This is what we have free speech for. This excellent video says it all.
Ponder as you watch: could you imagine a production like this coming from anywhere else but the Land of The Free? (Think Spain, Sweden or France? Weep, that the land of the Magna Carta was not the obvious source or even a likely contender. Could we really see this video coming out of Berlin or Beijing, or more to the point, Sussex, or Liverpool? The tragedy…)
Yes, this video is so good I’m posting it here even though every other libertarian, freedom loving, and just plain sane blogger will post it too and I hate being repetitive. Yes it’s that good.
H/t To Catallaxy, Bolt, and to SPPI
The creators FreeMarketAmerica.org are looking for donations.
God forbid that I should admire the largest most successful collection of free people on Earth.
Update: Words by Ryan Houck
If I wanted America to fail …
To follow, not lead; to suffer, not prosper; to despair, not dream.
I would start with energy.
I’d cut off America’s supply of cheap, abundant energy. I couldn’t take it by force. So, I’d make Americans feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.
I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.
I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all-but-outlaw America’s most abundant sources of energy. And after banning its use in America, I’d make it illegal for American companies to ship it overseas.
If I wanted America to fail …
I’d use our schools to teach one generation of Americans that our factories and our cars will cause a new Ice Age, and I’d muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that they’re causing Global Warming.
And when it’s cold out, I’d call it Climate Change instead.
I’d imply that America’s cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes. I’d teach children how to ignore the hypocrisy of condemning logging, mining and farming — while having roofs over their heads, heat in their homes and food on their tables. I would never teach children that the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class and create lasting prosperity.
Instead, I’d demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.
If I wanted America to fail …
I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones. They would be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists could understand them. That way small businesses with big ideas wouldn’t stand a chance – and I would never have to worry about another Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or Steve Jobs.
I would ridicule as “Flat Earthers” those who urge us to lower energy costs by increasing supply. And when the evangelists of commonsense try to remind people about the law of supply and demand, I’d enlist a sympathetic media to drown them out.
If I wanted America to fail …
I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capitol to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights. I’d send federal agents to raid guitar factories for using the wrong kind of wood; I’d force homeowners to tear down the homes they built on their own land.
I’d make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build.
And because I don’t believe in free markets, I’d invent false ones. I’d devise fictitious products—like carbon credits—and trade them in imaginary markets. I’d convince people that this would create jobs and be good for the economy.
If I wanted America to fail …
For every concern, I’d invent a crisis; and for every crisis, I’d invent the cause; Like shutting down entire industries and killing tens of thousands of jobs in the name of saving spotted owls. And when everyone learned the stunning irony that the owls were victims of their larger cousins—and not people—it would already be decades too late.
If I wanted America to fail …
I’d make it easier to stop commerce than start it – easier to kill jobs than create them – more fashionable to resent success than to seek it.
When industries seek to create jobs, I’d file lawsuits to stop them. And then I’d make taxpayers pay for my lawyers.
If I wanted America to fail …
I would transform the environmental agenda from a document of conservation to an economic suicide pact. I would concede entire industries to our economic rivals by imposing regulations that cost trillions. I would celebrate those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private.
I’d convince Americans that Europe has it right, and America has it wrong.
If I wanted America to fail …
I would prey on the goodness and decency of ordinary Americans.
I would only need to convince them … that all of this is for the greater good.
If I wanted America to fail, I suppose I wouldn’t change a thing.
This is very sad and the saddest part is its absolutely true.
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I agree.
We are surrounded by abundant energy and led by world leaders who apparently secretly agreed among themselves in late 1945 to
a.) Unite Nations
b.) Avoid Nuclear War
c.) Hide Information about “Nuclear Fires.”
Since 1945, reliable new information has been ignored, manipulated or hidden on:
1. “Natural nuclear fires” on Earth in 1956
2. “Nuclear fire” in the Sun in 1975, . . 2005
3. “Slow nuclear fires” in cold fusion in 1989
4. “Natural nuclear fires” in planetary cores
This sad tale of deception is documented here:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-31
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The title should be “If I wanted America(Western world) to fail …(And Socialism to win?)”
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I know America and Americans. It will pull through, don’t ever doubt that. The presidential elections this year are the start of putting the trash out.
Pointman
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I’ve lived here (US) over half a century and watched as she slowly lost ground. All isn’t lost yet but the progression is troubling. Most observers the world around would be surprised to learn that if you subtract the east and west coast city dwellers from the votes cast for president, the results would always be conservative (republican) leaning libertarian. The problem we face is that the average city idiot hasn’t a clue how food is produced, raw materials are harvested, or what really constitutes wealth building. In addition, the left (Fabians?) has craftily gotten people addicted to government handouts, nearly assuring their vote.
Obama’s first win was extremely frightening to me because he shouldn’t have won-yet he did. Beating him this time around will be difficult. If he is run out, (I do so hope), I will have faith restored.
If he is re-elected you can start writing our epitaph.
It means that we were “asleep at the wheel” while they sacked us.
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Exposing who Obama is and how he and his appointees view the world is key. See my post below.
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Thus it was so sad when Andrew Breitbart died. He had only weeks earlier announced that he and his media scrutiny would be doing just as you said, and using all the left’s own tactics back at them if they wanted to play dirty.
A man of great energy and insight. He will be sadly missed.
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Sometimes Pointman, you’ve got some seriously insightful posts on your blog. Regrettably, on occasion, you come out with comments like this. The US is a one party state with two factions. I think you are suffering the same delusion that would have you believe Tony Abbot has any agenda other than maintaining the status quo when it comes to the carbon tax. Remember, he is a Rhodes scholar!
I despair that intelligent people still believe that such a thing as the political right and left actually exist.
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Yes, of course. There’s no left or right wing party in America. It’s all a conspiracy theory. They don’t exist. If you really believe that claptrap, then what the hell are you doing hanging around the blogosphere? Just here to whinge rather than waffle?
Within any real democratic system, the parties are never ideal or perfect but that’s what we’ve got to work with. Get used to the idea. Once people slide into the easy option of saying it’s all futile, no point in doing anything – all they’re doing is coming up with the oldest excuse for being lazy and sitting on their butt doing nothing. Without engagement in the political process, no political change will ever happen, which I suppose supplies a lot of whinge material …
Pointman
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All Waffle’s doing is trying to rationalize his inertia. Nothing is done by doing nothing.
In the Nepali film “Caravan” (also released as “Himalaya”), an old man (with his dying breath) is telling the young villager how to get their caravan over a difficult high pass:
“Keep moving upward, no matter how slowly.”
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Absolutely. Pisses me when idiots come out and claim that they are so down on the political process that they vote informal or don’t vote at all. Fine say i, if you don’t vote and engage in the process, you got no right to bitch about it.
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Good Grief! We agree on something.
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I agree with Waffle: the ‘right vs left’ pantomime is just fodder for the gullible masses.
We no longer have genuine democracy in the west: not in the US, not in Australia, not in the UK, in Europe – or anywhere else for that matter. What we have is that type of political-economic system called ‘fascism’. No, not jack boots and sexy black uniform type, a more covert form. But fascism nevertheless.
And it’s not about “conspiracy theory” pointman. Please! Labels like that are for people who let governments do the thinking for them. If you disagree then tell me: whose ‘conspiracy theory’ was it that Osama bin laden conspired with a bunch of islamist crazies to destroy the Trade Centre towers in NY in 2001? Or is a ‘conspiracy theory’ only sane if Government espouses it…?
And do you really believe that come November Americans will have a choice between a ‘free-market’ Romney and socialistic Obama? Please tell me that you don’t think that. There are no differences of any substance between the two mainstream parties in your country or in mine.
There are no differences that will have any meaningful consequence on matters of free market economics and individual liberty. Both of these people and the parties they represent are vociferous war-mongerers. Perhaps Romney more so than even Obama! Doesn’t sound very ‘free-market libertarian’ to my mind…Just like in Australia, the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ differ only in the particular special interest groups they serve. They are both socialistic and supporters of BIG government.
And does any Australian seriously believe that the Liberal Party in Australia is any more free-market or any less socialistic than the Labour Party? How exactly? What happened to Abbott’s promises of “small government”? Haven’t heard much about that since the polls have been showing a landslide to the Liberals. All we get now is promises of taxpayer-funded largess to fund paternity leave for well-paid executives and promises of doubling the baby bonus…Please! Free market my a*se!
And perhaps pointman you need to pay closer attention to your own country’s history. Your Constition and Bill of Rights were painstakingly constructed with essentially one over-riding objective: to limit the power of government. Note: not to limit the power of the people being governed – but this is exactly what has transpired after 2.5 centuries.
The right vs left pantomime we call democracy morphed into farce sometime ago and is now quickly turning to tragedy. That stuff is for child-like minds like Catamon’s.
As the libertarian American Ron Paul says: “government is the problem – not the solution.”
Finally, Ludwig von Mises dismissed the ‘left vs right’ rubbish as having no consequence in terms of free market economics and liberty. I think I’ll go with his view…
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Waffle,
Are you saying that the Bankers own the Democrats and Republicans – that America is a bribeocracy?
