Newt, you've already lost.

You didn't lose with Trump in 2016, but with California's Prop 13 in 1978.

The goal of the Neocon movement was to decimate American public education because they knew that an educated population would never vote for the kind of shit they were selling, and because teachers (being educated and all) were a powerful Democratic voting block. Defunding public education was a win/win for them.

It worked beautifully.

The teacher's unions were starved. Public schooling imploded. We went from the most educated populace in the world to the point where 50% of the population can't find their own country on a map.

Then the real screw-job started with the wealth transfer. Unions were busted, jobs were moved overseas. The safety net that kept millions from abject poverty was dissolved ("welfare queens", "food-stamp cheats"). The Middle Class began to evaporate with about 10% climbing up the ladder and the rest being dumped into the street.

For people like me -- people with high-end skills and a college degree -- that shit worked out great. But people who aren't as lucky? Kinda sucks being them. So they got madder and madder. Luckily, there were dark-skinned people that this rage could be directed at. That good ol' American racism? That shit pays dividends if you play it the right way.

Now you have an increasing number of poorly educated people living in poverty with grievances. Hey, guess what -- we have a new tool to focus all that anger and it's called FOX News! They can show you whose dastardly plan it was to keep your poor, white self down on the farm while those FUCKING LIBERALS live it up in the cities!

Lather, rinse, repeat.

See Newt, people like Bob aren't an anomaly, they're the intended end result of a very well-conceived long-term plan by extraordinarily smart people who understood Chomsky, Orwell and Lasker better than you ever will. Bob is now the norm and you are the exception.

Go ahead and vote in Biden or Warren or even Sanders: it doesn't fucking matter because you can't vote out entrenched stupid. No matter who is sitting at 1600 Penn Ave, Bob is sitting in front of his computer, seething and being stupid. He's not going anywhere. He's not going to see things differently and he's damned well not going to get any smarter.

There's a shit-ton of Bobs in this country and their numbers are growing daily. What're you going to do with them? Put 'em in a camp somewhere? Shoot 'em? You cannot have Bobs and the America you want. That leaves you with exactly two choices: you pick up your gun and shoot them, or you pick up your passport and leave. It's one or the other. You might not like the taste of this shit sandwich, but you're going to eat it whether you like it or not.

Also, you think Bob's a little kooky? Go visit 4chan's /pol/, visit whatever 8chan became, visit the comments section of Zero Hedge, read the comments on FOX's YouTube videos: those motherfuckers make Bob look like a goddamn bastion of rationality. Those people, the ones who're yelling at their screens and pounding out febrile screeds? They're armed. They hate you. They want to kill you. The only reason they haven't is because they haven't reached critical mass yet. Give them a couple of years of post-Covid economic collapse and they'll get there.

I'll never forget the most important lesson a Holocaust Survivor taught me: "The smart Jews left first".

Good luck; see you in Lyon.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I enjoy this guy's kooky style.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I'm with you guys - but then we are all nerds I think. But seriously it's a false equivalency. Nobody is talking about abandoning the Earth. I like Maher - but he's a bit kooky.

The most interesting graph happens at roughly 4:38. 3.7 trillion dollars, made up of roughly 1/7th discretionary spending, 1/7th defense, and 5/7ths SS/Medi*/Interest.

The one philosophical holdout that I still appreciate about the GOP platform is generally smaller government. But for all they harp on that, they usually do jack shit to actually cut down on that total from the graph.

That huge 5/7ths portion is close to untouchable; or at least it would be political suicide to mess with any of that stuff. The only exception is the interest payments, which *do* have to be paid, but we could work to reduce the debt which would in turn reduce interest. How to do that? Raise taxes. And suddenly all the Republicans think it's a terrible idea.

That leaves the 1/5th from Defense and 1/5th from other Discretionary spending. To me, Defense is the obvious target. If you really want to tighten the belt and be fiscally conservative, do we actually NEED to spend all that on defense? Couldn't it be cut in half or even more drastically and we'd still easily be able to actually, you know, defend the country? But again, pretty much zero Republican interest in cutting Defense budget, unless you're a kooky fringe element like Ron Paul with zero intra-party backing.

