Monday, March 13, 2017

Insecurity and Distraction







A couple days ago, Sean Spicer, our WH Press Secretary, was confronted in an Apple store by an admittedly "impolite" critic of the President, a young woman of Indian descent, born here, no discernible accent, seems like her heart's in the right place, who asked him some annoying and rude questions, saying Trump is a "fascist" and so forth, and at one point Sean Spicer said this:  "It's such a great country that allows you to be here."

Now, I understand how annoying it can be to visit one of those telecom stores.  My wife and I have a scheme for dealing with it.  We play sane shopper/insane shopper.  They can either deal with her quickly and give us the best deal they have, or, I act like a silly lunatic in the store, creating distraction and chaos, and getting the other customers to join in, without actually bothering anyone, just creating General Disarray, but forcing the salesperson to hurry up and get us the hell out of there.  Learned it from my Dad.  I am fun to shop with.

So, I can imagine being confronted in one of these stores, and getting a little flustered with the lady asking the rather crude, lumpy questions about Russia and Treason and Fascism, but Spicer's response was very telling...

Yesterday, Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa long known being a One-Trick-Pony (immigrant-bashing), tweeted, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."  And he doubled down... 
And King himself refused to back away from the tweet. On CNN Monday morning, King said, "I meant exactly what I said," and that he'd "like to see an America that's just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective."
There have been large shifts in the demographics of the world over the past couple-thousand years.  We are still in the midst of this shifting.  The US is a very recent product of this shifting.  We are a country made up mostly of immigrants.  During certain periods in our history, we had unprecedentedly high levels of upward mobility, and most always more than the rest of the world.  We absorbed new, usually rather poor, immigrants as the last wave moved up.  Now that upward mobility is down, below that of Europe, irony, the Right blames the immigrants and minorities, irony of ironies, for that lack of upward mobility.  In case you don't know, immigrants and minorities, pretty much by definition, only hold so much power.  They are not politically capable of holding back those above the mobility-ladder from them, and it is not in their interest to hold down themselves.

The Grown-Up Question raised here should be, "How do we increase upward mobility?"

Well, here's how not to do it...
The Congressional Budget Office projects that 14 million people will lose coverage by 2018 under the Republican ObamaCare replacement bill.
“I’ve been telling you why don’t we wait, just let (Obamacare) implode and let’s not take the blame,” Trump said to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price,... “I’ve been telling you that as an option. It’s not an option I like, frankly, but it’s certainly an option.”
And it just goes on...

You can blame immigrants and minorities if you like, but if you don't want to have the babies, and you don't want to build the roads, and you don't care if you can get proper health care, maybe you should just get the fuck out of the way and let someone "else's" BABY take care of things.

JMJ 

88 comments:

  1. There's so much to say here, I don't know where to start. So I'll let others go first.

    Spicer strikes me as the sort of kid who had some fags behind the bikeshed, then denied he smoked. Not the finest of, erm... 'real Americans', if you ask me. And please don't get me started on Peter King.

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  2. LOL! It's funny you mixed up Peter and Steve King. Peter is a Rep. from NY. And the exact same sort of One Trick Pony! Something in that "King" strain there... hmmm...

    Yeah, Spicer, I think you hit him on the nose. I can't even imagine Conway in High School! I bet the Spicer-types remembered her, though! LOL!

    JMJ

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    1. Oooops... yes, Steve King, of course. Rep. Asshat Supreme. A man who by all rights should give populism a Bad Name. Who gets these people elected, one has to wonder? I'm guessing it's the people Father John Misty sings about in Pure Comedy.

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  3. Upward mobility is going to be tough. All those jobs Trump keeps saying he's going to bring back aren't going to materialize. Further AI is going to be a real game changer. With intelligent human robots that require no health care, no vacations, no holidays, and the ability to make better decisions much quicker it is going to be interesting. Out of the box thinking will be necessary. Not sure anybody is up to it, but, the GOP/conservative element sure as hell won't be. Unless it suddenly opens its eyes.

    The 50's, 60's, and early to mid seventies ain't coming back. Hell, neither are the 80's or 90's.

    Well there's a start Gert.

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    1. Well, as I see it, it will be a long time before the machines are doing everything. In the meantime, the best place to start would be to place a higher value on real work.

