Althouse: Bernie Sanders was appalled by "the mass of hot dazed humanity heading uptown" for another day of "moron work, monotonous work."

July 3, 2015

Bernie Sanders was appalled by "the mass of hot dazed humanity heading uptown" for another day of "moron work, monotonous work."

"'The years come and go,' Mr. Sanders wrote, in all apparent seriousness. 'Suicide, nervous breakdown, cancer, sexual deadness, heart attack, alcoholism, senility at 50. Slow death, fast death. DEATH.'"

From a NYT article — linked today at Drudge — titled "Bernie Sanders’s Revolutionary Roots Were Nurtured in ’60s Vermont." I love the photo. I'm sure I would have had a crush on him back then. It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies.

213 comments:

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Michael K said...: He looks like Bill Ayres with glasses and a bad haircut.

The Socialists don't like real people very much. Lenin could not stand them.; 7/3/15, 8:10 AM
MadisonMan said...: It's cruel to judge people on what they did in their 20s. :); 7/3/15, 8:10 AM
Original Mike said...: You have something you want to get off your chest, MM?; 7/3/15, 8:11 AM
tim maguire said...: Scut-work is for the victims of capitalism. Under socialism, everyone can be a literature professor at a small liberal arts college in New England.

The toilets scrub and the ditches dig themselves.; 7/3/15, 8:16 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: They are shuffling, horrifying zombies.

R. Crumb captured that hell very well.

The worst part of it, in my experience, was dealing with destructive, evil fags and fag hags, like you.

Every day in the office was just fucking imprisonment. The corporate law firm environment is straight out of S&M hell, with vicious horrible kids like you cast as royalty snapping their fingers to call their lowly vassals to produce more worthless shit.

You're a fag hag. You love that shit. I can just imagine what an insane hell your office is, but of course, you're geting your ass kissed which makes it all worth it to you, and you get to play fag and fag hag S&M games.

That's your boot on the back of the schoolboy's neck, Althouse. You didn't grow up. You became stupid and evil.; 7/3/15, 8:19 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "He looks like Bill Ayres with glasses and a bad haircut."

He looks like Jemaine from "Flight of the Conchords."; 7/3/15, 8:21 AM
Michael K said...: I don't get HBO. On purpose.; 7/3/15, 8:27 AM
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...: I love the photo. I'm sure I would have had a crush on him back then.

And setting up a life-long pattern.; 7/3/15, 8:29 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: AA: "It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies."

Really? Scoffing at the notion of working hard, raising families, playing softball on weekends, buying homes, volunteering for the PTA, maybe even attending Church every now and then - while eschewing drug use, campus protests, ridiculously shallow and thoughtless pamphleteering.

Whatever happened to these insightful young critics of that time?; 7/3/15, 8:34 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: What's next on your fag hag agenda of nihilistic destruction, Althouse?

Fag hags have to destroy. It's innate. You were born that way. You're deeply committed to your faggotization and pussyfication attack on men, so I imagine you'll continue down that road.

Remember, fag hag, it only took 50 years for you and your Weird Sister S&M crones to take over. We're starting to plan to kick your asses out. Beware.

Your desire for destruction is a weapon we will use against you.; 7/3/15, 8:40 AM
Saint Croix said...: Did he ever get a job?; 7/3/15, 8:40 AM
SGT Ted said...: The Socialist always knows what is better for other people.; 7/3/15, 8:42 AM
campy said...: "At that time"?; 7/3/15, 8:42 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: Men, don't buy into the fag hag propaganda that you have to kiss their asses and shackle yourselves into playing their S&M games to make a living, raise a family and buy a house.

I fought the fucking fag hags for decades, and I beat the bitches. I worked at a full time job only one time in my life, for six years. I devised a strategy to get what I wanted and to get the fag hag foot off my neck.

And, I own a house outright, I have kids and grandkids and I'm financially secure for life.

Don't fall the fucking fag hag propaganda.; 7/3/15, 8:47 AM
Hagar said...: More like a slightly less neurotic Woody Allen.

I do not see anything nasty in Bernie Sanders.; 7/3/15, 8:57 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: Here's your first clue on how you beat rotten fag hags like Althouse.

Find a woman who loves men the way they are.

Your first error is swallowing the fag hag BS that you should "prove what a strong man you are" by putting up with up worthless fag hag feminist woman.

Find a woman who is on your side and loves men the way they are.

Don't give a shit whether or not you're fashionable and hip. That's the fag hag trap.; 7/3/15, 8:57 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Shouting Thomas, how's about re-locating? This place gets boring when trolls camp out the way you are.; 7/3/15, 9:04 AM
Ambrose said...: Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.; 7/3/15, 9:08 AM
David said...: You morons!

That pretty much sums up how the left still feels about the masses.; 7/3/15, 9:11 AM
Chris N said...: I imagine a world where unsmiling ideologues and faceless bureaucrats keep a lid on things for a while, Eventualky it's just secret police and their midnight visits.

Sanders '16!; 7/3/15, 9:13 AM
Chris N said...: *Mobile device posted while literally standing next to a horse and buggy.; 7/3/15, 9:15 AM
Bobber Fleck said...: Bernie, like most socialists, is unable to connect the dots between productive labor and a sustainable society.

Bernie and Barack ("You didn't build that") Obama think the free government money is minted by the Treasury. They believe governments were formed first in order to provide the infrastructure for the commerce that followed. Never mind the need for taxes to pay for that infrastructure.; 7/3/15, 9:20 AM
garage mahal said...: Sanders for voted against Patriot Act, Iraq War, NDAA, NSA spying, SOPA, and against Wall St bailouts. What a government jackboot!; 7/3/15, 9:23 AM
William said...: I've had some of Bernie Sanders feelings. Anyone who ever got stuck on a subway (no air conditioning back then) while wearing a suit and tie to an annoying job questioned the basic premises of capitalism. I think the Marxists had this thing where they claimed that alienation and anomie were the by products of capitalism and that under socialism riding the subways would be a shared communal joy.......I cannot claim to have won the rat race, but if you grind away long enough, you can make enough money to chuck it. And senility generally doesn't set in at fifty.......I wonder if Bernie, even today, has any random thoughts that are subversive of a socialist ethos. Does he truly believe all that crap.; 7/3/15, 9:23 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Instead of these nostalgia pieces by the toadies at the NY Times, maybe they should ask Bernie if he supported the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s, and whether he has any thoughts on why and how it collapsed in 1991.; 7/3/15, 9:25 AM
Rusty said...: Gosh, Bernie. We can't all be revolutionaries. Some of us have to build the stuff you want to tear down.; 7/3/15, 9:29 AM
BudBrown said...: Senile at fifty. I remember in 1973 running into
a former high school classmate. I complained about
my parents saying something or other and she just pointed
out the obvious - they were old. A couple years later
another friend -he'd dropped out and made sails for a couple
years then gone back and graduated - who'd just started some
downtown office job was saying how he'd never understood how
his father put on the suit and tie and went to the firm everyday,
but now he got it. All the hot women working down town.; 7/3/15, 9:31 AM
Scott said...: I don't have any problem with a crank like Senator Sanders. It's the people who vote for him that creep me out.; 7/3/15, 9:46 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies."
Use of the word "zombies" is telling. It is common for socialists to believe the middle classes aren't leading real lives. Their lives don't matter, you see, they aren't as important as "we" socialists are, so it doesn't matter if we destroy the things that they love.
The lines before the lines that Ambrose quotes are:

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.; 7/3/15, 9:50 AM
Scott said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/3/15, 10:01 AM
MadisonMan said...: I don't have any problem with a crank like Senator Sanders. It's the people who vote for him that creep me out.

