable that he defends our President, it just makes you look sad and desperate.

It doesn't stimulate debate. It's not productive. I have yet to read in ANY of these threads any real solutions. Or the reality of what will happen if the USA falls into 100% neo-conservative control again. (Because let's face it, that's the point).

So quit with the Thom bashing. If it continues I will just delete all the threads and become VERY free with the banning.

Class dismissed. Thom Hartmann bashing- the latest right wing tactic

All I can say is that is some funny stuff...

A Confession: I Was Wrong About Not Being Disruptive to Thomland

I often accuse Libs of not being very reflective of their ideas or even their own actions as in what they write on public message boards/forums. So in the spirit of self-reflective analysis, I wish to say that I was wrong about not being disruptive of discussions that happened on Thomland. I honestly did not want to address that issue before as I was always under the assumption that a discussion can only be disrupted if the participants so let it happen. My words or anybody's words can not take away from someone else's. For example, adding a book to the library in no way diminishes the value of any other individual book. In fact the more books {variety} in a library the more likely to be visited by readers. I tried in fact to show that no matter how many "troll" visited my threads, I was not the least bit distracted. Of course when you get banned for simply pointing out their failures in logic and sources of information, then yes, my ability to continue a conversation is greatly diminished.

This form of censorship creates "dead zones" in the free flow of information. After a while it is like being in a dysfunctional family. I often refer these dead zones in families as the collective "taboo" subjects. As a family creates more and more taboos, the family no longer is communicating but simply on non-personal levels. Their interactions become more like transactions in the market. "May I have the butter?" "Yes, here it is." "Thanks." As I even told .Ass, I personally identify people by the subjects that interest them. Clearly it was easy to spot him on other boards. He denied it but clearly he just lied.

I had the sneaky idea about this long before writing this, and not because they kept squeaking like a little mouse about it, but because when I took breaks then certain threads would pop up without a single conservative voice or any view of variance. The most recent example is "Republican Neoliberalism". Four pages and not a single contrary view-talk about group think. Any deviance was quickly squashed by the intellectual bullies.

Of course, my absence allows the intellectual shallow mice to come out of their woodwork and spout nonsense. Since their "leader" is just as shallow {i.e. Thom Hartmann} it is no wonder that they so easily fall under group think mentality. One of the most hilarious idiotic statements made on that thread was: "Glen Beck as spokesman for the neoliberal forces..." Obviously if you watch his interview with Ron Paul {Glenn Beck - Interviews - Congressman Ron Paul Interview} then you would not jump to such idiotic statements. I did include his full descriptor as he likes using "weasel words" to describe simple shit. I suppose he thinks it distances himself from his words but he either thinks Glenn Beck is an actual supporter of Neoliberalism or he is not and no amount of adjectives takes that away. For example what does it mean "spokesman for neoliberal forces"? Is that different from being a supporter? Is .Ass trying to say that he gets paid to say stuff whether he believes it or not? And if so then why "neoliberal forces" included? Is the forces different than the actual people?

Naturally, .Ass feels the need to put his ideological opposition in "ticky tacky little boxes" as this makes it so much easier to address the issues they bring up like Glenn Beck being a neoliberalist or not? At first he tried countless times to put me in the Neocon box. I honestly found things that I could agree with, according to the PNAC website {defunct?}. The issue that most of the neocons presidents over the past century were clearly Democrats. Even Obama is clearly a neocon with his stance on Afghanistan. This does not mean it is right or wrong but just a framework that fits the model. Then it was binary oppositional thinking, neoliberalist, authoritarian, conservative narrow minded cretin, intellectually shallow-based on writing, and of course all the various ad homs that Kate spewed out including rodeo clown, Eddie Haskal...

Now it seems that I am a "positivist". It seems that at least I should have been allowed to defend myself from personal attacks. Oh that is right, respect is what is demanded for people to speak to the mighty and great .Ass, all other intellectually inferior people get spoken down to. I really have not studied that much, but from what I have read, .Ass is clearly a positivist when it comes to matters of ecology. Strangely, he would play the "Only an expert can know" video, but it seems to only apply to "experts" that he disagreed with. Like he hates economists. I can only conclude that he clearly does not understand the concepts of economics and as such does not like those "experts" but when it comes to the ecology, they "know their stuff" and are experts we need to counter the right wing noise machine.

.Ass clearly showed his positivism when we discussed DDT. He insisted that for us to have a discussion I must in fact announce that DDT was a Persistent Organic Pollution (POP). Even recently with Chris he mentioned that he spent days trying to explain to "someone" about POP and DDT.

Even though I admit that maybe I was wrong about being disruptive, I in no way will change my behavior. I felt I was invited by Thom Hartmann, and as such he needs to be the one to address me or to the conservatives on his board. He needs to spell out that he plans to change policies. Otherwise, this is just an example of principle-agent problems. All the moderators are {including Sue and Louise} just agents of Thom and thus have no bearing on my decisions. They can have adverse effects on my encounters at Thomland, but what they say has no bearing on my actions.

As far as the moderators are concerned, they clearly are whores as they work for an organization that limits speech and censors people out of some distorted sense of justice. I have lost a lot of respect for liberals from these encounters. I am not sure that conservative groups are much better, but at least the pretenses are done away with. Thomland was suppose to be different as he invited all different points of view.

Cross post at JoeDan's also: A Confession: I Was Wrong.

Poly the disease...

Starting with Thom's spam:

According to the New York Times, based on an analysis of four sets of political science data, now after five terms, Chief Justice John Roberts’ Supreme Court is “the most conservative one in living memory.” During this time, the Roberts court “issued conservative decisions 58 percent of the time" and, in the last year, that rate increased to 65 percent, the highest since 1953. As Jeffrey Toobin noted last year in an article for The New Yorker, "In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party." And now with the additional appointment of Alito, Bush moved the Supreme Court so far to the right that some are wondering when they're going to repeal the minimum wage and child labor laws, as the last uber-conservative court did about 100 years ago. Given that the Supreme Court is the most powerful of the three branches of government - the result of their taking onto themselves a power not given them in the Constitution, the power to declare laws unconstitutional which they asserted in 1803 - it becomes ever more important that there be a Democrat in the White House over the next two terms when it becomes increasingly likely that one of the conservative members of the court will retire.

On to Poly's responses:

Probably, at some point when people come to their senses, the Supreme Court will have to be expanded to over-rule wacko far-right Justices.

The numbers on the Supreme Court are set by Congress....not the Constitution. The number of its members. has varied over the lifetime of the nation.

Retired Monk -is a disease"
....
At one time, the Supreme Court only had 5 Justices. Now it has nine. Membership can be increased....and it isn't easy. It would take a majority of Progresives in both Houses of Congress to do it. That isn't easy, either.

Retired Monk - is a disease"

When I got the spam from Thom, I was quite interested in how Poly would spin it. He always says there is no difference between the parties and both bow down to the corporatists. Here he had an opportunity to state that who is in the WH is immaterial as normal procedure. But true to his ideologies he suggests packing the court to drown out "wacko far-right Justices". I would hardly consider it far right as this court gave us the Kelo decision. Enough for me to say...

WARren Huntsinger at it again...

Well WARren is at it again and tried to spread some of his normal diatribe posts at Znet including the post: Z Blogs | Do As I Say documentary. I find it funny that a man that was a drop out and could not get rhyzomes and naval right in English sentences would criticize my English so called "fumbling attempts". Just recently I was amazed at how many words he truly does not know how to spell when supposedly his spell checker was off. And this is from a man that hung out with an idiot that could not use an apostrophes correctly. If you are going to go all pedestrian on a blog then at least spell correctly is the first step. When has WARren ever criticized a Libtard with improper English including "Poly the ideologue"? Well let me get back to the blog post at Znet:

Another way to make a little money if you don't have any real skills to do something like build your own home, grow organic foods, help prepare your community for the post apocalyptic world where the grocery store shelves will be empty and the gas pumps won't work because there's no power to power the electric pumps and there's no gas to ship to the gas stations, where no matter how high we turn the thermostats in our homes when the temperature dives into the teens, the furnace doesn't turn on, is to make a cheap documentary about hypocrisy.

The documentary Do As I Say is one such documentary.

What moronic shit is that? You clearly are trying to identify two individuals. One is the virtuous man that is trying to save the world in some heroic manner that is more narcissistic than actual factual understanding. And another guy that just wants to points out the hypocrisies of those that are the "leaders" of various movements.

But unlike WARren, if I see a mistake, I am not hesitant to reveal it and not just say some shit like, "Indeed, why should one expect any continuity of thought? Let's just toss some word salads together and have some lunch." I would say you are missing another verb in the first part since the first man is doing something and before the comma and is there should be an or to signify that there are two ways and not just "Another way". Loganthor was right, conservatives are much more willing to give even if it the receiver likes looking into the mouths of a gifted horse.

Anyway, that paragraph describes WARren's gloom and doom scenario. I have attempted countless times to address his issues but just like the discussions about Kuznets curves, he just wants to bloviate instead of discuss issues. Part of our discussions are at: RDRutherford • View topic - 2010 Posts from Thomland.