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George Carlin was a visionary –
http://www.blissful-wisdom.com/george-carlin-was-a-visionary.html
00
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George Carlin was a visionary –
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I presume that you have never lived or worked in a One Party State?
If I am correct, you might try taking a holiday in the DPRK – the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. It is a cheap holiday; you only need a one-way plane ticket.
And a word to the wise: It is probably better not to upset Pointman. He tends not to take prisoners.
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You miss the point Rereke as did Pointman.
You make an inappropriate distinction between a form of communistic authoritarianism of a bygone age (eg. the DPPK) and more sophisticated forms of fascistic authoritarianism in countries like ours which have evolved on the back of surpluses generated in bygone times when our democracies were still real and markets were still largely free and capitalistic.
But sadly, that wealth has long gone and all we have now is a pyramid of debt. And with it went our democracy and our free market economies. What we are now left with is a welfare-warfare form of statism – otherwise known as fascism. It is a pretence of democracy and capitalism and the political pantomime that gives credibility to this pretence is acted-out every 4 or 5 years and with some poetic license is actually not unlike a children’s pantomime, minus the two-person horse perhaps.
And, as more and more people see the political farce for what it has become, the actors’ masks and costumes are slowly being left to slip and fall away revealing the lies and the deceits; the threats to remove freedoms of expression and opinion; we can see the clandestine usurpation of private property rights; of ongoing theft of private wealth by appealing to our sense of “fairness”; we see the cameras everywhere and we are told of ever more draconian laws of arrest and detention; the removal of the presumption of innocence etc. etc. the justification of torture even!
And in Obama’s term, even a law giving him the legal right to murder any person anywhere, including any of his own citizens, merely on his say so…!
Does that sound like a healthy democracy to you?
It is certainly a sophisticated form of an evolving-authoritarianism I grant you. It makes very clever use of clever gadgets and clever tools to listen in, to discretely watch and record and to propagandise with; sophisticated – because it makes clever use of science and technology and knowledge to better target its messages, target its enemies; to more efficiently neuter/ eradicate them; more sophisticated than the DPPK because it knows much better what makes us tick: and so it uses appeal to authority and to consensus to sway our minds; most of all, plays on people’s envy of others and camouflages its motives in promoting environmental victimhood. But for all of that sophistication, it is still socialistic authoritarianism – whichever party is in government.
Real democracy depends on real choice. And on voters understanding what those choices are. A key element of the modus operandi of our sophisticated authoritarian systems is to give voters the impression of having a choice. The channels of marketing and propaganda are directed almost entirely at that aim. But what are the choices really?
In Australia: the direct carbon tax of Labor versus an indirect carbon tax of the Lib-Nats evolving into an ETS – supported by both parties (M Turnbull has anything to say on the matter). What kind of choice is that?
In the UK: The Conservative-Liberal coalition party who boasts they’re the greenest ever government and seemingly content to throw pensioners and other vulnerable groups into frigid fuel-poverty (costing real lives mind you) whilst funnelling millions of taxpayer pounds to a dozen or so very wealthy landowners for windmills, versus the UK Labour Party who claim they will re-distribute even more taxpayers money to the ‘renewables’ scam. What choice, exactly?
In the US: well, as I understand it, Romney will make war on Iran much more quickly than Obama. There’s a choice. What else…?
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Pointman, I admire your optimism. My problem is productivity. The western world has “welfared” and taxed itself into oblivion.
I can’t see where enough freedom is going to come from to re-produce the wealth creation of the pioneers of most of the west, but more over, the USA.
The USA is in a demographic and productivity death spiral.
80 million baby boomers have only about 1.3 kids. That’s not enough to provide the welfare system the system has become.
Pile on top of that, the fact that Borrowings returned 94 cents to GDP in the 50’s, down to 12 cents in ’08 and now -45 cents.
The demand on productivity to turn that around is near impossible to acheive, especially while input costs are under preasure from renewables and a lack of will to produce cheaper energy.
I love the American “we can do and acheive anything”. I just wish someone had locked it in a time capsule so it could be revisted when required.
Alas, I’m not sure enough Americans have an interest in the prosperity of the Republic, rather, what can your Government do you for you.
Don’t get me wrong. Just an outsider passing on my observations.
Here in OZ, well, where do I start? just a shambles.
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Pretty sure that the many Australians who don’t buy the rationale for Gillard’s carbon tax are pretty much aware of what the alarmist, activist, politicians and their fellow travellers will, if unchecked, do to our economy. Namely all the modern industrial economy destroying activities pointed up on this video.
Incidentally that super climate alarmist, James Lovelock, has had second thoughts about the pace of climate change. As reported in Watts up…:
“However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far”…”
…
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
…
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.”
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I have absolute confidence that America will repudiate the Obama regime in November (and for once ‘regime’ is the appropriate designation for an American government of Czars, bureaucratic despots, secretiveness and gall that would make Nixon blush). The people were hoodwinked, and wanted to believe, and so overlooked the warning signs. OK, it happens. But that is all past now. The illusions have evaporated. Obama is going to relieve Jimmy Carter of his title.
That’s the immediate concern. Longer term, free speech, information and markets are together a virtually unstoppable combination against any challenge.
But they have to be exercised. Even in little everyday things it’s important to exercise free speech; to fight against the constricting influences of cultural Marxism. Remember, each time you do a PC fairy loses its wings.
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Oh, so the previous administration, er regime, was so squeaky clean. Like starting a war on false premises and letting the financial institutions run wild, not to mention the approval of waterboarding for torturing POW’s. Obama didn’t inherit a very good situation but I’m not defending him. It’s apparent he is against fossil fuels and sold on renewables. I really don’t have much confidence in either party. Our government has degraded into an oligarchy and I don’t have much hope for relief anytime soon.
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Howie, the previous administration was not “squeaky clean” that’s probably impossible. But when do we get to say out loud that our present situation is squarely Obama’s fault?
I somewhat agree that our government behaves as a oligarchy, or corporatocracy. Crony capitalism is also part of the problem but I absolutely do not agree with the “Occupy” or 99% methods or concepts of resolving these problems. The only way I see that works is regularly changing our representatives and watching their votes carefully.
By the way, the financial institutions “running wild” started with Clinton era laws and oversight. Government “oversight” is a sham in many areas but “credit swaps” were so complex that it appears even big banks didn’t understand them. I can’t imagine government employees knowing more than the bankers themselves. I would have preferred that we not bail them out and instead let the chips fall where they would. This way the banks would learn something about their own failings. As it stands nothing seems to have changed much.
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The financial situation might have started under the Clinton administration but the Bush administration did nothing to rein the financial institutions in. Obama made a lot of promises that he didn’t keep and probably couldn’t have kept anyway. If the Bush administration hadn’t been so rotten Obama might never have gotten elected in the first place. It’s going to take someone truly great to get this country back on the right track but I don’t see anyone at present who could do that. As it stands right now I don’t see much chance of Obama being defeated in November but a lot of things could happen by then.
00
I do love to read an equal opportunity basher – as Bush was no saint (and neither is Obama). But I do want to correct one thing. Bush did not do ENOUGH. he did warn of the impending crises, but caved to congress in not pushing through reforms. So he is as much to blame. But to say he did nothing is not quite correct.
Obama is the same way. He did something. But it is as ineffectual to deal with the root cause as was Bush’s unheeded warnings. So both are equally culpable.
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We are all capable of looking down.
And see that our feet are firmly planted on the ground.
We know whats going on , we know why.
In the world of ideas, we don’t have anywhere to look.
Ideas may be someone elses fantasy, someone elses malice or someone elses greed but we cannot be sure an idea is one or the other, often until it is too late.
We try to look at what supports an idea and cannot see.
Those of us with scientific training know how to look and test and even then it is hard to know the truth.
The above “If I wanted America to fail ” is a brilliant way to emphasise that the failure to test, prod and push at ideas can have far reaching and devastating consequences.
Global warming is the focus here but in my hometown we have a huge conflict over the consumption of alcohol by our youth and the sad consequences.
This is a great piece, it helps to see that we can cut through the confusion and misinformation!
00
It’s one one of the more powerful videos around. The choice of actor was inspired — the guy is very, very good.
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Oz is buggered!!
Can I come and live in Formerly ???? 🙂
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Perhaps not the whole country but certainly a number of our pollies!
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As scum rises to the top, so do psycopaths.
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And aiding and abetting the IFUKUS-coalition “in the national interest” is not in our interest.
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Nah, Blackadder, don’t be goin’ anywhere jus’ yet. Bit of hard work an’ well have th’ Oz that we built back with us.
… It’s a bit like French polishin’ a good piece of old furniture. Gotta strip back the years of accumulated stains and regulation. Clean it up, and then let the new polish bring out th’ best in her…Less is more when it comes to polishing good furniture. It’s all about the wood, not the gloss. It’s all about the people’s enterprise, not the Bureaucrats ambition.
This thin veneer of elitist crud that suffocates us, will not break the sturdy grain of our well made Aussie paradise.:-)
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At some point, you’ll get sick of chaasing the whiteants and woodowrm that fester throughout the material.