It makes me wonder what kind of people are running against him.; 7/3/15, 10:01 AM
Scott said...: Maybe the socialists' zombie metaphor is reflected in the rise of zombies in media and popular culture.

The Godzilla character, and other monsters in postwar Japanese cinema, were a cathartic response to nuclear war directed at a brutalized people. Maybe the appeal of zombie themes in American media reflects powerlessness and fear of a powerful, unaccountable government that insinuates itself in every life. It keeps coming at you and cannot be stopped.

But to Senator Sanders, the zombies are the common people who want things that they shouldn't have. To the common people, the zombies are the bureaucrats with guns that do the bidding of Senator Sanders and people like him.; 7/3/15, 10:03 AM
Big Mike said...: It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies.

Only the drones who work for the state and federal government pushing paper from one desk to another, and from there to yet another, qualify as zombies. Most of the rest of us do real work.; 7/3/15, 10:11 AM
Real American said...: and the left's contempt for ordinary middle-class people hasn't improved since the 60s. They've declared all out war on regular people.; 7/3/15, 10:13 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The early modernists felt nothing but contempt for the middle and working classes. A little education, demanded by capitalism (a vocational education, not a "gentleman's education"), had lifted them higher than nature intended them to be.
Modernism never changes. The rise of the working and middle classes, to a socialist, always leads to the end of the world, by class warfare (early 20th century), nuclear warfare (mid 20th century), or ecological catastrophe (current).; 7/3/15, 10:20 AM
garage mahal said...: It makes me wonder what kind of people are running against him.

Neoliberal Democrats. No way in Hell they will allow Bernie to run the party, where actual people are represented in the process. Republicans won't have to lay a finger on Sanders. Democrats will gladly to their dirty work for them.; 7/3/15, 10:20 AM
cubanbob said...: "'The years come and go,' Mr. Sanders wrote, in all apparent seriousness. 'Suicide, nervous breakdown, cancer, sexual deadness, heart attack, alcoholism, senility at 50. Slow death, fast death. DEATH.'"

All of this in part due to working 40 or more years and having a good chunk of your money redistributed to subsidize socialist fantasies. Without all this slow, death and fast death who would pay for the socialist dream?

Part of me hopes that he does become the nominee. Then he and the Democrats might get an electoral defeat on the George McGovern scale. My fear is that he and the Democrats won't.; 7/3/15, 10:26 AM
narciso said...: dimelo, Cuban bob, now much fewer people, 92 million are working, so mission accomplished,; 7/3/15, 10:29 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: For all of you non-ideologues out there, "neoliberal" is the new "neoconservative." Bill Clinton is supposed by many to have been a "neoliberal." People way deep in the fever swamp of socialism believe Barack Hussein Obama is a neoliberal. Because he's a moderate! He should have had bankers lynched in 2009!; 7/3/15, 10:31 AM
YoungHegelian said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/3/15, 10:31 AM
YoungHegelian said...: he thing I like about Bernie Sanders is that he is like a Cretaceous ant in amber, except from the 60's.

Much has changed in this country since then, but a lot of those changes occurred on the Left. Maybe, as people drag out Bernie's fossils, they'll see just how folks who were so certain & self-righteous then have simply changed what topics they're certain & self-righteous about now.

Bernie's lucky. At least, he wasn't one of those 60's German lefties that openly supported pedophilia. That would be tough to explain to Wolf Blitzer in a CNN interview.; 7/3/15, 10:33 AM
Roughcoat said...: I like going to work every day. I like being productive. I like the idea that I can pay my bills, put food on the table, put a roof over my head, give a little money to my favorite charity, help people out when they’re down. It makes me feel like an adult. It makes me feel like a man. My parents and grandparents inculcated these values. Small-town Midwesterners. They learned those values from their grandparents, who were born in Germany and Ireland. They subscribed to the notion that there is intrinsic dignity to labor. They were republicans with a small "r." They also voted Republican and that was in the time and heyday of the small-town Republican, when the GOP was still the party of Lincoln and of liberty and freeing the slaves, and the Democrats were the party of slavery, rebellion, war overseas, and big city corruption. They were conservatives in the Burkean sense, which means they were classically liberal, tolerant in a live-and-let-live way. They were stalwart, steadfast, brave, hard-working, taciturn, and stoic. Kind, caring and generous. Maybe a little boring, also a bit emotionally "quiet”--I won’t say they were “shut down.” They were the salt of the earth. Norman Rockwell must have had them in mind when he painted his pictures. Best people I ever knew. With the passing of my mom at age 92 a few months ago, they're all gone. It is well to remember them on this Fourth of July. Their grandparents came to this country determined to be good Americans. They succeeded in this endeavor, probably more than they could ever know. Whatever is good about me, I got from them. God bless them, and God bless America.; 7/3/15, 10:34 AM
Michael K said...: "It is common for socialists to believe the middle classes aren't leading real lives. Their lives don't matter,"

Yes, and breaking a few eggs to make an omelet, etc.

If we could read Hillary's mind, for example. The White House Travel Office people are another example.

“Careerists, while they’re not political, do serve at the pleasure of the president. All President Clinton had to say was, ‘We’re replacing you.’ It would’ve been unheard of, but was within his legal purview to do.” Instead the Clintons did what Linda said they always did: “Destroy their enemy and ruin them.” The abrupt travel office firings were triggered by what the Clinton White House claimed were allegations of sloppy accounting. In December 1994, Billy Dale was indicted on two counts of embezzlement. The press went berserk criticizing the new administration.

That was back when the Press cared.; 7/3/15, 10:41 AM
Michael K said...: "With the passing of my mom at age 92 a few months ago, they're all gone. It is well to remember them on this Fourth of July. Their grandparents came to this country determined to be good Americans. They succeeded in this endeavor, probably more than they could ever know. Whatever is good about me, I got from them. God bless them, and God bless America."

My mother died at 103 a month before 9/11. She remembered the Titanic. She wrote letters to soldiers in WWI. Her father died when she was 18 months old. Her mother had no Social Security or pension but raised her children to be solid citizens.

She lived in 3 centuries.

Hillary would never understand, nor would Bernie. Or garage, I suspect.; 7/3/15, 10:45 AM
Fernandinande said...: "the mass of hot dazed humanity heading uptown" for another day of "moron work, monotonous work."

Congress or senate? No, I got it - scotus.; 7/3/15, 10:49 AM
Roughcoat said...: I don't like the attitude and views Sanders expresses in that article. Usually, almost inevitably, I don't like the people who have those attitudes and hold those views. They tend to have the mentality and morals of 1930s Soviet commissars. They're "Strelnikov types," grim and determined and, if they get the chance, murderous. They tend to be "ends-justify-the-means types," and for them the ends always mean totalitarian control and oppression, and the means for getting there always involve mass murder. They want to control our lives. They want to tell us what to do, how to think. They won't leave us alone. They are miserable people and they want to make us miserable. They are to be opposed at all costs.; 7/3/15, 10:50 AM
Godot said...: Part of me hopes that he does become the nominee. Then he and the Democrats might get an electoral defeat on the George McGovern scale. My fear is that he and the Democrats won't.

