Florida State Seminoles

[eCat]

I'd love to write a paper about the impact of the internet, but also point out how it allows people to live in a vacuum.

The internet can spread information to millions of people that wouldn't have known it otherwise and it has the ability to change policies and opinions that in the past would have just been accepted - see Netflix and debit card bank fees for example, but it also enables people to seek out other like minded people and then reinforces a belief system they share without them having to face any real scrutiny for it. I see that everyday at some of the political websites I visit.

"Hey, I thought I was the only guy that thought it was OK to shoot Mexicans at the border! You mean you guys are for it too?"

oh and for the record, I do think its OK to shoot Mexicans at the border and my favorite website is "shootmexicansattheborder.com"

[AlabamAlum]

That seems to be the consensus. I don't know if that's worse though. Being a racist cunt for pay? Is that supposed to make you a better person than the nuts like AA that honestly believe that shit?

No, no, it doesn't make you a better person; it makes you rich.

Nuts like AA? Armand Asante?

[TheBigMook]

Yes of course it makes her rich, its just the question I ask myself whenever someone says "You know Rush/Ann Coulter/etc. don't really believe that extreme stuff they say. They only do it for ratings/book sales." How is that better? The reason its working is becuase its reinforcing the shitty/ignorant beliefs of the people giving them the ratings and buying the books.

[AlabamAlum]

I have no idea if she believes it or not. That's not my point, necessarily. It's that she/they have become millionaires by sitting around and bullshitting and sassing - throwing crap against the wall and such. Stuff we essentially do here for free (or even pay for in the form of bandwidth fees).

So, whether it is Rush or Keith Olbermman or whomever I don't care. The same admiration (envy?) is there because I've had to work for my money.

[Owlman]

The Flim-Flam Man

[eCat]

I have no idea if she believes it or not. That's not my point, necessarily. It's that she/they have become millionaires by sitting around and bullshitting and sassing - throwing crap against the wall and such. Stuff we essentially do here for free (or even pay for in the form of bandwidth fees).

So, whether it is Rush or Keith Olbermman or whomever I don't care. The same admiration (envy?) is there because I've had to work for my money.

at the end of the day we all have to live with what we see in the mirror.

[AlabamAlum]

No doubt. But in a weak-hearted defense of Olbermann and Rush (et al), I don't see their rabble rousing as some moral travesty.

[Bklyn]

Edward Luttwak is a rare bird whose peripatetic life and work are the envy of academics and spies alike. A well-built man who looks like he is in his mid-50s (he turns 70 next year), Luttwak—who was born in 1942 to a wealthy Jewish family in Arad, Romania, and educated in Italy and England—speaks with a resonant European accent that conveys equal measures of authority, curiosity, egomania, bluster, impatience, and good humor. He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University, and he published his first book, Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, at the age of 26. Over the past 40 years, he has made provocative and often deeply original contributions to multiple academic fields, including military strategy, Roman history, Byzantine history, and economics. He can recite poetry and talk politics in eight languages, a skill that he displayed during a recent four-hour conversation at his house, located on a quiet street in Chevy Chase, Md., by taking phone calls in Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese, during which I wandered off to the porch...

I think that if America had been able to tolerate a second Henry Kissinger, that person would have been you.

Kissinger at 88 is writing brochures for Kissinger Associates. His last book on China is one such work written by the staff at Kissinger Associates. It is designed to curry favor with the Chinese authorities and nothing else.

I know him personally very well, but he is such a deceptive person; he’s a habitual liar and dissembler. Although I’ve spent a lot of time talking to him, I have no insight on him at all. His book ends with a paean to U.S.-Chinese friendship and how every other country has to fit in. I have to review it for the TLS, but I’ve been delaying it by weeks because I don’t know whether it is a case of senility or utter corruption.

Why are so many Jews so stupid about politics?

They have not had a state for 2,000 years, they have had no power or responsibility and it will take centuries before they catch up with the instinctive political understanding that any ordinary Englishman has. They don’t understand politics, and of course they confuse their friends and their enemies, and that is the ultimate political proof of imbecility.

Do you anticipate violence this fall between the Israelis and the Palestinians?