Since we are pretty much all in this managed global system together, then, if we want the system to change and be truly different, we are all hypocrites, one way or another, by default. Those who want change are therefore more likely to be vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy than those who want to maintain the status quo. That's a working axiom I'm using for this piece, and my underlying criticism, whatever other flaws there might be in the substance of the documentary.

Strangely WARren never had a problem with whole threads of "Republican Hypocrisy" promoted by a fascist. Even if your adult son or daughter did something wrong it was to imply hypocrisy of any family member that was a Republican. Strange indeed that WARren never uses his principles in a balanced manner. Instead he uses them in a biased manner accepting some Libtarded talking points and accepting most stereotypical smears of conservatives.

Actaully, ren does do a good job in reducing his ecological footprint according to on-line questionnaires but he lives in a garden that is attended by and managed by an "evil corporation" {name is not a matter of concern} and thus he enjoys a lot of externalities that he does not pay for.

The only real possibility for change, if change is even wanted, would be if billions of people do billions of little things every single day that are truly different than what the system now makes easy for us to do, which is, of course, how it manages us through our willing, nearly blind participation.

That is clearly possible under our current system even if WARren thinks corporations rule the world. One way this is possible for his dreams to come true is through globlalization. Even Noam Chomsky understands that some versions of globalization is beneficial-he just hates corporations. I personally have no love or hate for them. They are what they are and studying east Asia has taught me that they have just as many domineering corporations {and even more so} than the USA.

I find it hard to get a good picture of the actual health of the planet. There are some areas that clearly need more attention and most of those areas deal with lack of properly defined property rights. Even government ownership is better than just free for all which of course results in tragedy of the commons. Which this discussion only points out WARren's lack of really wanting an open discussion as he had to sabotage any discussion of Dr. Olstrom's work. Instead of trying to understand her work and how it related to and contrasted with others that deal with property rights, WARren would rather create diatribes sprinkled with name call droppings. For example, I read most of one of Korten's books and found nothing of substance. It contained not one useful model, paradigm or knowledge set that could help understand the world and it was just a collection of self-aggrandizing Libtarded talking points.

Meanwhile, what makes life easy now, ultimately and systematically destroys a little more of the grid of living systems that we pretend to understand through our most advanced tools.

Yes indeed, those advanced human created tools, tools we can simultaneously use to tell ourselves we are destroying the living systems of the planet while also hypocritically creating the potential for destroying this grid of life which makes it possible for us to breathe each minute, something we tend to take completely for granted until that moment when a breath is not possible.

At least for me, ren nor any environmentalist has given me a complete scope of the problem. All I get are anecdotal pieces of information. Much of our news is disjointed and fragmented and even ren might agree with. Thus being more of a scientist I want to understand the aggregate not individual cases of measles. Much like our fruitless discussions about DDT, in which case you could never acknowledge that the way DDT is being used in Africa and other developing nations is much different than how the USA and industrialized countries used it before. In addition, ren has failed to show that how an increase in GDP actually "systematically destroys a little of the grid". It is not a simple more people equals more environmental pollution and it is one reason that Kuznets curves are useful for looking at explanatory variables. It was not meant that it was going to answer the meaning of "life, universe and everything".

Our science, translated through our system of cultural idea systems, like our philosophies, literatures, even religions, envisions human beings at the pinnacle of the planet, and the system of managed, programmed human beings as a whole agrees de facto, by their daily actions if nothing else, that they are that arrogant chosen species at the peak of their self conceived hierarchy that makes up the grid of linked living ecosystems and moving cycles of gaseous atmosphere and water we call the biosphere.

Here is where I find it strange the logic. If humans are arrogant, would any other animal be different? If the future is to go to ants, bees or roaches, then would they not enslave and use every last bit of resources of the planet? But beyond that, if humans are a virus like WARren says we are then what are we fighting it about since it is inevitable {predestined} that we consume every last corner of the petri dish and die out. If not a virus then we will change and adapt to the new surroundings and do just fine. Although I have not had a chance to read some of the work of "collapse" of civilization, the examples I have seen are derived from rigid societies without a democracy or capitalism to adapt to changing environments. While ren thinks that so called capitalism is like a disease, I see it as a functioning system that adapts well to changes especially if wrapped in what we would call a "liberal democracy". His ideas of Parecon is just as dangerous as Pol Pot's or Mao's visions of communism.

(Well, at least hypothetically that's the case, according to the hypocrites who don't live the life they preach, except for maybe a few really strange wackos, who probably didn't show up in the documentary about hypocrisy.)

Sounds like WARren did not watch it. I know he likes fiction stories to reveal all the truths about the world, but for me I like to watch or read it before making too grand of proclamations. I even plan on watching the fat man's latest propaganda piece on capitalism on DVD to see how he bend the truth and spreads his lies. Should be very educational as a piece of propaganda.

rén, let me just say that I feel your pain and empathize with the fact that that post got zero responses. Don't people know how smart you are? Do you feel lonely and an outsider at Znet? And here they already gave me membership.

Bill lost his moderatorship about two boards ago. I haven't seen much of him since. Bill hated Chris and he associated Chris with me, I guess. Bill and I never had much to say to each other. I finally found out how he really felt in that exchange, which has been "disappeared" as they were wont to do with such things at that time.
Next Justice to believe in "Unitary Executive" theory?

WARren, and you have the nerve to question my Engligh grammar skills? Are you just jealous that I have a MSc, and you are a loser drop-out???

Thom Hartmann is a Dweeb, "Real Threats" is a Joke...

Just another day in the news – Real threats against Democrats – and lies from Eric Cantor…

gun imagesWhen House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced yesterday that his Richmond, VA office was shot at, becoming one of the first Republicans to say he was a victim of anti-politican populist rage, it appears that he was lying to the press and the American people. Richmond police say the bullet that hit a window of Republican Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor’s office had been randomly fired skyward from some distance away, and by an odd coincidence fell to the ground – perhaps miles away – striking a window in the same office building where Cantor has an office. The bullet penetrated a window, but was stopped by the windowshade, where it was found. In somebody else’s office, just in the same building. Meanwhile, Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner’s office received an envelope filled with white powder. Real threats against Democrats, fueled by hate radio and hate TV, and lies from Eric Cantor. Just another day in the news.

1. What a hypocrite, Thom?
I listened enough to see that you have just as much hate speech as the next wingnut on radio. If you dropped this “con” or that ” con” wants to steal your money and make your children like “The Jungle” then you might have a point. Otherwise you are just like the rest Thom.

Just wondering Thom. Where were you when all the protests in Seattle happened? How about the violence perpetrated on Marine recruiting offices in San Fransisco??? You surely have selective attention!!!

godknows
you

2. Real threats against Democrats, fueled by hate radio and hate TV, and lies from Eric Cantor. Just another day in the news.

Haha. “Real threats”, going for the NLP techniques again and providing a good example of a pleonasm. Thom it is either a threat or not and Cantor felt it was a threat. We really do not know who fired the bullet and why. So to call it a lie only makes you look like a liar. But do not let truth stop you from bashing…

godknows

3. Hey Thom…
Let me hear you condemn this bit of trash talking from another “right winger”…
Real Time With Bill Maher 2010.03.26 New rules: BI-FURIOUS
Oh that is right, I am wrong, but I am sure you will condemn this hate filled rhetoric also…

godknows

4. Man Arrested for Death Threats Against Eric Cantor - - CBS News
Thom, you going to continue to call Cantor a liar??? Anyway, was it real enough for a "real threat in your book Thom? I just imagine that this little of news will not hit your Faux news reviews...

godknows
you

Misc. Dweebs

HEY, RUTHERFORD! – you wanna sincerely exchange a viewpoint or two? Here’ are a couple to chew on …

1) I’m sure that even YOU can accept the notion that in a healthy economy, there is some kind of a balance between SUPPLY and DEMAND. For the past 30 years (since your namesake was President), the pendulum has been getting pushed exclusively towards the SUPPLY side. Now, for the most part, DEMAND is collapsing – GLOBALLY!, because the people who comprise the greatest global market for consumer goods are systematically being put out of their jobs and their homes.

2) The whole concept of the “Ownership” society is beginning to collapse, as the investor class (e. g., YOU!) sits by the pool waiting for your dividend checks. You demand GROWTH, above all, from your investments. THAT is why, for the past 30 years, productivity has increased annually while wages have flattened.

Ever hear of a guy named Henry Ford, Ron? I have some grudging respect for the racist bastard, because he knew something about how to SUSTAIN a business by taking the LONG view. Ford recognized that if he paid his workers enough that they could afford to buy the products produce in the factories they worked in, he’d CREATE a market for himself. Do you think the 9-year-olds in Singapore that BUILT your 48″ Plasma display & 3 GHz computer are making enough to buy those items? Do you think they can even DREAM of making that much?

Enjoy your private little “micro-economy” while it lasts, Ronny-boy. It’s all gonna come tumbling down around your ears, far sooner than you expect. Don’t be lookin’ in here for a soft place to land when it does.

Sure, why not a "sincere exchange of viewpoints"? But so far I have not seen any and your talking points don't help your cause.

