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Category: Politics

Why the oddly specific number? Why?

Two Quotes about Chrysler and GM that stick out:

“I know this is difficult,” Mr. Clement said. “I know this affects real workers in real towns and cities across Ontario.

and

CAW president Ken Lewenza has called Fiat’s proposal to cut labour costs at Chrysler Canada by $19 an hour an “unreasonable” demand and has said it is “not going to happen,” arguing the CAW is competitive with unionized environments in the United States.

Why $19 and not a Percentage?  That’s a strange way of doing things.  It’s not like “cut them by 5%”; which would be the normal way to approach cuts.

Something stinks there.  Is there anyone inside of Fiat who can break their wall of silence and pass along the skinny on this?

Also; this again:

“I know this is difficult,” Mr. Clement said. “I know this affects real workers in real towns and cities across Ontario.

If there is something that can be said about Harper is that Canada lives between Alberta and Saskatchewan.  That’s it.  The rest of the landmass that we think of as Canada is “the Rest of it” and is dismissed very easily by the Snow-Texans of the West.

Some Interesting Reading on Tony Clement too (National Post)

In Case you aren't getting it yet

Taibbi:

What’s hilarious about the teabaggers, though, is how they never squawk about waste until the spending actually has a chance of benefiting them. You will never hear of a teabagger crying about OPIC giving $50 million in free insurance to some mining company so that they can dig for silver in rural Bolivia. You won’t hear of a teabagger protesting the $2.5 billion in Ex-Im loans we gave to GE through the early part of this decade, even as GE was moving nearly a hundred thousand jobs overseas over the course of ten years. And Michelle Malkin’s readers didn’t seem to mind giving IBM millions in Ex-IM and ATP loans at the same time it was giving its former CEO, Lou Gerstner, $260 million in stock options.

In other words teabaggers don’t mind paying taxes to fund the salaries of Bolivian miners, Lou Gerstner’s stock options, deliveries of “sailboat fuel,” the Hermes scarves on Sandy Weill’s jet pillows, or even the export of their own goddamn jobs. But they do hate it when someone tries to re-asphalt their roads, or help bail their slob neighbor out of foreclosure. And God forbid someone propose a health care program, or increased financial aid for college. Hell, that’s like offering to share your turkey with the other Pilgrims! That’s not what America is all about! America is every Pilgrim for himself, dammit! Raise your own motherfucking turkey!

And once again, Taibbi:

You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses!

Don’t know about you, but given the choice, I’d rather be an elitist than a peasant any day.

Shamelessly stolen from Rising Hegemon

Ronald Reagan: I knew this already

He's Dead.  Don't Worry.
He's Dead. Don't Worry.

Ronald Reagan’s acting career hit a lull in the late 1940s. Despite parts in minor films such as The Voice of the Turtle and That Hagen Girl, he became increasingly preoccupied with his more important role during Hollywood’s “Red Scare” as head of the Screen Actors Guild. It was revealed last week that the future President played another role as well: as a secret FBI informant, code name T-10. According to an article published in the San Jose Mercury News, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Reagan and his first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.

–Time American Notes Hollywood

Reagan was no friend to the Common Man, Classist and a turncoat.  Ronald Reagan could not resist the chance to take credit for other peoples efforts.  However; I’m not writing about Ronald here; I relish the chance to take a bottle of piss to his grave any day now;  but oinly after my Thatcher, Bush I and Bush II urine around the world tour sometime int he next 20 years.

Instead; I wanted to note the sycophantic bleating of one of his supporters:

RECENT MUTATIONS

    • Posted:

    • Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
    All of your parents likely voted for Reagan. Tough pill to swallow for people that so hate “what Reagan did to this country”, eh?…

    • Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
    Reagan, like the rest of the world knew next to nothing about AIDS in the early 80s. To slag him off for inaction on something that no one fully understood at that time is silly. So we’re blaming Reagan for terrorists killing marines in Beirut? Should we blame WTC employers for the deaths of their employees on 9/11? That’s preposterous….

    • Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
    and what might that be #34? Reagan not only won the presidency in ’80 and ’84 but it was damn-near unanimous. To see people take potshots at a dead president who was nationally and internationally revered pisses me off. Do you know how many streets are named after Reagan in Eastern Bloc countries that suffered under Communist rule? Reagan wasn’t perfect…but he did more in his 8 years at the helm than any president in the last 50. That’s virtually undebatable….

    • Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
    #25 “Reagan saved the world from nothing.” So winning the Cold War, saving U.S. Hostages in Beirut and saving the U.S. economy don’t do it for you? I’m sure I could name more……

    • Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
    Reagan was the best president we’ve had in the last 50 years. And yes, I stand by that statement….

    • Commented on London cops beating the shit out of peaceful G20 demonstrators
    For people commenting that the “police were pushing more”…uh, what’s the cop to protester ratio here? Would I have to push harder to fend off 5 guys than they would to advance on me?…

    • Commented on London cops beating the shit out of peaceful G20 demonstrators
    Ok…so maybe I’m the dense one but if I was in a pack of about 20 with my back against a wall and I was being pushed/advanced upon by literally hundreds if not thousands of people…I would probably push back—possibly even quite forcefully. Doesn’t matter if the protesters were being “non-violent”, I doubt I would allow myself to be crushed by throngs of people….

    • Commented on “Marx was Right!”
    Marxism, Communism, Socialism…whatever you want to call it—has always seemed to me something that looks good on paper…but history has shown (and will continue to show) does NOT work in real life. No ideal situations exist in this world and for Communism to work requires ideal situations/environments. I don’t think Marx was evil, as some seem to, but just an idealist with some interesting ideas that don’t really work. “Right” or no…they just don’t work. Heck, I even think that pacifism is a neat idea and would be great in an ideal situation…but then some guy comes along with a gun or knife and it’s back to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”…

    • Commented on Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell’s ‘Deconstructing Dumbo’
    I don’t know if your comment on bloggers holds water or not…however, I do like BB.net despite the transparent “leanings”. I do wish there to be a bit less political speak on here or at least a bit more objectivity, however. I’m currently on my second username, because I was apparently banned from posting prior (not because of profanity or any such thing, but for disagreeing) Wouldn’t be overly surprised to see this post end up in the bin….

    • Commented on Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell’s ‘Deconstructing Dumbo’
    So is your implication that educated people are not conservative? The fact of the matter is a) I am conservative b) I am educated c) I, myself am a graphic designer. I supposed applying labels is what this post is really about and the comments have proven it….

    • Commented on Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell’s ‘Deconstructing Dumbo’
    It is clever logo manipulation…but yeah, the mongers are on both sides, on that there is no debate. The left has Michael Moore, Franken, Maher, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins etc…the right has Limbaugh, Colter, Hannity to an extent. Clearly, BoingBoing has chosen which side they wish to get behind. I suppose we’ll have to deal with it….

    NOTE: I’ve removed Comments from “Whimsical Stories”

Here’s another one:

• Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
The American communists were managed directly out of Moscow. The only reason they didn’t get their chance to put millions “up against the wall” was because of people like Ronald Reagan….

• Commented on Ronald Reagan was a secret FBI anti-commie snitch
I really wonder if you would feel the same way if Reagan had been informing on Nazis? The only difference between the two groups is that the communists have a higher body count….

• Commented on “Marx was… second???”
Well, Mr. Jefferson also thought it was OK to hold slaves, have sex with your slaves, sell people into slavery etc. Probably not a paragon of good economic thought. Thank God the Republicans came into power and freed the slaves….

• Commented on “Marx was Right!”
Failix This is a new form of argument to me. You write “Fail” and that logically proves what? Only that you have no critical reasoning skills. Open your eyes, read Liberal Fascism, you might get a clue. #247 Buddy666 I meant to write Lenin and Stalin. Do not forget that Lenin started the camps and the mass murders long before Stalin took control….