I don’t anticipate violence this fall. War leads to peace. Peace leads to war. So, now logically we should have war. And the Iranians, of course, would love to pay for one. But the moment there is an intifada, the Palestinian regiment collapses and gangsters take over. So, the moment the violence escalates they stop fighting and they start talking peace. The moment the talking appears to be approaching an actual peace, they start an intifada.

Because the strategic depth that it affords and the control over those borders is more important?

Listen, my wife is a very good cook. And we have a housekeeper, who is an even better cook. It’s a weird situation, but I think my housekeeper is a better cook than any restaurant in Washington. She is a simple woman with no education, from Chile, and she just happens to have a superhuman talent. She being such a good cook, she achieves wonderful effects with very strange ingredients, and strange combinations of ingredients. Israel’s success as a state has been made possible by Arab threats of different kinds. Arab violence or threats of violence are part of the Israeli soup. There are certain levels of violence that are so high that they’re damaging, and there are also levels that are so low they are damaging. There is an optimum level of the Arab threat. I would say for about nine days of the 1973 war, the level of violence was much too high. Even when Israelis were successful, the level of violence was destroying the tissue of the state. Most of the time, the violence is positive.

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-polit ... wak/?all=1

[sardis]

Ann Coulter is a genius.

Ditto Rush (heh) and the rest of the folks that are millionaires for spewing bombastic partisan rhetoric a few hours a week. That's money for nothing and your chicks (and dicks) for free.

So which one does Ann Coulter prefer...

[eCat]

I thought this was a good read by Jack Hunter on the modern and past view of conservatism.

-------------------------------------------------
Conservatism is a negative philosophy. I don’t mean “negative” in the sense that it proposes something undesirable. I mean that it seeks to negate objectionable aspects of the human condition. Man has a propensity for evil. This means that men must be restrained in some fashion — which is precisely why conservatives have typically stressed religion, conventional morality, humility, etc.

But conservatives have also stressed that any government designed to be powerful enough to restrain men will also be run by men, whose collective propensity for evil is to be feared even more. Conservatives have never argued that man should not be governed — only that there is far more to fear from humanity organized in the collective called “the state” than from the inherent and inevitable shortfalls of individual men. Classical liberal Lord Acton perhaps summed up conservatives’ creed best when he wrote that “Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Our Founding Fathers were unabashedly conservative in their attitudes toward the state. President George Washington said: “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant — and a fearful master.” James Madison noted: “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” Thomas Jefferson was even blunter about the danger of centralizing state power: “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

From the Founding to the 20th century, critiques of the modern state — or what we today call “big government” — were at the heart of traditional American conservatism. Ronald Reagan’s hero, President Calvin Coolidge, was a champion of laissez faire and a harsh critic of statism. “Mr. Republican” Senator Robert Taft led conservatives in their battles against President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. President Reagan would later sum up conservatives’ view unequivocally: “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

This brief history of the American conservative tradition is necessary to demonstrate how it has now become history. The election of Reagan in 1980 was revolutionary in that it popularized the term “conservative” like never before — and it was tragic in that the word’s widespread use stripped it of any substantive philosophical meaning. Today, virtually every Republican — relatively liberal leaders like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are prime examples — calls himself a “conservative.” But do they mean it in the same way the Founders or Reagan did? Do they mean it in any substantive way at all?

We know the GOP presidential candidates don’t like Obama, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, and each candidate can rattle off one-liners about Democrats. But who among them has a major beef with the modern state, to the degree that it guides their political philosophy?

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/03/goodb ... z1cjyhQgSn

[Bklyn]

There are no more true Republicans. They call themselves Independents and other things now.

[Bklyn]

The poorly educated, unskilled or semi-skilled labourer who competes purely or mainly on price certainly has lost out as millions of people in the emerging world have entered the markets. Those among the English-speaking, educated and skilled global elite who are not forced to compete on price have therefore enjoyed growing income (and wealth) relative to their less-skilled compatriots: globalisation has increased domestic inequality in every individual economy.

This is why the anti-globalisation protests of 10-12 years ago were so much more coherent than the current 'Occupy' protests, which have been criticised for their lack of clear demands or goals. The trouble is, it's become so much harder for any right-thinking person to protest against globalisation over the ensuing 10 years because that period has seen more of the world's population lifted out of poverty, at a faster rate, than any other in human history – these are the really big winners from globalisation. And unfortunately for the 'Occupy' protestors, it appears to have been the globalisation of market capitalism that has achieved this.