My hope is Sanders will eventually mount a third party campaign.; 7/3/15, 10:56 AM
garage mahal said...: People way deep in the fever swamp of socialism believe Barack Hussein Obama is a neolibera

Paul Ryan just voted in favor of Obama's neo-liberal trade authority bill that he pushed so hard for.; 7/3/15, 10:59 AM
Roughcoat said...: Michael K:

God bless your mother. Thanks for the remembrance.

My mother grew up in a house where her Irish grandmother spoke lilting English sprinkled with Gaelicisms and her granny reminisced about the Civil War service (Union Army) of her older brothers and of her beloved husband (my great-grandfather), all born in Ireland, all Union army volunteers, very keen on fighting for their new country. Great-granny, born in 1849, died just three years before I was born in 1950, very sorry I missed her. But when my mom passed I lay claim to old the old photographs, hundreds of them, some going back to Ireland. I'm sorting through them now. What a treasure trove! And my dad grew up in a house speaking German, going to a German-speaking Lutheran school through the 8th grade, and living with a Saxony-born grandfather, a.k.a. "Grosspa," who worked in the locomotive roundhouse in Aurora Illinois, brewed beer in their bathtub, and denounced the Prussians as arrogant, control, warlike swine and the reason he immigrated to America. His son, my grandfather, was born in 1883 and died when I was in college. I used to talk to him about what it was like to grow up in a world with horse-and-buggies and no electricity and live to see a man land on the moon. You can only imagine how fascinating those conversations were, and how fondly I remember them.; 7/3/15, 11:03 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: You don't have to look too deeply into the history of modernism to see that at the root of socialism is a hatred of man.; 7/3/15, 11:06 AM
furious_a said...: "...the mass of hot dazed humanity heading uptown" for another day of "moron work, monotonous work."

Ah, yes, the heavy backpack called "responsibility" that most Americans shoulder through life's Aerobic Nature Walk so that chair warmers like Sen. Sanders can draw a salary.; 7/3/15, 11:07 AM
Michael K said...: "You can only imagine how fascinating those conversations were, and how fondly I remember them."

I used to have conversations like that with my uncle John. He was actually a great uncle and I was 10. He was deaf as a post and I would sit next to him so I could shout questions in his "good" ear. He had great stories. He was my grandfather's oldest brother (of nine brothers).; 7/3/15, 11:18 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Garage Mahal wrote:
Paul Ryan just voted in favor of Obama's neo-liberal trade authority bill that he pushed so hard for.
I'll grant you that it often very difficult to tell the difference between a power-mad megalomaniac and a socialist leader. We seem to headed into "no true Scotsman" territory, Garage.; 7/3/15, 11:18 AM
furious_a said...: It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies.

"...ordinary middle-class people..." like their parents putting food on the table and a roof over their heads and paying their college tuitions, who when they were their children's ages twenty years earlier were bailing out of Higgins Boats at Tarawa or dreading the Western Union telling them that their father, brother or husband wasn't coming home.

Fucking Boomers.; 7/3/15, 11:21 AM
Unknown said...: "It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies."

Was that unique to that time, or do (many) young people think they're meant for something better? Eventually most of us grow up and realize ordinary life isn't so bad.; 7/3/15, 11:22 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I have a grandfather who was born in 1895. One of eleven kids, siblings included 2 sets of twins. Half of them died in infancy. He was the son of a Georgia sharecropper, and was named after a famous outlaw. He began chewing tobacco before he can remember and started smoking at the same age he went to work -- eleven years old. He was drafted in 1917. He told me that his first day in the army included a chow line, and it was the first time he had ever been able to eat until he was full.; 7/3/15, 11:25 AM
Bob Ellison said...: The root of leftism is self-hatred.; 7/3/15, 11:29 AM
Roughcoat said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/3/15, 11:38 AM
Roughcoat said...: Fucking Boomers.

Bernie Sanders wasn't a Boomer, you stupid putz, he was born in 1941--he was pre-Boom, from an age cohort that provided the great majority of leftist professors who radicalized the humanities departments of American universities and colleges with their bullshit Marxist anti-American ideology and cultural views well before the first Boomers began arriving on campus. The leftist radicalism of the 60s was the vile product of men (and women) born primarily in the early half of the 20th century, not of the Boomers. The first boomers only started attending college in c. 1963, and that was a very small demographic cohort. Nor did the Boomers contitute a significant voting bloc until the end of the 1970s, inasmuch as most Boomers were still coming of age in that decade. When the Boomers did come of age, in the 1980s, they were in their most productive years and contributed mightily to the economic growth of the Reagan years.; 7/3/15, 11:42 AM
404 Page Not Found said...: Sanders never changed. He still thinks that people who work for a living are suckers and morons, which is why he has never had a job himself.; 7/3/15, 11:43 AM
Roughcoat said...: In the above comment, I meant to put fucking boomers in italics to show that I wasn't the one who said it.; 7/3/15, 11:45 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: Did Sanders ever get a "rel" job? Well he became a politician--that's a "job" of a sort.

I knew folks who looked just like Bernie Sanders--they were hanging around Telegraph Avenue south of UC Berkeley in the late 60s. Bernie would have fit right in--they were his contemporaries after all. Long curly hair, not too frequently bathed, full of knowledge about how to set the world right. Our host would have had a crush on them. I just thought they were full of bunkum.

Sanders is a Mario Savio "look alike". But the real world has a way of catching up. Savio led the "Free Speech Movement" in 1963 from the steps of Berkeley's Sproul Hall. Four years later he was tending bar at The Blind Lemon on San Pablo Avenue. Now that was an interesting venue---blonde little sorority girls from UC Berkeley went down there to meet young Black Panther wannabes from Oakland---getting it on a bit with the sexual revolution and all that. I looked at it all and couldn't decide who was the most plastic among them. There was a lot of competition, and some close second place finishes.; 7/3/15, 11:47 AM
tim maguire said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/3/15, 11:49 AM
tim maguire said...: garage mahal said..."People way deep in the fever swamp of socialism believe Barack Hussein Obama is a neolibera"

Paul Ryan just voted in favor of Obama's neo-liberal trade authority bill that he pushed so hard for.

Yes, garage, Obama cannot be a real liberal because certain Republicans who never met a corporation they didn't want to bend over for just helped Obama bend over for those same corporations. (Here's a hint for you: the Democratic Party is the party of billionaires and giant corporations because liberalism is a perfect fit for their interests and priorities; the Republican Party is the party of the middle class and small entrepreneurs because conservatism is the perfect vehicle for someone of decent morals and strong work ethic; there is no party for the poor, but the Republicans will hurt them less because they will get in the way less; and, finally, because the best and the brightest on the right go into business, the right is generally led politically by the less than best and brightest.); 7/3/15, 11:52 AM
Anonymous said...: Bernie was a garden variety hippy back in the day, and, if he's recanted for participating in that obvious foolishness, I have not heard about it. Since then, he's made a career as a politician. So he's never produced anything of value, never performed a vital service, and he's never had a real job. His chance of being a decent president is less than zero. In his defense, I would say that BS is a true believer and you can take what he says at face value.; 7/3/15, 11:55 AM
Michael K said...: "blonde little sorority girls from UC Berkeley went down there to meet young Black Panther wannabes from Oakland-"

I don't think they were mostly sorority girls but there was areal movement of leftist women who got involved with black prisoners in the 60s and that resulted in a number of the terrorist organizations that had white women and black, usually ex-con, men in them. The Symbionese Liberation Army was only one of quite a few. Read "Days of Rage."