So that leaves the 1/5th of Discretionary spending. And yeah, sometimes Republicans do actually make cuts here. At best, they cut "drop in the bucket" type stuff like mentioned in the video, with negligible effect on the budget and a loss of programs that are valued by some/many. At worst, you end up like KansasBrownbackistan, with zero budget for schools, etc.

That rift between party platform and actual action is the biggest reason that I tend to have *zero* interest in voting Republican for any national office, in spite of still being registered as a Republican. State offices (governor, state legislature, etc.) are slightly more palatable places to consider voting in an R, but not by much. I do think they tend to be good options for Local government offices, especially for more rural areas. On the other hand, D's tend to be much better at promoting things like Bond Issues for improving schools, maintaining infrastructure, etc.

*promote KOOKY!

KInda leaves you going meh. The real Sarah Palin does kooky better.

Ron Paul was not goofy, but he was a (partially) fringe candidate. The gold standard being his biggest kookiness. But as far as just being loved by libertarians, well, that's what the media sold and that's what some poor saps actually believe.

As more a liberal leaning guy I swapped parties to vote for Paul. His honesty was nice but would have been unverifiable. However, his willingness to buck those he could have been bought by and made president from amazed me. He wasn't a populist except insofar as that his message was against those in power.

But what is most funny is this. Paul didn't do bad in the polls for basically being a 3rd party candidate. In that he smashed Nader and most other 3rd party candidates. Even knowing his defeat, those still willing to show their vote to him was astonishing. Now some would argue that he technically wasn't third party since he ceremoniously went under the Republican brand...but that's about stupid logic there.

Here's to a great career, Dave. You will be missed!

And I now cast a hard and emphatic vote behind Craig Ferguson to take over Dave's helm at the Late Show! He's the only one who has Dave's kookiness that would fit perfectly in to that slot.

Well, that's incorrect. All police are not felons and I'm guessing few of them suck cock -- not that there's anything wrong with that. Doing their job deserves no applause, just a paycheque. It's the talk afterwards that got my applause.

And I think you're a kooky crazy person that makes no sense.

Van Jones is kinda kooky in my opinion. I digress.

To imply that Obamacare is a Republican plan is ludicrous. Why can politicians not take responsibility for their own legislation? Republicans and Democrats are all the same. I see little difference between the two parties. They are all reactive, knee-jerk legislators that believe there needs to be a law for every situation known to mankind.

Leave the American People alone. Me and my neighbors can take care of ourselves.

Van Jones should read Dr. Covey's book:

“Proactive is a word you won’t find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

Look at the word responsibility- “response-ability”- the ability to respond. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us.

In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.

Reactive people are also affected by the social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well, when people don’t, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values-carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” In the word of Gandhi , “They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them” It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

I admit this is very hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else’s behavior. But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”

Not annoyed with the chatter, perturbed non-sequiturous responses often confuse and bewilder-Chat-Bot makes sifty seem like a kooky uncle with endearing Alzheimer twitches...

Love your title! I'm no royalist but I do love Charles, that kooky mofo!

Hey QM, I'll just respond to your quotes in order:

>>> As I reply in order.

-the old "white victimization by the race card" card. I don't buy it. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Republican Party, and even Ron Paul have become quite successful stoking anti-black resentment. I don't see them suffering because of it, unless you count that only a tiny minority among blacks will listen to them as fallout.

>>> The mainstream media has done a far better job creating class resentment, than the handful of conservative commentators have stoking "anti-black resentment", which even if there is such a thing, is dwarfed by anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-big government sentiment.

I assure you, black people, and any people know the difference between piss and rain water. They know racism when they see it, context and all.

>>> Based on the government school education and biased media of the past 50 years, a rational, fact-filled discussion on identifying racism' is just not possible. There's a lot of money in playing the victim. We're going to have to disagree on this one.

-The largesse of the elite doesn't change the fact that the racial makeup of the 1% is white. It also doesn't change the fact that the 1% is greedy.

>>> The 1% is greedy? Compared to whom? Aren't Black professional athletes and entertainers in the 1%?

-My point is, if you are going to put up unflattering statistics and facts about blacks, don't whine when unflattering facts about white people are brought up. Goose Gander.