Better of starting with a newly felled tree, and building something with the old mistakes in mind.
The problem is, you have to let the furniture run it’s course to see where the remedies lay.
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They have black box voting machinery in the united States, no paper trail, no verification, no wonder nothing will change that isn’t approved of by the real rulers aka the banksters.
We need to start acting like we are the maintenance crew of spaceship Earth. We have to think long term, 25 year plans instead of one year schemes. We have to establish a conceptual continuity. We need to understand how reality works. The sun doesn’t rise or set, if our language is defective, can we expect anything better than a garbage in garbage out scenario.
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Some look at the USA as a monolothic block, and to much of the outside world, it is. However, you have to state the name of the country to understand the error of your statement.
It is The UNITED STATES of America. i.e. 50 states. 50 election systems (some states even more since how elections are run are left to the localities). That is why you have hanging chads in Florida, and lack of primary ballots in Virginia. Because each state does it its own way. There are NO USA Elections. Even the president is a series of 51 (District of Columbia gets a vote as well) elections, not ONE election.
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I have seen similar ones before. But I like you take on it. It is a point I make continuosly to many – the one remaining asset America has is its true Freedom of Speech. No other country has it. But alas, that freedom is now under assault. By no less than Pelosi and Obama.
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If it helps, every time the guy says “America”, just mentally substitute “Australia” and then see if the statement still holds true. Unfortunately, many of them are true on this side of the Pacific.
> I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.
Carbon tax and solar, check.
> I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all-but-outlaw [our] most abundant sources of energy.
Climate Change Authority and Clean Energy Council, check.
> I’d muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that they’re causing Global Warming.
ABC Tells When Kids Should Die, and the national curriculum, check.
The the Chief Scientist commissions a report that recommends “reducing the content of science subjects to a realistic level”.
> I’d imply that [Australia’s] cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes
Wind power projects have been mostly cancelled, but wishful thinking is aplenty.
> Instead, I’d demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.
The 500
top employersderdy polluders, check.> I would ridicule as “Flat Earthers” those who urge us to lower energy costs by increasing supply.
By Lobbyists, Liberals, and Greenpeace, check.
> And when the evangelists of commonsense try to remind people about the law of supply and demand, I’d enlist a sympathetic media to drown them out.
Yep, ABC, check.
> I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capitol to bully [Australians] out of their dreams and their property rights.
Spencers and Sheahans, check.
> I’d make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build.
Thomsons farm and the Mining super profits tax, that’s 2 out of 4.
> And because I don’t believe in free markets, I’d invent false ones.
Check.
> For every concern, I’d invent a crisis;
Horrifyingly, check.
How’re we doin’? 🙁
The rest of the video is a list of signs to watch out for during this year.
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“loggers to log”
Already happened in Queensland – Fraser Island was consistently logged for a hundred years but because some greenies couldn’t add up, thirteen sawmills and a hundred jobs were lost in Hervey Bay. That peeved me because the very area that was most pointed to as being virgin wilderness had been clearfelled after WW2 to provide the turpentine poles to rebuild the London Docks.
Then came the Western Hardwoods lockout – again, areas carefully logged for over a hundred years were locked up. Only people that go in there now are druggies tending their crops.
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Majority of Americans are not aware of many of the people and their views that Obummer has in place in his government. John Holdren is a name few are aware of. His views even less so. Most in the skeptic community are aware of who he is but may not be aware of the details of his views. Perhaps Jo could do a post on this frightening and now empowered man. If not, folks would do well to familiarize themselves with Holdren and his world-view. The more the public know about him, the less likely they are to vote for that administration. To sum up; Anti-human, anti-freedom.
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And then there’s EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
And then there’s Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
And then there’s Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. (Open Mouth Change feet)
All three of these directly implementing what the video directly concerns.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Tony.
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Don’t forget James Hanson of GISS.
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Ahoy Tony
As the resident music critic & of a similar vintage perhaps you can help me.
I was a little tacker in the Vietnam War era, but I can still remember the odd protest song lyric.
The one that comes to mind had a cynical line
“Be the first on one the block to have your son brought home in a box”.
It occurs to me, as a paranoid cynical pessimist ( who only ever gets pleasant surprises), that Australia’s current crop of pollies is hell bent on being the first one on the block to throw away a functioning healthy economy & just society. All to prove their Fabian/ NWO credentials to people & organizations which will not themselves suffer for the folly & for the benefit of an even smaller group.
On ANZAC Day in particular, I find myself wondering if the society which is planned for us is the one for which so many have sacrificed.
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Ah!
Country Joe McDonald.
The band was Country Joe And The Fish.
Amazing how you remember a song from just one section of the lyrics, so you can never quite track it down.
The song is titled ‘I Feel Like I’m Fixin To Die Rag’, and here’s the clip of them doing the song at Woodstock, and caution, it has bad language.
I Feel Like I’m Fixin To Die Rag
Now, even though I was a staunch member of the RAAF, that didn’t mean I I didn’t like most forms of music, even protest songs, and hey, isn’t that the theme of the title, free speech hence the freedom of free thought.
Speaking of Country Joe, there was a wonderful wonderful movie he was in called ‘Zachariah’. It was billed as the first electric western. Had a number of bands in it. Obscure movie, and it played at art houses mainly, and I saw it (three times I think) in 1971 at a small arty theatre on Hunter Street in Newcastle up near the Hunter end of that long street.
Tony.
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“Hunter Street in Newcastle” the stuff of Bob Hudson legend!
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Art house theatre in Hunter Street Newcastle, sounds like the ROMA Theatre, owned by Margaret and Theo Goumas. Although 1971 may have been their other theatre, the Kensington, which for years had a banner for My Fair Lady, strung across the front of the theatre above the awning.
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Bob,
It was a tiny little theatre up near the Mall.
Played mostly smaller films that the big theatres didn’t take.
The Kensington doesn’t sound familiar at all. Even had hessian seats I think, and barely fit 100 people even when packed, and the only time I think they may have been packed was for the original Emmanuelle movie, which none of the others would touch, and must have made them a mint as it ran to packed houses, and was extended for one week, and then extended for a second week.
Oddly, Zachariah played to near full houses also. Word soon got out. Great music, and for a Western, it was totally outside the mould. Cowboys playing electric guitars was a bit ‘out there’ but the whole house rocked.
A group of around half a dozen of us went on the Thursday night, and then again the Friday, and for the Saturday Matinee as well.
I even think they extended that one a week also.
Tony.
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Sounds like the ROMA, which started life as the Tatler which showed Movietone, Cinesound newsreels, travel shorts and WB cartoons, Bugs Bunny,Pepe Le Pew, Road Runner, continuously through the day. No sessions, the lights never came on from opening to close of day, just a continuous loop.
As a child when the city was still a vibrant shopping precinct, not the dead, neglected shopping strip it is today, my mother would start at the West end of town, make her way to the top of town doing a little bit of shopping and a lot of window shopping as she went but always spent 30 minutes to an hour in the Tatler.
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For Novocastrians too young to place the Tatler/Roma theatre it is now the toy and hobby place.
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I was going to add to this but decided to read below and found everything I was going to say in Bob Malloys comment.
Had forgotten the name “Roma” but could easily bring up Tatler (alzheimers at work) having sat through some Newsreels there: just pop in to get the news.
🙂
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Playing off of Milton MacPhail (#7):
Also keep in mind that groups like ACORN (supposedly defunct) can negate one person’s vote many times over, so if there is regime change in November in the United States, it will be becuase of a genuine mandate from those whose eyes are open.
I made a similar point to the U. of North Carolina professor who found that ‘well-educated conservatives [US terminology]’ tended to be distrustful of ‘climate science’. I asked (and have not received an answer), what is fair about my one (“educated-conservative-climate-skeptic”) vote being negated thousands of times over by rampant voter fraud; why do law-enforcement personnel (Attorney General Eric Holder) refuse to investigate and prosecute these crimes?
An agenda?
I think the video is the tip of the iceberg … … …
Regards,
Mark H.
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Electronic voting. Election results preprogammed.
http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html
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Homer voted electronically in 2008.
It’s on youtube.
It’s still funny.
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Electronic voting, don’t go there. I do IT security and some of the utter horror stories concerning EV I’ve heard indicates the kit never went near anybody who really knew what they were doing with technical security. Even basic stuff like ‘replaying’ vote transmissions or making your own ‘admin cards’ were possible… No audit trail etc.. A stuffed monkey mounted on a pole could have come up with something more secure.
Go back to the old pen and paper – tried & trusted and a darn sight more secure.
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This is a powerful video….
Do you think if we put the words KONY in it, will it work?????
Hmmmmm….
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Thanks for posting this Jo, I’m in the process of posting it on financial sites.
Best,
John from CA
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Well made vid. Crap, but well polished crap.
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“CRAP”
It’s the Abbott,Abbott,Abbott syndrome. Watch out folks, it might be contagious.
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Hmm!
As a young and spectacular looking 18 year old Debbie Reynolds sang in 1950:
Abadabadabadabadabadabadabadaba said the chimpy to the monk
Tony.
