| Author | Message | ||
     Ft_bstrd |
Can't stand the Beetles/John Lennon. Pretentious pablum. | ||
| Fahren |
Reindog, Sorry, I've been on the road for work, and have not been able to catch up online. Life trumps web, every time. I'll get to it, though. Thanks for pointing it out. | ||
| Kenm123t |
Most of the 60s rock is only good if your stoned. The FOLK music was just protest music but way better than the OWS drummers lol how the musical have fallen I you want to listen to fantastic musicians rememeber the Carpenters they never missed a note | ||
| 99savage |
Never took the phrase "sheep like" seriously until watching this. Not sure how typical it is of the OWS crowd but this group meekly follows a self appointed leader without question in pursuit of a goal they musk know is impossible. And suffer the consequences. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y&feature =player_embedded Wouldn't touch one of them w/ a barge pole | ||
| Bandm |
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/adam-carolla-break s-down-occupy-movement-fking-self-entitled-monster s/ | ||
| Cityxslicker |
let them eat horse.... oh wait that was Obama's Idea for us ! | ||
| Sifo |
Never took the phrase "sheep like" seriously until watching this. These people are without a doubt the useful idiots who will be used as cannon fodder and discarded like trash. No doubt I've been pretty hard in my judgements on the idiots that support this BS, but I've seen virtually nothing that has me wonder for a moment if I may have judged them wrongly. So far the police have handled them with the kid glove treatment, and they don't even understand that. The time will come when the kid gloves come off. I will have little sympathy for the idiots when that happens. | ||
| Reindog |
Doesn't matter. The OWS movement is dead when it is relegated to page 13 of the newspaper. Talk about Useful Idiots: The Liberals who spearheaded Tahir Square in Egypt are in shock over the election results. Big surprise. War is coming. Thanks a lot, Liberals. To borrow from Prince: Party like its 1933. | ||
| Hootowl |
FYI John Lennon became quite conservative before he was killed, and was embarrassed about the naivety of his youth. | ||
| Pwnzor |
I'll borrow/repost this from my own thread:  | ||
| Reepicheep |
Worth reposting! | ||
| Sifo |
The Liberals who spearheaded Tahir Square in Egypt are in shock over the election results. Big surprise. This is after they have spent a few months prior to the "elections" slaughtering the Christians and burning their churches. The problem is that right now in Europe the latest socialist utopia experiment is quickly grinding to a halt. They have run out of other peoples money. The socialists right now see the US to be ripe for pickings. It won't happen without a fight. | ||
| Fahren |
Without a fight? No fight required. None asked for. The Fed has already sent trillions overseas to bail out European banks, no asking of anyone (not that asking Congress has ever really been a problem, when the fed, the US Treasury and other bankster kleptocrats want to impose their will on the American people). They sent bags of freshly minted dollars overseas using TARP bailout funds; now they have done it again as part of the Central Banker bailout of Europe. This is insanity, and The People seem to be more worried about whether the latest xBox crap will be available in stores for Christmas. | ||
| Moxnix |
OPM (other people's money) addicts. | ||
| Pwnzor |
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| Drkside79 |
Yeah you know me | ||
| Sifo |
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| Blake |
>>> The Fed has already sent trillions overseas to bail out European banks... Your figure,"trillions", and your mischaracterization of loans already repaid are both incredibly inaccurate. It makes for good propaganda though doesn't it? What is "the fed"? | ||
| Pwnzor |
What is "the fed"?  | ||
| Moxnix |
We know what the Fed is: a private banking consortium meant to make mo' money. They've been a cause of my chronic everyday paranoia for decades. Thread hijack-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRIDNQNsUss&feature =player_embedded 'Come the revolution, everyone becomes part of the problem. “I can’t lead. And I don’t want to follow.” — Martin Clark This is perhaps a good point to introduce my new theory about what government really is. It is a phenomenon, not a system. It is best understood as a fight between the outsiders and the insiders. The insiders always control the government...and use it to conquer and control the outsiders. Why do they want to do so? The usual reasons. Wealth. Power. Status. Everybody (or everyone who isn’t either feebleminded or a saint) wants wealth, power and status. And the easiest, fastest way to get it usually is to take it away from someone. That is government’s role. Only government can take something away from someone else lawfully. Why? Because governments make the laws. --Back to the salt mines . . . . | ||
| Mtjm2 |
Was talking to an old friend that happens to be a Baltimore city cop . Seems the homeless have moved into the empty tents . Not many REAL protesters left . They like to show up when the media does . | ||
| Blake |
I was hoping Fahren would respond. I wonder if he knows any of the pertinent facts beyond the propagandist talking points. I do tend to agree with Mox on the Fed though. Should never have abandoned the gold standard. | ||