1. Not sure what straw man argument you want to pursue but I am clearly a Keynesian and more specifically a "structuralist Neo-Keynsian".
2. You don't know me, so I understand the labeling is much easier than addressing issues. While I have shifted more of my equities to higher paying dividends, that was mostly to diversify my holdings and to pick some less volatile stocks in the mix.

2a. Fordism as described by Liberals is vacuous at best. He paid them an amount above the prevailing wage to ensure the highest quality workers in the industry. If he had been building Aircraft carriers would he have paid his workers each enough to afford one also. Just ridiculous to tie work output to consumption.

2b. You do understand that Singapore is a HIC and there are no 9 year olds in sweat shops??? Right? or did Thom say something today on that subject.

3. It may collapse but since I have been reading the same for decades then I will not hold my breath waiting for it to happen. As long as the Demos and Obama do not mess with the economy and create structural rigidities in our economy then our economy will adapt as it has always done before.

godknows
says carry on...
Highlights on the Show…March 15 – 19, 201

Well Ron if that’s how you feel about pass then read bills, join me in calling for the repeal of every piece of legislation that the Republicans passed in the middle of the night mere hours (or less) after putting their gregarious bills on the table.

BTW, how long do you have to sit and think before coming up with your (dubious) zingers… looks like at least a 1/2 hour to me. Do you have to call someone to get ideas?

O brother.
Do you have something in specific to point to or just vacuous innuendos? Anytime I missed that affected 1/7th of the economy? The one time that {I remember} the Republicans working so hard to get something passed "in the night" was ANWR and that never did pass even when using the same techniques Pelosi is using now.

Timing now. You really do not have a life. I actually thought the next 1/2 I would look for and read the bills...

godknows
all

mstaggerlee March 19th, 2010, 10:04 am

@wRONg Rutherford, re:”Just ridiculous to tie work output to consumption.”

I’ve been working on the bleeding edge of the electronics industry for the past 33 years, creating non-consumer products that make most people’s eyes glaze over when they ask me “What do you do?” You ARE correct that nobody here gets paid well enough to buy our products – then again, nobody who works here would WANT one … kinda like an Aircraft Carrier. However, pretty much everyone who works here IS paid well enough to buy a 3 GHz computer or a 48″ Plasma TV … if they do want one.

So – your statement, copied above, seems to indicate a belief that wages (consumption) should NOT be tied to productivity (work output). Enlighten us fools in here then, Professor, to what SHOULD wages be connected?

Most excellent, now resorting to juvenile name calling, right?
Great for you. Hardly the case in believing that wages should not be tied to productivity but it is beyond that also. Fordism does not in fact hold to the productivity to wages and wants to somehow include output as a factor {the tangible end product}. That I find ridiculous. Aircraft carriers was just a simple example but wide body aircraft or high rise buildings or any number of "products" that the average person could not afford even if they were a "bankster" {sic}. And those that support the Fordism of the worker should be able to afford his product produced like the concept that tiddly wink workers can only afford their output?

Bloviating Ren H at it again. Just give it up!!!

Ren H wrote:

drc wrote:
Barefoot Gen and Dr. Buckley

Lol. Are you just trying to play within some constricted rules of the board, here drc, or are you really unaware that:

BarefootGen openly morphed (at Sue's permission) from Mazeppa early at the beginning of this version of Thom's board; that Mazeppa was a resurrection of a certain Dr. Buckley, who was banned a couple of boards back, nearly two summers ago, along with a few other possibly associated names (formally known as "socks") since, maybe too many to mention? That of course he was closely associated with Ronald Rutherford and a host of Rutherfordian socks, definitely far to many to mention?

While I heartily agree that whoever was behind those names brought a kind of "intellectualism" to the board, I don't think it's fair to equate that intellectualism with conservative intellectuals -- though Buckley himself and Rutherford may be a conservatives, I don't know. And I don't know how I could know.

What they did bring was a kind of systematic disinformationalist techniques which they used to disrupt serious discussions.

I think it's really important to separate the use of various "Neuro Linguistic Programming" (NLP) techniques from any political ideology, because not to do so clearly offers a potential for using those techniques to create even more confusion. After all, Thom himself is well versed in those techniques, has even taught on air classes in his radio shows on how they work, and it would not seem fair to say he is therefore a conservative.

As far as serious intellectual conservatives are concerned, I think they would have to identify themselves. I'm not sure if Dave M would call himself conservative, but he's surely an intellectual, and when he takes the trouble he can present some excellent and challenging arguments.

I guess I'm a bit uncomfortable with generalizing about conservatives as you have, drc, because I have a very different sense of what this board has become, and why, since it had a listing of some 16,653 accumulated (though certainly not active) members several boards and years back. I have no way of knowing what Norske's motivation for this thread was, not for sure, but I took it as a way of making a point about the current make up of board participants.

I, in my own personal vision, do see a correlation with what has transpired since I first joined a Thom Hartmann board six years ago and what Norske's asking for in his post. And from my limited view, I also see a correlation with what I know of as a consistent application of disinformationalist strategies by a very small group of constantly banned and re-emerging posters, who have as a result had a very significant and still continuing effect on the atmosphere of discussion on this board. There's no way to measure how much. I can only say that I am aware of the loss of a host of intellectual progressives who have gone elsewhere, who were once an important part of the atmosphere of the board. I don't think it's easy to see that unless someone has been here for a long period of time, long enough to have experienced the change and to have established a network of friends who have nearly all left for very pertinent reasons.

Damn, idiot!!! Is English your second language??? Like for example:

That of course he was closely associated with Ronald Rutherford and a host of Rutherfordian socks, definitely far to many to mention?

Putting a question mark at the end of a sentence only shows you do not know how to form a question and are too lazy to use the rules of English. It is also "too" as in too many. Are you an idiot???

I was talking to my wife the other day, and I was explaining that you are like many foreigners that learned "English" in such a formal setting that they find no difficulty in creating elaborate run on sentences but have no grasp of actual English. They can not even speak it. They do well on GRE tests but can not communicate simple conversations with people here. But in one sense the papers they present are such blather that professors {and real ones not made up in your make believe mind} are blinded by their "brilliance". Brilliant! You are like those people.

You criticize the simplest sentence I write as a response and wonder how you can decipher DRCs and Polycraps shit and not understand a simple sentence. It is just short hand for your ideological blinders and condescending BS. Just leave me the shit alone and you would get along better in life.

You show so little respect to others that you disagree with and you always wonder why people do not respect you.... If you ever get a mirror look into it deeply...

Take for example "closely associated with", I just find him much more of an intellect than you can ever muster to be. An honest and thus respectful participant in discussions unlike you and your NLP. Yes you and Thom studiously ignore your propaganda that you spew on a daily basis. That is why when you present a piece by Noam Chomsky that is just lies and innuendos you just lap it up like a little pussy cat. So my relationship was purely as a result of us both discussing issues that we thought were interesting. It was in fact you that destroyed so many fruitful conversations.

You are just an intellectual bully and a small intellectual.

Hey Ren, one more thing, I graduated with a MSc what did you graduate with???? Oh, that is right. You are a loser drop-out!!!

It's more like PeeWee gets all weak in the knees when I show him some attention, and this is the best he can do to express himself about it. I think he's maybe a little embarrassed. Or maybe its the unwanted guest syndrome. They want to be wanted, but can't be because they can't make conversation, so they stand around making sounds like they are going to say something, but never do. They can't leave without being wanted, but can't make themselves be wanted either. It's a horrible dilemma for them. So to cover that over, they sneer at everyone.

It never ceases to amaze me how you can manipulate the situation that you are the brave hero and intelligent but that all conservatives are bumbling idiots that do not match up to your intellect. You should have been banned long ago and repeatedly for such shit as that.

While you loved to run around and say that I was stalking you, you cleverly divert that to put it all on PeeWee that he is an inept fool that can not manage himself in group situations. You really are a fool and a tool. All I can say, is that I feel sorry for your psychotic mother that never instilled a sense of self ownership in yourself.

Ram Jaane...

Thom Hartmann is a hypocrite! #10034|Minimum Wages

Pay Cuts for Congress? & “Big” Governments Republicans Mandating Marriage……

budget imagesRep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) introduced a bill last week to slash pay for members of Congress 5% or $8,700 a year — and freeze their automatic cost-of-living increase. With Congress’ approval ratings “spiraling downward,” Kirkpatrick said, “Families across the country are getting by on lower wages…so why shouldn’t senators and representatives have to feel the same pinch?” The cut would be the first since the Great Depression. She said she’s already started handing over 5 percent of her pay every month. Hey, Congresswoman Kirkpatrick – how about instead of leading the entire country, including Congress, to ever-lower wages and bringing us all to Wal-Mart pay levels, how about instead increasing the minimum wage, change our trade and tax policies to bring jobs back to America, and break up the big vulture corporations that put out of business local companies and prevent entrepreneurs from even starting new companies? Stop promoting the Republican idea that we should all be paid less, and take us back to an era when worker pay increased along with corporate productivity.

Thom you are at it again. Too funny about your ideological support for minimum wages and "living wages", so I was surprised as to how you spun the latest.

