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RedditBack in the Great Depression years of the 1930s, unemployed writers, like unemployed steelworkers, were in need of jobs, and so the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, which put all sorts of Americans back to work, did so for writers as well--6,500 of them in the Federal Writers' Project at approximately $20 a week. Among other things, the FWP's writers produced a series of classic guide books to American cities and states, still enjoyable to read today. (Richard Wright and John Cheever were among the crew who, for example, did The WPA Guide to New York City.) FWP workers also gathered more than 10,000 first-person oral histories of ordinary -- yet extraordinary -- Americans, relatively few of which were ever published.
Almost 30 years ago, the writer Ann Banks collected 80 of these into a deeply moving memory piece of a book entitled First-Person America. When you read through it, one thing likely to strike you about its narratives from our last spectacular economic meltdown was how many of the speakers didn't distinguish between the 1920s and the 1930s, between, that is, "the roaring twenties" of the "Jazz Age" and the Great Depression era. For lots of them, it was all tough times. As Banks wrote in her introduction: "For most of the people in this book, the Depression was not the singular event it appears in retrospect. It was one more hardship in lives made difficult by immigration, world war, and work in low-paying industries before the regulation of wages and hours. Though they spoke of living through bad times, those interviewed by the Federal Writers seldom mentioned the Depression itself."
This came to my mind recently as I read in the Washington Post about a category of crime I hadn't known existed: desperate people in a money crunch, often behind on loan payments to car dealerships, who torch their cars and then try to collect insurance on them (usually by claiming they were stolen). Washington police estimate hundreds of such cases in their region just in the past two years. Though the numbers of such attempted frauds may now be on the rise, it's a phenomenon that hardly began with the collapse of Bear Stearns, or the tanking of the stock market, or the global credit crunch that followed. I was left wondering how many people this time around won't make much of a distinction between the blow-out 1990s, the Bush years in which the President, in response to the 9/11 attacks, asked Americans to head for Disney World and shop till they drop, and the disaster that is now almost certain to follow and haunt us all.
As more people today are behind on car loans than ever before, we undoubtedly can brace ourselves for a rise in car burnings in the years ahead, just as we are already seeing a rise in all kinds of extreme acts, as ever more Americans have their homes foreclosed and face the reality of eviction. As Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, points out, if you search carefully through local news reports nationwide, you can already see where we're heading, and it isn't pretty. Not one bit.
Suicides, self-inflicted wounds, resistance to eviction, armed self-defense, arson, and murder--such acts may become increasingly run-of-the-mill as the foreclosure and financial crises meld into a single disaster in the United States. Already Turse finds painful evidence of the human costs of the present crisis bubbling up into consciousness. As he writes in "The Rising Body Count on Main Street":
"Right now, there are no real counts of the many extreme acts born of the financial crisis, but assuredly other murders, suicides, self-inflicted injuries, acts of arson and of armed self-defense have simply gone unnoticed outside of economically hard-hit neighborhoods in cities and small towns across America. With no end in sight for either the foreclosures or the economic turmoil, Americans may have to brace themselves for many more casualties on the home front. Unless extreme economic steps, like mortgage- and debt-forgiveness, are implemented, the number of extreme acts and the ultimate body count may be far more extreme than anyone yet wants to contemplate."
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The depression has not even begun yet, that's for sure. We'll need Obama's tax hikes and protectionism in place before we REALLY get rolling.
Posted by pontificus at 10/20/2008 @ 3:42pm
Posted by pontificus at 10/20/2008 @ 3:42pm
Keep in mind that 15 years ago, PONTI's mentor (Rush) and Sean and the rest (and likely PONTI, too)...
told us of the "recession that Bill Clinton's tax hike would bring upon us" in 1993.
And when it didn't happen, and instead we actually had a boom, balanced-then-surplus budgets?...."He just got lucky" and "Gingrich gets all the credit!"
Posted by Maskdelta at 10/20/2008 @ 4:02pm
Ponti pulls fear out of a hat... for all to see... and react to.
It doesn't especially matter to him if it's true... or if it's ethical to say it... what matters most, it seems, is that the 'fear button' is pushed.
