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Post by jacquelope on Jun 6, 2011 3:37:18 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 6, 2011 3:18:49 GMT -6
Very good news indeed. What pissed me off was that BofA was trying to foreclose on a house that the owners paid cash for! Basically they were trying to steal it. But then when you think BofA could sink any lower they did. After losing in court they refused to pay the penalties and lawyer fees. Talk about fucking arrogance. They felt the law didn't apply to them. What was awesome is that the sheriff helped foreclose on the bank. Law enforcement didn't get bought out that day.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 6, 2011 3:14:13 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 6, 2011 1:39:07 GMT -6
Yeah but I'm gonna be hoarding all the ammo.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 5, 2011 19:29:13 GMT -6
Wow, reading replies to this on other websites. "Bush" "Bush" "Bush" "Tea Party" "Conservative greed" The Article clearly states "Obama Administration" and "State Department" who is Hellary Clin-tawn. This is why I purchased a handgun years ago. Civilized behavior in this country, in many areas, is as thin as paper; we are one step away from devolving into civil war and barbarism. I suggest you all purchase weapons too just in case. Partisan jingoism today is really really high, and I'm extremely partisan myself but damn. It happened on Obama's watch, and this move is his fault, but it is basically a continuation of the traditional neo con, Republican corporatist bullshit that has plagued America for decades. The reason I would still vote for Obama now is to avoid having another Citizens United bought and paid for justice being added to the Supreme Court. That's a really big issue, bigger than many Democrats and disaffected Obama supporters (one of which is me) realize. If a Republican becomes President we have ZERO chance of ever unseating the 5-4 Corporatist USSC majority. I cannot repeat this often enough.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 5, 2011 12:44:46 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 5, 2011 0:29:20 GMT -6
I keep hearing stories about how jobs are moving to the red states, the blue states are dying, and unemployment is lower, people are fleeing Blue states for Red states, etc.
How much of this is really true? And why?
I sense that this is at best a temporary bump for the Reds, and that an ugly moment of reckoning is coming for them. But I can't quite substantiate that feeling.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 4, 2011 23:33:48 GMT -6
And what happens when Brazil's standard of living increases and their workers want higher pay? What happens when Apple runs out of cheap places to go?
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 4, 2011 6:52:00 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 4, 2011 6:45:41 GMT -6
www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap Robert Johnson | Jun. 3, 2011, 2:49 PM A Wikileaks post published on The Nation shows that the Obama Administration fought to keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour. (This article was taken down by The Nation due to an embargo, but it was excerpted at Columbia Journalism Review.) It started when Haiti passed a law two years ago raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. According to an embassy cable: Thanks to U.S. intervention, the minimum was raised only to 31 cents.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 3, 2011 12:45:10 GMT -6
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010403742.htmlCorporate America, paving a downward economic slide By Harold Meyerson Wednesday, January 5, 2011 The city on a hill and the last, best hope of mankind has entered a new period in its history. We are now America, the downwardly mobile. The problem isn't due to the recession. Would that it were. The decade just concluded is the first in which Americans, on average, have seen their incomes decline. Median household income increased by about $4,000 per decade in the 1980s and '90s: from $42,429 in 1980 to $46,049 in 1990 to $50,557 in 2000 (in 2007 dollars). In 2009, the most recent year for which we have figures, it had declined to $49,777 - but 2009, of course, was a year of deep recession. If we go back to the peak year of the last decade, 2007, we find that median household income was just $50,233- roughly $300 less than it had been in 2000. Until the housing and financial bubbles burst, of course, we enjoyed the illusion of prosperity through the days of wine and credit. Now we stand on unfamiliar terrain in which almost all the signs of long-term economic health point downward. Our private sector isn't creating jobs at a rate commensurate with our increasing population, much less at a level to significantly reduce unemployment. The share of our civilian population employed has dropped to 58.2 percent - the lowest level since the early '80s, when far fewer women had entered the workforce. The social pathologies long associated with the inner-city poor - single-parent households, births out of wedlock, drug and alcohol abuse - now stalk the white working class in rural and post-industrial regions far removed from big cities. The middle is falling. Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, has noted that as wages and employment levels have fallen for the Americans who have graduated high school but not college, their level of out-of-wedlock births (44 percent) has approached that of Americans who haven't completed high school (54 percent). Americans with college diplomas or more, by contrast, have a rate of just 6 percent. ..........................