Let's see people should get paid based on what Thom? Just because you want income to be high for all including our "elites" does not make it so. Why should the filthy "rich" in this case get more pay for obviously not performing their job? Do you think their approval rating means anything? If they were waiters, do you think they would get any tips? Of course you think they should get paid no matter how bad their "service" is? I am sure you tip the same for lousy service because you want them to have a so called living wage?

I know you think that productivity should dictate wage increases when the productivity goes up but are you then willing to concede that wages should in fact go down when productivity goes down??? Not likely as you want it both ways. You obviously have no understanding of labor markets.

This is obvious in the sense that on one hand you want more small business but unwilling to actually lower the barriers to their formation including but not limited to minimum wages. It is not large corporations {or as you call them: big vulture corporations} that fear rising minimum wages as they will just pass on costs. It is the small businesses that will have higher obstacles to formation of small businesses. Take a gander at a couple of points about minimum wages:
5 Things You Didn’t Know About the Minimum Wage
The Effect of Minimum Wage Increases on Retail and Small Business Employment | EPI Study

PS: 1. Hey Thom, I see your little minions are running around again censoring information contrary to your views. Very funny indeed and almost fascist in its applications. In case you missed them the first time, I will repeat them for your reading pleasure.,,

You could stop this Thom by first stop spamming all my email accounts. Sue is suppose to have a list that she so graciously decided to spread to the whole world. Yes personal information was spread around. Wonder if that is grounds for...

PS2: Uh, Craig. Are you a conservative or just playing one? As you have only shown yourself to be uncritical and to repeat other people’s words, I can only assume as much.
Which unjust and unnecessary war is he talking about? Probably the one started by Demos, no?

It’s time we turn that around and tell the conservatives – The nine most terrifying words in the English language are – I’m from the corporation and I’m here to help.

Now that is just funny shit. I am really scared that a corporation is going to come into my house uninvited and help me out. Until then, I will be more concerned about the Police State as Antifascist was always concerned about also.

Keep up the spamming, maybe one day I will read the whole thing…

PS3:Thom would be better actually creating a valid argument.

Why not present the information mst??? I am talking short term effects. Thom wants short term productivity gains to automatically go to “labor” no matter the level of unemployment but when productivity goes down as new hires are added to the payrolls then I am sure that Thom will not consider that “fair”.

Thom just has no idea how labor markets work and likes to cherry pick data to confirm his own biases.

LOL, Not my hero. I have no heroes and find no reason to go looking for them in my life also. Maybe Thom is your hero and you need to defend him? No?

PS4: We can complain about the deals afterwards all we want. My point was that if approval ratings is a gage of productivity and their productivity is so low, why would we pay them so much???

How you going to force them to be better educated? Re-education camps? And yes, Thom is in the education business, although disinformation is more likely the outcome…

PS5: Here Thom. This is a subject right up your ideological alley.
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Moorestown New Jersey Unions Highlight Union Arrogance
I just suspect that your attitude toward the politicians (more than likely middle class) and “living wages” would change drastically from your lead piece.

PS6: Hey Thom. Since you already spammed me on the latest blog post then why not post it here?

Compassion for CEOs?
The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers has filed a lawsuit against Bankster Goldman Sachs for overpaying its top executives. The lawsuit “seeks to stop Goldman from allocating roughly 47 percent of 2009 net revenue as compensation, saying such allocations ‘vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste.’” Apparently the IBEW and their electrician workers don’t realize how hard it is to find employees willing and able to buy and sell stocks and only be paid a few million dollars a year for this brutally hard work. After all, these guys have to buy suits and ties. They have to pay for limousines and thousand-dollar-a-bottle champagne. Being a Goldman Sachs executive is tough work, guys – cut them some slack! Have some compassion!

–Thom Same dribble as always.
What do you do that is “brutally hard work”??? How much do you get on a book sold?

What do you have to buy??? A computer? Notepad and pen??? See how illogical your positions are with regards to your own standings?

Carry on…

PS7: We have another wiener!!!

Thom’s blog
Thomas Jefferson on Student Lending….
Six Democrats have sided with banks, against the Landmark Student Lending Reform. Who are they? Bill Nelson (Fl.), Tom Carper (Del.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Jim Webb (Va.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.). The student lending industry has launched an “aggressive lobbying campaign” of senators representing states where big lenders are based, scaremongering about job losses resulting from passing SAFRA. Now, it appears that their lobbying is paying off. We’re a long way away from when Thomas Jefferson started the University of Virginia with the notion that part of building a middle class (necessary to a democracy, he said) would require people with some education, and advocated a national program of free education up to and including university levels, the last state to fall from that ideal was when Governor Ronald Reagan ended free enrollment in the University of California system. My question – how do these people sleep at night or look themselves in the mirror?

-Thom

Isn’t it so bad that your favorite bank along with your fascist promoter on your forum is against such propsals:

A Whole New World - US Banker Article
Bank of North Dakota makes about 70 percent of the student loans in its home state, but if the Obama Administration has its way, the $3.5 billion-asset bank would be out of the origination business by this time next year.

Thom Hartmann is a hypocrite!"Why are we the only stupid industrialized country in the world?"

So Thom, You consider being stupid by not having a "socialist security" for health care also, no? Didn't your mother ever tell you that just because everyone else is going to jump in a lake does not mean that you should. If other industrialized countries also forced women to wear burkas would you also think we should follow that example.

The big question is why do you think just because government provides the services that it somehow is free then?

Your blog does not get too much traffic and your forum is losing interest. Why do you think that might be? I really want to know if you want lively dynamic conversations on your forum or is it meant only for "Libs". Considering that people get banned for the slightest while the "forum pets" get to insult all day, I have to wonder.

Maybe if you paid attention more to even your own words, you would in fact notice your hypocrisy as in http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/./viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3852
Thom Hartmann is a hypocrite!


Link: Why are we the only stupid industrialized country in the world?


Thom: You have another issue that I am sure you will get right on to responding to at:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/./viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3875
T.H. says Geo. Washington wanted Fed Gov Health Care
Probably just making the shit up again, hey Thom???

PS:

If you have some actual data to add to the discussion, bring it. I don’t think you do. You’re just another lazy right wing freeper (who clearly was not banned for his insulting tone), throwing grenades at the parade.

Why???? It is Thom’s blog and he never even provides a link to his "facts" in his comments. His books are even worse for not having footnotes or much of a bibliography.

PS2:

Ron: did Thom say it would be free? Standard attack mode: to put words in the mouths of those you attack that they did not say.

I am asking Thom, not one of his cheerleaders. I’m asking him where will he find the money. I have read and listened enough to know that he is just pushing that issue under the rug or has some “hope and change” mantra that he repeating.

Yes, and thanks for the vacuous link…

Thom: You have another issue that I am sure you will get right on to responding to at:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/./viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3875
T.H. says Geo. Washington wanted Fed Gov Health Care
Probably just making the shit up again, hey Thom???

PS3: Hey Thom, your NLP is quite blatant here as you somehow felt it important to add the adjective of “Mormon”. Well I suggest that if you want to add adjectives to people’s names then add “BLT believer” to Obama as in a counter argument: Barack Obama’s Black Liberation Theology

As far as “Faux news”, you certainly are one to throw rocks, right Thom?
Barack Obama's Black Liberation Theology

PS4:

Thom,
Your report is incomplete, misleading, and, therefore, a lie. Here’s what he actually said: “Leave your church” if it “starts to preach social and economic justice, especially through the structure of a giant government.” He said “Social justice and economic justice are code words.” He was “referring to Jeremiah right’s type church, a Black Liberation Theology or Marxism or church that’s turned into a political arm.” He agreed with the idea “that Christians should not merely give to the poor but also work to correct unjust conditions that keep people poor.” He said this is what Jesus taught. And he said “Go find another parish”, not another church, and “Go alert your bishop.”
You can read his complete remarks at http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/37852/ I marvel at the ability liberals have to be consistently wrong.

Exactly, and Thom just lives in his dream world devoid of reality as his minions scurry around to protect him from the truth. Just on Thom's there is a couple of lies pointed out and of course the usual suspects {rodeo clowns} had to pop out at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/./viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4000

Riot Act, reading of|by SueN

When we moved to the new site in March, all the people who had previously been banned were allowed back in. It was a fresh start for everybody. Unfortunately, some people, whether out of misplaced ideology, because they are paid, because it amuses them, or because they have been swept up into a gang war mentality, in practice continue to disrupt the forum far more than they contribute to it. And no, I do not consider expressing alternative views about the issues disruptive. Attacking fellow members is disruptive. Deliberately derailing threads is disruptive. And no, I do not mean normal thread drift, which is natural, particularly in a forum that welcomes ADDers!

Since I am the administrator, it comes down to my judgement, and I have decided that the time has come to weed out some of the worst ones again. The ones I ban will all have had plenty of warnings, either on this board or a previous one, and will have been continuing to disrupt.

As for everyone else, thanks very much for sticking with us, and please take this opportunity to focus on the very important issues that we have facing us, or to relax in the lounge. Please ignore any disrupters who are left.