• Commented on “Marx was Right!”
#231 Jesse Hitler is included as he was also a socialist, a national socialist. The red fascists and the black fascists are heads and tails of the same coin. When you line up the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century, Lenin and Marx and Hitler and Mao, along with lower ranked contenders like Pol Pot and Castro and Che, you do find Socialism as the common thread. Instead of re-reading Marx, Metzger should do a first read of the Gulag Archipelago, the Black Book of Communism, and Liberal Fascism. Or is that too much reality for this community?…

• Commented on “Marx was Right!”
Raj77 – the point being that on the one hand you have the socialists, with a body count in the hundreds of millions, and the capitalists, who got excessive bonuses. Of course it’s time to run into the arms of the state and try socialism again….

• Commented on “Marx was Right!”
Hey, what’s a few hundred million dead among progressives? You Marxists will get it right one of these days. You have to break some eggs, right?…

• Commented on Solution to AIG bonuses: a 90% tax on people who receive them
Maybe next we can levy a bill of attainder against the people who donated to Prop8 in California, a tax of 100% of their hate donations….

Note: Gay Republican, Money Quote: “Open your eyes, read Liberal Fascism

Considering that every conflict  that wasn’t in the name of either Communism, Fascism or Socialism was ostensibly in the name of some form of Capitalism (if you wash away the veneer of honor or politics) the idea that Communism has killed Millions while Capitalsm has clean hands; is preposterous.  Ask a dead homeless person how Capitalism helped them out.  You can’t though, because they starved to death, in AMERICA.

Anyway; where was I going?

Authority.

That’s it.

I can’t stand authoritarians; even though at times that is exactly what I am.  I stand on my Bully Pulpit at home and demand blind obedience in the name of social order and cleanliness. Thwip,Thwack, Crack (Whipping Noises, I don’t know).  However; I know that out in the streets I don’t carry any real authority.  Sure I may possess the requisite size and strength to push people around; I could even lose a millions pounds and become a police officer (if I didn’t have such a problem with following orders). However, even given these sweeping powers of persuasion or intimidation I know what actually moves society; that is the social contract.  The understanding that while I want to make my life so much better; I can’t just stomp my way to success, even if I was on TV.

These guys; the Reagan cheering squads; don’t actually understand the social contract.  They appear to fervently believe that cooperation and looking out for your neighbours is some kind “girly” persuit and that no person in their right mind would care for it.  They want DADDY to look after society while they do there level “naughty” best to get one over on all their brothers and sisters.  Daddy will take care of the monsters.  Daddy will scare off the bad man.  Failing that they will buy themselves a big gun so that they can be like Daddy.  Don’t you just want to squeeze their precious little heads (with loving arms)?

Then there are the “Rebellious” Ones:

CelleCast: @hhavenwood what is #teaparty ?? well, it traces back to our history where the sons of liberty protested onerous taxation from an elete govt
markhendricks: Hmmm? Right wing radicals… religious fanatics with guns? Sounds like our Founding Fathers that the head of DHS doesn’t like #teaparty
joecaruso: They “Cling to their guns, religion and bias”. -Barack Hussein Obama And what does he “Cling” to???? #tcot #teaparty #USA
HonestAmerican: @meanolmeany Threats from libs? They don’t even own guns. #teaparty
joecaruso: I heard the guns and ammo used in this rescue mission of Richard Phillips can be traced back to America. #tcot #nra #teaparty

Tweets from Twits (What was really remarkable was how many “New Media Marketers” there were there)
Oh, those “Tea Partyers” they’re so “Mad as Hell” about what?  For 6 years the US government has literally been pissing money into the Deserts of the Middle east, driving up national debt to record amounts; spending national treasure on adventures overses that have produces nearly zero appreciable positive results.   If any of you crankknards say “Iraqi Freedom” I’ll poke you in the eye with Ahmed Chalabi’s Cock.  They were their own country before America got it’s metal wang all wet and they will be their own country again when America finally stops spurting.  However, like a dim-witted john, America left the money on the table next to it’s wallet and fell asleep.  America also lets it’s kids have access to the pin number on the Cash Card.
So the Rebels (like Tim McVeigh) get all up in arms about the Government wasting their money and then one of them goes out and does something crazy; like shooting up a bunch of Cops or Killing people in an Immigration Center or Blowing up Federal Buildings.  Does the Right-Wing take responsibility?  Nope.
They just go back to their default state; kissing Daddy’s ass and telling us how we should love the president, but only if he’s a Right-Winger.