| Fahren |
Blake, it just goes too deep to try to work out on a forum. It has to do with my deep agreement with you that free market capitalism is great, but my equally deep conviction that there is hardly such a thing any more, in this global economy. The markets are rigged, by the very, very wealthy, for their own continued benefit. It matters not a whit which party sits in the White House - the corruption, the impoverishment of the many for the benefit of the few, the entire system of rigged market capitalism, not free market capitalism is deeply a part of the status quo. I'm not talking about your local main street banker being corrupt - I'm talking about the Monsantos, Bechtels, the Haliburtons, and on the financial side, the Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Rothschilds running the show, using financial hit men and the financial WMD provided by the IMF and World Bank. So I hear you that our President should be a strong leader, but that the Congress (the voice of "the many") should be stronger than the single executive leader, lest tyranny rear its ugly head. But do we not see the opposite happening, whether it be with Bush or Obama at the helm? So I hear you when the market should decide the value of goods, but is that what we see in today's highly speculative commodities markets? Is that what we see in the derivatives, CDS's, and other twisted market "products," and in the massive market manipulation of high frequency traders on Wall Street and in the City of London? Did we not see huge loans given out to country after country, for their "improvement and development," only to see the loan money going to multi-national infrastructure corporations to build power plants, pipelines, refineries, mines, etc., at zero benefit to the people of those countries, and leaving the countries with unsustainable debt loads, and wide open to the looting and loss of sovereignty that we are seeing in Greece, as well as right here at home in places like Jefferson County, Alabama, Michigan and Wisconsin, and we have seen all across Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central America. Blake, you and I, we are living examples of a Venn diagram: There is overlap of our circles, where we hold similar core beliefs, and where we can find common ground for discussion, but big, big parts of our circles are mutually exclusive, even contradictory. There is no common ground with me if you feel the revolving door of Wall Street to Washington is healthy and has produced no massive fraud, no socialization of risk and privatization of reward. The US model of growth is unsustainable and not exportable. Imagine what will happen - what is happening - as China and India emulate our model, a model wherein 5% of the world population uses 25% of the world's natural resources. That math won't work once the rest of the world wants in on the deal. What I see is a lot of very wealthy, powerful people (and, after all, corporations are people, right?) who all see that our current growth model is unsustainable and is crumbling, and they are grabbing all they can, from whoever they can, for as long as they can. And good, honest savers, and honest businessmen and women are the ones who are going to be left holding the bag. | ||
| Fahren |
Mr. Jefferson, on the TBTF: " [The] Bank of the United States... is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution... An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?" Thomas Jefferson | ||
| Fahren |
Comfortably Numb | ||
| Aesquire |
Ok, so we agree that politicians take bribes and make rules to profit the bribers, that certain "market products" like CDO's are rip offs, ( ripping off us ) and The Fed is a scary and out of control thing. I also agree that the Executive branch has taken more power than intended by the Framers. Do we agree that limited government is a better plan than more than a Trillion dollars a year additional debt every year and accelerating like a 1190R down a ski slope? I'll skip that I think you make zero sum assumptions that don't reflect the real world on some items. | ||
| Aesquire |
One of the problems we have had is that the "market" does not set the value of some goods, like CDO's. That is a case where "well meaning" politicians both got richer, and cost us all billions in "lost" wealth. ( when the scam was revealed ) I know the mortgage crisis cost me in my 401k. ( where a great deal of capitalism takes place ) | ||
| Fahren |
I'm all about dim sum - not sure about zero sum. But here's sum zero sum 4 U... most here will not agree with it, of course: http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-people-do-not- create-jobs-2011-12 | ||
| Aesquire |