Actually Sue, you have a moderator that is disruptive to threads. You have a moderator that goes around with out any proof calling others ideological names including I was specifically called out as being a brown shirt. When he said he never called me a Chicago School of Economics ideologue, I showed him that he specifically did call me that.

If you want to run your kingdom like that, that is fine. I did nothing more than what your own administrator have done continually on a daily basis. And he was the one that went around with "If the shoe fits wear it."

I just have one question for you. When I used the alert button after being told to use it for years, why was it that you came down on me and told me to correct myself when your Libtarded friends were allowed all the leeway including your "Editor" of Monkville?

If you wanted a growing community, then just thank Thom for his ineptitude on managing the boards. Including changing software so many times and then picking stupid ideological constrained individuals that are more than happy to parade around as idiots. The height of Thom's followers was when I noticed he had 10,000 members. A thread I started and devolved into complete character assassinations. Now how many does Thom have?

Thom, Sue. Just get one thing straight. NO ONE, I MEAN NO ONE IS PAID TO BE THERE!!!
That truly was a sad day when Thom started accusing board members of that. Also the day that Mrs. Hartmann started talking about members penis size, but that is for another day.

NP with me, Thom. It only shows that the left is just as intolerant as what they portray the right as being-which is still in question.

Good luck, Sue, Thom and Monk with no brain.

Ron Rutherford
PS: I will be back!!!
PSS: What happened

It is based solely on marginal utility functions and when Thomland no longer provides the same or more utility than the next possible function then I will move along or change. Not sooner or later.

What utility does it provide?

I have answered this many times before. Basically it goes back to the posts about how I "win" every discussion because I learn more in the process. Recently, I was looking at some development theories including what Warren Huntsinger had presented on Jane Jacobs.

Open letter to Thom

Dear Thom:

Basically your moderator Polycarp2 has gone off the ranch.

He first started to edit out disses in posts and that basically was one sided and still is. Personal attacks from the left are consistently left while even innocuous ones like "Dodge" are deleted. Also it does not even show that Poly has edited a post unless he states it as such and that is not every time. For example in the thread:
No Dissing here...Move along|Warren
He even is dissing again without recourse.But when some major "dissing" was pointed out, he was slow to respond and only did it after a new thread was started.
#1 No "Dissing" allowed
In which case he just deleted everything.
But even the fact of opening up new threads with posts out of context was his initiative. He decided to single out some conservative voices for public ridicule by quoting them out of context without even a link to the original conversations. And when people did include the link, he summarily edited it out without reason.

But when it was Poly's own prejudiced opinions, he insisted that the link be provided. He even edited the original post to make it look like the new poster had altered the original. Which of course was against any "TOS" that Thom has had. Grounds for people being banned. Are you going to ban Poly?
Brown Shirts|Stereo-Types|Poly
Is that acceptable to call others Nazis, Brown Shirts, etc?
Alter his own original posts to cover himself?

Thom, I know this will be hard to believe, but NOBODY gets paid to be on your forum. I know nearly all the "conservatives" there and none get paid to post on your BB. You have started rumors yourself and have no proof of it. Thus it becomes fodder for the Progressives to use that Dis at nearly every opportunity.

Sue has even allowed personal information about me to first be open to the public and then allow that same information to be freely published on your site. Is that acceptable? The ironic thing is that she never has acknowledged the transgressions. Even now she is busy going around locking threads that clearly show disses against me without opportunity to respond and making excuse after another for the transgressions of Poly.

Poly is a polarizing figure that has clearly gone off the ranch. What you need is moderators that are not so tied to their ideological beliefs as to censor some and allowed "favorites" to ride.

Sincerely,
Ron Rutherford
PS: This is my from work Email and you can contact me at ...

jeffbliss is a dweeb.

However, contrary to such abominations, contraception/family planning is the only way that the earth's impoverished have even a remote chance of making it out of poverty. For example, China cannot feed itself and grow its economy. It must lease land in other countries to grow enough food. It must build the equivalent of one coal-fired power plant per week. China runs the Yellow River dry using the water for industry and water shortages have been reducing food yield. China is depleting the aquifer in the north, where it grows about 1/2 of its grain and 1/3 of its corn, by about 10 feet/year. The deep aquifer is a fossil aquifer, once it's depleted, it's depleted. The shallow aquifer is replenishable, once its depleted the pumping rate can only match the recharge rate.

Actually they need to be out of poverty before birth rates fall. As I said before development and then birth rates will correct themselves. As far as China cannot feed itself...

Overseas food not China's staple
China relies little on the global food market, despite its increasing openness and growing trade.

According to Cheng Guoqiang, deputy director with the institute of market economy under the Development and Research Center of the State Council, the country has witnessed an annual 11-percent increase in its food exports following its entry into the WTO in 2001, and an annual 22-percent increase in its food imports.

Between 1998 and 2001, imports grew at 3 percent a year and exports at 2 percent.

However, in recent years the value of food exports has been less than 10 percent of agriculture GDP while food imports accounted for about 10 percent of that figure, which demonstrates a low reliance on the global market.

"The percentage ratio shows that the growth in the agriculture sector is mainly driven by domestic need," Cheng said at the 11th Sino-French Seminar on Wheat held yesterday in Kunming.

The agricultural outputs and the land areas of the two countries are similar, but China has a much larger labor force employed in agriculture and most of its population lives in rural areas (table B-1). Productivity and income of agricultural laborers in China are accordingly much lower than in the United States. China’s food share of exports is 6 percent, surprisingly high (only 2 percentage points less than the land-abundant United States) for a country with limited land resources. Its food imports are just 4 percent of total imports.
Surprisingly Self-Sufficient in Food
For a country with nearly 1.3 billion consumers and limited natural resources, China’s level of food imports is surprisingly low. China is nearly self-sufficient in food and is a major net exporter of many food products, including manufactured food and beverages, animal products, vegetables, fish and seafood, tea, and fruits (table B-2). China’s agricultural exports go primarily to neighboring Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea, which are also among the top markets for U.S. agricultural products. {From the PDF at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib775/aib775e.pdf}

And as far as grow its economy you might want to check out: GDP growth 1952-2008. Again continuing with the paper:

Poor, But Not Hungry
China has a rising urban middle class with world-class consumption standards, but it is still largely a poor country. Its per capita GDP is similar to those of developing countries, such as the Philippines and Sri Lanka.1 In 2000, China’s urban residents spent an average of $236 per person on food, and rural expenditures were even lower, at $56. Farm families, which still make up the bulk of China’s population, grow much of the food they consume.

Food insecurity, however, is not a problem for most of China’s population. China’s per capita food supply, measured by calories per person per day, was 8 percent above the world average in 1999 (fig. B-2). Famine and food insecurity were common in China’s past, but food consumption and food availability have soared since economic reforms began in the late 1970s.

Growth of the agricultural sector is important when we consider balanced growth strategies and makes development that much easier.

It is also worth noting that China is making a major push again to get more mechanization into the agricultural sector especially tractors as India has done in various stages also.
************************

You're saying that we must grow the population so that the pyramid has a wide base, with a lot of youth providing for a relatively smaller number of old, rather a some sort of ovoid or diamond, with fewer youth providing for a relatively larger number of old. That won't work because we are using scarce resources and degrading/changing the environment at too great a rate. This argument is from the know-nothing economists who don't understand natural systems and misapply economic theory to them.

I think you pretty well summed up your position in ideological terms. But seriously I am not advocating a pyramid since that is no longer possible anymore. It will be at best at column that has a slight decrease in width as you go up and then at the top a pyramid but shallow starting around 60 or so. Death rates among working age people is pretty low now.

Human capital is an economic concept and has no place in ecology or environmental sciences. Economics is defined as follows:
...
It is a subset of sociology, anthropology, and psychology. It is wholly incapable of discussing the carrying capacity of the earth.

So far this post is just you telling me what you believe not concrete proof or analysis of facts that are agreed upon. You are doing nothing more than making declarative statements.

The link I provided was from 2008 and most articles I read indicate that China is now struggling to maintain food production. I find it amazing that anyone would profess that just because basic needs may be met that that is acceptable for those people.

It is a far cry from 'struggling' than not being able to feed their citizens. I don't even need China to be able to feed itself 100% to prove that the world has enough resources only that if China and India can feed its citizens and USA can provide the necessary shortages then the world has plenty of resources. Well I would say it is more acceptable than being chosen to leave this world involuntarily.

It isn't only about agriculture. China cannot grow enough without huge amounts of fossil fuels to keep up with the demands of its increasing population without degrading our environment. Coal-fired plants are the backbone of its growth.

That is for industrialization. Do you think they use coal on their fields?

Your children are harmed by too many people. How do you propose any of the impoverished nations nurture their vast multitudes? I suggest you look carefully at the loads most developing nations are carrying in just meeting the basic needs of their people. Most of the world's population has no hope of getting any nurturing, only in making it day to day.

You can talk about your theoretical children but I know they will be harmed unless we avoid the demographic cliff. Again you saying tripe from the Neo-Malthusians will not convince me that all the propaganda I have been exposed to for 30 years is complete garbage. When was the last famine?