Most people would call it terrorism... but here in America we call it "politics as usual"...;^)
It's a shame, really... because most of us are pretty smart when we're not prone to abject terror and reality-based paranoia...
Posted by ttr at 10/20/2008 @ 5:19pm
You know Red, my whole family are what you call "Leftists" and we not only don't walk away from our responsibilities we look after our extended families, neighbors and communities as well. It truly pisses me off that the engineers of this deregulation disaster-those masters of personal accountability-don't even have the cajones to confess, much less apologize. They just say it was Clinton's fault or even Carter's fault or, for God's sake, Obama's fault. No accountability whatsoever.
I am proud to be a Liberal, a Lefty, a small case socialist because it is as opposite a greedy, uncaring, right wing, money worshipping Capitalist as I can get.
If McCain wins I give it six months before a genuine class warfare erupts. You can't treat working people like crap indefinitely because once they have no hope of moving up they will bring the upper class down. History can and will repeat itself.
Posted by Pogge at 10/20/2008 @ 5:59pm
Others simply WALKED away from their personal responsibility and accountability just like "good leftist" and left the taxpayers and corporate america holding the bag as usual!
Posted by RedRiver_. at 10/20/2008 @ 5:30pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Sounds remarkably similar to what Bush allowed corporate America to do.
Posted by OneVote at 10/20/2008 @ 6:17pm
The depression has not even begun yet, that's for sure. We'll need Obama's tax hikes and protectionism in place before we REALLY get rolling.
Posted by pontificus at 10/20/2008 @ 3:42pm | ignore this person | warn this person
When you measure prosperity by how far the stock market goes up you miss the point. This a measure of prosperity for the wealthy and a small percentage. In reality, we have been losing ground for some time. Bush tax cuts have done nothing but line the pockets of the already well off.
Posted by OneVote at 10/20/2008 @ 6:22pm
Ponti's doom n' gloom sale is more projection of his own misery. The Happy'r, ahhh so Happy!, the happier they claim to be, the bigger the split in them.
The more LIBERTY they claim, the HAPPY'r they claim, the more they claim to be able to PONTIficate, the less reality they harbor, the more they project, the larger their lies.
Oh, the Left, the Left, that awful, terrible Left
So terrible the neocon can not but sing
For all good doings under the sun
Have Reagan, Rush and W done
And dirty deeds? Why that's a wrap
Dirty deeds are by for from and of the Left
Posted by winyahn at 10/20/2008 @ 7:12pm
SUICIDES !!!!! ??????
Talk about going green!
We're reducing our carbon footprint everytime someone takes the ultimate selfish way out.
As long an internal combustion engine nor firearm is used, suicides seem environmentally friendly.
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/20/2008 @ 9:36pm
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/20/2008 @ 9:36pm
LOL ... Try googling "Church of Euthanasia"
Posted by leftofcenter at 10/20/2008 @ 9:57pm
Hey Poggee: Based on your rant, you forget that all the charitable trusts that endow do gooders like William Ayers and his knuckleheaded ideas get their money from capitalist money grubbing rich people. The rich donate more than Michael Moore, Joe Biden and all the rest of your ilk.
I am a proud capitalist that would rather donate my money to the local church than send it Obama, because it will be better spent.
I will take your six month bet and raise you. Those who are unambitious hate those who are. You sound like the latter.
Posted by apoorspic at 10/20/2008 @ 10:31pm
when dipshit ceo's who put in less than stellar performances pay themselves buzillions...
huzzah for a little wealth redistribution...
Posted by dexter666 at 10/20/2008 @ 11:52pm
The biggest financial crisis in almost 80 years and the focus of the two system party candidates at their last "debate" was on who said what nasty personal thing about whom. And the chief economic advisor to the one most likely to come away with the prize, Obama, Robert Rubin, was the author of the 1990s deregulation that stands at the foundation of so much of the securities abuse that caused it! Talk today of a renewed stimulus package, possibly another tax rebate which so many of us could use, and Nancy Pelosi rides in to announce that nothing that might actually help people would be enacted before that most important of all job fairs, the November election. Looking for change? Nancy might show you her new coat and shoes. Our prospects: A severe and long lasting recession and utter fools at the head of the executive and legislative branches to "lead us". Something tells me that George Bush, as bad as he's been, might just come to look like Albert Einstein in comparison.