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“I Remember It Well”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sISWPzEqHLQ
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Wow Catamon, that single comment alone has made me realise how ignorant you are.
The facts and evidence is all around you, slapping you in the face and you still dont see it.
I may have missed it but who exactly are you, who do you work for and where are you from? You have to be a Psi-Op of sorts.
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CRAP = cannot really argue points.
00
I think is crap because, really, the if the US is failing its got little or nothing to do with the proposed responses to AGW, and a lot more to do with the rabid right trying to drive the politic’s in the US. There is a lot of work needs doing in the US to recover from Baby Bush’s time as President and its going to take years yet.
It is however finely produced propaganda and should be appreciated for what it is.
Want the US to fail? Simple. Get more Teabagger’s in positions of power, and let them continue to try and fark up the revenue base. Most of the Yanks i’ve met aren’t stupid people so there is hope.
Those lines are quite true, just not in the context of the vid.
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This is the new meme on why “Obama can’t solve any problems” (but keeps creating new ones): “Bush wrecked everything!”
One is tempted to ask: If BO can’t get the job done, isn’t it time we tried someone else? I’m looking forward to the Democrats running on excuses for impotence — stupidity will seem more a more likely reason to most people.
(Except for the really slow ones, like Catamon.)
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Catamon says @ 14.4:
No no no. Try this:
There all fixed.
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Catamon
the old Bush Derangement Syndrome still runs deep I see.
President Obama says that he inherited the economy.
He didn’t inherit the economy.
He asked for it, campaigned for it, spent millions to acquire it, and then promised to change it.
He hasn’t.
Tony.
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Finally someone that explains it in a manner that any idiot, with the exception perhaps of alarmist troll type idiots, can understand. Obama didn’t inherit it, he wanted it. He said he’d change it and I would disagree with Tony’s assessment only on this point by saying I think Obama did change it but his changes made it worse not better.
As to it being Bush’s fault, well Bush may have been in the oval office but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were leading the two houses of congress. Congress was controlled by Obama’s party and when he came in the Democrats had both houses AND the executive. Yet the only change they made to the economy was to worsen it.
Still the irrational and those who are clueless about the American political system, which by the way includes many of our own US citizens, blame Bush.
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Very sharp analysis Tony, you get it better than 40% (or more) of Americans!
Good onya.
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Catamon –your mate President Obama is the guy who when a drone aircraft crashed in Iran got on the phone and asked the Iranians to give it back.His advisors wanted to send in another to the area and blow it up –common sense to everyone but Obama.
Of course the Iranians said no , went and collected it , were able to extract some of the information from it’s recorders and then went about reverse engineering the drone and built one for themselves.
Forget the politics but who would want someone like that running your country.
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Obama definitely. Who would want the kind of idiot who will start a shooting war with a country over something as minor as that as their leader? Tech leakage risk goes hand in hand with using the tech.
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Start a shooting war? Iran has been in a ‘shooting war’ with the US since 1979, when they stormed our embassy and took everyone hostage. They have been organizing terrorist attacks against the US ever since then.
Only those as dumb as you deny it.
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Actually there were two significant things that Baby Bush did.
Unsustainable tax cuts for the rich.
Iraq II.
From those two monumental blunders much flows, neither of which are easy to fix.
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And Bush inherited a nightmare from Clinton.
Think how monumentally lucky not only the U.S. is but in fact the whole World for that fact.
The Kyoto Protocol was presented to the U.S. Senate to vote if the U.S. should add that all important second signature, ratifying the Protocol. It was presented to The Senate by Al Gore, as President Clinton’s Vice President.
Some people say that the Clinton Administration may have been hamstrung by what was predominantly a Republican Senate, so it may stand to reason that The Senate, maybe in fit of Republican pique that they not vote for anything presented by a Democrat President, predictably voted against ratifying that infamous Protocol.
So then, have a guess how close the vote was?
The vote to ratify the Kyoto Protocol was rejected, by what can only be called a very close count.
95 – 0.
Not one Senator voted to ratify.
Democrats and Republicans both.
Phew!
Dodged a major bullet there. Imagine where we would be now had they got it passed.
And guess who still gets the blame for not ratifying Kyoto?
Yep! Right in One. George W Bush.
Tony.
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OK then, further to this.
In a flourish, and barely weeks from his election victory, Kevin Rudd flew off to Bali, and added that vital second signature on behalf of Oz, thus leaving only one Country on Planet Earth (one of 192) not to add that second signature, the U.S.
Barely months later President Obama came to power with a Democrat House, and a Democrat Senate.
Now, almost 4 years later, and still no second signature from the U.S. If it was SO SO important, why hasn’t he even presented it?
Tony.
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Tony,
Arguing with catamon requires the removal of at least 20 IQ points and the ability to tolerate this weeks ALP spinlines.
When s/he is finally cornered, it will just spout abuse like some kindergartner. It’s actually kinda funny, in a pathetic kind of way.
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I would say you are not american, but your talking points look all too familiar of the left. They demonstrate your ignorance as well. For those of us colonials who study things, we realize the truth is not cookie cutter or easy to grasp to the sheep of animal farm. However, the truth is what it is. Not some spin created by ignorant sheep to please the new Napoleon.
The “crap” was left from a failed policy of trying to ensure all americans, whether they could afford it or not, home ownership. That last clause is the key. If you cannot afford it, you have no business buying it. For it leads to default. It is not the banks fault you cannot pay. But that is the mantra of the left.
And the cause of the defaults are the CRA, a law passed by a democrat president, and protected by democrat (that is the left in the colonies) congresspeople. Bush 43 warned of the impending crises – 7 times. And was roundly booed off the stage by the same self serving democrats who then proceeded to look for scape goats when his prophecy came true.
This is not hypothetical jargon. These all are historical facts. But you will not find them in the talking points of the left in the colonies. it does not fit their agenda. They do not care about the outcome of their actions – only the intentions. And as is so often the case, the outcomes do not match the rhetoric.
Catamon is merely another Ovine disciple of the new pig leader napoleon.
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Try to learn where apostrophes go. Not in making nonpossessive plurals. “politics”, “Teabaggers”.
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You should probably learn to place comments under the post you are referring to, since I did not use any apostrophes – correctly or incorrectly.
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Phil, this was not a reply to your comment. It was a response to Catamon’s comment at 12:59 pm on April 25 in which he wrote the two words that I mentioned as singular possessives, not as simple plurals.
If you had read those two words in my comment you would have seen that it could not apply to yours, which includes neither of those words.
I clicked on Reply in Catamon’s comment, but my little contribution was inserted much lower down.
If you look at the indenting of these comments since that one you will see that none of them is as far left as that one, so the blog system nearly got it right.
Obviously, that point about not being as far left applies in another way too.
I thought your comment immediately above was valid. One of the Up votes on it was mine.
Bush bashing was a top sport of the junk infotainment media, and still seems to be in some cases, made easy by some obvious stuffups that he made in speaking, but the substance of the guy (and his academic record) told a very different story.
Laurie W
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Sadly true!
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At dawn of 25th April 1915 our young men stormed the shores of Gallipoli.The sun will shortly rise over the East coast of Australia:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old,
age shall not weary them nor the years condem,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. Lest we forget.
To all that have served our nation, thank you and God Bless.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRtDWMke79c&feature=related
Pointman
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Thanks
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I know I’m late posting these, they are some of my favorites.
Remembering those from the great war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntt3wy-L8Ok
For those that served in Vietnam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKcMwSLkB84
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gUSq7pxux4&feature=related
For those presently serving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QgBUbEHVA
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War can be a serious business http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrK_jyZUlQc&feature=related
Pointman
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Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0d0uzRalHY&feature=relmfu
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I love your blog, Jo, I really do. But I do think that the left/right thing in relation to CAGW obscures the real issue. Personally, I’m not either left or right wing. I can see the pluses and minuses of both sides. I believe it’s good to have a balance between free enterprise and social support; humanity needs both.
Too much of either is a bad thing. Yes, admittedly leftist green loonies want us to live in a Luddite paradise, and don’t think out what the deleterious effects would be of actually succeeding in their aims. But by the same token, free market philosophy carried to its ultimate can result in great poverty and injustice. The extremes in either case can lead to barely distinguishable evils.
I think the real issue can’t be articulated in political terms. It’s something that, when it *is* articulated, seems hopelessly idealistic. Put simply, I’d say it’s a refocusing of humanity on the large scale to the pursuit of truth, to which all other activities, including politics, would be subservient.
I suspect that philosophically, green loonies and Wall street raptors alike might accept this; it’s just that they think they already have the truth, and so there is nothing to pursue. The conclusion is inherent in the premises for action rather than the premises for action needing to be based on the pursuit of as-yet-unrevealed truth (plus the acknowledgment of what we are currently ignorant of).
Study history, Jo. Never in the memory of man has the human race ever been able to predict what the long-term outcomes of particular attitudes, and actions based on those, will be. All we can say, with the benefit of hindsight, is what actually happened regardless of the aims of the movers and shakers–because of factors they weren’t aware of that simply had to arise, given that the truth of the situation was whatever it was, and that people react as they are wont to do.