A lot of those Boomers were also stoners and didn't accomplish much. At one time, USC medical school had 20 second year students on LSD. The Dean was sick about it. Several of them never got straightened out.; 7/3/15, 11:57 AM
n.n said...: His message may be worth considering if he stopped denigrating individual dignity and debasing human life. Neither class diversity nor selective-child can be considered good ideas. Also, the establishment of monopolies by an authority has a notorious history where the controlling minority ran amuck after suppressing competing interests. Left-wing ideology can only be implemented in a homogenous society and even then with elevated risk to the life and welfare of the population.; 7/3/15, 12:08 PM
Babaluigi said...: On the eve of the celebration of our Declaration of Independence from England, just more examples of how low my so-called "fellow countrymen" have gone. I am a direct descendant of 6 men who served on the "American side" of the Revolution, and I am so disgusted by those who so willingly and happily throw those hard-won freedoms away. I am glad that my family lost no one in those battles they fought under the American flag against fascism, communism and socialism in the 20th century, since the idiots in this country now embrace those philosophies so enthusiastically!

What the hell is wrong with you people?; 7/3/15, 12:13 PM
Roughcoat said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/3/15, 12:14 PM
Roughcoat said...: No generation is perfect, and now that I've praised my parents' generation, permit me criticize ot while rising rise to the defense of my own Boomer generation with respect to the latter's enormous economic productivity (which--and as I mentioned above--was manifested in the 1980s and 90s); and in the waging of America's wars. The Vietnam War was a conflict fought primarily by Boomer boys in their late teens and early twenties (the average age of the frontline combat troops was 19, and it wasn't much older than that for all military personnel). Despite the unbelievable mismanagement of the war by senior military commanders and civilian leaders of the so-called Greatest Generation, and despite the fact that the U.S Army in Vietnam (especially the combat forces) was primarily a draftee army (if you were drafted into the army in those days, odds were, you were going to Vietnam), the war was effectively won by the early 1970s. American ground combat forces--army and Marines--did not lose even one major engagement to the enemy. Yet that hard-earned victory by a mostly Boomer, mostly draftee army was squandered by the incompetence and, in many cases, sheer mendacity of America's military and civilian leaders of the Greatest Generation. Less than twenty years later an American military with Boomers in the upper levels of command and a government with Boomers in the upper levels of leadership (but led by a president from the Greatest Generation, appropiately) made short work of a large, well-equipped, and battle-hardened Iraqi army in Operation Desert Storm.; 7/3/15, 12:22 PM
Big Mike said...: What rightguy2 said.; 7/3/15, 12:24 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/3/15, 12:27 PM
SteveR said...: Little boxes on the hillside...; 7/3/15, 12:28 PM
Carol said...: "It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies."

Well it doesn't help if your parents are miserable in their jobs and let you know it. Though I didn't know how miserable my father was at the phone company until he died and I found his diary.

It's just that there was no choice but to work, or so they thought; 7/3/15, 12:30 PM
Saint Croix said...: Interesting article about Sanders in the National Journal.; 7/3/15, 12:34 PM
Roughcoat said...: His whole (current) thing is protecting the vanishing middle class, not "ordinary middle class."

But he wants to use socialism to protect and save the vanishing middle class, and socialism is a destroyer of the middle class. Like so many leftists his intentions are good but his means of achieving them are bad, very bad indeed. Although, frankly, it seems to me that the intentions of many leftists are as bad as the means. They are destroyers and misery-makers. Bill Ayers, I'm looking at YOU.; 7/3/15, 12:37 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: So, I stepped away for an hour to do some yard work - always puts me in a good mood. The sun is starting to creep out from beyond the clouds.

I did find the flag in the closet upstairs and hoisted it outside which also put me in a good mood. The missus is cleaning the kitchen and packing for a quick camping trip with the kids to the Santa Cruz mountains (where Huey Newton and the Black Panthers used to murder and bury people, according to David Horowitz). Now, I'm off to the hardware store for a few small fixit items and lightbulbs.

Maybe, I'll throw the football around this afternoon with my 13 year old and his pals. Just in the street, though. Yes, a beer afterwards would be a good idea, thank you. Hey, Honey, if you're going to Safeway, pick up a couple of steaks, I feel like grilling tonight.

Ahh, my mundane life as a Zombie......; 7/3/15, 12:44 PM
Roughcoat said...: Ahh, my mundane life as a Zombie.....

Fast zombie, or slow zombie?; 7/3/15, 12:46 PM
Michael K said...: "American ground combat forces--army and Marines--did not lose even one major engagement to the enemy. "

Vietnam is a terrible dilemma. Eisenhower did not want to get involved and there is some argument that he could have evacuated the French from Dien Bien Phu. Kennedy fell in love with the concept of small wars and Special Forces. Maxwell Taylor may well be the villain of Vietnam. The Army was also trained by DuPuy to fight armor and industrial war battles.

Bing West's "The Village" is a good example of what might have been and Abrams tried to reverse course too late.

I didn't go because I had been in before Vietnam got going. Medically, we had the best care for wounded we have ever had. That didn't help much. Webb's "Fields of Fire" is a good novel about it.; 7/3/15, 12:56 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I don't think that Sanders' intentions are good, Roughcoat.; 7/3/15, 12:57 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."

- Norman Thomas (US Socialist Presidential Candidate); 7/3/15, 1:08 PM
Rob said...: Sanders was a damn fool then, and he's a damn fool now. No progress. Expressing those ideas in The Freeman was a wonderful example of preaching to the choir, but while it took no courage to give his readers so large a helping of what they wanted, in his defense, it was probably the only place he could get published at all. Now he has the Congressional Record, where all of us can pay to preserve his drivel for the ages.; 7/3/15, 1:10 PM
Skyler said...: I'm amazed that a communist gets so much positive attention. We've sunk pretty low in this nation.; 7/3/15, 1:14 PM
RigelDog said...: Cute?? I would have run screaming....chacun a son gout.; 7/3/15, 1:18 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: So many of those early modernists -- socialists -- were insane. Virginia Woolf killed herself. JM Keynes was not just a homosexual, he was a homosexual who preferred to sodomize very young, uneducated working class lads. Ezra Pound embraced fascism and died in an Italian madhouse. George Bernard Shaw was a eugenicist, and militant vegetarian. He was married, but the marriage was never consummated because Shaw was never able to get over the shock of seeing his wife's pubic hair for the first time.; 7/3/15, 1:27 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Can Zombies still vote for Scott Walker for President and drink beer on weekends?; 7/3/15, 1:27 PM
Anonymous said...: We aren't too far off from a time when we will all be longing to get those days of ordinary life back again. Begging and praying for it.; 7/3/15, 1:29 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies.

They are, Robo-Blogger.; 7/3/15, 1:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Terry: For all of you non-ideologues out there, "neoliberal" is the new "neoconservative." Bill Clinton is supposed by many to have been a "neoliberal." People way deep in the fever swamp of socialism believe Barack Hussein Obama is a neoliberal.

Don't freak out, but sometimes even garage is half-right. (Enjoy the femto-second while it lasts.) "Neoliberal" is just a synonym for "globalist". Both the Dem and Repub establishments are neoliberals. (Neoconservatives, btw, are neoliberals.) And they're all just fine with a lot of "socialist" programs, because "socialism" often serves their interests. So, no, old pinko fossils like Sanders (or Warren, for that matter) aren't going anywhere, for the same reason that the 'pubs are probably going to be stuck with Jeb!.