Progressives vote Nader!
Posted by john lowell at 10/21/2008 @ 12:03am
Any bullshit from the right claiming that Obama is the harbinger of doom because "he's going to do this or that" is too funny.
Please! They owned the Govt. for the past eight years. It's been one disaster after another.
I'm just waiting to see what else is going to happen before Obama is sworn in. I'm sure old W has at least one more collosal blunder left in him. Or, maybe Bush already fucked something up and the consequences are headed this way like a tsunami.
Posted by koroviev at 10/21/2008 @ 01:02am
Posted by john lowell at 10/21/2008 @ 12:03am
wow, that obama seems like a dangerous critter.
now, tell me about john mccain....
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 01:03am
Or, maybe Bush already fucked something up and the consequences are headed this way like a tsunami.
Posted by koroviev at 10/21/2008 @ 01:02am
i bet mr. bin laden might just pop up one more time.
happy halloween.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 01:05am
Another WTC scale attack now would be an unthinkable disaster. It could conceivably end the world as we know it.
Instead of an election...we could have thunderdome!
Posted by koroviev at 10/21/2008 @ 01:29am
no, no attack.
just an audio tape.
a la 2004.....
"he'll" endorse obama because he really wants mccain to win.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 02:11am
i bet mr. bin laden might just pop up one more time. Posted by frosty zoom
Why should he bother? W is bringing the US to its knees for him. The financial mismanagement will in sum be far more disastrous than WTC, and probably cause more deaths too.
Posted by mikecope at 10/21/2008 @ 04:15am
All of the brainiacs from the right who post here are doing so not for an argument, but, rather to annoy those of us who would like to have a place to debate logical views on various topics. I thought about just removing them and then I reconsidered. I actually enjoy reading their "words of wisdom." Each of their posts verify that they are rather pathetic loosers.
Posted by Truthman at 10/21/2008 @ 07:24am
Why should he bother?
Posted by mikecope at 10/21/2008 @ 04:15am
mccain.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 08:40am
Posted by Maskdelta at 10/20/2008 @ 4:02pm
"And when it didn't happen, and instead we actually had a boom, balanced-then-surplus budgets?...."He just got lucky" and "Gingrich gets all the credit!""
Policies of high taxes, protectionism, and artificially high labor prices are precisely what are believed by many economists to have caused what should have been a recession in 1929 to morph into a full blown Depression. What's sad is that so many today have failed to learn the lessons of the past.
Posted by pontificus at 10/21/2008 @ 09:30am
What's sad is that so many today have failed to learn the lessons of the past.
Posted by pontificus at 10/21/2008 @ 09:30am
yep.
that's why you'll vote for the fiscally inept republicans.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 09:48am
As long an internal combustion engine nor firearm is used, suicides seem environmentally friendly. Posted by bleedingheart
Since humans are claimed to be the leading cause of global warming, shouldn't the U.S. institute a one child per family law?
Posted by abell12ct at 10/21/2008 @ 09:57am
Posted by pontificus at 10/21/2008 @ 09:30am
Didn't say "1929", PONTI...
I said "1993".
Now, are you going to say (as I said you would) "Clinton got lucky" or "Gingrich gets the credit"???
LOL
Posted by Maskdelta at 10/21/2008 @ 10:04am
"Palin backs shipping Alaskan LNG to Japan Tuesday October 21, 9:51 am ET By Martha Mendoza, AP National Writer
Palin talks of US energy independence, but fights to keep shipping liquid natural gas to Asia
On the campaign trail, Sarah Palin says repeatedly that America must tap its own natural gas and oil reserves to become energy-independent. But the Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate has pushed the federal government to allow a liquefied natural gas plant to continue exporting to Asia -- the only such plant in the United States that sends the product overseas.