Buckminster Fuller put it like this: outcomes are at right angles to expectations. They are in a direction that no one planned or foresaw. Personally, I suspect (and certainly hope), that the human world will become a less crazy place than it is now, just as it is somewhat less crazy than it once was. I have this sneaking suspicion that at some point in our future, we will see the tendency to split the views of humanity into two opposed camps, currently identified as left vs right, as insane as we currently view, say, the past religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.
I see us as being engaged in Swiftian battles between big endians and little endians, arguing which end of the soft-boiled egg it is proper to break when accessing its nutrition. We are such a clever species in some respects, and yet are still in our infancy when it comes to being able to concentrate on what really matters–viz. the pursuit of truth and the acknowledgement of what we are ignorant of. Call that being idealistic if you like, but I believe that being driven by that imperative is in fact the most efficient and effective way for us to evolve as a species. We have taken as long as we have to get where we currently are mainly because, at any given moment, we have been such know-it-alls that actually knew diddly-squat.
It will all eventually come out in the wash, at which time we will doubtless be faced by a new set of challenges that we’ll deal with in the same kind of way, but hopefully not quite as inanely. One thing I will agree with, though: free speech is essential, but in the end, left and right are as likely to want to restrict, or abuse, it.
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“Study history, Jo. Never in the memory of man has the human race ever been able to predict what the long-term outcomes of particular attitudes, and actions based on those, will be.”
No, but history repeats.
Over and over and over. . . it repeats. . . and its repeating again.
00
He who does not understand history, is condemned to repeat it.
Winston Churchill.
00
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill.
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You would be talking about Classical Liberalism here — the philosophy of maximizing Human liberty: Personal liberty, political liberty, and economic liberty. This is the philosophy that has transformed the world over the last 300 years, whose resulting cornucopia has increased human welfare and wealth beyond the imagining of our ancestors.
Is this philosophy without flaws? Does it result in wonderful results for absolutely everyone? Of course not — it’s just light-years better than anything else the Human race has tried.
No political party completely embodies this philosophy, but there are significant differences. Today (in the USA) the Republican party is the most influenced by Classical Liberalism, and that has been the case for almost its entire 150 year history. (True, it has a somewhat isolationist and reactionary wing as well — but they rarely achieve power.)
The Democratic party was first the Party of Slavery; then the Party of Segregation and Racism (The Ku Klux Klan was the ‘military wing’ of the Democrats — and now, ‘Reverand’ Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson take up the slack from the other side). Currently, the Democrats are the Party of Collectivism.
There was a time, in the 1960s, when the Democrats embraced Classical Liberalism — after the party was purged of the collectivists who were trying to infiltrate it. (BTY: Ronald Reagan did his part in that, as a Democrat.) But those champions (‘Scoop’ Jackson and J.F.Kennedy) would be kicked out of todays Democratic party — or already left it to become the ‘neocon’ wing of the Republicans.
Historically, Collectivism has been one of the worst philosophies the Human race has ever tried — just as Classical Liberalism has been the best.
The idea that there is no essential difference between political philosophies is pernicious nonsense — would you let someone tell you there is no difference between liberty and slavery?
*******************
Why has Classical Liberalism prevailed (as much as it has, anyway) in modern times? Here is an essay on that subject that may provide food for thought (and help explain why collectivists are uniformly against the right of self-defense).
These facts and opinions are uncomfortable to many, who have been imbued with the collectivist idea that, if Human nature could just be changed (never mentioning that extreme force must be used to accomplish this, if then), a utopia would be possible. Freedom itself is often uncomfortable, especially to those who have been taught to be dependent. This should not prevent you from clearly looking at the historical facts and choosing the best of the possible alternatives. “Perfect” does not exist.
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Something different Via WUWT:
“Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth”
Henrik Svensmark in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
ftp://ftp2.space.dtu.dk/pub/Svensmark/MNRAS_Svensmark2012.pdf
“Here are the main results:
– The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.
– The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.
– Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..
– As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times.”
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Australia is more likely to be the country not allowing such a speech, instead of eg Sweden (with eg the worlds oldest Freedom of the Press Act, 1766). See:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/finkelstein-media-recommendations-would-poison-our-democracy/story-e6frgd0x-1226289830360
However, the problem is not if you are “allowed” to say this or that. It is rather that in a country with a too strong political establishment and too many politicians and bureaucrats, they can simply and easily IGNORE what people want and do whatever they want.
But the tide is turning for environmentalism. And it goes hand in hand with slowly taking power away from politicians.
–Ahrvid Engholm
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If you wanted to, you could substitute the word ” Australia” for ” America” and the article would be equally as true.
00
Fantastic video. This would make a good starting point for promoting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign (are you listening Mitt?). Great stuff, Jo
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Hey,
what do you expect from aging, Grandpa Baby Boomers?
They and the “lost generation” of the ’30’s couldn’t do anything to match the “greatest generation” who fought WWII, so, for their clueless egos, they are
…. saving the world! (from their egos)
But now the mess has been made:
ceding the moon and Mars to China,
allowing Iran and N. Korea to gain nukes,
“Peace for our time” as dear, old Neville said,
robbing Peter to buy votes (free medical, housing, etc anyone?)
and the Millennial generation will have to clean it up.
On the other hand, Grandpa has “borrowed his way to prosperity and he’ll be long gone before it’s paid for!
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Libertatum is once again neglected /sadface
If you’re point is to emphasize Liberties or Libertarianism, my suggestion would be to add Libertatum back onto the Magna Carta. At best it will convey your intent; at worst it will aggravate pinkos.
On a side note, I believe this is the video and group that Twitter removed from their site a some days ago merely hours after it was put up.
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I feel something from it. Look at it go!
00
“If I wanted America to fail….” I’d call for mandated 83% CO2 Cuts by 2050 — as passed by the U.S. House in 2009. You talk about taking a wrecking ball to civilization… Yes, what one person calls a harrowing failure, most leftists call success. From my Real Science comment:
If this AGW scare doesn’t work, the liberal elite econuts will rebrand and repackage and reposition. Obama’s Science Czar’s John Holdren’s past call (before the AGW scare) to “de-develop the United States” & create a “stable low consumption economy” is the political expression of the leftist dream, and they will push and push for that. Driving it all is secular guilt, and the dream of their own Eden. But the raw feeling of their pastoral fantasy is not dressed in words such “a stable low consumption economy,” but THIS:
“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion.” –Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue
They see draconian CO2 cuts as the ticket to fold up industrial civilization, if all goes “well.” But unfortunately, for them, and everybody else, it wouldn’t lead to this Utopian Eden. An Alabanian told the story of what happened to their country with the collapse of communism (and just some supply systems): “Even the trees lining the roads were chopped down.”
It would be no Garden of Eden. I could say that instead it would be like a Mad Max world — but it’d be much worse. No desert idealism of clean and clean-cut ruffians. Tons of people (at first), and just cutting discomfort, cold, disease, dirtiness, dysentery, hunger, and violence.
You’d think at some point, let’s say after severe CO2 caps are implemented, and other problems ensued, people would see it coming, and repeal… But there would possibly be too much inertia, and once a series of collapses begin, it may be impossible to halt the descent.
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Very cool video. Nice work.
May I point you all to a new Lobby Group that will be launced soon called the Aus Taxpayers Alliance which may interest many of you on here and their policies. > http://www.taxpayers.org.au They stand for similar things that is listed in the video but also is against the unnecessary taxes, waste, welfare state and social policies of the Left.
Also, Hope everyone is enjoying ANZAC Day!
00
Oh goody, the [snip you mean Tea-Party] are coming to a website near you! Considering the Coalition are pretty prominent economic illiterates at the moment, do we really need another lot carrying the same flag??
00
I see the Guilleard/Thomson/Slipper mob must be in real trouble again.
They’ve sent out their pre-eminent spin dummy out to bore everyone again.
Keep at it catamon – let’s see if you can do another hatchett job on someone. After all, it’s worked so well for your comrades in Queensland (you know the ALP Tarago party).
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[I see the Guilleard/Thomson/Slipper mob must be in real trouble again.]
Probably not as much as you’d like to think Maddy dear. Will be interesting to see to who the sh#t sticks on this one.
Suspect the whole affair will get quietly dropped if Slipper is cleared of the CabCharges thing as there seems to be a dawning realization in the Noalition ranks that the harassment stuff is worse for them than anyone else.
Seems the Regime Change is possibly not as imminent as some would like it to be mate. 🙁
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I guess the corrupt ones can allways stall it by 2-3 years with a useless investigation eh.
Keep it up there you lot, you’re doing a fantastic job of destroying the ALP unionist front.
00
I’ve only read a few of your DH comments and I realise that you must be associated with the Watermelons.
00
Considering the domination of left-wing lobby groups in Political circles, I do not thing this is such a bad thing. They also have some highly qualified people running the group.
00
Catamon – your homophobia is very unsightly. Please, take your hatred to your nearest klan rally – where you will be perfectly at home. And stop maligning people just because you do not like what they do in the privacy of their home.