      JMJ

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    2. That may be Jersey. How long it takes will depend on how rapidly the technology advances, or if you prefer, progresses. I've saw some estimates that AI will be capable of "outsmarting" humans in our lifetime. Capitalism actually naturally drives society in this direction.

      Marx must be smiling ☺

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    3. Yeah, he was often a very prescient fellow.

      JMJ

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    4. Out of the box thinking will be necessary.

      Just how long have we been cackling about 'robots will create wealth and leisure!'? Centuries, I think.

      Now's the time for action: wealth redistribution. Yeehaw!

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    5. Hey, even AEI and CHARLES MURRAY have been talking about a Universal Income (http://www.aei.org/publication/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american/) for some time now. Theirs is not the best approach, but it goes to show that even the libertarians have been considering this subject!

      JMJ

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    6. Well, as I see it, it will be a long time before the machines are doing everything. In the meantime, the best place to start would be to place a higher value on real work.

      I agree with Farmer that one needs 'economic nationalism' for that.

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  4. Farmer should chime in and declare 'Tis much ado about nothing!' and he'd be right. But I still think the reaction of the Spicers and Kings to be significant, even though the whole flap is a tempest in a shot glass.

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    1. It's about "Eyes Off The Prize." Blaming immigrants and minorities for problems not of their making.

      JMJ

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    2. This is the Left's Shtik since Adolph Hitler. The right is fascist and needs a foreigner for a scapegoat. The Left's go-to scapegoat is the right. But even worse, you'd foist your bad ideas on the entire world so that you could pretend you'd eliminated the right's "foreign menace". You've been played, Jersey.

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    3. We don't "blame them". We see them as unecessary competition.

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    4. ...after all, our goal isn't to "repeal" and "replace" capitalism. It's to profit under it.

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    5. We don't "blame them". We see them as unecessary competition.

      Some really do see them as the foreign menace, T.

      They don't all think in economic terms as you do,

      Do you think Stinker's aversion to Joooos has anything to do with thinking of them as economic competitors? Please don't make me laugh!

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  5. You seem to think that we all "blame immigrants" for our unemployment woes. But that would be a misreading of cause-effect. We recognize the laws of supply and demand, that's all. A shortage creates higher demand and upward price. The best tool for creating artificial "shortages" are "laws". And restricting immigration creates a labour shortage. Restricting imports through "tariffs" creates a product shortage. Both of these are tools for encouraging business to hire and do business in America proper. Your solution is to "raise the minimum wage". But without tariff's, etc. all THAT does is move more jobs "offshore".

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    1. You seem to think that we all "blame immigrants" for our unemployment woes.

      I said that? Where?

      ;-)

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    2. Not you...

      ...the Right blames the immigrants and minorities, irony of ironies, for that lack of upward mobility.

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    3. FJ!

      "You seem to think that we all "blame immigrants" for our unemployment woes."

      Well, I can't speak in "alls" but let's not pretend a big part of the Right's lovely message is that immigrants and minorities are hurting us.

      "But that would be a misreading of cause-effect. We recognize the laws of supply and demand, that's all."

      If that was true, Voo Doo Economics would never have been taken seriously.

      "A shortage creates higher demand and upward price. The best tool for creating artificial "shortages" are "laws". And restricting immigration creates a labour shortage. Restricting imports through "tariffs" creates a product shortage. Both of these are tools for encouraging business to hire and do business in America proper. Your solution is to "raise the minimum wage". But without tariff's, etc. all THAT does is move more jobs "offshore"."

      I didn't mention the minimum wage here, because of the context, but yes, it needs to go up. But "off-shoring" isn't really a matter of tariffs or wages or taxes, per see. It can be. But in the end all we have to say is, "No, you can't go build your plant in that Third World Kelpto-Junta and and then ship your child-slave doohickeys here, you piece of shit scumbag." It's not that hard. Then they don't really have a choice, do they? I know of no Constitutional Right to allow imports from anyone, anywhere. As I recall, that was a pretty big part of why we fought the Civil War - because the Scumbags (the Southern Plantation owners) wanted to do just that.

      Back to that "choice" I mentioned... Here's how actual, real-life economics work: IF THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE, SOMEONE WILL FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE IT. This is why Voo Doo economics do nothing but make the idle rich richer, and why the rate of taxes only nominally effects behavior. We've seen, through our history, the relationship of taxes and tariffs, immigration and lack of, to conditions on the ground vary widely. There are also very many other factors, like housing and banking and health care and education and a host of others.

