Not a lick of difference

[BO]

So, there you go...the senate approves Bush's surveillance bill.

Included in the yeh votes, the latest champion of the sheeple--Mr. 'we need a change'--Barack Obama. Turns out he's just another house nigga--doin' what his masters want. Can you say orrreeeeoooo?

Bwaahhaaahhaaa. Time to go spread some shit on the SC.

[waldopaper]

No doubt you've seen Pizzo's "Stupid Day," which (as of now) I can't find anywhere else but OEN... which is now going through the exact same dynamic as SC... complete with breakoff kool-kids-klub which i aint bothered to join. seems anytime a site picks up some numbers, it becomes- as audio sez- a "we're-being-buggered-by-a-camel-with-dignity sale."

We gotta hide the price tag on our hat when the quality folk come by. huf-puf-tut... then the "dlc" will take us "seriously..." bwaahhaaahhaaaaa... AGAIN.

[curt]

Bros, OEN is headed for the bin. Only a handful (5 or so) elefant seeers left there. That's less the 0,01 per cent. The Editor-in-Chief there has already filed me correctly, under "Radicals" and he watches my every move. One can only wonder how he hasn't been able to learn anything from what the "radicals" have been saying all along. Time & time again, the Ds have delivered rock solid proof : there is only one Party with two fractions.

[waldopaper]

It looks to me like Frank the Italian Suit with the senior editor haircut is being retained to create shareholder value. Naturally it's with People Magazine celebrity natter ...aaaannnd (does this sound familiar?) "we" don't want to alienate the "swing vote."
It (such pandering) would be annoying if any of this shit mattered any more than spots on a frog's ass. But it doesn't. The rich fatties have already decided what THEY are going to do... and it has nothing to do with Frank and Beano's celebrity gossip column.
OK... clicks and eyeballs. Reduction (deliberate) of the potential clicks and eyeballs by 90% or more does not fit the business model.
feh.

[BO]

The Chimp is about as relevant as Classmates.com now. Tedrick would be better off moving into real porn.

Hell, I can't even find a decent political site anymore. All of the good political commentary has moved to the financial sites like the housing bubble blog and the Daily Reckoning.

As always, if you want to know what the PTB are up to, just follow the money. This is, after all, the second gilded age. Everyone wants money for nothing and the chicks are free.

Anxiety culture. Gimme, Gimme. Same as it ever was...

[waldopaper]

Shit- lost a post... anyway... to summarize: Gilded Age... William Sumner... had a counter-voice in Edward Bellamy... who wrote Looking Backward... ever hear of it? Me either. And the Parable of the Water Tank in 1897. I had never heard of that one either.

Old Market-Economy Sumner in an 1899 speech said,

"The great foe of democracy now and in the near future is plutocracy. Every year that passes brings out this antagonism more distinctly. It is to be the social war of the twentieth century. In that war militarism, expansion and imperialism will all favor plutocracy. In the first place, war and expansion will favor jobbery, both in the dependencies and at home. In the second place, they will take away the attention of the people from what the plutocrats are doing. In the third place, they will cause large expenditures of the people’s money, the return for which will not go into the treasury, but into the hands of a few schemers. In the fourth place, they will call for a large public debt and taxes, and these things especially tend to make men unequal, because any social burdens bear more heavily on the weak than on the strong, and so make the weak weaker and the strong stronger. Therefore expansion and imperialism are a grand onslaught on democracy."

Sumner held that the market was an evolutionary critter, and was gonna do it's doo whether the "government" messed with it or not. The Sumner-Bellamy debate somehow reminds me of Dawkins- Gould. Why has "education" glossed over this- the presence of socialism in the US and associated labor struggles 100 years ago?