Nice propaganda piece. You do realize that the "1%" & "millionaires tax" is a bald lie? The proposed "rich people tax" is going to tax mostly small business owners. Sure, $250k a year is a lot of money to me since I make so much less, and I'm not immune to the class envy tactics of the evil people who keep conning you into believing them. Who will be most hurt by the "tax the rich" movement is the guy who owns his own business, and is too small to file taxes like the major corporations that have bribed the politicians to give them huge breaks to "create more jobs". ( mostly in Indonesia and China... See GE and the massive bribes and "green" cons. ) There's lots more shoe store, tailor, tanning salons, etc. than billionaires. Jerks like Warren Buffet who call for more taxes on the "rich" stand to make lots more money on the results than they will ever pay out. You think he's stupid? Did you notice the sudden reduction in Obama's class envy private jet talk after Warren endorsed his plan? ( Buffet = private jet rental ) There is one grain of truth in that article. Consumers create demand that creates jobs. You want to "get the rich" and accomplish something besides giving power to evil people? Remove the limit on Social Security tax. Tax all people at the existing flat rate with no limit on income. May give SS a desperately needed boost in revenue. ( which Congress will steal and spend elsewhere, never ever reducing the deficit or debt. At least in this admin. And the last one. ) Then the rich ( defined here as able to reconfigure their finances to pull these tricks... and they will ) will simply ( like Warren Buffet ) change their accounting to reduce their taxes. ( with appropriate bribes to politicians, of course ) | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
The whole premise of his argument is heavily flawed. Under the "customers create jobs" premise, he assumes that employees just have money. They don't. The ONLY way that customers have funds to purchase goods is to be gainfully employed whereby they can, in the production of goods and services, exchange time, effort and talent in a free market for the economic medium to purchase goods and services themselves. The greatest mechanism to transfer wealth to workers is employment. Period. The middle class pays the least percent of income IN THE HISTORY of income taxes now. That number isn't zero. That number is a negative percentage. The middle class EARNS money from the 1% for doing absolutely nothing. In fact the less they do, the more they earn. The author seeks to increase the amount of unearned income by taxing the top earners at a greater rate in order to redistribute even more unearned "income" to the middle class. While the tax rates are "realatively low" historically, the number of tax deductions allowed is also historically low. The author is trying to create the impression that capital and capitalism plays absolutely no part in job creation. "If only we took 50% of all the wealth of the top 1% and gave it to the bottom 50%, jobs would be created. It simply isn't true. Sure the bottom 50% would have excess income for a short period of time. They would buy goods and services until the money was exhausted, but then they would have nothing. Prosperity isn't created by having excess spending money. Prosperity comes at taking capital and employing it so that you get it back plus earnings. It's the reason companies are built in the first place. Investors seeking growth on capital fund investments in goods and services that have a high probability of market success and market demand. This line: "The middle class has been pummeled, in part, by tax policies that reward "the 1%" at the expense of everyone else." is ridiculous. Reward? Really? The people who EARNED the money OWN the money. It isn't society's money. It isn't government's money. It's the person who OWNS the money's money. If I make $10M, how does what tax rate I pay affect a person who makes $50,000/year in any way? My tax rate is completely irrelevant to you UNLESS you expect to use the tax base as a way to compensate workers for work not performed. Wealthy people do ONLY three things with their money: Save it Spend it Invest it That's it. If they save it ("most of the $9+ million just goes straight into the bank (where it either sits and earns interest or gets invested in companies that ultimately need strong demand to sell products and create jobs)", banked funds serve to provide loans for small businesses, home mortgages, cars, and credit cards which ALL fuel demand. Without banks, large purchases would be nearly impossible, demand would drop, jobs would cease being created. If the wealthy spend it, goods or services are traded for capital that is used to provide wages for workers as well as return for investors. If the wealthy invest it, business owners are able to bring goods and services to market. What is preventing the middle class from growing and HAS negatively impacted the economic prosperity of the middle class is taxes and regulation. As taxes and regulations increase, investors and corporations are squeezed economically whereby the viability of companies to profitably bring goods and services is reduced or eliminated. As a result, corporations and individuals are willing to spend more resources, time, and money in an effort to reduce or eliminate the impact of taxes and regulation. We have seen this in the exportation of manufacturing to China, India, and Mexico. Believe me, as an owner in a company that imports 100% of the goods sold from Peru, it's a pain in the ass to deal outside the US. We do it because it is 100% impossible for us to produce our product in the US. It's not that it would be too expensive, it's that it is ILLEGAL to produce it here. We tried and nearly went broke doing so. The wealthy are not betting long. Currently there is in excess of $9T of corporate and $7T of individual investment asset sitting on the sideline. It is principal protected but is earning very little. It's just waiting to see what happens in 2012. If Obama is re-elected, it will be permanently invested outside the US. |