(Btw, I believe you're confusing Shaw with Ruskin re the unconsummated marriage anecdote.); 7/3/15, 1:33 PM
Roughcoat said...: It was Ruskin. Evidently the attributes of womanhood clashed with Ruskin's aesthetic sensibilities.

Yeah, sure they did. *wink wink*

But your point about Shaw remains valid. He was, in no particular order, a Stalin apologist, Communist dupe, arrogant blowhard, overrated playwright, moron.; 7/3/15, 1:53 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Yes, Anglyne, I was more interested in Garage Mahal's use of neoliberal as a term of abuse than describing what it means. Like I said, neoliberal is the new neoconservative. The best example I can think that explains how neoliberal policies work is the story of Jamaica between 1970 and 2000. The Jamaicans select a socialist prime Minister, Manning, who believes in the self-sufficiency socialist crap that was popular in third world countries in those days. Country goes bankrupt, goes hat in hand to the World Bank for rescue. The leaders of the World Bank will be happy to help, but Jamaica has to forget this self-sufficiency crap. Hotels is what they need, to bring in Western dollars. The World Bank will help the Jamaicans build a tourist industry, but not farm communes or mining operations or whatever. Hotels produce an higher economic return and are less damaging to the environment. They are more "sustainable."
You are right about Shaw versus Ruskin. I was misremembring an anecdote. Shaw never did, however, consummate his marriage.; 7/3/15, 1:56 PM
T J Sawyer said...: Sanders must really have Hillary scared for the Times to bring out this frightening portrait!; 7/3/15, 1:56 PM
furious_a said...: Roughcoat said...

Bernie Sanders wasn't a Boomer, you stupid putz, he was born in 1941

The first boomer cohort hit the colleges in 1963-64. You missed the "it was very typical for younger people of that time". Do you move your lips when you read?; 7/3/15, 1:58 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: How did socialism become a bad word? Being anti-social is nearly synonymous with a defective disposition toward base criminality. While that would explain many of the personalities that frequent this site and others like it, that they think they can get away with openly justifying it is curious. Over time they won't, as polls of smarter, younger generations show. They're sick of of crude quacks who think that this country's respect for individual freedom, rebelliousness and irreverence has anything to do with hating the fundamentals of macroeconomics or the ties that bind societies together.

Maybe since America was the only country founded upon Enlightenment ideals, our conservatives would be left imploding in the cold unless they confused those ideals with idiotic selfish prick behavior. But people are catching on. There are only so many depressions and near-depressions and corporatist sell-out schemes that they'll put up with before reacting against the dangers of letting base, selfish pricks set the agenda and market a confused equivalence of those things with the meaning of freedom. What they are is anarchists hell-bent on pushing an unbalanced, ignorant and empty sense of foolhardy destruction onto America that no sane person would want. And that will continue to become more and more evident with every next Republican pres candidate jumping out of the clown car that ferries them around from debate to debate, like debutantes attending pageants, with just as little to say and just as much phony image to fill in the balance.

Ross Perot referred to them as "blow dried". And now they have Don Trump to add in the "blowhard" factor.

No one here will address the substance of Sanders' ideas or why they get traction. Just like they failed to do with Ron Paul. Instead, they will continue with the lazy peanut gallery spitball throws. There are consequences to this. But then, that's how they'd intend to elect and govern the country: Through base ridicule.

If only W. hadn't ruined the prospect of Frat Boy as President. Some Frat Boys actually make successes of themselves, you know? But then, these Republicans don't know anything more than hazing rituals, humiliation and weird sex-type antics.

At least decorate your clown car better. Maybe even get Trump a green curly wig.; 7/3/15, 2:00 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "How did socialism become a bad word?"

Gee, I don't know. Ask the Greeks...or the Venezuelans...or the Cubans...or the Cambodians...or the Soviets.....; 7/3/15, 2:06 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Or the French, or the Swedes, or the Danes, or the Germans. Or whatever. The fact that you don't know the difference between a society that values its own people's well-being and tyranny or dictatorship says everything that needs to be known about you, and why it is Republicans can't get anything useful done. Their theory of government depends on that - as it does on not knowing anything and being ignorant clowns.

Politicians are public servants. Never hire someone who openly declares that the job is bullshit, that he intends for less of it to be done if hired, or how much of what's wrong with it is the people's (i.e. your) fault. Every Republican should be fired based on that general principle. But apparently they get by on the willingness of Americans like Paul Jacobsen to be horrible, easily pushed around bosses. Good going, Paul!; 7/3/15, 2:14 PM
buwaya said...: This is the normal bohemian/wannabe aristocrat attitude towards anyone who truly works for a living.

This is NOT NEW. The attitude was typical of aristocrats and "intellectuals" of all ages, going back to the Greeks in the European tradition, and others elsewhere too.

Paul Johnson has a fascinating history of the transition of this attitude from the old aristocracy to the bohemian/intellectual subculture in "The Birth of the Modern".

Earning ones bread by the sweat of ones brow, in whatever sense, was just not the done thing, and could not be. It became unfashionable to look down on the actual peasantry and industrial workers, so it became more proper to patronize them and marvel at their misery. Those workers who managed move than a bare living though, the "bourgeoisie" were the despicable enemy. Marx did not invent this, he just incorporated the prevailing attitude of his subculture into his theory.

Our modern culture war mainly is just more of this, the intellectuals and aristocrats against the workers.; 7/3/15, 2:16 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: Hey Michael K, I stand by my assertion that those little blondes in The Blind Lemon down on San Pablo were sorority girls. They were blonder 'n blonde, clean, freshly showered and well dressed. There were plenty of hippie chicks around but they were (a) mostly not blonde; (b) mostly not clean; (c) been a while since they were acquainted with a shower; and (d) were dressed in thrift store chic. So it was sorta easy to tell the difference. But I'll give both groups this--they were proud of what they were.

I mean Berserkely in '65 to '68 was a strange place to be.

And San Pablo Avenue in West Berkeley was the front lines of the war for sexual and cultural liberation---plus which it had a lot of bars. Which allowed folks to loosen up and join the fray.; 7/3/15, 2:18 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "The fact that you don't know the difference between a society that values its own people's well-being and tyranny or dictatorship says everything that needs to be known about you, and why it is Republicans can't get anything useful done. "

The fact that you base your economic philosophy on a theory that has failed every time it has been tried in history shows that you have no regard for history, no respect for empiricism, and believe in fantasy.; 7/3/15, 2:20 PM
traditionalguy said...: Just a hint why Bernie is popular. The metrosexuals and unisex persons are longing for the Patriarchy to come back. And socialism is the Hebrew dream of a tribal kibbutz of men and women happily being men and women under authority of a Father/ Strong Man / Fuhrer / arrogant one man ruler/ a Man of Steel.

People long for an authority to surrender to. And He is God.; 7/3/15, 2:21 PM
buwaya said...: Rhythm and ....

Why is it that you and I have such profoundly different points of view ?
Could it be that I have spent my life getting things done, with people who actually make and do things, with hands and brain, and have seen where we are constantly blocked, frustrated and opposed ?