IR theory? You mean international relations? If so, it is just as incapable as economics in discussing real world systems. It/they is/are a subset of the social sciences and so is capable of dealing only with human behavior. A trillion people? We have been breaking the earth's systems as we grew to this point. If we do not change, we will collapse them. While the earth may be able to sustain greater than 3 billion people, human nature indicates that it won't happen. People would have to act to minimize the harm they do and evidence indicates that we don't do that for long. As proof, look at your attitude. You believe that there's nothing to worry about. Now multiply yourself by a few billion and you can see why there's no hope.

You say it but it does not make it so.

As far as attitude, you believe that there will be world wide famine and billions will die off and how that happens is immaterial but you insist it will happen. Now multiply yourself by a few billion of divergent thinkers constantly looking for this great die-off and sure enough we might just get it.

Those that have been praying for an economic calamity has gotten one right now. Just be careful what you wish for. By the way I never said there was nothing to worry about.

Dweebs of the Whole Left|Kossacks

It started out with a blog at Daily Kos: There Are No Libertarians In Recessions.

Then Nutters at Thom's got it: http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=104&func=view&catid=11&id=257928

And even Dr Thoma got into posting a link to it with actual discussions from the wing-nuts. September 18, 2008 links for 2008-09-18

You would think at least someone would verify that Laurence D. Fink was actually a Libertarian before making a fool of themselves.

My first advice is to never believe Kos for a source of information.

But in case you are interested ... then they must not be talking about the Laurence Fink of BlackRock Inc {founder, CEO}.
Barack Obama (D) PresidentOBAMA VICTORY FUND - $30,800 primary

Notice that since 87 no Republican.

Newsmeat also notes that total contributions that they gathered information on that Fink spent the following amounts:
$2,000 Republican
$44,800 Democrat
$6,000 special interest
total: $52,800

Well, no Libertarian Party donation and no Ron Paul support but a big paycheck for Obama!!! I think he made his bed and it is not with any libertarian ideals.

P1|Antifascist hypocrisy and stupidity...

Quote:

name='Antifascist' date='Thursday, 3 April 2008, 5:09 pm' post='129999'> The Army and Veterans groups were the two key organizations that gave Hitler his chance. They provided him with an audience, money, training, and a network of hight level contacts that launched his political career. Otherwise, Hitler would have remained a bookish Vienna vagabond. And so here we have the same pattern. The patriotic counter protesters are also a motorcycle gang and ex-military personnel--veterans. So they can provide the "muscle" if needed as sort of a quasi-security force if things get out of hand. Gangs are Okay if they show their "colors" and "roar" for the state. The gang theme is a psychops technique designed to intimidate political dissidents. The press does its part by presenting the motorcycle gang as a just ordinary citizens expressing there political views. Most Americans total missing the similarity to the role veterans groups played in pre-Nazi Germany forming a spectrum of political groups of which Hilter's faction was only one.

The title link is to the full version to Antifascist post that is truly a masterful work of Machiavellian techniques.

First Anti, introduces the dreaded Hitler and how he rose his SOCIALIST party to power in Germany. So he is trying to set the framework and mindset that anything by Hitler must be bad a priori.

He uses some vague passage of Hitler gaining some recognition for "His anti-Semitic harangue" that his superior officers were pleased. Well ain't that special? So we only take the word of Hitler that even the event happened and no names or ranks to even try to tie his self boasting into an actual political gain.

Quote:

And so here we have the same pattern. The patriotic counter protesters are also a motorcycle gang and ex-military personnel--veterans. So they can provide the "muscle" if needed as sort of a quasi-security force if things get out of hand. Gangs are Okay if they show their "colors" and "roar" for the state. The gang theme is a psychops technique designed to intimidate political dissidents.

Yes some had some T-shirts of USMC and Marine Corps, but nothing in the article or the pictures indicated that any protesters were actually former Military. And what was the demands they asked for:

Quote:

The demonstrators said they plan to boycott Berkeley businesses until the council is recalled, apologizes or grants free permits to a pro-troop group. The group that organized the protest, Eagles Up, had to pay for their permit. The gathering outnumbered Wednesday's anti-war demonstration at the center, marking the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

So basically the counter protesters are asking for the same privileges that Code Pink have already received. But seriously where is the same pattern?

But know let us look at his most damning piece of information, as noted in the picture of the man appearing to shout at a code pink person and maybe already pushing the old man to the ground. First notice that it looks like the old man has his legs wrapped around the young man's one leg. Also note all the chains on the Code Pink protesters.

So after looking at the article and pictures this picture was not related to this article. I first found one related picture of this event at: Calls renewed to fix Berkeley's citizen boards.

Quote:

A donnybrook ensued over Berkeley's Marine Corps recruitment center - resulting in a scuffle with protesters on Feb. 1 - after a city commission declared it unwelcome. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn

The editor placed the picture in the article presumably because:

Quote:

Berkeley is finding that having its own foreign policy isn't cheap. The city's recent dustup with the U.S. Marine Corps has so far cost the city more than $200,000, while businesses say they've been slammed by related protests.

Doesn't sound like the city is being very careful with the publics financing. Must be liberal meme. Take from everyone so a few get to have their views crammed down the rest of the citizens.

Now we are getting closer to the truth but we need to see the original article about this orange jump suit wackos.

Quote:

BERKELEY Facing off over Marine Corps 3 war opponents chain selves to door of recruiting station, and right-wing blogosphere goes ballistic As the right-wing blogosphere railed and a U.S. senator vowed financial retaliation against the Berkeley City Council for its effort to boot the Marine Corps out of town, three war protesters ratcheted up pressure from the left by chaining themselves Friday to the front door of the downtown Marine recruiting office. The demonstrators snapped their locks shut at 7 a.m. and spent the next 7 1/2 hours blocking the door, waving and chanting as hundreds of cars driving by honked in support. Finally, at 2:30 p.m., police snipped the chains and arrested them. Two of the three were cited for blocking a business and released, and the third was booked into jail on an unrelated traffic warrant, police said. The demonstrators promptly said they will keep protesting outside the recruiting station at 64 Shattuck Square until the Marines leave Berkeley - which is what the City Council advised the service to do in a vote Tuesday night that called the Marines "unwelcome intruders." The council also voted to allow members of Code Pink, the protest group that helped organize Friday's blockade, to park at a designated space in front of the recruiting office every Wednesday afternoon and operate a loudspeaker. The council's action apparently made Berkeley the first city in the nation to call for the ouster of a military recruiting station from its borders. "We made really great statements by blocking the door," said one of the three blockaders, 64-year-old Mary Ann Thomas of Oakland. "It's time we became more articulate about what we're doing." Conservative bloggers and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., also believe more articulation is necessary - from the opposite side of the political spectrum. DeMint began drafting legislation Friday to cut $2.1 million in federal funding to Berkeley in a current congressional budget bill and transfer the money to the Marine Corps. The funding would include $750,000 for prospective ferry service, $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District nutrition education fund and $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, which promotes nutritional awareness in school lunch programs. "The First Amendment gives the city of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money," DeMint said in a statement. He called the council's vote "a slap in the face to all brave servicemen and women and their families." Conservative blogs blasted the council and Berkeley in general all day with comments such as one on "Gathering of Eagles": "These cretins disgust me." Members of the council who voted to condemn the Marine Corps station were unbowed. "I guess they've never heard of free speech," Councilwoman Dona Spring said. "I've had a lot of nasty phone messages today, threatening me with things like saying, 'I'll take you out.' But they can go ahead. I don't feel scared." Code Pink said it has begun to circulate a petition calling for a Berkeley ballot measure that would make it more difficult to open and operate recruiting stations. The measure would be modeled after anti-pornography laws, organizers said, mandating that - like porn shops - new recruiting offices be subject to public hearings before they would be allowed to locate near homes or schools. The Marines, meanwhile, were not ready to back down. "It's just another protest," said Marine Corps Capt. Richard Lund, head of the recruiting office. As he spoke in the early afternoon, with the protesters still chained to his door, a small band of demonstrators on the sidewalk shouted at passing cars and students at Shattuck Square: "Marines out of Berkeley! Marines out of Iraq!" Heated words were exchanged whenever people tried to enter or leave the office, but the protest was peaceful. "You guys are just cannon fodder!" the chained protesters shouted at three teenage boys who walked past the office and said they wanted to go inside. "They want to train you to kill babies!" The teenagers turned around and left. At one point, UC Berkeley student Kyrolos El Giheny walked up to the front door and tried to go inside to talk to Lund about a possible Marine career. He was unable to get past the chained protesters. "They told me, 'No business as usual today,' " El Giheny said. "It's kind of nutty. It's really an infringement on my rights."

OK, so who are the fascist in this story (aside from Antifascist)? Yes we can really say this is the same pattern as Nazis used to intimidate political dissidents and true patriots that want to serve the USA. I guess Code Pink and orange suits are the gangs that are acceptable now days for Fascists-like Antifascist. Also note that Antifascist also did not link to the true story of the protests and the violence. Machiavellian!!!

I end with some real pictures of the "peaceful protesters"...