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Ok Phil you are going to have to explain exactly what you mean by “your homophobia”. I don’t believe i have posted anything here that can be considered homophobic or in fact have even referred to sexual orientation in any of my posts.
I could of course if that would make you feel like less of a twit?
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If I believed you were that naive and stupid, I would not have called you out on your contemptuous behavior. However, you appear to be at least a learned man – albeit easily duped as is indicated by your insistance upon talking points.
You have indeed made sexual references in a derogatory way. And as typical of your ilk, you then feign ignorance. I do not buy your ignorance for a second. I just find you contemptible.
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Tony from OZ,
Loved your post at PA Pundits:
Bob
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Americans call their their day ‘Veterans Day’, and they observe that day on November 11, the day we observe as Remembrance Day.
I did a Post for that day a few years back now, and it’s been one of the popular Posts at our site, because Americans had no idea.
It was about John Monash, and how instrumental he was in actually ending the War itself. He is the ONLY non American to ever command US troops in any combat situation, as they are always under the command of their own people.
It’s from that wonderful book Monash by Roland Perry.
I hope you don’t mind if I add the link here.
Remembrance Day And The Importance Of Australia’s General Sir John Monash
Tony.
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Tony
I don’t mind at all. In fact I have saved both articles and forwarded both to a British born overnight radio host with a strong interest in Australian history.
00
Thanks Bob,
I just loved that line …… “anyone got a light?”
Only from an Australian.
Tony.
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Great Vid there Jo – very pertinent.
Bush Lawyers hat on here:
If this is right from ABs blog, under the Fair work australia 2009 legislation, he could be presumed under law as being guilty rather than having the presumption of innocence:
Link here
Wow, I can see the lawyers putting downpayments on their next beach house with this one, probably.
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Wow , what a good little Ayn Rand acolyte! Pity someone probably wrote the script for him because he sure as hell doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. To suggest that America is in the straits that it is, as a country, due to a carbon plan which is not even in operation shows you how daft this line of ‘thought’ is. The global financial crisis is a DIRECT effect, on worldwide scales, of unfettered free market fundamentalism. You can’t have it both ways.
Jo, I, along with Michael Larkin, cannot believe you actually subscribe to this. And it’s the guy in the video complaining of impenetrable products/laws of the upper class causing suffering to those less well off! Breathtaking hypocrisy. Can everybody say CDOs, subprime mortgages, bail outs for blatant robbers….
No, the dire state of the US is NOT due to a lack of freedoms.
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Matt Bennett
Hmm!
Taxpayer-Backed Green Energy Firms Struggle, But Hike Executive Pay
Tony.
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Untrue, emotional and meaningless statement.
If you want to complain about the closeness of large banking to government, you’ll get no argument from me. If you want to point out that the financial markets have become a giant casino and are too unstable, I’ll nod my head.
But to somehow pretend that free market fundamentalism (whatever that is) causes financial breakdowns is utter rubbish.
In order to get that kind of financial destruction you need very strong regulatory capture by the banking institutions, government coercion for unsuitable credit risks to take on excessive credit, coupled with government coercion for unsuitable lenders to lend it to them. You need a meddling central bank and you need a fiat currency. And you need a hectoring academic class wagging their finger and saying ‘you wouldn’t understand, we’ve invented a way to remove systemic risk’.
None of those are considered to be free market inventions. In fact they’re all a feature of big governments. Big governments enable the big companies to capture their markets, free of competition. Try and start a retail bank or investment bank and see how far you get before someone in government starts talking to you.
The whole idea of ‘too big to fail’ is a complete anathema to those who support free markets. As is the idea of propping up failed institutions with public money and then rewarding the executives lavishly.
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Oi! Please excuse the over-long rant. I thought I’d finally reached my “angle of repose,” that I could no longer be provoked by dumb liberals; but every so often, something just snaps . . .
. . .
Matt Bennett is clearly suffering from chronic (and likely terminal) Liberal Cranial-Anal Syndrome. How and when could I tell? The moment he invoked Ayn Rand, when no one previously had. Liberals seem to regard Rand as some sort of Libertarian avatar, whereas most Libertarians see her as a silly schoolgirl romantic and quasi-embarrassment.
Bennett’s condition has undoubtedly immunized him to facts & reason, but for the more critical, open-minded reader, I offer the following corrections to his loony litany:
“. . . America is in the straits that it is, as a country, due to a carbon plan. . .”
As is obvious to almost anyone but Bennett, the so-called carbon plan is but one of the long list of statist ills besetting America that are mentioned in the video, and it most certainly did not blame all of the USA’s economic woes on it.
“The global financial crisis is a DIRECT effect, on worldwide scales, of unfettered free market fundamentalism. You can’t have it both ways.”
No, Matt, it is not a result of “free market fundamentalism” (whatever that is), DIRECT or otherwise. It was, however, a direct result of American lenders’ irresponsible lending practices (of which the notorious sub-prime market+daughters was only one), which were a direct result of policies enacted in the ‘70s, under the Carter administration, whereby lenders were strong-armed by the feds into adapting risky lending practices, with the pretext of eliminating racist lending practices. The lenders of course lobbied hard for some kind of federal protection from these sub-prime mortgages, leading directly to the creation of that two-headed monster, FannieMae/FreddieMac. Surely even Michael cannot be unaware that the abuse & corruption in these agencies were solely by Democrat congress-critters and their appointees, while Republicans vainly tried to reign them in? The fin de siècle abuses of mortgage-backed securities and their unholy spawn, the CDOs & CDSs, and Greenspan’s hands-off policies, only happened after the horses were out of barn, over the fence, and into the next state (no, make that next countries – the contagion had by then spread world-wide). These abuses were not only tolerated, but encouraged by the Clinton administration – the sub-prime mortgage meta-market fueled the go-go 90s. By the time BushCo came to office it was too late, and in the aftershocks of 9/11 they didn’t dare appear as party-poopers.*
You can’t have it both ways? Poor Matt has reading comprehension issues. I scanned the comments upstream and couldn’t find a single instance of someone trying to “have it both ways.”
“. . . impenetrable products/laws of the upper class.”
Once again, this is literally non-sense, but presumably Matt means laws enacted to benefit the wealthy, and at the expense of the middle & lower classes. Which begs the question: Who pays the most (personal) income taxes? A hour’s browsing at the IRS’s web site reveals the following: Top 1% of American wage earners paid about 39% of all personal income taxes(in 2007); “middle class” (about 49%) pays another 61%. And the bottom 50%? Did you add up the percentages in the previous sentence? They pay absolutely nothing. In fact, the bottom 10-15% usually get a yearly stipend, i.e.: negative taxes (and that’s in addition to Aid to Families w/ Dependent Children and other programs) (I have not actually checked at the IRS in about 5 years, so these figures have undoubtedly morphed a little). Not to be a wet blanket, but how long does anyone think this state of affairs is sustainable? How long before the wealthy finally revolt & move all of their money to off-shore accounts? Or immigrate somewhere where there are grown-ups in charge?
As long as we’re on the subject, we should also consider the so-called “Buffet Rule.” Obie-Wan likes it because it’s “fair,” but Obie won’t tell us that it is not about the personal tax rate, but the capital gains rate – currently 15% – which means that anyone who owns stocks, bonds, etc – nearly 100 million Americans, 30%, not just the “1%” – will get their capital gains taxed as ordinary income. Obie would also like us to believe that closing this “loophole” would retire the national debt in 10 years. This is magical thinking on a scale never before seen in the entire history of H. Sap; it would embarrass a stone-age shaman. I haven’t had a chance to check for myself, but the usually reliable Paul Krugman figures it would take this boondoggle 250 years just to retire 2011’s debt, and that’s using Obie’s highly questionable figures. In reality, the last three times the capital gains rate was raised, revenues to the Treasury Dept. decreased, most likely because investment capital decreased, thus dampening investment, job growth, etc; so in reality not only would the national debt not be paid down, it would increase. But Obie doesn’t want to talk about that, or that he’s increased the national debt faster and farther than any other president in history (5 trillion & counting); so instead he tries to score political points by holding out this shiny little Hershey’s Kiss and calls it “fair.”
“. . . bail outs for blatant robbers. . .”
Yes, Matt, the investment bankers, auto mfrs, and a few other foolishly over-extended corporations were bailed out . . . by the Democrats. The Republicans were staunchly opposed, to the point of shutting down the federal gov’t. But We The People were terrified of economic Armageddon, relentlessly hectored them, and finally they capitulated. The Obama Democrats also “pre-bailed out” several “green” energy corporations, to the tune of several billion dollars (and of course massively subsidized green energy concerns are collapsing world-wide, on the backs of taxpayers everywhere, thanks to politicians’, regulators’, and greens’ wet dreams of an “elegantly frugal” [cf Amory Lovins’s Soft Energy Paths, 1976] green future).
“No, the dire state of the US is NOT due to a lack of freedoms.”
Well let’s hope that Matt is done with his schooling or training, has a semi-secure job, and is never required to take a reading comprehension test. I can’t find anywhere in that video essay where anyone tried to chalk up our dire straits exclusively to lack of freedoms. I fear this is entirely a product of Matt’s fevered, fecund imagination. Maybe he should consider a career as a novelist.