Boredom + Ennui equals TAKEDOWN

I hated Wall-E so much that when a Mefite posted a link to an old story about it; I found an equally old review and decided to take them down a peg:

The “good folks” over at Redstate.com loved Wall-E and posted a tortured set of reasons why Wall-E was all about the Reagan and the Guns:

1) The overthrow of fascist tyranny – The most direct conservative message in the movie is the uprising of the humans to throw off the chains of fascism. Humans on the Axiom have been subjugated to the soft fascism of the nanny state where the state provides all needs to all people, and they are all equal in their care. Everyone looks the same. Every gets the same food, clothes, media and activities. It is the perfect Marxist utopia, except for the French Revolution inspired construct of a ruling elite (Auto and his hench-robots) who have the ultimate freedom and authority to rule society and construct it to their ideal. Just because it is performed “for the good of the people” doesn’t make less of a tyranny. I’m sure Pol Pot’s forced march into the wilds of Cambodia was for the good of the people too.

Of course, when I think of Liberals, I think of Rigid social mores and Cool Uniforms.  Or wait, do I think of Hippies?  Yeah, the last thing.  Also Fascism does not Equal Communism.  These two things are not equal.  I think they were trying to arge against authoritarianism; which I think is still a stretch, since there is really only one Authority and society as a whole (The land whales) were not down for it; they were just mindless consumers (like good Capitalists).

(Quick, examine that short Paragrah, did I say anything about a certain Austrian political figure?  No, Give me a cookie!)

2) Failure of the Big Government social programs – We’ve had a lot of discussion of the anti-corporate message in the form of Big N Large. I contend that BNL is not a corporation, but a government. It represents the ultimate extension of the nationalized corporation as defined by Mussolini, and is a pretty close analogy to Great Society. In the end BNL has total worldwide societal control and all needs of the people are met by BNL’s “programs”. But just like the failure of the Great Society, BNL’s planned economy fails in a spectacular manner. Even the changes made to save humanity do not meet the promises. We see advertising, analogous to current PSAs, to take the Axiom on its 5 year cruise. But the promise of the Axiom is not met and we see the price of that failure early in movie when we see all the fat people on hover chairs. Just like the Great Society, once the liberal plan is put into motion, there is no option to change to a rational alternative. All that can be done is to maintain the status quo, without end. As a side note, the CEO of BNL makes all of his pronouncements from something that looks like the White House press room. This is reference to governmental power, not corporate power.

Simply stating that Wal-Mart , ahed, I mean BNL is not a Corporatation and then going on from there isn’t reasoning; that like saying “I don’t think the Green Goblin is a villan, so therefore Spider-Man is a menace!”  good thinking there JJJ.  So; yeah this whole section of the argument is out the door.

3) The effects of the Mainstream Media – Every human has a personal video feed that is used to pipe constant media brainwashing. We see the propaganda where they are all told that “Blue is the new red”. All of the mind numbed sheep dutifully go “oooohhh” and happily don the new color, while all continue to look identical. They dutifully do as they are told, including eating what they are told, until they have become an identical group of fat useless drains on the welfare state. A state which dutifully fills up the troughs for them to eat from. I found this theme to track with the current obesity problem in the welfare and food stamp programs.

I aggree; the mainstream media is a profit driven entity owned by large corporations who want money.  How is this a Liberal thing.  I get it; if you don’t like it (it’s Liberal) and if you like it (Like cool Stormtrooper uniforms) it’s Conservative.  Tell me again how Fascists and Commies are Liberals again?