      The point I was making was that immigrant and minority bashing addresses none of this, and to pretend the Right only has it's heart in the right place on this is LAUGHABLE.

      JMJ

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    4. When jobs are plentiful, nobody on the right gives two-sh*ts about immigration. The DNC sold you on the race card through identity politics so that you can feel good about yourselves. Get OVER yourselves. You're not that virtuous. Neither is allowing foreigners to take your next raise.

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    5. Trump jumped on that mildly retarded angry bronco, but it had been bucking for years. I have a few big worries about the way we're handling these people.

      1. It would be a lot easier to secure the border from smugglers or other criminals if they weren't mixed in with thousands of harmless migrant workers.

      2. It would be easier to sort out and round up the bad guys if the harmless workers could come out of the shadows and have a legal alien status.

      3. It would raise wages and open opportunities for the working class, overnight, to give these people legal alien status. From there we can ensure they are treated properly and legally, raising their wages and improving working conditions for all involved.

      4. I hear all this talk of "voter ID" and "sanctuary cities" and "we have to secure the border first," but I don't see any call for making sure the people we hire in our workplaces are legal residents or aliens. We have to do that. We have the system in place, it's SS, it forces clean-up of the SS/fake#/immigrant problem, it's something we all need, and perhaps for legal aliens we could refund the payroll taxes should they decide to longer reside and work here, or we could say, hey, we need you to contribute that and that's that.

      5. WHY DO WE CONTINUE DEPORTING PEOPLE WHO KEEP COMING BACK HERE??? I know it's expensive, but if they've committed crimes here, they should do the time here. There is something seriously wrong with our current deportation disposition. I don't know what arrangements we have with these countries, but it's not working for us. A deportee who has committed a serious crime, done his or her time, then comes back, should be faced with very long time for returning. It's the only way.

      6. Clean the hell up our prisons! My God! What are we creating??? It's a nightmare. And now we hear more federal private prisons??? My God! What is wrong with us? If our prisons weren't literally Universities of Violent Crime, maybe we'd all, ALL of us, be a little safer and better off.

      I could go on... but it's all interrelated. The point is, what I see coming from the Right and from some other quarters, and this is the crowd in charge of fucking everything these days, is just more of the same failure and continuing and exacerbating of problems.

      JMJ

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    6. 1) It would be a lot easier to live if manna fell from heaven. How would you propose to seperate the "harmless" from the "criminals/smugglers". Free airline tickets from Mexico City to LAX?

      2) It would be a lot easier to separate the bad guys if they'd only just raise their hands. How would adding 300 million legal citizens into the pot make the "sorting" easier?

      3) Adding 20 million workers, overnight, would make wages for the rest of us rise? Doesn't that fly in the face of the laws of supply and demand?

      4) You've never heard of E-Verify? You've never filled out a I-9 Form?

      5) It costs $168,000 a year to lock someone up. Hell, why not just buy them condo's in Florida?

      6) $168,000 is why we have "private" prisons. No one can afford to pay ther government's over-generous civil service rates.

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    7. Do you think that if Harvard offered everyone in the world a free ride for Room and Board to their school no one would apply? How soon do you think it would be before they went out of business? How long do you think it would take your proposed immigration policies to attract a billion new immigrants?

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    8. You must believe America to be one STRONG Dog, Jersey... Nietzsche, GoM: As it acquires more power, a community no longer considers the crimes of the single individual so serious, because it no longer is entitled to consider him as dangerous and unsettling for the existence of the totality as much as it did before. The wrongdoer is no longer “outlawed” and thrown out, and the common anger is no longer permitted to vent itself on him without restraint to the same extent as earlier— instead the wrongdoer from now on is carefully protected by the community against this anger, especially from that of the immediately injured person, and is taken into protective custody. The compromise with the anger of those particularly affected by the wrong doing, and thus the effort to localize the case and to avert a wider or even a general participation and unrest, the attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole business (the compositio), above all the desire, appearing with ever-increasing clarity, to consider every crime as, in some sense or other, capable of being paid off, and thus, at least to a certain extent, to separate the criminal and his crime from each other—those are the characteristics stamped more and more clearly on the further development of criminal law. If the power and the self-confidence of a community keep growing, the criminal law also grows constantly milder. Every weakening and deeper jeopardizing of the community brings its harsher forms of criminal law to light once again. The “creditor” has always became proportionally more humane as he has become richer. Finally the amount of his wealth even becomes measured by how much damage he can sustain without suffering from it. It would not be impossible to imagine a society with a consciousness of its own power which allowed itself the most privileged luxury which it can have—letting its criminals go without punishment. “Why should I really bother about my parasites?” it could then say. “May they live and prosper; for that I am still sufficiently strong!” . . . Justice, which started with “Everything is capable of being paid for; everything must be paid off” ends at that point, by shutting its eyes and letting the person incapable of payment go free—it ends, as every good thing on earth ends, by doing away with itself. This self-negation of justice: we know what a beautiful name it calls itself—mercy. It goes without saying that mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful man, or even better, his beyond the law.