. . . . . . . . . .
*As long as I’m ranting, I may as well extend this line of thought, re: regulation. It could well be that total laissez-faire capitalism is not workable, that we’ll always need at least some regulation. Like government, it could be a necessary evil. I don’t really know enough to tell. But then I don’t really think anyone else does either. I do know that our current “cure” is worse than the disease. The seeds of the current debt crisis – burdensome & intrusive regulations – were planted over 30 years ago. And in fact it could be argued (and I believe our host has) that the seeds may have been planted over 90 years ago with the creation of that hideous Creature From Jekyll Island, the Federal Reserve.
At any rate, national (and global) economies are ecologies, every bit as much as savannahs, alpine meadows, forests, etc. All healthy forests require (usually) small, regular fires. Small regular fires burn off duff & deadwood, clear the understory for new growth while providing ash for fertilizer, and most importantly, prevent fuel supplies from reaching dangerous levels. Healthy economies require (usually) small, regular recessions for exactly the same reasons: deadwood companies & individuals are gotten rid of; merely complacent ones get a sharp financial rap to the knuckles and usually straighten up. About 120 years ago, a bunch of arrogant bureaucrats decided they knew more about forest management than Mother Nature, that forest fires were bad, period, and so the western US had the infernos of the 1930s; residents there thought the whole world was going up in flames. But bureaucrats are not only arrogant, but stupid; they didn’t learn from the experience. I well remember the relentless Smokey Bear “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires” ads of my childhood in the late ‘50s-early ‘60s. It took another conflagration, this time in the jewel in the crown of America’s national park system – Yellowstone – in 1990, plus a scathing review of park management practices by Alston Chase (Playing God in Yellowstone), before the mule-ish bureaucrats started to wise up. How long will it take our regulatory class to get a clue – that over-regulation & bail-outs only increase fuel supplies to dangerous levels and lead to major conflagrations? Probably never; the desire to meddle (and for a totally secure paycheck) is just too strong in the Nervous Classes. The only solution is to have less of them in government, and that means keeping the rascals under eternal vigilance. Sigh.
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Paddick J – Your rant is anything but over long! Indeed, it is not really long enough, but it is long enough to capture the essence of the cause of the crises in America in a succinct way. An excellent post and should be required reading for every sheep out there who parrots the nonsensical lines of Obie-Wan.
I really wish I could give you more than one thumbs up.
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Well said.
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what about an honest press? who is this Climate Commission spokeswoman?
how come this anonymous spokeswoman and Christine Milne are the only two individuals who get to respond, and the excerpts below are the final words on this revelation? need i tell you the MSM have virtually ignored the Lovelock story?
25 April: Daily Telegraph: Gemma Jones: Climate change alarmist warnings all hot air, says British scientist James Lovelock
A Climate Commission spokeswoman defended Professor Flannery’s work.
“The Weather Makers is an accurate and balanced work. It’s a critically acclaimed piece of work that inspires motivation to act, not fear,” she said.
“The most important message is that hope is not lost, we can still act to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”
Greens Leader Christine Milne said the climate was still warming.
“Every single year from 2001 on has been one of the 13 hottest years on record and the clear scientific evidence is that it is human activities driving temperatures ever higher … we can’t get complacent about what needs to be done,” she said.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/climate-change-alarmist-warnings-all-hot-air-says-british-scientist-james-lovelock/story-e6freuzi-1226337509756
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Wow Tony, what a revelation, many corporations of all sorts don’t have executive pays linked to company performance! A true speciality of those robbers I was talking about. Seem to remember nobody was too happy when the top end of town continued to pay huge bonuses post-GFC, despite being bailed out by taxpayer dollars. If we were really into free market fundementalism, why were those big banks not allowed to simply fail? Why did they not have to wear the costs of their stupidity? Do you agree, given you think the above video is so full of wisdom, that they should have been let collapse completely?
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PS – Tony, something we can agree on: I too thought Perry’s Monash autobiography was a wonderful read and was much inspired by the polymath tendencies of this inspiring Australian. A life well worth celebrating, someone who really understood freedoms were earned and came with responsibilities…. Well done on spreading his name amongst a new generation of Americans. M
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re Lovelock: the biggest mistake post-Climategate on the sceptic websites was the endless clarifying of what “hide the decline” meant. for lay people like myself, the “hide the decline” revelation came from the emails responding to BBC Paul Hudson’s “Whatever happened to global warming?” article, which revealed to the MSM public the fact the so-called global temperature for the past ten years was below the predictions. the emails revealed the fear and panic of the CAGW Team (which we didn’t know even existed, much less were so tight) who had hidden this decline, aided and abetted by the politicians of all stripes and the MSM:
25 April: UK Daily Mail: Gerri Peev: Is global warming just hot air? World temperatures have risen by just 0.29C in the last two decades
‘Green’ policy burdens will cost families £267 a year extra by 2030
World temperatures have remained almost stagnant in the last two decades, new figures have revealed.
Temperatures across the globe rose by around a third of a degree last year from the average of 14 degrees Celsius recorded between 1961 and 1990.
In some years, temperatures rose by just 0.29 degrees C while in others they rose by .53 degrees…
By 2030, ‘green’ policy burdens could cost families an extra £267 a year and have already raised current energy bills by £78 annually.
The figures on global temperatures were published by Environment Minister Gregory Barker in a parliamentary answer to Tory MP Anne Main.
Mrs Main said it raised questions about whether vulnerable people should be made to make the choice between heating and eating…
The figures were unveiled as an environmental guru and maverick scientist admitted that he may have been ‘alarmist’ about climate change…
The 92-year-old told MSNBC in America: ‘The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2134769/Is-global-warming-just-hot-air-World-temperatures-risen-just-0-29C-decades.html
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Hi Pat, not sure you’d caught up with the facts yet but ‘hide the decline’ was just a reference to a mathematical anomaly and a ‘trick’ used so that it rendered the data usable and valid. A very common usage of the word in statistics, it had nothing to do with hiding any temp decline – of which there has been none. Long term trend is well and truly up! Cheers. M
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But it had every thing to do with a decline in the proxy records, replaced by thermomete records, if your going to promote a paper on proxies and then throw part of the record away because it doesn’t conform to the message is deceitful.
If part of the record is unreliable, how can you trust any of it to be believable.
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So what if it is? Still doesn’t speak as to the causes of any temperature increase. Especially since the recent trend is flat despite CO2 concentration increasing.
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If what you say is true Matt and there has indeed been no decline in temps then why would you call it “hide the decline” would not this just cause confusion? Are you confused Matt?
Bobc Got it right and you are a moron, go back to Coby’s blog where you will be welcomed with open arms……..oh i should ask is Coby’s blog still up and running?
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Jo,
Is our ability to say what is on our mind truly free?
We have to have been educated in some way through our parents, teachers, educators, scientists, politicians, etc.
We put our faith in that what we receive is absolutely true and correct as everyone else has had the same information through media, books, etc.
We have no time to question the content of our education only that we have faith that our educators were correct.
Scientists generated a whole barrier around holding dear their laws and theories and want us to believe that they are absolutely correct and no need to check their work.
Problem is their are massive amounts of errors that have just been added to over generations with no one having a clue to these errors.
When the errors are brought forth, published works become the defense rather than even looking into the research that shows the errors.
Our society is ignorant to what we are educated and their is a great deal of bias in that education.
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Ahh catamon, your use of the term “teabagger” tells me that you know EXACTLY what it means.
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Yup, person who identifies with the right wing loony Tea Party loony movement in the US.
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Ah rightlysouthern, given your pointer to the word “teabagger” i googled it to see what connection is.
What a fracking hooter!! So, the “Tea Party Members” in the US hate the T word, even though they actually coined it in this application.
And at one point actively encouraged people to do it unto others!!
And even funnier!
However, it appears that the actual term is in no way homophobic since when “teabagging” occurs in the context the Tea party seem to find confronting, it can be either an intra or inter gender practice. So Phil up-thread who raised this issue is still a twit.
Dog but these Teabaggers are a silly lot. 🙂
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Your feigned ignorance is no excuse, nor believable. You are a twisted bitter little man whose only pleasure appears to be in trying to elevate yourself above those not like you.
Your continued slurs only reinforce your lack of knowledge and bigotry.
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Look Phil, i think you should really just admit that its the Teabaggers who have hoist themselves on this particular petard, appreciate the inherent humor of it and let it go. Nothing i have posted here is even close to bigotry. Unless you consider derision of Tea Party affiliated persons who espouse and promote nutbagger political views to be some kind of bigotry?
In point of fact i was unaware of the confected controversy that seems to surround the term in the US until last night. Sorry i missed such a hilarious own goal for so long but there you have it.
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Sorry bigot. But your insistence upon using your homophobic terms labels you as both a bigot and an idiot. You have been told of your errors, and instead of correcting them, you doubled down on stupid. That is your choice (don’t you love freedom?).