>>> We have a right to our own opinions, but not to our own facts, and the FACT is that compared to their percentage of the population, Black males commit far more crimes compared to a similar percentage of Whites. That the libmedia covers up these facts isn't doing anybody any favors.
Where were these unflattering facts about Whites? Besides Ron Paul newsletters?

-I thought your original point is that sifters don't care about/endorse black extremist sifts. It looks like the sifters don't feel threatened by that video, and are using it to demonstrate the guy's kookiness.

>>> But the response would be far different if the racial roles were reversed, wouldn't you say?

What does it mean if a handful of people don't walk out and even clap? Does it impugn every African American?

>>> Of course not. But even calling those dummies who stayed to listen to that guy 'dummies' would be met with cries of racism.

I think we've discussed on several threads now how Paul would endorse a society that openly tolerates racial discrimination. In the context of everything he has done to support and encourage racism, even if he claims to be an angel, the newsletters are very relevant.

>>> Ron Paul isn't endorsing racial discrimination. Isn't it odd that before the Civil Rights Movement, there had to be laws in place to ENFORCE segregation?

>>> To me, Dr. Paul's criticism about the abuses of power wrought by expanded government is valid.

As I posited earlier to Net, do you believe the only thing holding the system together--guiding the economic, religious and moral decisions of 300 million people--are a few recent laws on the books?











>> ^longde:

I think we've discussed on several threads now how Paul would endorse a society that openly tolerates racial discrimination. In the context of everything he has done to support and encourage racism, even if he claims to be an angel, the newsletters are very relevant.

Hey QM, I'll just respond to your quotes in order:

-the old "white victimization by the race card" card. I don't buy it. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Republican Party, and even Ron Paul have become quite successful stoking anti-black resentment. I don't see them suffering because of it, unless you count that only a tiny minority among blacks will listen to them as fallout.

I assure you, black people, and any people know the difference between piss and rain water. They know racism when they see it, context and all.

-The largesse of the elite doesn't change the fact that the racial makeup of the 1% is white. It also doesn't change the fact that the 1% is greedy.

-My point is, if you are going to put up unflattering statistics and facts about blacks, don't whine when unflattering facts about white people are brought up. Goose Gander.

-I thought your original point is that sifters don't care about/endorse black extremist sifts. It looks like the sifters don't feel threatened by that video, and are using it to demonstrate the guy's kookiness. What does it mean if a handful of people don't walk out and even clap? Does it impugn every African American?>> ^quantumushroom:

Hey QM, thanks for taking the effort to respond. Now:
Black and white people clap differently? You're making my point for me. For some guy to speculate on racial differences--not racial inferiority or superiority--doesn't make him a racist.

>>> It's fair to say that when a White non-liberal even mentions race, no matter the context, s/he's a racist. That's just the way it is. FOX be damned, liberals still run the mainstream media and that's their M.O.

On the second quote, "white folks greed", yeah that's a racist quote. Given the setup of America, whose oligarchy is dominated by white people, I think it's accurate.
>>> How much money has "the oligarchy" spent on the war on poverty? 5 trillion. What percentage of that money has gone to directly aid Blacks, who make up only 13%-14% of the American population?
But it's racist all the same. But if this is racist, then posting those crime statistics of African American youth, as you often do, is racist as well.
Facts is facts, however unpleasant. You would think those that are trying to fix the problems would be grateful for accurate data. They might even see the fall of the Black family unit coinciding 'somehow' with the rise of the welfare state.
Where are the sifts demanding white people be destroyed? I guess I missed those.
http://videosift.com/video/Exterminate-White-People-Off-of-th
e-Face-of-the-Planet
>>> Yeah, he's likely a lone kook, but why aren't people walking out?

I am a CPA with 38 years experience.

I am wearing a man's flannel shirt and hiking boots and no makeup, with my hair pulled back with a rhinestone covered barrette, sitting here at work. (I'm not lesbian, I'm just comfortable in the cold Pacific NW, in a kooky town that lets you be comfortable without judgment.)

There is NO WAY he could guess what I do for a living.

I have no paper cuts at present. That might give me away.