      So much for that "justice" line in the Preamble.

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    9. Thersites, first, in the real world, as opposed to the imaginary mindscape of philosophy, the immigrants are ALREADY HERE. I'm not talking about letting them in. I'm not saying we should let more in. I'm not saying we should just have mass unbounded immigration. I don't endorse immigration as a way to create upward mobility abroad. I am dealing with the REALITY that there are millions of people HERE, NOW, and most have been here for years. This is not about illegal immigration, which we've had at net-zero for years anyway. This is about dealing with people who are HERE NOW. They have American children and families and jobs and are now, and long since, a part of America. And WE, Americans, have long been a part of THEIR countries as well.

      All I'm saying is that we need a more orderly and ethical and beneficial way of dealing with that REALITY.

      And that video is stupid. Who the hell of any importance is suggesting that mass exoduses would somehow fix the Third World?

      JMJ

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    10. And your responses to my suggestions were disappointing. "Throw up your hands" conservatism at it's finest. If something requires any more than two seconds of thought or effort put into it, it's just too much! It's too complicated! Let God sort it out! Only HE TRULY knows! It's silliness.

      ALL of your counter-arguments were canards. I can't even tell if you were being serious.

      "1) It would be a lot easier to live if manna fell from heaven. How would you propose to seperate the "harmless" from the "criminals/smugglers". Free airline tickets from Mexico City to LAX?"

      Approved workers would have visas. They'd come and go legally.

      "2) It would be a lot easier to separate the bad guys if they'd only just raise their hands. How would adding 300 million legal citizens into the pot make the "sorting" easier?"

      For people who are here, the 11 mil or so, they'd get amnesty for coming and using bad papers and such, but not for unrelated crimes.

      "3) Adding 20 million workers, overnight, would make wages for the rest of us rise? Doesn't that fly in the face of the laws of supply and demand?"

      Where the hell do you get these numbers? They're different all the time! THEY ARE ALREADY HERE. WE ARE NOT ADDING THEM. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?

      "4) You've never heard of E-Verify? You've never filled out a I-9 Form?"

      Yes. Obviously those systems are not working.

      "5) It costs $168,000 a year to lock someone up. Hell, why not just buy them condo's in Florida?"

      Again, the numbers, man. Are you serious? No. It's like 30K.

      "6) $168,000 is why we have "private" prisons. No one can afford to pay ther government's over-generous civil service rates."

      No. We have private prisons because conservatives elect scumbags to higher office.

      JMJ

      JMJ

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    11. We have private prisons because conservatives elect scumbags to higher office.

      Scumbags who like to provide social welfare for their rich donor friends. Just like your buds in the DNC.

      "One Party Under God".

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    12. The DNC is not my bud. I wish you wouldn't write things like that. Frankly, I think the DNC is a joke. I wish Perez luck getting them going again.

      In the old days, they were like a herd of cats, reflecting Will Rogers sentiment, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." And there were good cats and bad cats, and various in-betweens. After the Civil Rights movement and all, the Democrats became a more organized party, and they ditched a certain kind but large number of bad cats. Those bad cats became Republicans, in those places. Now the GOP is like a herd of cats, except it's that certain kind of bad cats and cats that worship Mammon.

      The Democrats, on the whole, are much better than the GOP on a host of issues, but of course play lip-service or do worse with them often as well. I'm a regular voter all my adult life, and I only registered as a Democrat in 2016 to vote for Sanders in a closed primary in Florida. I'll be unaffiliated again before the next election. I never belonged to or gave money to the Democratic Party.