"When we talk about energy, we have to consider the need to do all that we can to allow this nation to become energy-independent," Palin said earlier this month during the vice presidential debate. "It's a nonsensical position that we are in when we have domestic supplies of energy all over this great land. And East Coast politicians who don't allow energy-producing states like Alaska to produce these, to tap into them, and instead we're relying on foreign countries to produce for us."
This summer, Palin cheered the Energy Department for extending an export license for the Kenai Liquefied Natural Gas facility. The license allowed the Alaska plant to continue shipping its products to Asia through 2011.
The plant began shipping its product exclusively to Japan in 1969, renewing federal export permits every few years. As energy prices have soared in recent years, and with supplies dwindling, there has been increased opposition to allowing the plant to export.
The current license extends a permit that otherwise would have expired in 2009..........."
Drill baby Drill.....Your worst fears about allowing energy companies to offshore drill and drill in ANWR are realized
Posted by OneVote at 10/21/2008 @ 10:51am
"and artificially high labor prices"
Posted by pontificus at 10/21/2008 @ 09:30am
Man, are you dim. What we see now is pay going up for people who get rich off of labor while salaries for those who produce stagnate. Low wages for people who work in industries outside of the financial sector (i.e. real production) is one cause of the crisis. Without real and fair income to purchase necessities like food, fuel, and shelter, the less well off are forced to rely on credit. High interest rates and commodity inflation along with ridiculous fees and harsh penalties on loans and credit card transactions are in essence privatized "taxes" on the poor for the benefit of the bank. This puts those of less fortune in a form of indentured servitude to the financial sector, a wonderful little control mechanism. We are stuck with three choices here; fairly tax those who get rich off the poor and give out government assistance, pay workers enough to live without credit for basic necessities, or fuck the funny money and let things of real value like resources and labor move our economy.
Now, brush this aside and call me a commie.
Posted by HAL9000 at 10/21/2008 @ 11:24am
john lowell,
Beware. That "Vote Nader" stuff will get you in a ton of trouble here. I typed NADER/GONZALES '08 at the end of a few posts and the dogs were unleashed.
This is a clairvoyant group.
The truth about you is; you are a republican. Better yet a racist republican. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, yada yada yada.
(PS. I'm voting for Nader also!)
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 11:55am
This puts those of less fortune in a form of indentured servitude to the financial sector, a wonderful little control mechanism....
Posted by HAL9000 at 10/21/2008 @ 11:24am
The official term is usary.....Usury (pronounced /ˈjuːʒəri/, comes from the Medieval Latin usuria, "interest" or "excessive interest", from the Latin usura "interest") originally meant the charging of interest on loans. This would have included charging a fee for the use of money, such as at a bureau de change. After countries legislated to limit the rate of interest on loans, usury came to mean the interest above the lawful rate. In common usage today, the word means the charging of unreasonable or relatively high rates of interest. As such, the term is largely derived from Abrahamic religious principles and Riba is the corresponding Islamic term. The primary focus in this article is on the Christian tradition.
The pivotal change in the English-speaking world seems to have come with the permission to charge interest on lent money: particularly the Act 'In restraint of usury' of Henry VIII in England in 1545 (see book references).
Pretty damn un-Christian like isn't it.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2008 @ 11:59am
If you want to stop these acts of desperation join the efforts of The Benefactor Project.com If you choose to ignore or not support the project then the next time you read a story like this one you will be part of the problem that caused it.
Posted by anonbene at 10/21/2008 @ 11:59am
(PS. I'm voting for Nader also!)
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 11:55am
You are completely full of crap and you know it. Nader makes Obama look like a republican, so there is no way in hell after reading your idiotic posts that you'd be voting for Nader. If you do vote for Nader, than you truly have no clue as to what Nader stands for.
By the way, I like Nader, but he will never be the president of this country. The two party system won't allow a third party. It sucks, but it's a reality.
If Obama wins the election, he may want to consider a position for Nader in his cabinet. Nader has a long history of protecting consumers and could be a valuable resource.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2008 @ 12:23pm
" If you do vote for Nader, than you truly have no clue as to what Nader stands for."
That would make me a typical 2008 presidential election voter.
Oh Well....