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 2, 2011 22:12:33 GMT -6
The Japanese do a HILARIOUS parody of the TSA. It's in Japanese but the language used in this video is pretty universal.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 2, 2011 22:10:30 GMT -6
And this is PART of why my family flies charter.
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Post by jacquelope on Jun 2, 2011 19:43:30 GMT -6
Waltc I'd like to add one thing about that.
You mentioned the diversion of focus away from the white working and middle class. What about the black, hispanic and other races of working class/middle class Americans? The whole point of the corporate elite today is to keep us divided. The white working class vs minority working class, the old versus the young, the middle class versus the poor, and now immigrants too. If you got rid of the evil dark people you'd still have tribalism - it would just be between the middle class whites and the poor. The same politics of division would manifest in slightly different ways. In the end, though, it would be the same - the middle class would still get pushed down into the ranks of the poor.
Affirmative action wasn't the best anti-discrimination law that could be written, but with no laws against racial and gender discrimination, there would still be a strong white vs non-white, man vs woman, etc. division in society, just as bad as there is now. The powers that be would still be exploiting these divisions in different ways, keeping us all divided and easy to conquer.
Get rid of the dark people, the liberals and the ACLU, and you would still have modern day Jay Goulds practicing that age old saying (approximate quote): "I can always pay half the working class to kill off the other half."
We all need to join forces. Middle class, poor, white, Mexican, black, everyone, and fight for workers' rights. Bring jobs back to America, force corporate America to treat workers ethically, don't let the workers get divided ever again, and there will be less of a need for bread and circuses.
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Post by jacquelope on May 31, 2011 8:18:35 GMT -6
So when the social programs do get cut, what will people do then? Starve to death quietly?
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Post by jacquelope on May 30, 2011 21:52:10 GMT -6
John Galt is not a person, it's a metaphor. It represents someone who is invaluable, irreplaceable. Ayn Rand tried to give it a name and define it as one individual. That was her big mistake. In the real world if Bill Gates suddenly disappeared then that would effect absolutely nothing. Even if all worked perfectly, the great richie-riches goes on strike, then it would effect absolutely nothing. Pure fiction. I have said as much several times to the guy in the other forum who referred to workers as "interchangeable carbon blobs". My point is there is no single John Galt. The world depends on the masses. A nation of millions of productive people (see: America) can be John Galt, but not any one person. Indeed, Bill Gates could be taken away by aliens 20 years ago and Linus Torvalds would have taken his place with Linux, and millions of Open Source coders would have taken up the slack if Bill Gates's entire corporation disappeared too. But if America shuts down... we as a nation are the proverbial John Galt. No one person... but the nation. America can take the world down economically. If the workers of the entire world go on strike, they are collectively John Galt. They can shut the world down, especially the rich. If the Middle East and their oil workers collectively go John Galt (which is, again, thousands or millions of people), the world grinds to a halt (at least for long enough for it to be epic). IMO, John Galt is made of millions of people... never, ever one person. On top of everything you said of Ayn Rand, which was all correct, Ayn Rand furthermore missed this fundamental reality.
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Post by jacquelope on May 28, 2011 13:07:52 GMT -6
[ wish you guys would stop using the phrase "cheap foreign goods" in your battle of wits, cause it implies that imports are cheaper then made in the 1st world. Try the phrase "inflation causing foreign goods" or "dollar killing foreign goods" or "job killing foreign goods" or "expensive foreign goods". "cheap foreign goods" is an anachronism, it only applies when there is a total balance of trade or surplus, which aint today. Ah yes, like my favorite pet peeve "cheap oil", which is not cheap because of all the externalities (the damage it does to the environment and people's health, see: smog). We're letting the propagandists frame the entire tone of the discussion.
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Post by jacquelope on May 26, 2011 4:20:50 GMT -6
We are all John Galt.
John Galt isn't just the top 1%. Everyone who works and buys anything is John Galt. There is no one person, no one great genius innovator or hero, who can shut the world down by taking their ball and going home; but the world can be shut down by a large and diverse group of such people.
What do y'all think?