      I did do some canvassing volunteer work for the Obama campaign in 2008, but not because I was a huge Obama fan, rather I just thought it would be interesting to do in a rather "Southern," red-county community. I have some funny stories about that experience...

      Things like private prisons, though. They are not partisan in the Democrat/Republican sense. They are manifestations of conservatism. That's why are phrased that as I did. We have private prisons because conservatives elect scumbags to higher office. I don't blame conservative voters for being fool enough to do that. I blame the scumbags. They use our worst angels to frighten our most insecure voters to do terrible things. There is no support for private prisons among liberals. Given a choice, few Democrats support them.

      JMJ

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    13. How to get rid of the problem of illegal immigration... pencil whip it! Just "legalize" them? WTF are we paying for borber patrol agents and immigration people for if the answer is...ignore it, it will go away.... but then ten years later poof...another 10,000,000! Surprise!

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    14. How about this, since government doesn't do any of the things they're in charge of, lets get rid of them entirely!

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    15. If we did the things I suggested - and none of these things are novel, genius ideas I just now invented, they've been around a long time - we can better control immigration. I don't see you offering anything positive, and I don't see the Right offering anything positive. It's all either throw up your hands, or a hammer of doom. I see no depth of thought on this subject there.

      JMJ

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    16. The DNC is not my bud. I wish you wouldn't write things like that.

      I won't do it again. :)

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    17. So you "control" by "surrendering control". Negation of the negation. Clever!

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    18. What do you mean by "control?," FT?

      Thanks, Gert. I know it seems petty, but I dont like to be lumped in with the partisans. ;)

      JMJ

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    19. Control. You know, that thing that government officials mean when they say, "to govern is to choose." All that sh*t that happened at the outset of the 20th century when Foucalt's "Disciplinary Societies" transformed themselves into Gilles Deleuze's "Society's of Control".

      Our "Enclosure" is the nation state up until the day they cede "control" to the UN. THEN, we're ALL trapped in the same cage with no possibility of an "alternate future" other than the one that our "globalist elites" grant us.

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    20. ...and in accepting their neoliberal globalist economy and hating Trump, you're turning us all into Davos Men.

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    21. I wasn't sure if you were talking about controlling immigration, or some other meaning.

      Control in the circular subject of governance is a matter of what do you want to do and what does the rest of society have to say about it. There are some easy lines that can be drawn, though. The ol' "your right end at the tip of my nose" rule is helpful. If you what you want involves other people, than you have to balance the rights. That's why we have the "public sphere" as apart from the private. Then there's defining the public sphere, but really, when you look closely, you see it's really pretty clear.

      Now, nationalism is another matter. I am not a "Davos Man." I like national identity and cultures. They make life more diverse and interesting. But I also understand the reality that they are temporal things. Cultures change. Everything changes. I'm not one to stand against the wind shaking my fists against it.

      JMJ

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    22. You are a "nationalist" that draws no distinction between a citizens rights and duties and those of a non-citizen? How does THAT work? I, for one, declare ILLEGAL visitors "homo sacer". You declare them "citizen". Explain.

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    23. ps -= I agree, cultures change. It's called "legal immigration" and it allows for "controlled" change.

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    24. In other words, your argument should be for more legal immigration... but it's not. Why is that? You like having me standing one of Jack Nocholson's posts and enjoying the freedoms I give you, don't you

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  6. ps - And before you all get up on your moral high-horses to complain about our lack of empathy remember this. Governments SOLE purpose is to do all the immoral things that allow US, as a people, to remain moral (punish/kill/etc.) and behave morally towards one another (within our borders).

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    1. I do not see that as government's purpose.

      JMJ

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    2. What purpose do you see behind their "force" monopoly?

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    3. Well, to quote that ol' forgotten piece of paper, "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." In theory, it can work. ;)

      JMJ

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    4. And how do you establish "justice". Have you ever read Joseph d'Maistre's St. Petersburg Dialogue "On the Executioner"? According to Joe, he is the "cornerstone" of society in who's absence all order within the State would disappear. Or perhaps you've read Nietzsche's 2nd Essay in the Geneology of Morals. Evidently criminals have a hard time "repenting" their crimes, when all the dirty tricks criminals use are duplicated by the police in securing their convictions... spying, lying, etc. So what is it that they're supposed to "repent"?