When you decide to quit being a bigot and address issues rationally, you will get a response in kind. Until then, be a jerk all you want. Bigots are a dime a dozen – and worth that much as well.
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A little off-topic ….
Tennessee Votes To Teach Uncertainty In Science.
Curse those red-necks! 😉 They is goin to get theirselves edukatid.
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Catamon,
So some sicko’s in the left wing started name-calling the Tea Party crew (who they fear will cut out all their govvie slush funds). The Tea Party crew — being honest hard-working people — didn’t get the sick pervert joke immediately — just as catamon didn’t either, and that is supposed to tell us “what a joke” the Tea Party are and err… how clever Catamon is?
Dearest Cat – the jokes on you again (from your link). If some tea-party people are calling for the term to be used now, its only because they’re so successful that the term is losing it’s perjorative nature…
J
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And good on them for embracing the hilarity of the situation and getting a good laugh at themselves! I mean, if it wasn’t for then the Repuglical primaries would have been a lot less newsworthy and entertaining.
Doesn’t change the fact they are a mob of out there right wing nut-jobies, but its easier to accept such exist if they show some human characteristics like a sense of humor.
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Yes, as I myself intimated. However, it tends to repeat in less extreme forms. At one time, Protestants and Catholics persecuted and killed one another. Bloody religious conflicts still persist, of course, but not internal to developed nations. In time, I believe they will disappear even internally in currently undeveloped ones.
Meanwhile, in the developed nations, the partisanships and the conflicts they produce don’t generally lead to actual mass killing. To be sure, they lead to unpleasant consequences, but not killing. It’s as if there’s a base frequency that still exists, but exhibits itself, through time, at higher harmonics.
For instance, we no longer hang heretics like CAGW sceptics (of which I am one), but instead try to vilify and marginalise them. In the most extreme cases, we may make it hard or impossible for them to practise in their chosen fields. Still reprehensible, but not as bad as depriving them of life.
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You see what you are doing here? You are accusing me of saying something that I didn’t. What I actually said was that the extremes of both left and right lead to barely indistinguishable evils.
You are talking about Classical liberalism, which you seem to think highly of, but at the same time exhibiting something different in this rejoinder of yours.
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Sure Michael, I get it: Too much freedom or too much slavery are equally bad things — we can’t really take sides or say which is morally better, now can we? That would be judgemental.
I beg to differ. Freedom and slavery both have costs — if you don’t want to pay the costs of freedom, you will get slavery and have no say in what you pay. Half of each is not a stable state.
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I would add that with both also comes responsibility.
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Matt Bennett –
i am well aware of what Phil’s “hide the decline” referred to.
that is why the MSM made an issue of pointing it out, even using sceptics to prove it didn’t mean a decline in temperature.
however, there are few people in the world who even pretend to understand the science. this is what people like me understand, and this is the hindsight moment of truth, which Paul Hudson at BBC revealed and whic the CAGW Team and their ennablers wouldn’t:
24 April: UK Register: Andrew Orlowski: Gaia scientist Lovelock: ‘I was WRONG and alarmist on climate’
‘I swore Earth should be frying by now’
“I made a mistake,” the 92-year-old scientist now says.
“We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” Dr Lovelock reflects. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. It [the temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.”
This puts Lovelock in the same territory as scientists such as MIT’s Professor Richard Lindzen.
“A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1°C to greenhouse warming,” Prof Lindzen explained [PDF]…
“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” the British scientist now thinks.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/24/lovelock_clangers/
9 Oct 2009: BBC: Paul Hudson: Whatever happened to global warming?
The title of this may be a surprise. So might the fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not last year, or 2007, but 1998. For the last decade we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. What’s more, climate models did not forecast it even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on earth is going on?…
To confuse the issue even further, last month, another member of the IPCC, Dr Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University , said that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years. But he makes it clear he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man made global warming reasserts itself…
One thing’s for sure. The debate about what’s causing global warming is far from over. Some would say it’s hotting up.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/10/whatever-happened-to-global-wa.shtml
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Matt Bennett –
this is what the public understands. btw Matt, if you can find any MSM CAGW gatekeeper who even mentioned BBC’s Paul Hudson and his article “Whatever happened to global warming?”, even when they quoted Trenberth’s response to it as below, please post it on this thread. so amusing that Flannery was allowed to tell us what Trenberth meant! LOL.
20 Nov 2009: NYT: Andrew C. Revkin: Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute
In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discuss gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature. Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.
The cache of e-mail messages also includes references to journalists, including this reporter, and queries from journalists related to articles they were reporting…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html
23 Nov 2009: Reason Blog: Ronald Bailey: It’s Not Exactly “Climategate” But ….
In one of the leaked emails, respected US climatologist Kevin Trenberth admits that scientists cannot account for the lack of global warming to date.
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t… Our observing system is inadequate,” the email says…
But Dr Flannery says the scientific community knows enough to say greenhouse gases cause global warming, and that humans are responsible.
“The thing is we deal with an incomplete understanding of the way the Earth’s system works, we know enough to say as the IPCC said that greenhouse gases cause warming,” he said.
“They are 90 per cent-plus sure that it’s caused by humans, we can go that far.
“In the last few years, where there hasn’t been a continuation of that warming trend, we don’t understand all of the factors that creates Earth’s climate, so there are some things we don’t understand, that’s what the scientists were emailing about.”
Dr Flannery says scientists are working to find out how the whole system works.
“These people (scientists) work with models, computer modelling. When the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem. That’s when science gets engaged.
“What Kevin Trenberth, one of the most respected climate scientist in the world, is saying is, ‘We have to get on our horses and find out what we don’t know about the system, we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn’t reflect it’.
“And that’s the way science progresses, we can’t pretend to have perfect knowledge, we don’t.” …
http://reason.com/blog/2009/11/23/its-not-exactly-climategate-bu
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It seems to me that the US will not be ruined by lack of material goods. They are very wealthy. The problems they face are mainly caused by inequitable distribution of wealth.
Once, most human labour went to produce food, clothing and housing. But because we are smart, we have figured out how to produce stuff without as much labour, which is fantastic, because it leads to an every increasing standard of living.
So people who used to work on farms and in factories and making and mending clothes have to find another way of earning a living. So we have coffee shops, and other nifty things springing up. There is a cycling craze, and bike mechanics are in demand. There are personal trainers. These are all good things. New ways for people to earn an income don’t necessarily spring up as fast as they are needed. So sometimes governments act, by creating jobs or paying social security benefits.
But there are other methods which people now use to generate their income. People who, rather than do something others are prepared to pay for, try and find ways of scamming the system. These people are surely the big risk to us today. No matter how good a system of production we have, without the proper incentives, it will fail – like the Soviet Union. Having an economy significantly distorted by overly generous rewards for scamming the system must hurt us all. The growth of the financial sector is such a distortion. Preying on people’s addictions, be they tobacco, gambling, alcohol or illegal drugs, is another distortion.
I think we need to be constantly aware of the possibility of distortions occuring, and be ready to fix them.
As far as actions to fix greenhouse gas emissions are concerned, a carbon tax or trading scheme gives the minimal distortion necessary to produce the desired result. I’m very wary of additional layers (like mandatory targets for renewable energy), as they may not produce the desired result, or at least not efficiently.
Going back to the US, the tea party are simply cheerleaders for the wealthy. They aren’t interested in useful reforms.
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YOur response is stereotypical – and of course wrong. There has been a disparity of wealth since Cain and Able walked the planet. That is nothing new. The downfall will not be from a disparity of wealth – but from greed, envy and sloth.
Those who do not want to work for their wealth will take that from others until there is no more to take. The inherent lust for freedom is what makes slavery a bad investment, and wealthy people hate it more than most. They will not slave for the masses. They have already demonstrated they are very generous, but their generous hands are being bitten by those that are fed by them.
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Actually John, right now we meet the classical definition of bankruptcy — liabilities greater than assets. But then you don’t seem to know the difference so you can call a light-year high stack of IOUs wealth without any trouble. Or maybe you simply enjoy the thought of working for a lifetime only to have your hard work eaten by every freeloader ever spawned.
Either way you remain the fool I’ve always believed you to be. Get some self-respect before it’s too late!
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From JB,
I heard this morning that inflation is on the rise this does not bode well when your interest rates are at zero and trying to stimulate growth.
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Thanks Jo for commenting above. I`ve been reading your blog for several years now and see no reason to argue with catamon about the Tea Party. I have better ways to spend time. As usual it`s hummingbird mouth overloads it`s alligator ass. Next time putting brain in gear before mouth in motion, would be advice well taken.
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its its
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Jo, this American thanks you for the kind words. We need to be reminded every so often that, bad as things have gotten here, they are so much worse in other places.
Keep up the good fight! The recent attacks on free-speech in Australia, a country I had regarded as a model democracy until recently, are frightening. I am frankly not sanguine about the American prospect, but I’ll keep trying to expose the childish fantasies of the so-called progressives in the run-up to our next Prez-election.
Thanks again,
PJ
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Unlike PaddikJ I cannot console myself with the thought that things are worse somewhere else. This video could be entitled, “If I wanted the human race to fail.” The thought is chilling.
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