Prescient AND hilarious. Point: dog.

>> ^complacentnation:
I still don't understand why so many people hyped Ron Paul when Dennis Kucinich was way better. Especially in terms of free market. A 'freer' market in this country would mean corporations taking shit to the next level. The government should get out of our lives but should better regulate corporate conglomerates. Not having some sort of regulation on business is practically the same thing as economic imperialism!


Probably because they did research and you didn't. What Kucinich, like any regulationist, doesn't understand is that the problems are not rooted in capitalism, but government enabled collusive activity between politicians and business. This can only happen with greater government control of the market. Maybe not with upstanding people like Kucinich, but some politician at some point who is more corruptible. So long as the regulatory power is there, it's going to happen. The idea of regulation itself depends on the person regulating being supremely unselfish and morally upstanding, and that's simply not going to be the case 90% of the time. It also asserts that government officials are prescient intellectuals who can choose the best technologies better than a market outcome. Therefore it is idealistic to expect it to work despite well-intentioned meaning and origin. In the end, all it does is raise prices and stifle innovation. Take ethanol subsidies for example. The government took money from you, and gave it to big corn conglomerates under the pretense that it knew what the best tech was better than a market outcome (that's essentially what a subsidy is). The people are poorer and less able to afford or invest in better technologies, corn-related food and livestock goes up in cost negating fuel savings, pollution stays the same since it takes as much energy to create ethanol as you get from it. Total government fuck-up.

A lot of socialist democrats today in favor of ever bigger government, they falsely blame market greed for the original depression, the cost of oil, CEO wages. I hear it all the time. It is insane to believe the housing bubble, for example, was rooted in spontaneous evolution of man becoming more greedy in the year 2000. That is nonsense. What really happened was centralized control of interest rates, under the same idealist principles which you espouse, in the form of the Federal Reserve, lead to a human being (Greenspan) politically pressured to avoid a necessary correction/recession after the last Fed-created bubble bust in 2000. Rates were forced down to 1% for an entire year, well below where the market would have had them at the time. That created a demand for housing and kept everyone spending, but do you see how that demand was artificial? All the people on Wall Street, they didn't evolve. They've always been greedy, that's what they're there for, to invest in the best sectors and benefit at the same time that their investment is ultimately benefiting us in the form of better products and services that we, the consumer, demand. If a recession was allowed to happen, though, and rates were reflective of the truth, they wouldn't have been incentivized into all that speculative and unsustainable madness. Greenspan actually vocally encouraged that "growth" for years and naturally people gravitate towards optimism and wanting to think something that great will last forever. Naturally, that attracts these ponzi schemes and shady lenders into placed they were not so commonly found before. So the socialist plank of a central bank and central economic planning enables it, and yet capitalism is blamed. Meanwhile, people are talking about giving the arsonist even more firefighting duties. Huh? You can see why we libertarian people are beside ourselves.

Greed drives innovation so long as competition is preserved and government grants no special privileges. If you accept that competition and the fear of competition leads to prices getting bid down in an effort to win the consumer of that product or service, then the last thing you want is government getting involved to erode it with managed trade like NAFTA, health care bills like the HMO act, no-bid contracts, taxpayer subsidies, etc, etc. Government is itself a monopoly, comprised largely of lawyers and very manipulative individuals who engage in some of the most outstanding and convincing propaganda you'll ever see, all the while colluding with their businessmen campaign financiers to return the favor and cause all the problems you hate so much but are utterly unwilling to blame on government enablement itself.

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

I fall on the gun control side- but man I do like me some Soylent Green. Such a prescient movie- I forgive his NRA stuff for that picture alone.

I think I have to explain the joke as nobody seems to "get" it.

The Spahn Ranch was an old Hollywood Wild-West movie set, used to film old Bonanza episodes among other things. Charles Manson and his "Family" lived on the ranch, occupying the old movie sets in a communal smelly-hippy-murderous-cult-type lifestyle. I dunno, but to me the thought of Charles Manson doing commercials for Ranch Dressing is hilarious.

Also interesting to note that there have apparently been at least 5 possible previously unknown graves of Manson family victims discovered on the ranch in recent weeks, so this parody is very relevant and maybe a bit prescient!

http://cbs5.com/local/manson.bodies.inyo.2.681846.html

That has to be the coolest thing I've ever seen in a boxing ring. Prescient.

Sorry for the double-post - but I suppose the premise of the show (getting you to watch any way they can) works since considering being in her husband's shoes and having to endure that experience disturbed me to the point of having to look for follow-up information to see what became of these two.

And DFT, your post is prescient in a way you may not have originally intended.

Look here to a 2/27/08 article by the NY Post that confirms Cleri's gambit was all for the money and fame, if you couldn't have guessed it already.

"Frank Cleri said he had been aware of his wife's cheating but not prepared for the emotional drain of their going public with it for the money."

Chilling.

Some people like the idea of a constitutional scholar as President, which makes your point about the right to bear arms more prescient.

I assume you are of the opinion that the second amendment is as clear as an unmuddied lake; I'm yet to be convinced that second amendment rights are appropriately applied when arguing against more restrictive handgun ownership.

'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

Should this line not be tied to its 'Militia' and 'security of a free State' context? If not, why not?

And if you ask me, I'd say Article II Sect.2 defines 'Militia' almost as a civilian force conscripted into service.

'The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.'

"Hey Joe, good to see you joined up with the militia here to fight against the invasion or-what-have-you. Oh and you brought your highly concealable handgun... thats real swell."

This video takes on a bit of a prescient nature considering the recent zoo tiger attack (link: CNN news article).

I'm ashamed of Princeton having been involved in this stupid crap. Glad to note that they finally closed that shit down early this year, albeit under the excuse of "fulfilling their research agenda." LOL

Re: the "feeling anxious before seeing shocking images." They would have had to be informed of what they were going to be shown for the test beforehand, so this "prescient knowledge of their own emotional reaction" is bullshit. It's a simple case of anxiety from knowing that something disturbing is up ahead but not knowing when it's going to happen. It's just like when you play any shooter/thriller video game like Doom or Resident Evil. You get the nervous thrill even before the monster pops out simply because you know it's going to.

How very prescient of you Issykitty.

> Prescient...

Try totally fucking obvious.

Prescient...

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

- James Madison

Eerily prescient.

WTF are you people talking about. "Back in my day" of course everyone was required to say the pledge of allegiance and it started the school day.

I suppose if you were a brave third grader you might exercise you civil rights to make it "optional" but I'm willing to bet that would not go well for you. I believe many schools still do this daily, especially private religious middle and high schools.

In fact in the early 90s there was a scheme by this corporation to outfit EVEREY classroom in the school with "free" TVs in exchange that we had to sit like zombies and be subjected to advertising and mandatory (I suppose you could gouge your eyes out) crappy programming. I can't remember if the pledge was incorporated into this.. maybe.

You must go see the Red Skelton video on this subject. It is mandatory prescient required reading before anyone can speak intelligently on this subject. (BTW, the whole thing, not just the crappy rethug corrupted mashup). The whole "war on the pledge" movement B.S. cracks me up.

(links anyone?)