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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2010 9:30 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Who gives a damn if some woman says Hispanics look like Asians. Good god, who cares? That is so irrelevant to everything that needs fixing. Who cares if a firearm is used in an ad to appeal to people who like guns. Of all the things to be upset about. This is crazy. |
Most Americans, by this point, have already decided for who they are going to vote. Now they're just reinforcing and justifying their decision. |
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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:54 am Post subject: |
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Wow! If Abby Hoffman were to return from the dead and look at the headlines from this election, his first thought would probably be: "Hey, somebody finally managed to slip a boatload of LSD into the nation's water supply!"
Has America finally flipped its lid?
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| Personally, I am sorry about something I wrote about Dan Maes, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado and possibly the worst candidate for anything in the entire country this year. Among many, many other things, Maes was accused of making up a story about being an undercover operative for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in the city of Liberal, Kan. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/opinion/30collins.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Methinks she exaggerates a wee bit on Maes. Surely the worst candidate has to be the person behind this quote:
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| �Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls.� |
See story cited for a quiz on the election cast of characters. But I can see how there might be different opinions on this, given the astonishing range of crooks, cads and imbeciles with their hat in the ring.
Take Rick Scott, for example. He was the head of a company that enriched itself by committing massive fraud against the federal government, which resulted in enriching Scott, himself. The board of the hospital chain paid Scott $10 million to leave the company, forcing him to resign.
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| Scott resigned in 1997 amid an FBI probe that ultimately led to the company paying a record $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud. |
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/26/1703036/rick-scott-and-his-role-in-columbiahca.html
Does Scott hang his head in shame and lead a life of seclusion? No, he takes his ill gotten gains and runs for governor of Florida.
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The strategy has worked so far. Thanks largely to a $16 million advertising blitz he financed himself, Scott -- who moved to Florida seven years ago -- now leads in the polls over fellow Republican Bill McCollum, the state attorney general and former congressman. |
I think Scott would make a fine governor, as would Meg Whitman. And I'm rooting for Linda McMahon to be the next senator from Connecticut. These are people who have truly put their money where their mouths are. But not everyone is so sanguine.
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Let�s return to the bright side. Another really good outcome in 2010 may be the decimation of the filthy rich candidate. Meg Whitman (running for California governor), Rick Scott (Florida governor) and Linda McMahon (Connecticut senator) have together spent almost a quarter billion dollars of their own money trying to get elected.
Whitman and McMahon are both running far behind while Scott is in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent. We may be looking at nearly $250,000,000 in thwarted ego, folks. So on election night, keep an eye on Scott�s fortunes, even if you don�t live in Florida and could not care less that when he was making all his money in the private sector, he oversaw the biggest health care fraud scheme in the history of American government. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/opinion/28collins.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
One question does come to mind.
Why? |
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Space Bar
Joined: 20 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 6:34 am Post subject: Re: American politics as reality TV, the saga continues .... |
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| Gatsby wrote: |
| I am deeply ashamed. When I see goons hired by the leading candidate for the United States Senate arresting a reporter, it makes me sick to my stomach. This is not America. |
And neither is The End of Liberty. Arresting reporters fits right in.
Start watching. You'll want to watch the whole thing. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 8:50 pm Post subject: Re: American politics as reality TV, the saga continues .... |
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| Space Bar wrote: |
| Gatsby wrote: |
| I am deeply ashamed. When I see goons hired by the leading candidate for the United States Senate arresting a reporter, it makes me sick to my stomach. This is not America. |
And neither is The End of Liberty. Arresting reporters fits right in.
Start watching. You'll want to watch the whole thing. |
That film is hard to watch. The part about flying really resonates with me. Flying into or around the US is extremely unpleasant. I respect that security is important but other states with similar issues (Singapore) manage to maintain a fairly pleasant atmosphere. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 10:51 pm Post subject: Re: American politics as reality TV, the saga continues .... |
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| Gatsby wrote: |
If foreigners ask me, I tell them I am an American. If they unjustly criticize America, I defend my country. But privately, I am deeply ashamed. When I see goons hired by the leading candidate for the United States Senate arresting a reporter, it makes me sick to my stomach. This is not America.
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They arrested him because he shoved one of the guards. Seems like America...or for that matter much of the West to me. Shoving a security guard or police officer or even private citizen can get you arrested for assault.
If there is a next time, hopefully he has learned to keep his hands to himself. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 11:51 pm Post subject: Re: American politics as reality TV, the saga continues .... |
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| Space Bar wrote: |
| Gatsby wrote: |
| I am deeply ashamed. When I see goons hired by the leading candidate for the United States Senate arresting a reporter, it makes me sick to my stomach. This is not America. |
And neither is The End of Liberty. Arresting reporters fits right in.
Start watching. You'll want to watch the whole thing. |
This video does a good job of representing what I dislike about the Libertarian mindset. It brings up some goods points, but it draws ridiculous conclusions from them. "There are problems, so we need the government completely out of our lives," isn't the way forward. "There are problems, so let's engage in meaningful reform," would be much better. Some of that reform will mean government pulling back in certain areas. In other areas, though, government presence is invaluable. Some examples of where the film gets it wrong on the whole, "The government needs to get out!" thing are:
1) Health care reform (the fact that they state worry that the current health care bill will drive insurance companies into bankruptcy shows just how wrong they get it too). Government has a role to play in health care.
2) Food and drug regulation. I agree the government has no place in telling us what we can or cannot ingest. The government's role in food and drug regulation should be primarily informative, supplemented by incentives against purchasing unhealthy or detrimental products through taxation.
3) Unemployment benefits. If we're going to have a relatively market-driven economy, that's going to involve people losing their jobs. Some sort of security net for such people is ethical and socially beneficial. The trick is finding a good balance point between letting people fall through the cracks, and creating families that are on perpetual unemployment benefits. Bemoaning the fact that 'Hard working Americans are forced to support the lazy, unproductive unemployed,' just disgusts me; this kind of adversarial thinking destroys our sense of society. And his demonization of unemployment benefits and food stamps coupled with his instance that we should, "Work as hard as possible to live the best lives possible," is just ridiculous. There was a time when people worked as hard as possible while simultaneously receiving no social protections from the government, and life was horrible.
4) Education. Total failure to diagnose the real problem in our educational system (which isn't a problem with the system at all). And his characterization of professors as "people who failed in the real world" is beyond pathetic. There's more to life than making and consuming physical objects. One doesn't need to demonize universities (and no, a university education isn't worthless) in order to admit to the fact that some students who attend college would probably be happier taking a different course in life. And his whole, "Hey, everyone can be an entrepreneur," idea is almost jaw-droppingly stupid. Most students investing an amount of money equal to the cost of a college degree in a new business right out of high school would result in most students losing an amount of money equal to the cost of a college degree and not even getting "worthless" knowledge and academic experience out of the equation. He's right that student loans are a problem, though.
5) "Redistribution of wealth is not in the Constitution." This is wrong, taxation is currently included in the Constitution. I don't know whether this fellow considers himself a "Tea Partier," but he certainly speaks like one, and it's almost getting to the point where we can formulate a law stating, "Whenever a Tea Partier mentions the Constitution, their interpretation of it will be not only wrong, but blatantly and obviously wrong."
6) Gold. I think we've talked enough about this that it doesn't need to go over it again. These guys try to sell gold so hard that it wouldn't shock me if they're actually funded by gold selling organizations.
I couldn't keep watching after that. I'm not happy with a lot of things that are currently going on in America, but the society these guys want would be horrifically worse. |
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