Quote:

The door is held open for Weston Hoover, who pushes his way past protesters trying to block the recruitment office at 64 Shattuck Square. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn

Quote:

Dressed in a suit, Weston Hoover tries to force his way through anti-war protesters who chained themselves together in an attempt to block the entrance to a Marine Corps. recruitment office in Berkeley. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn

Yes sir, that was some peaceful demonstrators. Imagine what would happen if an abortion clinic had been blocked like that?

Notes on the Economy|Part 2|Melissa...

I think it is always important to note that when looking at one day's performance we should take it with a grain of salt until we can confirm its biasness towards the overall direction of the economy. That being said let us look at some news today:
British shares in worst fall since Sept. 11 attacks FTSE 100 index drops 323 points as miners and banks weigh

The U.K. FTSE 100 index (UK:UKX: news, chart, profile) declined 5.5%, or 323.5 points, to 5,578.20, led by financials including the Royal Bank of Scotland (UK:RBS: news, chart, profile) , which dropped 8.2%, and mining giant BHP Billiton (UK:BLT) which fell 8.7%.

I do note it is interesting that their market took the biggest dive on what happened in the USA more than even their 7/7 and airline threats. It was also noted that other European Markets were down sharply with Economic fears cuff Asia; India, Hong Kong slide Recession fears spark heavy selling; Japan, China, South Korea also slump. And from the last link this interesting quote:

"The decoupling between the U.S. and Asian economies is still in progress. Though the U.S. growth rate has been declining, the growth of exports from Asia is steadily growing in double digits," said Yuihama.

I hear people talk about this supposed decoupling but we live in a global economy now and it is unlikely that any of the actors are going to suddenly be isolationist or enact autarkic policies as Jagdish explains how they fail miserably on all counts. If it worked then Cuba and North Korea would be the richest countries in the world. But I should still try to find out the exact way that some people are using this phrase and I am sure it is different than the common misperception of it is. Which brings me to a conversation that Loganthor and Melissa are having at Thom's.
Melissa:

Looks like the Europeans are NOT too impressed with Bush's tax package either.

Loganthor:

Not that I care what they think.

Just out of curiosity.... anybody in UK have any plan of their own on how to fix the US economy?

Melissa:

Why would they care about fixing the US economy in the UK, they have their own problems.

I believe what is happening in the UK, is that they are trying to remove themselves from US association, and move more towards stronger European unity. My own feeling is, is that they are not too far off from converting to the euro, of course that will be the kiss of death for the USD.

(Boy, I miss Ron, he could add so much to this conversation.)

If we are too stupid to figure it out ourselves, than I dare say we deserve the economic mess we are in.

Watch the US markets tomorrow, should be interesting (glad I don't have anything in this market at the moment).

Thanks Melissa for the kind words, but maybe this is for the better. I got tired of ren's BS and living under different set of rules. Now I no longer have to abide by rule 10 or any rule for that matter that the fascist Thom can devise.

As far as being impressed, we in the USA are not here to impress them. We have to do what is prudent in what we do. The US was just criticized for lowering interest rates that could lead to the exchange rate going against the US dollar and increasing inflation in the US. So like usual we will not be able to satisfy the naysayers or nihilists. But as I noted before in Random Notes on the Economy, I like the use of fiscal stimulus and monetary policy working together to avert a possible recession. It must be noted that Fiscal Policy has lost much of its ability to control the economy since of a more open economy now, but it would be good that both economic arms of the Government work in the same direction. But maybe this is not enough considering that we are probably constrained since we have gone to the well too many times and ran up too much of a bill to continue to only use Fiscal stimulus to an economy without also using the brakes when it is needed also. (Meaning raising taxes or revenues when the economy becomes overheated-especially with respect to sectors.)

But I can say without a doubt the EU and UK is concerned about the US economy and they have followed these goals for a long time. Including in 1987 when the US dollar fell by 40% (85-86), Europe quickly stepped in and with various nations prevented further declines.

Lastly, I am not sure why Melissa does not understand certain things that I have emphasized to her but she still holds some views about currencies that run against any knowledge of the subject. Even if the UK adopts the Euro it will really mean not much to the US Dollar. Maybe a slight reduction of reserves of dollars since they can rely more heavily on the central banks of Europe to overcome any shortfall in currencies. But this process of adopting the Euro is not just a flick of the switch and nothing has even hinted they are ready to have a hard peg to the Euro anytime soon. I already had linked to creation of monetary unions on my final exam.

Ultimately, yes Tuesday could be an interesting day in the market. But we do have another round of worldwide markets before the US opens up tomorrow morning. And another thread at Thom's is a link to the Canadian news talking about the Canadian market in: TSX plunges more than 600 points.

Weighing on the benchmark Canadian stock index on Monday was a big drop in the price of oil. The price for light sweet crude oil for February delivery was down $1.95 US a barrel at $88.62 US a barrel.

Gold prices also plunged $19.50 to $862.20 US an ounce.

Well what may be bad for Canadians may actually be good for the USA. And on a positive note, if the USA slows down growth then I guess we will be consuming less hydro-carbons.

Anyway, take care Melissa. I did want to ask if you are going to own a home in London or rent?
Misc:
U.S. jobless rate jumps to 5% as payrolls grow 18,000

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The unemployment rate shot up to 5% in December as job growth stalled, a sign that the U.S. economic slump has spread to the labor market. U.S. seasonally adjusted nonfarm payrolls rose by 18,000 in December, the weakest job growth since August 2003, according to a survey of thousands of businesses. Job growth was revised up by a total of 10,000 in November and October. Economists were expecting payrolls to increase about 58,000 in December. Private-sector payrolls fell by 13,000, the biggest decline in more than four years. A separate survey of households showed employment plunging by 436,000, marking the biggest decline in five years. The number of unemployed adults rose by 474,000, pushing the unemployment rate up to 5.0% from 4.7%.

Jobless rate jumps to 5% as payroll growth stalls December nonfarm payrolls rise 18,000, weakest gain in more than four years

Flipped out Even as teens shun work force, job opportunities await

Thom Hartmann is a Dweeb-or in his words:Has the Rise of Conservatives in Media and Politics Over the Past 26 Years Led to a Police State in America?

This has to be the most preposterous question ever:Has the Rise of Conservatives in Media and Politics Over the Past 26 Years Led to a Police State in America? Yes our pied piper of the left wing wackos is framing the USA as a Fascist/Police State without even a hint of irony that maybe more of his "facts" come from such liberal strongholds of the country. But we already know that his rose colored glasses only see that conservatives are the ones that want to promote Fascism when in fact Fascism is a theory deriving from and sustained on Socialist Principles. Anyway let us look at his proofs:

...And was Carol Anne Gotbaum a Victim of That? The daughter-in-law of one of New York's top officials yelled, "I'm not a terrorist!" and apparently fought with security and police in the Phoenix Airport before being wrestled to the floor and handcuffed. She was then shackled to a table in a holding tank and left alone. She died while seven police officers sat in their security office nearby.

Ok, so we have a lady screaming in a public place about terrorism, that could lead to panic and could be a diversion for a terrorist plot was subdued and held in detention. Nothing seems wrong with that. It looks like no one wanted to be her baby sitter after her public tantrum.

A student of color in LA had her wrist broke by a school security officer after not cleaning up dropped birthday cake to the his satisfaction. During the attack he called her a nappy head. This 16 year old girl was expelled and arrested for littering and battery. But wait.there's more -- when her mom went to the school to complain of the girls treatment and demand the security officer be arrested -- she was arrested and suspended from her job with the school district. The assault was caught on the cell phone of students nearby.

And Thom see no irony that he not only used the source InfoWars.net for his primary source from Alex Jones but the videos were taken from Fox News!!! PrisonPlanet and InforWars are extreme Libertarian wackos and for Thom to attack Libertarians that are actually reasonable and then to take to word of the wackos makes me wonder if he even considered his sources of information?

A UCLA student was tasered by police without cause for studying in the university library without having his ID. Following Police orders to leave, the police tasered him while he was walking towards the door.

So at a "Liberal College" in a liberal town we have security guards that used too much force to enforce the regulations. The UC system is already noted for any liberal cause being good to protest on campus already as we saw in More Crazies at UCSB.

Para-style raids on homes have a 1300 percent increase over the last 25 years. The total annual arrests jumped from 3.3 million in 1960 to 14 million in 2004.

I don't see the second sentence in the article but I guess if the technique is working then we would expect that yes more criminals are rounded up. I did think the following needed highlighted:

Cato has released Balko’s new paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, which tells some of the stories of the innocent people whose homes were raided, and who lost their lives, to this new form of terrorism. It also documents over 150 examples of botched police raids.

So 150 "botched" raids vs. 14 million arrests. While I agree that the "War on Drugs" is another war that was never won or can be won. But that none of this indicates a Police State only that the laws are being enforced by our police and some security guards. So if we are afraid of a Police State forming then Legalize drugs and allocate our Law enforcement resources in more productive uses.

Police officer and security officers should learn how to restrain people in non-violent ways and train for dealing with citizens as human beings? Are we all becoming potential terrorists in the eyes of security and the police? Is authority making this clear with warrant less wiretapping our email, mail and a militarized police department?