The world and its powers are 180 degrees different than what you assume. We who make and do are the deadly enemies of the powers that be, who agree with you entirely. Even those people who make and do in France, Sweden and Germany. I have worked with the guys at ABB and Siemens, and etc. Believe me, they have the same understanding of the world we US engineers do.; 7/3/15, 2:21 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: The fact that you base your economic philosophy on a theory that has failed every time it has been tried in history shows that you have no regard for history, no respect for empiricism, and believe in fantasy.

Irresponsible people like you are the reason that Republicans get away with launching these depressions on the country. If you ever took an econ course the first thing taught would be the disclaimer that ALL functional economies are "mixed". There is no such thing as straight capitalist or socialist. Every law, furthermore, could be described as a regulation. Murder laws constrain the hit man and body guarding industries but only a Republican who believes econ is just a philosophy with no real-world data to apply to it would be dumb enough to advocate the "lesson" learned from that example.; 7/3/15, 2:25 PM
Michael K said...: "Hey Michael K, I stand by my assertion that those little blondes in The Blind Lemon down on San Pablo were sorority girls. "

Oh, I don't argue about it. I was referring to the more violent gangs that were made up of women who volunteered in prison programs and the black ex-cons. I don't know of sorority girls who got that far into gangster life but some of those lefty women sure did. Kathy Soliah was one who survived and she was a college grad.; 7/3/15, 2:27 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: "HIre me. I promise to downsize my responsibilities, blame the bad results on the management (i.e. the rest of the hiring committee), and build a wall around my office," said the Republican politician to the voter dumb enough to elect him. He then added, "But I won't decrease my pay. However, you should hire me anyway. I'll just lead you to believe that you'll pay less. You'll pay more in terms of decreased purchasing power and your own salary will decrease, but that's just part of the necessary project of what I need to accomplish. And what you're experiencing in the real world? You shouldn't complain about it. There are consequences to rejecting my theory. Be fearful of them."

"Later, we can sit down at a table and talk about the Laffer curve, etc."

This is why Bernie Sanders gets votes.; 7/3/15, 2:30 PM
Michael K said...: "How did socialism become a bad word? Being anti-social is nearly synonymous with a defective disposition toward base criminality. While that would explain many of the personalities that frequent this site and others like it, that they think they can get away with openly justifying it is curious."

HAHAHAHAHA

You're a trip ritmo.; 7/3/15, 2:30 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "If you ever took an econ course the first thing taught would be the disclaimer that ALL functional economies are "mixed". There is no such thing as straight capitalist or socialist."

Yes, I'm sure that every closeted academic from whom you ever took a 3-credit course will fill your head with all sorts of drivel. Drivel that is free flowing from the heads of people who have never actually done anything except sit in a classroom. And that, exactly is the problem.

The truth is, socialism is a theory of economic organization. It is a theory that has been tried many times in practice, and has been shown to be fundamentally flawed. In places where it supposedly "works", the economies work in spite of socialism, not because of it.; 7/3/15, 2:30 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: Liberals look at the world, and see it the way they want it to be. Conservatives look a the world, and see it the way it is.

Liberals used to take pride in that saying, or some variation of it, thinking it shows what visionary idealists they are. In actuality, it is the most damning statement possible.; 7/3/15, 2:34 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: ' . . . the first thing taught would be the disclaimer that ALL functional economies are "mixed"'
Nonsense. The first thing you are taught is the definition of economics, which is the study of the rationing of scarce goods. The next thing you are taught is what is meant by the term "scarce goods." It's a little later that the types of economic systems are introduced. My textbook (a very middle of the road McGraw-Hill intro to economics) explained that market economies were more efficient at producing goods and services than command economies, and that all economies were a dynamic mix between high growth and public good.; 7/3/15, 2:35 PM
Dr Weevil said...: So if 'antisocial' is bad, and 'social' is good, therefore Socialism is a good thing? That's as stupid as thinking that you can't love the Republic unless you're a Republican. Cognates often have divergent meanings, and anti-Socialist is not in fact a synonym for anti-social.

There is also no contradiction at all in hiring a boss who hopes to do less of what he's been put in charge of. Any decent fire chief will aim at having fewer and less destructive fires on his watch, any decent general or admiral will aim at having fewer wars or (if deterrence fails) at least fewer casualties among his own troops and civilians and even (if possible) among enemy troops. Any teacher would hope that all his students will learn the subject the first time around so he doesn't have to teach them all over again in summer school. And any decent politician will want the polity to do only what it should be doing, what citizens cannot do for themselves, and that means cutting huge numbers of programs that benefit no one except the indecent politicians and bureaucrats who run them.; 7/3/15, 2:36 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Far be it from me to wonder what engineers who "make and do" things have to learn in the way of actual people skills or successfully running things that involve human beings. They should do well enough to stick to their Erector sets.; 7/3/15, 2:36 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Ok, Paul. So you're a sociopath, and you're upset that other people are voting in alignment with what they know about the world, rather than based on what a philosophy of political sociopathy should teach them. The world "the way it should be" does not account for the useful role you see for all the sociopaths like yourself.

Which is all fine and dandy. You'll make a wonderful coordinator for the Republican Beauty Pageant, or maybe even a chauffeur for their Candidate Clown Car. Maybe even just like any other cabbie, only you'll be regurgitating Arther Laffer's discredited talking points and going on about "trickle down" or whatever. And all because people who know (and get paid well for teaching) what they research are wrong. So says you. It's a self-evident circuit - as all closed systems are.

Enjoy it. But stop pretending you have anything useful to say. Stick to your crowd of yes-men and other lackeys. Stop poking your head out of the bubble. We know how scared you are of what you see when you do.; 7/3/15, 2:40 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Nonsense. The first thing you are taught is the definition of economics, which is the study of the rationing of scarce goods. The next thing you are taught is what is meant by the term "scarce goods." It's a little later that the types of economic systems are introduced. My textbook (a very middle of the road McGraw-Hill intro to economics) explained that market economies were more efficient at producing goods and services than command economies, and that all economies were a dynamic mix between high growth and public good.

I guess it must have also taught you that over time technology makes things more and more scarce, instead of the opposite. That there is a need for greater and greater stinginess. I didn't know Professor Malthus was still teaching, Terry. Tell him a polar bear says hi.; 7/3/15, 2:43 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Poor R&B hasn't noticed that the ONLY people who talk about 'trickle down' economics are clueless lefties. Supporters sometimes call it 'bubble up' economics because that's how it actually works.; 7/3/15, 2:45 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "... you're upset that other people are voting in alignment with what they know about the world, rather than based on what a philosophy of political sociopathy should teach them. "

Cute. Now I'm a sociopath because I don't believe in your warm and fuzzy fantasies of a socialist world? Now who's living in a bubble?

Actually, that's exactly the opposite of the situation. It is you who are a proponent of a theoretical system of economics, socialism, that has failed everywhere except in the minds of academics who have never worked a day outside of a school or university. I am a proponent of a system that works overall for the greater benefit of mankind, regardless of its flaws and drawbacks.; 7/3/15, 2:46 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Supporters sometimes call it 'bubble up' economics because that's how it actually works.

Yes! And it provides an iron-clad explanation for the decreased wage growth and growth in living standards we've seen over the last few decades of Republican Rule!

But maybe that is just the result of wanting to see things "the way they should be", as Paul put it. We should be grateful to Republicans for putting things right, back into alignment with the "way they really are." These wonderfully mediocre things they've done for the economy were just necessities, and we should be grateful to them for doing so.; 7/3/15, 2:47 PM
mccullough said...: People heeded the message. Don't work, don't get married, don't raise your kids; instead live off the government by either getting on the payroll or welfare.