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Post by jacquelope on May 25, 2011 19:30:16 GMT -6
Chris Smith won in 2010 with 74% of the vote. The Republicans lost 21-22% this time around. Whether this victory was the result of a Tea Party split or not, a 21+% loss of voters is downright huge. In just ONE year.
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Post by jacquelope on May 24, 2011 19:41:08 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on May 24, 2011 11:27:33 GMT -6
Exactly. When I was a Republican I always stood for less welfare and more work. But I jumped the ship when they started talking about shipping the work overseas. WTF. You can't take away the safety net AND take away the jobs! Strong manufacturing and tech hiring patterns alleviate the need for welfare.
Let's hope that the ugly truth about the "reducing Medicare" debacle has the same staying power as the lies propagated about Obamacare.
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Post by jacquelope on May 23, 2011 21:40:11 GMT -6
You guys do realize that this whole system is a setup to get rid of the "useless eaters", right?
Look up the phrase. It's part of the whole population control thing. Exploitationist capitalism is the new home for population control. They've designated the working class of the world as useless eaters and are setting them up for elimination - not through old school Hitleresque mass slaughter, but through passive-aggressive deprivation. Death by poverty.
Take a look at what the capitalists are doing, compare that with they should do according to my theory. You'll find it matches perfectly.
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Post by jacquelope on May 23, 2011 21:36:44 GMT -6
Many thanks, Ted.
I went to the Straight Dope to mine them for any arguments they might come up with to support offshoring, and to also leave ammunition lying around for other anti-offshoring people to use when the arguments were over.
I must say that the insults and hard line presented by those guys wouldn't be so hard line if they were faced with a large opposition. 10 anti-offshoring people on there working together would send them scurrying away. They're bullies like that.
It's like that in real life, too. We need to come out in force and catch the enemy out in the open, like Wisconsin did to the recent Tea Party rally. They must know us, our numbers, and our fury. They will inevitably back down if we are as resolute as they are.
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Post by jacquelope on May 23, 2011 12:42:04 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on May 22, 2011 12:55:39 GMT -6
I guess I'm surprised that you're surprised. We learned about it in grade school. I suppose you didn't know that Chinese girl babies are often left in a ditch to die. Put the Chinese as just one more culture that hates women, along with Japanese, Hindus, Muslims and Catholics. GB You learned it in grade school? Where, in Taiwan? I learned about it in high school. It was done mainly for rich women, IIRC - women out in the field didn't go through that. I remember hearing conjecture on TV news back then that baby girls would be the most at risk as a result of China's 1-child policy: these projections turned out to be horrifyingly true. And as far as hating women is concerned, Catholics and the Japanese can't even hope to compete with India, China or the religion of Islam. Japan is the most feminist example in the group. Parents in Japan prefer girls: www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-619621.html
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Post by jacquelope on May 20, 2011 0:08:08 GMT -6
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Post by jacquelope on May 19, 2011 14:07:08 GMT -6
And here comes my common man's assessment of all of this:
The people in power, greatly fearing a dollar collapse, are doing everything in their power to ensure it never happens.
Am I close?
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Post by jacquelope on May 19, 2011 6:53:16 GMT -6
I've heard the "doctor shortage" story myself. There certainly is no shortage in Southern California. If there was truly a doctor shortage--i.e., a shortage in the "supply" of doctors--you'd expect compensation to rise. It has not. Not any. The going rate for a locum tenems physician is $65/hr today in 2011. The going rate for a locum tenems physician was $65/hour in 1994. There's certainly no "price" indication that there is a shortage of physicians. Very interesting. I wonder what the stats are nationwide. Maybe something else is afoot?
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Post by jacquelope on May 18, 2011 8:19:47 GMT -6
That place is a complete den of pro-offshoring madness. Care to come over and enjoy some rhetorical target practice? I keep getting banned from forums, I don't know what the fuck their problem is, bunch of cunts. They didn't even give you a single warning? Those guys are SCARED of facing a large number of anti-offshoring people. Jeez.
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Post by jacquelope on May 18, 2011 8:18:39 GMT -6
Someone should have put a bullet in Ayn Rand's head before it immigrated to the US from the Soviet Union. I wonder if she was actually sent here from there to screw us up.
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