[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cloud9', 'I') work for government. If you want to give me more money I will take it. The service I provide will not improve. Pay me five percent less and I will still do the same job.

[americandream]

Capitalism is not going to sink any day soon. Your average Amerfican and Westerner generally will be squeezed until his expectations wage wise mirror that of the low wage zones, yes. Investors care not a whit whether you are one nationality or the other (and I mean here the money pools, not mom and pop whose funds happen to constitute the pools), they are obliged to nurse that bottom line under the terms of their fund management and bonus criteria.

Glen Beck's role is to act as a safety valve for the frustrations that gradual pauperisation will give rise to. The odd rally here or rally there, to sustain the restless conservative, the odd Mr Change here and there or pot liberalisation here or there for the restless liberal, entertainment to keep the mass of the restless dulled the rest of the time and the march towards minimal global wage rates marches on.

All the rest is smoke and mirrors. This professional agitation of the likies of Beck and Limbaugh is very profitable. As is the professional agitation of the change merchants (Gore, Moore etc.) They all preside over one thing though. Resolute globalisation.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cloud9', 'H')ills that may very well be true. Neither one of them may be honorable. If you have never done a dishonorable thing in your life, you are a better person than I am. Are we forever going to be stuck in personality cults or are we going to look at the issues? The bottom line is that government is out of control. Whether your boogie man is the bail out of the bankster, foreign wars, hyper inflation, or oil slicks in the gulf, the government blatantly does not represent the interest of the people.

As far as the cost of the military is concerned, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated just the other day that the debt was the greatest threat to national security. Clearly that indicates that the military realizes that the status quo is unsustainable. The government borrows or prints one of every two dollars it spends. It may be true that only 53% of us pay taxes. The 47% may think they have a free ride, but they don’t. The stealth tax of the devaluation of the currency is eating us alive. We just don’t know it. Why do you think every pawn shop on the planet has a huge sign, “We buy Gold”? Anybody with any brains is trying to dump the paper for tangible assets. The Chinese and Indians are buying gold by the ton. They are getting out of dollars as fast as they can.

I have a fifty trillion dollar note on my wall. It is real money. It won’t buy a big mac. The reason we have not felt the full bore of hyperinflation is because the fed can’t print the money fast enough to cover the black hole that is the big bank balance sheets. The damn is going to break. Unless the government retrenches, people will lose faith in the currency. The day the Saudis refuse our dollars is the day it all collapses.

[PrestonSturges]

people like the Kochs have been funding and hobnobbing with far right ultranationalist kill-them-all-and-let-God-sort-them-out Christians for decades, and with Tim LeHay back in the 70's they started pushing the story line that Jesus ("Jeeeesssssusss!") is on the side of the oil companies, and good Christians should side with the oil companies.

In the Tea Party, you are seeing the mingling of the Kochs, the oil industry, politics, and religion.

Do any of us really need to have our economics, foreign policy, and religion determined by the oil companies.

Kind of a funny topic for Peak Oil, that we need to debate whether or not swear our lives and fortunes to the oil companies?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')In the Tea Party, you are seeing the mingling of the Kochs, the oil industry, politics, and religion.

[americandream]

Exactly. And they all consistently demonise any idea that smacks of us, the people, taking events into our own hands. All the while, this mandarin class of professional managers embeds itself into our collective psyche, the one peddling national glory, the other change that never comes.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')In the Tea Party, you are seeing the mingling of the Kochs, the oil industry, politics, and religion.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'E')xactly. And they all consistently demonise any idea that smacks of us, the people, taking events into our own hands. All the while, this mandarin class of professional managers embeds itself into our collective psyche, the one peddling national glory, the other change that never comes.

[americandream]

And I would go so far as to argue that your Constitution contemplates an ever watchful and informed citizen, founded as it is in response to the abuse of the commonwealth by a self appointed few. Whether that is posssible in the age of mass manipulation by this self appointed few is another question however and possibly highlights the emphasis on the separation of powers, the secular fundamentals of a proper citizens republic and the losses America has suffered thereon from these very powerful roots.

It's a real quandry as those who claim to be the vigilant these days serve vested interests. They share the same bed with the enemy.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'E')xactly. And they all consistently demonise any idea that smacks of us, the people, taking events into our own hands. All the while, this mandarin class of professional managers embeds itself into our collective psyche, the one peddling national glory, the other change that never comes.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')In the Tea Party, you are seeing the mingling of the Kochs, the oil industry, politics, and religion.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')Of course some people would look at that situation and reach the opposite conclusion - the parties are exactly the same

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', ' ')And as soon as we get the majority, we're going to take their stuff. Woo-hoo!

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')e won't know what the Tea Party will do until they get in office.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', ' ') The irrelevant issues that us little people vote on

[Cloud9]

Ludi, my wife and I are both school teachers. Between the two of us, we have had our pay cut by $18,000. We work just as hard today as we did three years ago. You think a prison guard is going to pack it in with twenty years in the system if they cut his pay by a couple of grand. There are no jobs in my area. The circuit court has factored in unpaid leave. Nobody is quitting.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cloud9', 'W')e work just as hard today as we did three years ago.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')The parties don't seem to be exactly the same - the Democrats sometimes throw a bone to the working class (or they have in the past), the Republicans never do.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', 'S')o what was the Medicare Drug provision then? It was both a budgetary disaster (unfunded) and a regulatory disaster (complexity that only a tax accountant or lawyer could love), and it was aimed squarely at pleasing working class retirees.

[americandream]

Where were the enraged conservative voices during dubya's reign?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')The parties don't seem to be exactly the same - the Democrats sometimes throw a bone to the working class (or they have in the past), the Republicans never do.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'W')here were the enraged conservative voices during dubya's reign?

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')e won't know what the Tea Party will do until they get in office.

[americandream]

They may not have a Sharia crook at the top of the ticket but you can be damned sure, they will start to apply some of the Sharia thinking to social issues in a bid to halt progress, accompanied by increasingly soothing sounds about Islam. Watch out for the liberals especially. These dopes will fall hook, line and sinker for the bait.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')e won't know what the Tea Party will do until they get in office.