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    5. Well, you just laid out why I am vehemently against the death penalty. In plenty of modern Western democracies, and other developed and developing states, there is no death penalty, and they're getting along just fine. Being and Old World authoritarian, I am not surprised he'd take such a position. The world we have today would be abhorrent to him. Personally, I find him abhorrent, and his position, laughably and provably outdated. You can't establish his sort of justice without resort to the executioner! But thankfully, he died 200 years ago, and a century later, his beloved empires all fell.

      JMJ

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    6. 'You can free someone from prison but you can't free them from the grave.'

      - Kirk Bloodsworth

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  7. erratum - ("they/government" punish/kill/etc.)

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  8. In other words, Government applies "force" so we don't have to. THAT is the "service" they render to the citizens of the State.

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    1. Well, "force" to do what? It begs the question. No on is forcing anyone in America to live here and enjoy all the wonderful services other than force that we have to offer.

      JMJ

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    2. No, they can stay home and accept all the FORCE that is "given" to them as a government "service".

      Maybe we all should all take advantage of the "Maduro Diet"... ;)

      So in response to the "begged" question, the answer SHOULD and MUST be, "to serve the best interests of her CITIZENS"... you know, all that cr*p in the Constitution's Preamble (not foreigners, not illegals, not the planet MARS, but her citizens).

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    3. ‘At the beginning’ of the law, there is a certain ‘outlaw,’ a certain Real of violence which coincides with the act itself of the establishment of the reign of law: the ultimate truth about the reign of law is that of a usurpation, and all classical politico-philosophical thought rests on the disavowal of this violent act of foundation . . . this illegitimate violence by which law sustains itself must be concealed at any price because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of law: it functions insofar as its subjects are deceived, insofar as they experience the authority of law as authentic and eternal.

      -Slavoj Zizek, "For They Know Not What They Do"

      Law begins in trauma. From the standpoint of the old law, the violent establishing of something new is crime. The old law is disobeyed, overthrown, transgressed, usurped. From the standpoint of the new law, this crime is self-negating. It vanishes (or is concealed) as a crime once the new order is constituted. Put somewhat differently, the establishment of law overthrows law, for example, the law of custom, the law of nature, or even law as an ideal that only existed at the very moment of its loss. And, because establishing is overthrowing, there is a risk--the negation of law such. Establishing manifests a disregard for law as it perversely (or criminally) turns crime into law. This paradox, this traumatic identity of law and crime, is the repressed origin of law.

      ---

      For law to function as law, the Real of violence must be concealed. As Zizek explains (with reference to Kant), law's validity requires that we remain within law, that we don't go outside law and emphasize its contingent, historical founding. If we do go outside the law, we can't even see the order as law; its claim to authority becomes just another contingency or act of violence. Zizek is not making a facile point regarding stupid subjects duped by a malevolent legal order. Rather, he is emphasizing the fact that law involves more than the violent, arbitrary, control of people. People need a kind of faith in law; they have to believe it (to believe that others believe it) for it to function at all. The fantasy of an original contract, for example, provides something in which people can believe; this fantasy attaches them to law as it conceals the Real of violence. Belief in law is that something extra that distinguishes law from violence, that separates the founding moment of violence from what comes after it.

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    4. Well, unfortunately, some people want to do very, very bad things. The real threat of violence is the only way to deal with them.

      I'll be the first to say that America uses this threat FAR too much for FAR too many things. The drug war is a perfect example. Ridiculous "three strikes" laws and such, not involving violent crime, as well. It is not uncommon for a man who's never laid a hand on another to serve more time in prison for some victimless crime than a man who has raped a child. That's a problem. Government needs force to be able to handle the bad guys. But when it uses force to enforce the arbitrary values of the powerful and wealthy, it becomes the bad guy.

      JMJ

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  9. As for AI and "machines" doing all the work... the "Progressive" movement was ALL about "Taylorism". Well I'm here to tell Taylor that LIFE has little to do with "efficiency".

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    1. I spent MANY years in production supervision AND management and I'm here to tell you many aspects of Taylorism remain integral to manufacturing and capitalism yet today.

      Life may have little to do with efficiency but production and business does.

      Humans always learn the hard way through experience. They are gullible too.

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    2. ...but production and business does.

      Exactly. So isn't 'government' the supposed antidote, the anti-business, or not? When government seeks efficiency, it sabotages its' own charter, serving to preserve the lives of its' citizens?

