In this excellent editorial (recommended for AdPopulum readers by Ted Auch), Laurence Kotlikoff discusses the urgent need for a viable third party candidate in American politics. Read the rest of this entry »
I love this movie! Finally, a leveling of the playing field. Not in a, “Look what you’ve done! We’ll get even!” sort of way, but in a, “Now we know everything,” sort of way. I’ve been fleshing out an argument in recent AdPopulum posts that the world we (of a certain generation) grew up in no longer exists. There is no American democracy: we’re not even a country, we’re a corporation. There is no equity: there is only the hot potato exchange of debt. Nobody was even remotely punished for the actions in this film, and the very actions this film examines continue to this day fully unabated.
The world isn’t changing: It’s changed! There is no going back now. Wasting breath on regulation – or whatever else one might propose – seems completely flimsy and futile. The fact of the matter is the masters of the market have rebuilt the markets in their own image, and nothing will ever change that. Organized crime at its finest? You damn sure better believe it! But, notice that your president is in collusion, notice that all of the academic institutions, legislators, regulators, and sundry government agencies are complicit. Notice that we, too, are implicated with our relentless need for credit and consumption.
Inside Job relieves us all of the burden of having to wonder how the system actually works. No more conspiracy theories and elaborate charts of secret societies and obscure organizations (Masons, Bilderberg Group, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, etc.), the banking and MIC cabals have completely taken over society, and there is no longer a need for secrecy on their part.
Where does that leave the rest of us? I propose we take the information presented in this film – whether it be the stunning panoramas of global metropolitan areas or the explanations of derivatives – and figure out how to exploit the system that takes so much joy in exploiting us. Do what the system does: ignore protests and work proactively to build a better life for your share-holders. There’s seven billion hungry mouths to feed on this planet, so let’s hang up the Tea Party, and Liberal Agenda, and Constitutional Republic, and righteous indignation nonsense and get to work.
These are the people that run our lives. How does that make you feel?
Last year we had a group of visitors here in Burlington from Topeka, Kansas affiliated with Fred Phelps‘ Westboro Baptist Church. For those not familiar this group you may be familiar with some of their pleasant slogans such as “God Hates Fags”, “Thank God For Dead Soldiers”, “Thank God for 9/11″, “Thank God for IEDs”, “Fags are Beasts, “God Hates Jews”, “Fags Doom Nations”, etc, etc. The list is long and oh so thoughtful. When this group came to Burlington they brought with them their signs and their children to protest Vermont being “most ‘gay’ friendly spot in DOOMED america.” This was not the first time they visited little ol’ Vermont they came a couple of years earlier to spew nonsense during the funeral of a Richmond man killed in Iraq by one of those IEDs they like to scream about so much.
During their most recent visit the anti-Westboro contingent was large, persistent, and peaceful following them from Montpelier to Burlington and all around town just letting them know we didn’t agree with their tactics or the hateful rhetoric that came forth from their mouths and those of their children. BUT I don’t know one person involved in the Burlington section of the anti-Westboro crew that thought they didn’t have the right to say what they wanted wherever they wanted. As common defense of Howard Stern goes: If you don’t like him change the station?
OK so I and my recent proposal about taxing Games of Mass Destruction have been called stupid on this site. Well I haven’t been engaged in ad hominem attacks in quite a while so I am not going to start here. You disagree with my proposal? Fine come up with your own that doesn’t adhere to the same wrote dogma of the right! Everyone that I have proposed this War Games Tax to loves it from the right and the left. It might not be your cup of tea but it took a bit of research to concoct. Stupid is not the word I would use for it if I disagreed with it or the person that came up with it. Rather I would resort to words like overreaching, excessive, or counterproductive. It could reasonably be called one of these words but STUPID? I am pretty sure that it is not stupid. HOWEVER, here is what is STUPID and again I speak of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that a Republican AND a General feared in exiting The White House. President Eisenhower was prescient to say the least. Our MIC including The Pentagon, contractors, and bases worldwide are bloated at best and totally redundant at worst. They take from this country’s education, infrastructure, and long-term solvency, while creating nothing of actual value to anyone but those that kill either in the War On Terror, Drugs, or ____! Read
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/12-7
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-tyranny-of-defense-inc/8342/1/
AND GET OFF MY BACK STUPID!
In the wake of the horrible and senseless actions in Tucson last weekend I was not surprised but definitely fearful of what the response would be among the political elites. Instead of hearing them say we need to get out into our communities more and spend less time wining and dining lobbyists and the political punditocracy in DC or make a pledge to stop bullshitting us about everything from the country’s long-term fiscal and monetary stability to Peak Oil….WE GET people like Robert Brady a Democratic Pennsylvanian congressman proposing Political Exceptionalism laws. Read the rest of this entry »
I haven’t posted in quite a while and I am compelled to do so not as a devotee of Barack Obama or an apologist for the DNC, but as someone who is fed up with a couple of misnomers being promulgated in the media and society today. First the F_ _KING Tea Party is not a group concerned with government overstretch because if they were they would have come out of their hypocrisy closet a long time ago when we began our Imperial Overstretch or more recently the Moral and Home Life Overstretch of their conservative and born-again brethren on the social right. Oh yeah and there has not been a president more intrusive in our personal communications in the name of a poorly orchestrated and lied about war than Bush, Cheney, and Co. They forced Verizon to bend over and take it, although knowing what we know of Verizon I don’t think it took much coaxing. They spied on Quakers, Friends, Peace Activists, and they thoroughly beat the shit out of many of us that dared to confront them in the streets of St. Paul in 2008. Read the rest of this entry »
Angry as hell at Big Government? Sick of those same old tired cliches in Washington laughing all the way to the bank while our economy festers? Read the rest of this entry »
So I am pasting below a comment I left regarding this amazingly one-sided and in my opinion just out in left-field piece from Michael Boskin (Excuse the first point as I know it is petty but had to make it cause you would never someone like this call Bush, Reagan by their last name only!): Read the rest of this entry »
When I say that PK is in the place to be on this one I am making the understatement of the week if not the month! His last 4-5 columns have been spirited, focused, and slightly bombastic, but who cares about that when what he is talking about is what those on the left and the right in DC should be discussing if they truly are of the people by the people. Read the rest of this entry »
I have known for quite a while now that the vote I cast for you in November of 2008 – my first ever vote for a member of The Big Two – was one that I would not regret, because I am still a huge admirer of your intellect, but would come to view with a great degree of disappointment and anger. Read the rest of this entry »