4) Propagandizing the education system – There was one scene where we saw the fat little children being educated through the use of media propaganda. This removal of parents from the upbringing of the children falls in line with the current drive to push children into the public indoctrination system as early as possible. While it is only an aside, the next time you see the children is when they are in danger thanks to the callous disregard of the elites. In this case, the state doesn’t save them, it is the actions of Josh and Mary acting as pseudo parents that save their lives.

Again, I agree.  Using the Education of the young to put forth an agenda is deplorable.  Of course, when the truth is that agenda and you don’t believe in it (like say Evolution and how the Mass Market is profit driven and not equitable…)  wait what?  Oh, my eduction by PepsiCo must have failed me again; no Pepsi for me tonight.

5) Triumph of individualism – Through accidental contact with the robots, Josh and Mary meet each other and begin a romance. We see one scene where the Lido deck is closed, and all of the hover chairs dutifully follow orders and head to the cabins. But Josh and Mary ignore the rules and stay in the pool. In another scene, we see Eve finally ignore the directive to deliver the plant to the bridge, and stay to help Wall-E when he is injured. Both of these short sequences demonstrate individuals standing up for self determination over the dictates of the state.

Wall-E is emulating something he saw in a Movie.  If emulation is somehow being an individual, all those kids dressed as the Vampires from Twilight are downright rebels. Dumbass.

6) Elites fighting to maintain power – The Socialist concept of rulership by elites is often accompanied by the struggle to maintain power for the good of the people, even when the people are harmed in the process. It is all done for the good of society. Toward the end of the movie, we see Auto put the humans into danger by turning the ship and causing everyone to slide toward the walls (I promised I wouldn’t discuss the gravitational absurdity of this scene). Here the elite is trying to save humanity, but in the process is likely to kill a lot of humans. This parallels a common environmentalist desire of today to see a significant reduction in human population to save the planet.

What Elites?  One Computer is “Elites” plural?  Dumbshit can’t even count now.

7) Individualism must be suppressed – In the movie, the robots save the day. But the robots that do this are the “misfit” robots that have been put into a “reeducation program” to get them to perform within the strict tolerances defined by the state as acceptable. Once Wall-E uses Eve’s “blaster” to open the doors, the misfit robots escape. Instead of being a danger to society as the state controlled media asserts, they instead help Wall-E and Eve save humanity.

The “Misfit” robots are dangerously malfunctioning devices used to maintain the ship; some of which were endangering the ship.  By this reasoning,  a clinically insane person who threaten kindergartens because “Obama is gunna take his guns” is a real conservative icon!  Again,  Fail! Or WIN! Depending on which end of the spectrum your type of Aspergers ends up on.

8) Superiority of the classics – This one is a bit of a stretch, but the continual use of a “classic” image of the movie Hello Dolly made me think of the fight against cultural corruption. Wall-E (and eventually Eve) pine for, and eventually show the triumph of, the classical values shown by that movie. They reject the cultural mores imposed by modern thought as expressed by their directives that they are expected to blindly follow.

Yes, like CLASSIC Warfare (Raping and Pillaging) and CLASSIC Marriage (dowries) and of course the old Conservative Favourite, the Classic Lifestyle of the Spartan Army.

9) In the end Humanity embraces truth and does the right thing – The captain finally decides to take the Axiom home. But his decision is based on truly knowing what they face. He learns that Earth isn’t the happy wonderful place that his movies are showing him. Instead he directly confronts the bleak reality of the world that Eve shows him. But despite the knowledge of the challenges that faces them, he rejects the easy stagnation of continued life on the Axiom, and returns to earth to build a new world. Once faced with the lies told to him by the state, he rejects the state and embraces the hard road of struggle for independence.

The “State” told him to keep looking for life at home and then when said life is found, GO HOME.  Which is what happened.