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    3. What ever became of the "anti-trust" aspects of the progressive movement? Have they all been signed over to the Clintonian "triangulators" on Wall Street?

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    4. Well, FJ, given your position here, certainly you would find the assault on Net Neutrality abhorrent!

      JMJ

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    5. Anti trust laws are actually a positive thing. They "level" the playing field so to speak as they place barriers to the capitalist tendency towards monopoly. Both Repubs and dems are guilty of being influenced by Wall Street. Trump, the alleged muti billionaire, knows about greasing the palms of both. As well as being pro market to a fault.

      I laugh at the partisan gyrations of both repubs and dems. Bernie was the only semi honest dude running in 2016.

      We have what we have and it IS going to get worse under Trump and the repubs. IMO.

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    6. I think FJ is pretty consistent here. I actually find very little disagree with, right?

      For instance, I love how the GOP suddenly discovered that we've had these trusts and monopolies in the private health insurance markets out there in the states, but of course, they blame it on Obamacare, as if this just happened! FUCKING FUCK FUCK! Where the hell have they been??? The whole fucking institution of health insurance was started by the government, became non-profit NGO things, the states got in on the act (as if Bungholeitus any different for a Wisconsin than a New Yorker), private for-profit came out of that... and now we have this expensive cluster-fuck system with every state doing it's own thing, no universal standards, prices, applications, costs, nothing. Where the hell are the anti-trust laws? Where the hell are the anti-monopoly laws? Why are we allowing this?

      And like you said, Trump and the GOP are going to make this worse.

      JMJ

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    7. Of course they blame Obamacare. Who else can feed and nurture a trust?

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    8. The unintended consequences of government interference... of killing bad trusts and supporting good ones. "None too much" bites us, again!

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  10. Replies
    1. Wait a minute... Is Stanley FT...?

      I never know what the heck he's doing next. All my friends are crazy like that!

      FT, is that you???

      Les?

      For the life of me, I never knew how they could manage so many monikers! I've been using pretty much the same one for like, oh man, I don't remember! 16 years? LOL! It's like a part of me now. I guess it's an old "band name" holdover. You know, how musicians have these peculiar attachments to their band and stage names.

      I never had the time before, too, ya' know? That's why I used to post at such weird hours. I worked crazy hours for many years. Now, I'm down and home, so I have some more time for fun like this, but my head's not on right either, so it's harder for me to keep up with all these smart, quick wits... I can't wait until I am both healthy AND have some time off work to enjoy life!

      I'm lucky, though, to have wonderful family and friends. And I scream "Stella!" (it's funny, I've been told I look a little like Brando) for all those folks I've known out there in my crazy life who are not nearly so lucky as I. I'm very worried. For the first time in my life, I have no idea in the universe of my mind what the hell the President of the United States is going to do next. I see a ruling majority that just seems deeply malevolent, and again for the first time in my life it seems they have no discernible modus operandi, they are either incompetent to the point of mentally disabled, or they are sociopaths. The lowest common denominators of virtue and sociability of the voting public are now the most represented. I'm really worried. I'm worried about my nephew and young friends in the military services. My God, I do not want to see them die for this insanity. It matters to me.

      JMJ

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    2. -FJ is Thersites, Stanley, TitanUranus2, Mrs. Grundy, Glenn Becks 1 fan, Red Herring, and a few others I've probaly left out like Inspector AIPac, Memberberries, et al...

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    3. I'm just me, Les. After 65 years I've gotten used to me. Wrinkles and all. 😀

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    4. You haven't lived until you've had a few 'female' handles. Chicks dig it! ;)

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    5. I don't know if it's you or the meds... ;)

      JMJ

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    6. Wait a minute... Is Stanley FT...?

      Nobody knows ALL of Farmer's blogs, RN. That's just the way it is. ;-)

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  11. Stella was a reference to the tropical storm currently giving the East coast a day off.

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    Replies
    1. A day off my ass Thersites! I live in the area expecting 18-24 goddamn inches of the white fluffy shit. Been out twice already just to keep up and looking at least two more outdoor excursions.

      I really do hate the Northeast this time of year. 😠

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    2. We got mostly sleet and slush in the Baltimore/DC region. About 4" on the ground here.

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  12. You a silly lunatic in the store, creating distraction and chaos? Naaaww.

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  13. James Clapper Is A Ru$$ian Spy! LOL. NOT.

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