Welbutrin gives you "vivid dreams," and I been haunted by civil-war ghosts... coming up to the edge of the fence... not saying... just looking... like this guy:

What were the arguments... what was the polarization that split the US? They're telling me it's the same dang thing. oh wait... another clue- after looking into "the pledge" (Bellamy's cousin wrote it). came on this rabid anti-socialist site... and once again- yer dealing with eggnogs who don't know the difference between socialism and the Nazis. Was "the pledge" just papering over a war?

What is it old man? What are you trying to say?

[BO]

The Sumner quote perfectly describes our current condition. You could say his intuition was pretty amazing. But then human nature hasn't changed much. What worked 100 years ago still works today.

And yeah, Marx should be mandatory reading in schools. History is always taught as a bunch of events and correlating dates. Easily forgotten because of a lack of context. All history is struggle. Nothing but cycles of oppression and liberation.

The longer one lives, the more one sees the true nature of man. We owe it to our kids to tell them the truth. There are no heroes. Only the disillusioned can really be free.

[Mouse]

The longer one lives, the more one sees the true nature of man. We owe it to our kids to tell them the truth. There are no heroes. Only the disillusioned can really be free. Well said, Bo.
A while back you talked about narcissism.
Waldo, you're reminding me of our video idea.
Do you think our best writers here can put together something succinct to start with that gives a framework for an expression of mirror and veil,
not me clearly.

What do you think of that as the theme - deceit, self-deceit, for the young?

[Mouse]

[waldopaper]

I dunno... I tried "mirror world" and did not have that much luck... probably because I did not do it right. The most important concept i see now (only because i had to deal with it today) is "economic structure." Is there a difference between "owning" the means of production (communism) and "controlling" the means of production ("socialism")? foo. that is not even CLOSE.

[pan]

The Plot Against Liberal America

The Democrats who have taken their place are an improvement, certainly, but for the party's more entrepreneurial leaders electoral success in 2006 was merely an opportunity to accelerate their own courtship of Washington's lobbyists, think-tanks and pressure groups staked out on K Street. Democratic leaders have proved themselves the Republicans' equals in circumvention of campaign finance laws.

Throwing the rascals out is no longer enough. The problem is structural; it is inscribed on the map; it glows from the illuminated logos on the contractors' office buildings; it is built into the systems of governance themselves. A friend of mine summarized this concisely as we were lunching in one of those restaurants where the suits and the soldiers get together. Sweeping his hand so as to take in our fellow diners and all the contractors' offices beyond, he said, "So you think all of this is just going to go away if Obama gets in?" This whole economy, all these profits?

He's right, of course; maybe even righter than he realized. It would be nice if electing Democrats was all that was required to resuscitate the America that the right flattened, but it will take far more than that. A century ago, an epidemic of public theft persisted, despite a long string of reformers in the White House, Republicans and Democrats, each promising to clean the place up. Nothing worked, and for this simple reason: democracy cannot work when wealth is distributed as lopsidedly as theirs was-and as ours is. The inevitable consequence of plutocracy, then and now, is bought government.

[BO]

Obama: 'I will win'

A confident Barack Obama raised an extraordinary $7.8 million Sunday at three California fundraisers, most if it in large checks to a Democratic Party committee.

“I will win. Don’t worry about that,” he said to the crowd of about 1,300 at his third event of the evening, according to the pool report.

He was warmly received by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called him "a leader that God has blessed us with at this time."

Just think of all that bribe money that has to be returned in favors. We are all sooooo blessed. But wait. As soon as the election is over, all those blessed dollars ain't gonna be worth shit. As always, the devil is in the details.

[pan]

Just to remind us that everything is the same as it ever was, same as it ever was:

[The plutocrats believe there are some things worse than war]: the confiscation of special privileges; the abolition of unearned income; the overthrow of the economic parasitism; the establishment of industrial democracy. The plutocrats would welcome a war that promised salvation from any such calamities; they would also welcome a war that promised greater foreign markets, the destruction of foreign competition, more security for property rights and a longer lease on life for plutocratic despotism.

from The Great Madness, Scott Nearing, 1917