Every time he mentions the word "free" it's not liberty from government, its a government handout that the government can't afford. China knows what "free" means. So does Greece. So do people who work in the private sector.

The "other people's money" is China's and private sector workers. How long you think they'll put up with the 1960's Boomer bullshit.

Cutting off Medicare and asocial Securiyy for Boomers will be the easiest decision in 10 years. Take care of the Vietnam vets and let the rest starve or drop dead.; 7/3/15, 2:48 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Cute. Now I'm a sociopath because I don't believe in your warm and fuzzy fantasies of a socialist world? Now who's living in a bubble?

Here's what you mean to say:

"You mean, I'm not a good person because I believe in a needlessly callous and ruthless way of treating America's people? Not prioritizing the needs of the wealthy over everyone else makes ME out of touch?"

Actually, that's exactly the opposite of the situation. It is you who are a proponent of a theoretical system of economics, socialism, that has failed everywhere except in the minds of academics who have never worked a day outside of a school or university. I am a proponent of a system that works overall for the greater benefit of mankind, regardless of its flaws and drawbacks.

No one who substitutes that much horse-choking rhetoric for even a single demonstrable real life point has any right to accuse others of spouting theory.; 7/3/15, 2:52 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Apparently R&B hasn't noticed that most of the "decreased wage growth and growth in living standards we've seen over the last few decades" has occurred in the last 6 1/2 years, when the Republicans were not in charge. Or perhaps he noticed and is just lying about it.; 7/3/15, 2:52 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: "decreased wage growth and growth in living standards we've seen over the last few decades" has occurred in the last 6 1/2 years, when the Republicans were not in charge.

That's not true. Either you're the one who's lying or you're ignorant, which Paul says conservatives never are.

If you need the data, go ahead an peep for it. Or find it yourself since you're the one contesting the charge. I can predict you won't, though - because I know how much Republicans hate data. Which will only, directly help disprove Paul's point all along. Which we all knew would happen.

Your political philosophy is nothing more than an attitude of how strongly people can beat their heads against a wall without tiring and without ever picking up one's head, looking around and thinking for a change.; 7/3/15, 3:00 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: No one who substitutes that much horse-choking rhetoric for even a single demonstrable real life point has any right to accuse others of spouting theory.

Apparently, you are still missing the point here, so I'll explain it again.

I don't "believe" in capitalism, any more than I "believe" in gravity. I recognize that capitalism works, and I seek to understand why. I don't think that greed is good, I recognize that greed exists and I don't advocate capitalism because I think greed is a good thing. I advocate capitalism because it works.

I do not advocate socialism because socialism doesn't work. I don't care how nice it is in theory. It is you who "believe" in socialism, and think it makes you a better person because you do so (and therefore the rest of us are inferior or evil, somehow, if we don't).

The problem is, your world view consists of wishful thinking and mysticism, which are exactly the methodologies that we would have hoped would have been extinguished with the Enlightenment.; 7/3/15, 3:02 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Actually, Dr. Weevil, the Dems took over both houses of Congress in Jaunuary, 2007. Bush rolled over for them on everything except funding of the Iraq War.
One of the standard topics in economics (Krugman never mentions it, though), is the problem with backward-lookers versus forward lookers. If the government tries to stimulate the economy by spending money it does not have, forward lookers cut back on their spending in anticipation of future tax hikes or benefit reductions to pay for the government debt incurred. This reduces the effect of stimulus spending. Keynes struggled with this because it is actually a rational response to debt financed government spending. That's why he prefered a store of government money to increased government debt, in at least some of his writing. This is macro econ 101.
A keynesian stimulus, BTW, is supposed to even out the business cycle, not correct for a financial crisis. I don't know what theory of economics Krugman and Obama are following, but it ain't keynesian.; 7/3/15, 3:04 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Another thing to remember is that despite what some progressive econ-pundits say, keynesian economics was supposed to modify classical free market economics, not replace it.
This is literally economics 101.; 7/3/15, 3:06 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: I don't "believe" in capitalism, any more than I "believe" in gravity.

Thanks. That actually explains all I really need to hear you say.

So, you don't believe people are motivated by social benefit to themselves and others, but you're not "anti-social" for advocating that belief? You believe any public institution that reflects the people's obvious will to recognize their obligations (however slight) to each other is wrong, but not because any theory told you so? Tell me what you personally observed about the world that made you believe this, and how it is not reflective of being a sociopath. Tell me how increased income inequality, decreased wage growth and increased rent-seeking of government regulation by lobbyists rich enough to pay off campaigns are good things. They are all the result of your lopsided understanding of human behavior (that people are selfish but not social) and they are the reason that Bernie Sanders will get significant votes that your Clown Car Beauty Pageant Contestants (who say the "right" thing!) will never reach.

You have done the best job convincing me that you're not just a corporatist lackey whore out of any of the commenters here, but it doesn't seem to be good enough to address America's problems. But who needs that when you can fantasize about bigger, non-existent problems - such as America possibly becoming the next Greece or Russia? Yes, I see how your perspective works. Fuck our problems and let them fester! Don't address anything and instead cry wolf over problems that aren't affecting us!

It's a great strategy - for someone who wants to do nothing for anyone. But your candidates are asking for jobs funded by me. That's a problem.; 7/3/15, 3:13 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Another thing to remember is that despite what some progressive econ-pundits say, keynesian economics was supposed to modify classical free market economics, not replace it.
This is literally economics 101.

No one said it should replace it. It's Republicans who are saying that classical economics has replaced (or should replace) keynesianism.; 7/3/15, 3:14 PM
Michael K said...: "They should do well enough to stick to their Erector sets."

I was told there would be no math.

HAHAHAHAHA

Another good one ritmo.; 7/3/15, 3:16 PM
Dr Weevil said...: So R&B hasn't noticed that the last 6 1/2 years have been economically disastrous for everyone except the governing classes? He hasn't noticed the massive inflation in food and gasoline prices under Obama - conveniently omitted from the official inflation index to keep his precious numbers looking good? He's heard that the unemployment rate is low, but hasn't heard that that is only because so many have given up looking for jobs after the unemployment benefits run out, and that the percentage of Americans working is the lowest since the Carter administration? He hasn't noticed the massive increase in health costs for most Americans, under Obamacare? He only knows the official government statistics carefully tailored to make a sinking economy look buoyant? He hasn't noticed that Obama has been "prioritizing the needs of the wealthy over everyone else" more than any president before him? Is there a single president who would have let Jon Corzine go unindicted for inadvertently 'losing' 1.6 billion dollars of other people's money with no explanation of where it went? So far from indicting Corzine on criminal charges, Obama proudly listed him as a top fundraiser on his presidential reelection committee.

Is R&B so stupid that he doesn't know any of this? Or does he know the truth and lie about it, possibly paid to do so? Take your pick. Or don't: it's a false dichotomy.; 7/3/15, 3:17 PM
buwaya said...: "Far be it from me to wonder what engineers who "make and do" things have to learn in the way of actual people skills or successfully running things that involve human beings. They should do well enough to stick to their Erector sets."

Er, real people skills for all these guys involves getting lots and lots of people coordinated and delivering. On complicated things. Its not the case that liberal arts graduates run about interpreting engineers and technicians and workers and farmers to each other. We do just fine, thank you. Any other people skills are, well, fripperies.