NADER/GONZALES '08
(Just got 5 more yard signs but I won't put these out until the weekend before the election as the Obama/McCain people destroyed the last ones!)
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 12:44pm
Soylent Green!!!! Now youve gone and spoiled the movie for everybody.
Posted by Mistral at 10/21/2008 @ 12:51pm
TEST:
Which presidential candidate was AGAINST the Wall Street BAILOUT?
1) Obama 2) McCain 3) Nader
(Now the great and wonderful congress is talking about yet another "stimulus package".)
(Speaking of cabinets) Which presidential candidate if elected would appoint a cabinet that would be REAL change?
1) Obama 2) McCain 3) Nader
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 1:16pm
BONUS QUESTION:
Which candidate will remove troops from Iraq the quickest?
1) Obama 2) McCain 3) Nader
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 1:41pm
Which candidate will remove troops from Iraq the quickest?
1) Obama 2) McCain 3) Nader
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 1:41pm
Which candidate has a zero percent chance of winning the election>
1)Obama 2)McCain 3)Nader
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2008 @ 1:47pm
bleedingheart, nader might get the troops out, and he would have opposed the bailout, but he still cannot transform his ideas into policies.
Posted by darladoon at 10/21/2008 @ 1:53pm
funny but if Nader is so great, why has he held no elective office?
Posted by emile duBois at 10/21/2008 @ 2:40pm
Wrong again Ponti,
One of the major causes of the Depression was a policy of fiscal stringency. The crash and subsequent loss of liquidity was a function of excessive speculation, not high taxes or labor costs.
I know of no proposal by Obama that even begins to approximate Smoot-Hawley.
Labor prices had nothing to do with it; wage increases lagged behind productivity increases so business were, in fact, getting more "bang for the buck". In fact, it was an flow of wealth to the rich that helped create the slowdown since the non-rich were simply unable to purchase enough to keep the economy going.
Posted by brunowe at 10/21/2008 @ 2:49pm
Pogge, great post!
Here's an interesting little insight into the difference between liberals and regressives (they are not "conservative"). I have a big party every year, and most of my guests are liberals. Usually about 100 people or more show up, camp out, play music, and bring food to share. But just a few are Republican Bush supporters, since I'm pretty accepting of my friends' having different points of view from mine.
Anyhow, the only people who have ever brought food and kept it in their own campsites - and then shared in the food other people brought - were some of the Republicans! Even on a personal level, there's a selfish kind of "everyone for oneself" mentality that is quite opposite the "we're all in this together" attitudes of liberals.
Gee! I think I added 3 new individuals to my ignore list just today! The trolls are still lurking, still delusional, and still disruptive. But, hey, it won't do them any good to respond to my observations because they are on my ignore list!
Good posts by other folks here, too. Would be even better without the spitting-in-the-wind replies to the freepers. Never try to teach a pig to dance; it just frustrates you and annoys the pig. Even more to the point, if you roll around in the mud with pigs, you get dirty, and the pig enjoys it. (And, YES, I AM calling Sarah Palin, a pig, along with the nasty ignorant masses who advocate violence at her rallies! Pigs all.)
Posted by LeeAnnG at 10/21/2008 @ 2:56pm
(PS. I'm voting for Nader also!)
Posted by bleedingheart at 10/21/2008 @ 11:55am
PSS, he's lying.
Read a collection of bleeding's posts...he's a conservative posing as a Nadeite.
Note- He almost never attacks McCain. And any right-wing position attack is done so "over-the-top" to make it seem sarcastic.
He's a Republican.
Posted by Maskdelta at 10/21/2008 @ 3:41pm
Posted by LeeAnnG at 10/21/2008 @ 2:56pm
Hey Liberal LeeAnnG, I think it is amazing you can paint a broad swath of people with your narrow observation of a few Republicans and their shameful behavior at one of your camping parties?!
I'd bring a case of DRC and plenty of awesome food to share at your party. And I'm a conservative. We'd have a blast!
But instead you've written me off as a pig.
I wonder how you justify saying your first paragraph you're, "pretty accepting of my friends' having different points of view from mine"...
