prole

Dude, she's got crabs.

That's exactly what they've been doing. Unfortunately, ungrateful punks like you seem intent on offering them only spit and condescension in return. I'm not following you here. Please read the posted article and clarify. That is saying a lot. Coming from the likes of you that means it probably warrants more investigation. I'll look into it, I'm sure there must be some historical precedent. I'll get back to you.

So you're suggesting that we further decrease class-mobility and equality of opportunity and create a scenario where we have a permanent underclass of garbagemen, janitors, and truck-drivers who have little or no hope of sending their kids to college? (I can see why you like guns so much.) I'm not so sure those folks would mind if some of their tax money went into a fund to help their kids and their neighbors kids go to college. Beats the shit out of that money going to fund wars their kids are going to die in.

Sounds like someone's been living beyond their means, hmmmm? You're getting wackier by the day. I can conjure up a great deal of sympathy for individuals and families hit with medical debt, but anyone who runs up an 18% credit card, signs a mortgage they can't afford, fails to pay back their ridiculously easy-term student loans (for an education that was already 75% taxpayer funded!), or defaults on an auto loan isn't worthy of much sympathy at all. What planet are you on? Or is this just your e-character playing dumb?

I'd like to see an organized student loan/medical bill/credit card debt strike. Those interested would suspend payments of their debts for one monthly billing cycle as a demonstration of organized debtor power. Subsequent debt strikes would endure until sufficient restructuring of the national health and education systems along the lines of increased coverage and opportunity that Obama suggested during his campaign had been made. Reform of bankruptcy, repossession, foreclosure, and predatory lending law would also need to be addressed.

In other baseball news:

He'd be worth at least one more ticket than I bought last season. What's the status?

Who needs an auto bailout when there are plenty of positions just waiting to be filled...

Is that the eugenics program you're starting?

I'll keep the phrase in mind when the VA comes around with the begging bowl. Clearly you are a total nut job. Sorry if you're slow. The point here is that the term "special interest group" is an overused rhetorical gimmick that can and has been trotted out in order to marginalize anyone with whose aims one doesn't agree with. Blacks, women, gays, workers, children, soldiers, immigrants, worshippers, the poor, the elderly, veterans: Pretty soon we're talking about real people! Now if you want to talk about Enron & Friends crafting energy policy behind closed doors in Dick Cheney's office, that's another story.

Obama? Bill, you were talking up Paul Ron or Bob Barr or some other 'tard right up to the last minute! If I remember correctly it was Obama's TV Special that put you over the top. I don't want to get all nitpicky, but that's what I remember. Anyway, we have to wait and see if the Lincoln playbook works under the fundamentally different conditions we're facing. Don't worry, I'm working on those cabinet picks, I'm just stuck between Isaac Hayes and George Clinton for Minister of Funk.

I'm pretty familiar with the roots of the notion of "mob rule". You'd do better to look towards the absolute monarchy's use of the term to encourage fear of parliamentary systems, voting, individual rights, etc. among the aristocracy, merchant and landed gentry to get a real flavor for the phrase, though. Here's some help. Anyway, isn't the balance of powers enshrined in the Constitution is designed to inhibit imbalances? You'd seem to argue that there is some greater authority than "the people" that elected representatives are beholden to once they gain office.

I'll keep the phrase in mind when the VA comes around with the begging bowl.

That's easy: 1930's revolutionary Spain. I'm not sure why this is a big deal. Trying to play "gotcha" again? To make it easier, I'd say I could think of a number of western European democracies and others around the world during different periods of the 20th century that I'd find more appealing than what this country has turned into. Namely, those that focused more attention and resources on fostering and institutionalizing enlightenment values and republican participation in the political process, those dealing more effectively with the stark inequalities in opportunities and living standards for regular folks, those that took the lessons from two world wars to heart and rejected chauvinist nationalism and belligerent "know-nothingism". Those that decided that education and culture and leisure and honest work and individual growth and preserving the integrity of the land require something more than "don't worry, lavishly rewarding humanity's worst impulses and basest desires will lead us to the promised land". Yep, pretty few and far between, fleeting glimpses really. Dumb thugs, aristocratic leftovers, fascists, economic kooks, shortsighted union bosses, IMF technocrats, and American firepower and skullduggery have done their job well. So good in fact that when all their bubbles stop popping they may find they've taken democracy with it.

Ha! I love it how the right-wingers get all "post-partisan" 'n shit after they get bounced. If anything, the Bush Administration showed the world how to "get things done". What they were getting done was flushing the planet down the toilet, but hey... We need to jettison the failed conservative project, not "politics" as a whole. Given the critical period we're living in, it's time to make a significant break with the neoliberal economic policy and belligerent foreign policy that's brought us to the brink. That's what Obama was "hired" to do. Not doing so will accelerate the catastrophe, lead to greater disillusionment, and likely result in the emergence of less democratic movements and political figures. Pretty standard trajectory for liberal democracies in crisis.

His task is to remain truthful to the claims he made to represent the people that elected him. I'm not seeing that in his decision making with regards to his cabinet picks or in the backtracking he's already doing from the claims he made to garner votes. While I understand that the idea of representative democracy is utterly foreign to you Jay, I think that you can grasp the concept.

Balls to the whole "let's wait and see what he does" argument and the "he needs smart and tough people that will be effective at what he tells them to do" line. Not only is the administration he's building more of the same (if not the same) assclowns that got us where we are now, they're guaranteed to be at each others throats 87% of the time. What a douche. (Not that I'm at all surprised.)

This thread is a total fuckin' downer. Get in the holiday spirit and let's remember some of the good times...

...and counting.

Sounds like you fell asleep watching the 700 Club again, Grandpa. Yeah, we wish...

Hey Bill, looks like you've got the fever. Enlistment is only a phone call away! Let us know when you get there, and don't forget to write. Bon Voyage! [video:youtube]

Wrong. He is the terrorist-elect.

"How dare you call me a racist! I sir, am a bigot."

No. I also discussed Haiti and the terminal depletion of its soils. The women feeding mud cakes to their children are still waiting for these famous "exchanges between people" that you keep saying will solve their wittle starvation problem. Note that Haiti isn't an isolated example but merely one of the most salient. The truth is that developing nations shouldn’t expect any reasonable solutions to their resource problems since they cannot offer you anything in return that you want. What is especially odd is your wanting to frame the issue of resource/ecosystem service depletion as being a non-issue until the resource is completely depleted and it becomes a global crisis. In fact, (as I have already said but you unsurprisingly keep ignoring) depletion affects human societies on a regional basis first and usually quite dearly. I could cite countless examples of the above but it is obvious that no matter what anyone says you’ll keep repeating your creed about self-correcting markets that somehow will avoid hardship for all concerned (on avrerage or at least in your neighborhood). Also note that even if you can replenish the stocks, the populations will have different characteristics than the original ones but why should you care if "on average" it doens't translate into a dietary loss for "mankind". It's quite rich to hear someonme who continuously appeal to individual economic rights somehow be only concerned with conditions on average. Are your readers supposed to think that rehashing the same pablum, however verbosely, and calling me silly names is the answer to my posts? For someone whose ideas and policies have resulted in rates of inequality not seen since the 19th century, disaggregated statistics, "per capita", and "on average" come in real handy.