The protestors' keynote slogan is: "We are the 99%". It is meant to signify that the protestors are those disenfranchised by the 1% that holds half of the wealth of the rich, developed world. But it should also draw our attention to the fact that the protestors are probably also among the 10% of the global adult population that owns 85% of all the world's wealth. They are almost certainly among the 15-20% that owns around half of that wealth. They probably are poorer than 20 years ago, but is that because capitalism has failed or exploited them - or because the globalisation of capitalism has rebalanced the world economy toward greater material equality by moving work and capital into newly open emerging markets?

http://www.ipe.com/news/the-occupy-prot ... p?blog=yes

[eCat]

I don't think the unemployed factory who hasn't had a job in 2 years gives a shit that his company moving his job overseas has helped a 3rd world country raise their standard of living a few points on a poverty scale.

I do agree that you can't fight globalization, however its seems to be very disingenuous to me that a corporate office , where the board and a couple of hundred white collar executives live in the gated communities of America - continue to enjoy the best of what America offers because they've improved company profits by outsourcing their manufacturing and exporting those products back into the American market .

While that may be considered an extreme example, a service driven economy is still rather limited to within our borders and the process of dumping unskilled workers who require a higher standard of living is unsustainable. Of course there are some things you can do such as strictly enforcing immigration laws which would provide higher paying jobs and in turn raise the price of some (but not all ) goods we take for granted as cheap today.

The irony is that America is the still the worlds largest manufacturer, however we are also the most efficient and contrary to what many believe have a strong work ethic compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Meanwhile our education system is still cranking out workers who are qualified to be 1950's assembly line workers.

For my libertarian views, its not lost on me that in the late 60's, the government became involved in subsidizing health care and now health care costs are out of reach for many Americans, and a substantial investment for the remainder.

The government got involved with housing by guaranteeing loans and controlling interest rates to drive the housing market and prior to the 2008 crash, the American housing market costs were out of reach to many Americans. Post 2008, not only are deflated housing prices still out of reach due to the economy, but Americans who were living with their means are now upside in housing they've spent the last few years attempting to build equity on.

The government got involved with education by backing student loans and now college costs are out of reach to many Americans.

The government had a hand in creating an environment where the financial markets created wealth by while not illegal , perhaps immoral means and the government bailed them out

notice I didn't say that government is the sole reason for these but there is a definite relationship in the complaints of these protestors and our government being the invisible hand of the market place as opposed to a free market determining winners, losers and profit motive/risk.

The protestors on Occupy Wall St. have a mixed bag of messages, and while I have no sympathy for a liberal arts college grad who willingly chose to go to a college where he or she would pile up $80K in student loans while I'm begging Engineering and Comp Sci majors to come work for us when they have 2 other competing offers, I do have sympathy for the protestors complaining that we have a marketplace that has grown from government reliance and unabated spending that forces them to address life choices that Americans going back as recent as 1990 didn't have to make.

In 1990, housing interest rates were around 9% with banks requiring at least 10% down, a college education at a state school was about $5 grand a year, and health care costs -while rising - were still considered affordable by most employers including the nations manufacturing base.

[TheBigMook]

Andy Rooney dead at 92. Sky diving accident.

[Owlman]

lol at sky diving accident.

[Owlman]

Elizabeth Warren: Socialist Whore by Tea Party Crasher

[youtube]iNgYHP-ywlg[/youtube]

[Owlman]

funniest thing about that video is the guy calls her boss (I presume Barak Obama) foreign born and he tries to leave by a locked door. You can hear people in the audience laugh at him about it.

[Bklyn]

Well, he was a Bush supporter, I suspect...

[youtube]SHjIb6trxBI[/youtube]

[eCat]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly told US President Barack Obama that he could not "stand" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he thinks the Israeli premier "is a liar."


According to a Monday report in the French website "Arret sur Images," after facing reporters for a G20 press conference on Thursday, the two presidents retired to a private room, to further discuss the matters of the day.



The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington's strong objection to the move.



The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: "I cannot stand him. He is a liar." According to the report, Obama replied: "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!"



The remark was naturally meant to be said in confidence, but the two leaders' microphones were accidently left on, making the would-be private comment embarrassingly public.

---------------------------------------------------

and that is the only reason I voted for Obama.

[AlabamAlum]

lol