Yet in paragraph 3 of the same post, you adamantly proclaim, "Never try to teach a pig to dance; it just frustrates you and annoys the pig. Even more to the point, if you roll around in the mud with pigs, you get dirty, and the pig enjoys it. (And, YES, I AM calling Sarah Palin, a pig, along with the nasty ignorant masses who advocate violence at her rallies! Pigs all.)" Oh, that is a charming keepsake of prose.
Now, how is your hatred better than Palin's hatred again? Because in my view hatred be it liberal or conservative is still hatred...
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/21/2008 @ 4:16pm
Now, how is your hatred better than Palin's hatred again? Because in my view hatred be it liberal or conservative is still hatred...
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/21/2008 @ 4:16pm
freiheit, I didn't see LeeAnn suggesting that they kill Palin as some of these nutcases at the McCain and Palin rallies have said of Obama. Calling things the way they are isn't bad, if that's they way they are. The neocons have flat out lied about Obama being a muslim, terrorist, socialist, communist, terrorist sympathizer.... and the list goes on and on.
Someone on one of these threads was talking about how brainwashed liberals are. Has it ever occurred to people in this country that the words communism and socialism are ideological ways to govern and nothing more. They are neither evil nor good and no better or worse than the people running the government. The same thing can be said of capitalism. But here in the good old USA, the words socialism and communism have taken on an evil connotation as if they were created by Satan himself. Ever wondered about that?
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/21/2008 @ 4:40pm
Hi Wolfgang,
Yes, I have wondered about that. Extraordinary, considering I think we've been basically a socialist nation since Woodrow Wilson.
And I think we're divided because power needs us to be divided against each other. That way we're too busy to comprehend how we, as a people, are being fleeced, as a new high tech feudalism takes shape before our blind eyes.
Well, on that happy note, I'm off for an evening in San Francisco! L8r.
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/21/2008 @ 5:31pm
BBC had a report today on "social inequality" between the rich and the poor in developed nations. The U. S. was behind Mexico and Turkey, but we were not much better than Turkey.
Posted by P. J. Casey at 10/21/2008 @ 5:32pm
shouldn't the U.S. institute a one child per family law?
Posted by abell12ct at 10/21/2008 @ 09:57am
no,
people should do that voluntarily.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 9:33pm
BBC had a report today on "social inequality" between the rich and the poor in developed nations. The U. S. was behind Mexico and Turkey, but we were not much better than Turkey. Posted by P. J. Casey at 10/21/2008 @ 5:32pm
That's because the poor in Mexico all moved north of the border, and aren't being counted..
Posted by twillie at 10/21/2008 @ 10:35pm
people should do that voluntarily.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/21/2008 @ 9:33pm
Why frosty?
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/22/2008 @ 12:07pm
From Planning.com:
"Gap between rich, poor in U.S. among widest in world
EMMA VANDORE; GREG KELLER, EMMA VANDORE and GREG KELLER Monitor staff
Economic inequality is growing in the world's richest countries, particularly in the United States, jeopardizing the American Dream of social mobility just as the world tilts toward recession, a 30- nation report said yesterday.
The gap between rich and poor has widened over the last 20 years in nearly all the countries studied, even as trade and technological advances have spurred rapid growth in their economies.
With job losses and home foreclosures skyrocketing and many of these countries now facing recession, policy makers must act quickly to prevent a surge in populist and protectionist sentiment as was seen following the Great Depression, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.
"What will happen if the next decade is not one of world growth but of world recession? If a rising tide didn't lift all boats, how will they be affected by an ebbing tide?" Oxford University economist Anthony Atkinson said at a conference at the OECD headquarters."
this is a fact, as much as mccain's owning 13 plus houses and having billions he didn't earn from his trophy wife...
what else is there to know???
mccain's willful igorance doesn't have to be copied by americans...if you continue to be ignorant, then electoral college will still have a place...
if you STILL vote for trickle down BS cut all spending on "regular" things for "regular" people while saying only parts of the country are "real america"...using some guy who is as fake as mccain to represent "working class" is so disengenuous....if any american has half a brain or any self-respect whatsoever...VOTE OBAMA!!!