HOW THE FUCK IS THIS SOMEHOW A LIE ON BEHALF OF THE STATE.  THE FUCKING LARDWHALE CAPTAIN DID EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS TOLD TO DO BY A 500 YEAR OLD RECORDING.  HOLY SHIT!  THAT’S LIKE STONING SOMEONE BECAUSE THE BIBLE SAID TO DO IT.

Again, Wall-E sucks and this gave me an opportunity to relive some of the low-lights of this crap fest.

My little Christo-Fascist says God is Angry with you

I’ve written about my daughter’s nascent fundamentalism before; it finally erupted into real problems for me over the past month.

It seems that a discussion about the Lenten Fast (Chocolate for Her if you must know) at a friend’s house led a major arguement and a dream in which God told my little girl that he was angry with the world.  I was not privvy to this dream or the argument until I received a call from the school (Catholic School no less) about my Daughter.

It seems she was cursing the kids to hell in the name of God.

And my wife wonders why I discourage religousness.  Sigh.

When speaking to the Principal I had to speak in code to avoid insulting my wife; placing the blame for the fundamentalist leanings in my daughter squarely on the shoulders of the Evilution-Denying shoulders of my wife and mother-in-law.  I’m game to discuss religion, but I always ensure that I frame it as a social coping mechanism.  It seems this nuance is lost on my little Christo-Fascist in training.

I apologized to the Principal and told him that I would speak to my Daughter about her behavior; we comiserated about Fundamentalism of that stripe and it’s corrosive effects and ended the call.  I then called my parents and asked them to NEVER discuss religion with my daughter again; as reinforcing it was causing trouble at school.

I’ve asked my wife to do the same with her family, but as I have said before “they’ve got the Jesus”…

Two More Years… Just Two more…

Holy Crap these people have NO shame

Rush Limbaugh recently said: “I am all for the AIG bonuses” and attacked the Obama administration for trying to undo them. He also blasted Dem efforts to get the names of the AIG bonus recipients as “McCarthyism.”

Fox News followed suit, also comparing Dems to “Joe McCarthy.” And Sean Hannity has now derided efforts to tax the execs by saying: “In other words, we’re going to just steal their money.”

When these people say “they are for the little guy” they mean “Short CEOs”

You are just bitter because you are a nerd

In the end many don’t. I was in a small enough town that I went through school with some students that were in 1st grade with me. I was a “jet” in the reading department. I was reading the “see Jane run” crowd on day one. There were kids there still working on the alphabet. They “caught them up” to me, but predominately these kids were always a step behind. By high school graduation, I was headed off to engineering school, and most of them were lucky to be getting a degree (a couple never did). My guess is that these kids never really were “caught up”, but merely were able to pass some test (potentially more of a subjective test than an objective one). And I’d bet I spent the summers going to the “book mobile” and reading 5 or more books a week (many psuedo nonfiction subject books of inventors and historical figures) while they probably watched alot of TV and hung out at some play ground.

It’s not that kids can’t be helped to “catch up”, it’s that the reasons they are behind in the first place rarely go away. Exceptions abound of course, but to presume that a teacher/school can “catch up” a kid without really addressing how or why he is “behind” in the first place would seem to me to be an institutionalized form of “betting against the house”. Apparently they see that with Head Start. They get these kids up and running, but as they progress through elementary school, with out the cointinued help, they just fall behind again.

Some Nerd, DU

Whenever someone puts into writing how many books they read over the summer; especially when followed up with “and those other kids wasted their time playing” you got yourself an insufferable fucking nerd on your hands.  Anyone who thinks education is wasted on people really needs to be sterilized.  Now.  We can live without more of their ilk clouding up the world;  I know it’s not likely someone with such a toxic attitude will ever reproduce, but let’s nip this in the bud now.

This is the same kind of person who votes to cut taxes; then complains about the state of government services and infrastructure.  They ask questions about social services like “Why can’t they do more with less?”

It’s like their terminal lack of human contact made them into some kind of other species; devoid of human empathy or reason.

I have no doubt that this person is better educated than I am; seriously.  What has that done for them?