Yes, and that Thom is just silly since they are using less than deadly force when encountering potential troublemakers. I would also point out that must be liberal idea to make statements as questions to somehow suggest that they are only asking a question when the question was already answered in their head. Also note that the government does not wiretap emails or mail and even when it was wiretapping it was not recording whole conversations only select words and patterns of calling. Much of the information that the government is now using is readily available through the market so is it really a question of Privacy?

Meantime a local middle school in Oak Park, Illinois has banned hugging -- calling the school a hug-free zone. The Principal says rampant hugging in creating bottlenecks in the hallway and making kids late for class.

Well what type of community is Oak Park, Illinois:

Oak Park has a long history of encouraging and maintaining racial and ethnic diversity, much of which was started in conjunction with the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. The village operates a Diversity Assurance Program within its housing programs department to ensure a stable, diverse, and integrated population. Years ago, Oak Park eliminated the use of "For Sale" signs in front of houses, widely considered one of the keys of success to maintaining the high diversity.

Yes a solid Blue Stater with police problems? Funny that. But the story gets more interesting (note that the link to Chicago Times is no longer valid and this comes from Hugging Banned in the Hallways of an Illinois Middle School):

Hugging is now off limits at an Oak Park middle school.

The new policy went into effect at Percy Julian Middle School last month because of administrators’ concerns that so-called “hug lines” in the hallways were making students late for class and causing bottlenecks in the halls, according to WBBM-Channel 2.

Percy Julian Principal Victoria Sharts told the station hugging is “more appropriate for airports or for family reunions than passing and seeing each other every few minutes in the halls.”

Sharts also said some hugs between students were “too long, too close and usually between boys and girls.”

The school’s 860 students are not allowed to hug anywhere inside the building.

OK, so they may be late for school but also note the innuendo on sexual harassment issues. Yes our Liberal doctrine of sexual harassment must be stopped everywhere except when it is a President that you like does it...

Lastly this link at Just say “no” to hugs? explains the issues fairly well.

Let's talk about being a "we" society again where all people are valued and get our police and security officers trained appropriately.

Sorry but this is six-sigma thinking and not reality. Thom Hartmann has not shown any systemic failure of the system or even a pattern to this "crisis" but just a group of random events to spell out a vacuous philosophy of "train" more of the people. I am sure the people that have these jobs already have enough diversity training to last a lifetime without Thom giving them more. What we have is just 3 simple events that got out of hand out of a population of 300 million. Seems like a spectacularly low incident rate that I feel extremely comfortable saying the USA is not a police state from that article. But there is still a question of whether Thom Hartmann is a fascist? All this talk about "we" and them cons then maybe he is promoting Fascism? (Yes I could not resist a couple of question marks.)
Links:
A New Yorker’s Puzzling Death in the Phoenix Airport

Community responds to Taser use in Powell

Police SWAT raids: The new domestic terrorism?

Not Anti-Americanism but American Nihilism

Slab wrote:
QUOTE:
QUOTE:
Grandpa Charlie wrote:
Better yet, I'd like to see a roll-back (in political consciousness) to where we would have been if the voters had never abandoned Carter in 1980.

Was the Carter Presidency good for the country?
I never thought so.

As I read it, Grandpa Charlie said: I'd like to see a roll-back (in political consciousness) to where we would have been if the voters had never abandoned Carter in 1980.

I therefore read that as he's talking about political consciousness, not Carter himself.

The political consciousness involved concepts like growing awareness of integral needs for:

1. environmental protection, managed by "us," not by the neoliberal magic marketplace that we now call the "Reagan Revolution," which has put us up against the edge of a cliff now, with a long fall and tremendous potential for social disruption in the short term (what's happening in the Middle East is the tip of it), since we abandoned any semblance of long term thinking as fast as possible once that consciousness itself was replaced by the smiling mask of the magic marketplace.


2. A societal "us" investing in a long term project to develop energy self sufficiency with increasing investment in renewable technologies like solar power, tidal hydrological power and a variety of other options, with investment incentives implemented through government oversights that at least have a potential to look long term, where the magic market tends to be by nature reactive and competitively short term instead of proactive, investing for the good of society, which would of course be for the good of the market, but that's not built into the dynamics.



That consciousness would have involved some major transformations over the next couple of decades in the way our present infrastructure looks today, had it played out. The transformation would probably have begun to look much more like what will eventually come to be, as the energy prices continue to soar, and as the reality of Peak Oil that is beginning to emerge finally sets in. The US could have been decades ahead of the rest of the world.

Where, in my opinion, Carter failed both the country and the political consciousness of the time, was after he listened to his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was obsessively focused on the Cold War then, and who managed to convince Carter that the Middle East was the most important geostrategic region for the future of the United States, because of the interest the Soviets who were also directing their foreign policies to the region. With the overthrow of the US friendly Shah of Iran in 1979, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets, in a years time an alarmed Carter went from an emphasis on the above progressive environmental and renewable energy oriented programs to a focus on the Middle East. The political disruption in the Democratic party itself came out when Kennedy challenged Carter for the nomination, and Brzezinski became a controversial figure.

I think political consciousness in the country was at a turning point during the Carter Administration. Carter failed in his last years to allow that consciousness develop to a fruition that could have taken the US to a very different energy independent place now, as I see it, and Brzezinski was a focal point for that failure. A major party rift developed over him during the primaries as I remember it.

I will concede that Brzezinski is a brilliant geostrategic political "realist" but his ideas are not compatible with mine.
...
Slab wrote:

QUOTE:
Ren,

I recall the consciousness after the early 70's oil fiasco resulting in gas shortages.
With that, I can understand the lure of easy supply from the middle east and our countries decisions to stop building oil refineries.
Not sure to what consciousness you are referring to. If it is the mandate of better fuel milage brought on by the oil shortage or any attempts to use alternate fuels.
I was reading about the auto industry and the new era cars (2000+) put out 97% less polutants than the cars from the 70's.
If that is part of the consciousness, it seems we are heading in the right direction.

I look at the mid 70's misery index and it's affect on our country.
Times are better now IMO.
We could free ourselves from mid eastern dependency by providing for ourselves and conservation.



I returned from Vietnam in 1970, and went back to college. I did what amounted to a second minor in ecology over an undergraduate career that I stretched out for five years, because I kept discovering nearly every day there was so much I wanted to study.

I don't think I could possibly recreate, especially here on this board, the level of awareness that those of us who were awakening to environmentalism in the early 70's were envisioning. The systemic implications we were seeing were mind boggling to us, and would still be so for many today, only now it's been marginalized and vilified with some of the most carefully designed and pernicious propaganda of the last century, and so the thinking has become entrenched, and codified in many ways that predetermines the directions of creativity. Maybe that was always inevitable. I look at the nature of this society and I'm inclined to believe that.

Better mileage and cleaner emmissions for cars was a triviality in comparison; We were seeing a decentralized energy grid that would have virtually redesigned the entire infrastructure of the US into smaller regional modules. Some of this is taking place in Europe now, Germany has been working hard to develop a secondary energy system that feeds from renewable locales back into their grid, where independent producers get paid for their energy production.

A centralized energy grid is possible and even necessary to maintain for the fossil fuel distribution network, simply because it will make it as efficient as possible, due to the resource extraction and refinement process itself, and its inevitable ontology of technological creation related to it. Fossil fuel efficiency, therefore, creates the the potential for the opposite type of network of the renewables, which are by the nature of the renewable source creation technologies, situations where the localities have control of energy production and remove their dependency on hierarchically organized, centralized systems.

It would have taken planning and some sort of financial incentive the market doesn't provide to make a long term transformation take place. We saw that back then, Carter listened to some of the top people in the field and was moving in that direction. That all ended so abruptly I almost thought one day when I woke up in early 1980 that I'd imagined it all.

We are light years from that now with our systemic commitments, and the consciousness that was budding then was commodified by what followed in the 80s. That consciousness can only be found in marginalized sectors at the moment. That will, of course, change as the budding catastrophe of this poorly designed, unsustainable system becomes suddenly apparent one day, perhaps sooner than anyone wants to really imagine now. We had time then so we felt free to imagine. People are less prone to imagine when they are terrified, and terrified people have less problems slaughtering others when they have the means to do so. I'm guessing that's probably our plight now.

The planning to change what needs to be changed will involve a lot of years and time now, time that was being recognized and being thought about in the mid to late seventies. We might have been ready now, if we had started then. It's hard to say.

That planning had nothing to do with being stimulated by the US peak oil gas shortage in the early seventies. That peak oil situation was already recognized because fossil fuel was already recognized as a finite source of energy. That stimulative connection is more to politics and to the Carter administration and what it recognized as a political pressure point it needed to react to.

What was going on in the sciences -- in the halls of academia where these issues were suddenly on the table and where none of the corporate interests had yet figured out the need to intervene -- was really something entirely different. It was a moment of timely possibility, and it was fragile. It passed.

Vote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners

Nihilism

Moral nihilism

Allan Nairn

War Whisperers

Allan Nairn page

Declaring Forever War

Allan Nairn's Statement to his Arresting Officers and the Public