Posted by jrs112 at 10/22/2008 @ 12:24pm
funny but if Nader is so great, why has he held no elective office?
Posted by emile duBois at 10/21/2008 @ 2:40pm
Thank you! I've been wondering that same thing. I even posed, to john lowell, that Nader's supporters should push him to run for a smaller office than POTUS. John got all indignant on me. It's okay, though. I'd still have a drink with john(preferably an alcoholic drink).
Posted by k330k at 10/22/2008 @ 1:04pm
Republicans. What a happy group.
They fail to mention their previous support for Bush and Cheney in the current climate of fear. (remember them?) There's no talk about them at all, even though they are responsible for some of the nastiest actions forced upon a complacent society since Stalin. Many people are afraid of losing their jobs because of them, even now. In regards to these two, Republicans seem a lot like the relative who takes a big dump in the only bathroom at a thanksgiving dinner, then walks around the house claiming that it wasn't him. But the bumper sticker is still on their foreheads. And the WMD's, the reason for the stupid war? Bush's military record? That he's an alcoholic? No problem; just create a little more fear, tell the approximately 40% of America that are also morons that 'Someone's gonna take your guns!!'
Now they want to elect a guy who has incontinence problems, both physical and mental, for president. And a woman who just spent 125,000 dollars on clothes while people lose their homes and their minds. Give us four more years, they say, all the while ginning up the whole spectacle with possible voting fraud, caging, yelling out the word 'Socialist', and all the while hoping things return to 'normal' so that they can get busy with the agenda of the self centered and blind. Soylent Green anyone?
If a logical plan was offered a normal person could give them some credibility. But they have none. It's a lot of the old 'Let them eat cake' crap. I suffer with the ignominy of it all. I was alone in a car with Ralph Nader for four hours and he's full of it as well. These blog posts are an excellent way to get the real picture of American thought. It's a great outlet. But it's not pretty. MaskDelta, take over for me. You're the man.
Posted by ficheye at 10/22/2008 @ 9:54pm
Why frosty?
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/22/2008 @ 12:07pm
ain't much space left.
ain't much water left.
ain't much [insert super necessary thing here] left.
that's why.
neo-europeans use a WHOLE bunch of stuff.
we've got one child because we love your children.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/22/2008 @ 11:06pm
I travel the world, there's plenty of space. Oceans are water. Ain't much [awareness] left.
We would agree that waste is bad.
But on the topic of population control, we can agree to disagree. And we obviously do on this one.
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/23/2008 @ 12:49am
I travel the world, there's plenty of space.
but how much is usable. the folks in afghanistan or chad can tell you.
Oceans are water.
full of salt. ta da! fusion power! desalinization cheap! but what happens to unsalty oceans?
Ain't much [awareness] left.
oh, there's plenty. are you aware of what you are made?
We would agree that waste is bad.
and expensive.
But on the topic of population control, we can agree to disagree.
no way! you're wrong ~ but seriously, it's not control, it's common sense. check out the infinite growth in the petri dish.....
And we obviously do on this one.
no way! that's no fun. listen, think about the resources you use. how many humans could that support? a lot. share. each of us is like at least an NFL sized village somewhere else. THEY deserve to have more kids. WE are the greedy ones. share, use less. let THEM have a chance.
technological advances have (and will continue to) improved human existence quite nicely. nonetheless, our current rate of growth has outpaced technology's capacity to keep things under control environmentally. i think fiat money has a lψt to do with it. compare global debt to global temperature rise (for example).
in other words, by stripping away the concept of wealth away from something earthly, we've escaped the earth's power to keep our greed in check. in non fiat based systems such as those used by bears or flatworms, wealth (i.e. food) is directly related to the earth. however, we've created a system that says, "ha, earth! we've got you beat. we don't need you for wealth anymore." unfortunately, this has lead to growth that ultimately is environmentally unsustainable.
just ramblin'
Posted by freiheit1 at 10/23/2008 @ 12:49am
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/23/2008 @ 01:42am
and it will (i sure hope not) collapse upon us, much in the same way the CDOcreditdefaultswapmortgage scam did.
or maybe not.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/23/2008 @ 01:44am