"Erector sets" include everything that keeps you alive, water, electricity, heat, food.
Without them you die.; 7/3/15, 3:18 PM
George M. Spencer said...: Looks like Pajama Boy's dad.; 7/3/15, 3:19 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Er, real people skills for all these guys involves getting lots and lots of people coordinated and delivering. On complicated things.

And ALSO, on deciding buwayaahahahahhaha. Remmeber that? Be a DECIDER!

Thanks for the generic description of your usefulness. Doing and building and coordinating and delivering. Do you also poop and pee?; 7/3/15, 3:22 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Another thing R&B hasn't noticed is that no one on the right thinks that "increased income inequality, decreased wage growth and increased rent-seeking of government regulation by lobbyists rich enough to pay off campaigns are good things". However, that is exactly what is happening under Obama's demented rule, and a very large part of why we oppose him.; 7/3/15, 3:22 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: So, you don't believe people are motivated by social benefit to themselves and others, but you're not "anti-social" for advocating that belief?

I actually do believe that people are motiviated by social benefit to themselves and others. That's called charity, and it's what people do voluntarily. You, on the other hand, probably believe in forced re-distribution. That's not charity. Charity is what you do with your own money.

As with most liberals, you seem to confuse intentions and motivations with results. For example, America now spends an estimated $1 trillion per year in means-tested benefit programs. That's exclusive of Medicare and Social Security, which are also, largely, income redistribution programs. And what have we gotten from that? No progress in poverty reduction.

We had much greater poverty reduction BEFORE those programs were set up.

As I said previously, I go by results, you go by theory. For you, intentions and motivations are all, and for me, results are more important. You even go so far as to call me a "sociopath" if I don't agree with your gauzy delusions. You are a theorist and an idealist. I am a pragmatist. I go by what works. You go by what you hope works. That does not make me a sociopath, it makes me an empiricist. You, i think, are just a fool.; 7/3/15, 3:24 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Check out Dr. Weevil's proud Republican contribution to the outlook for the American worker since his heroes Nixon and Reagan and the rest of the Clown Car took over the economic agenda! It's sekrit data that he can't get and doesn't show the effects of the recession his hero W. presided over, but it's his best argument for the economic policies he wants to advocate! Isn't it a beautiful chart? He sure would seem to think so. If of course he was even capable of remembering the argument he was addressing. Short memories seems to be a Republican speciality these days, though.; 7/3/15, 3:26 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "No one said it should replace it. It's Republicans who are saying that classical economics has replaced (or should replace) keynesianism."
You know those repubs, always insisting on a dollar-for-dollar-match in spending for tax cuts :).
It's a matter of degree, old boy. A tax cut that does not reduce government spending is a keynesian stimulus. How much do you know about keynesian economics? the most famous of Keynes' equations is C + I + G + (X-M) = GDP. C is consumer spending. I is investment. X-M is exports minus imports. G is goverment spending, and unlike C or I it does not have a multiplier > 1.0 because government money is not spent in expectation of an economic return.
This is really basic stuff, R&B.; 7/3/15, 3:30 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: As with most liberals, you seem to confuse intentions and motivations with results. For example, America now spends an estimated $1 trillion per year in means-tested benefit programs. That's exclusive of Medicare and Social Security, which are also, largely, income redistribution programs. And what have we gotten from that? No progress in poverty reduction.

As with most retrogrades, you seem to cherry pick points (they're not even accurate facts) that you can shoehorn into your goofy partisan agenda. Those programs were started decades ago and each one did address the problem that existed beforehand. Like the ignoramus holding the sign saying "Government Hands Off My Medicare", you don't even know that they're not for poverty. They're for the elderly. Medicare works very well for them, much better than what they had before. And SSI dramatically reduced the poverty rate among the elderly. You are literally proving that you have no idea what you're saying. An ideologue as young and green as you belongs in the leaflet distributing or phone bank campaigns - not spouting nonsense among a mixed crowd (and even just other partisans) who know better.; 7/3/15, 3:31 PM
Rusty said...: "How did socialism become a bad word?"

Really?; 7/3/15, 3:37 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I think that a lot of humanities students think that they are going to learn all about how to create economic justice when they take ebasic econ, or at least learn clever, daming critiques of capitalism. Instead its "what is the shape of the curve described by this function" and "how do we move the curve left, right, or up or down" or :where do these curves intersect?." I'm just speculating, but I would guess that an average BS physics graduate of a small state college knows more math than an economics PhD.; 7/3/15, 3:38 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Check out R&B's cretinous inability to read and judge a simple chart. If he could read it, he would notice that real wages peaked under Nixon (R), had by far their steepest drop under Carter (D), and hardly differed at all under later presidents of both parties. That's supposed to embarrass me somehow? If he could judge it, he would know that it can't possibly be an accurate representation of the economy, since American workers were most certainly not 18% poorer in real terms in 2007 than in 1973: there must be something seriously wrong with the way the inflation adjustment was calculated. He might also have noted that the Obama years are conveniently omitted: has he achieved a steeper drop in real wages than Carter? Quite possibly: he's certainly surpassed Carter's incompetence in other ways.

Of course, his assertion that Nixon and Reagan are my two "heroes" is another of his contemptible lies.; 7/3/15, 3:39 PM
richard mcenroe said...: I think Bernie was just appalled by the notion of going to work. S'why he went into politics.; 7/3/15, 3:41 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: You know, Rusty, when I grew up I was taught that the totalitarian mass murders of the twentieth century were a result of a modern industrial state applying the same-old methods of oppression that had been used for centuries. When I go older I found out that the "vast machinery of the modern industrial state" consisted of telegraph and telephone lines, trains, soldiers with guns and lots and lots of index cards.; 7/3/15, 3:41 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "Those programs were started decades ago and each one did address the problem that existed beforehand. Like the ignoramus holding the sign saying "Government Hands Off My Medicare", you don't even know that they're not for poverty."

Good thing, because poverty today is essentially the same as it was before we spent 5 decades spending trillions. But it does beg the question - exactly what problem was addressed if we have, today, the same poverty rate as we did before?

Then, you follow up your statement that those programs weren't for poverty reduction with the following claim:

And SSI dramatically reduced the poverty rate among the elderly.

But again, the fact is, America's poverty rate today is essentially the same as it was before those programs were started. So, what are we gaining by those programs? Your good feelings?

Again, it is you who are the ideologue. I cite facts, while you wave your hands and spout insults with any and all who disagree with you or dare to point out that your approach has simply failed to provide measurable results. Go ahead, keep shouting. But bear in mind, you're only fooling yourself.; 7/3/15, 3:42 PM
buwaya said...: I also decide. This is a problem ?
Point is, #1, we in the making business, the real making business, not the bullshit making business, don't think like you. We don't see problems and opportunities and political alignments like you.

Point is, #2 the powers that be are not who you think they are.
They have migrated over the last few decades into a position in alignment with the great mass of bureaucracies and private entities that live off playing with rules, not making things. They are actively opposed to making things. They are on the other side. We the workers are in a fight against a vampire establishment. Whether they are financial grifters or Harvard bureaucrats or tech entrepreneurs angling for copyright benefits or the likes of Bernie Sanders, they are on the same side, the opposite of ours.

Case in point, if you want one, is why a proper SF Bay Bridge repair took 24 years. Engineers were comprehensively sidelined by every bureaucrat, politician and connected grifter, every one milking it for what they could get. What would have been a 1 year job took 24. This is the case with every public works project, anywhere in the US. And that is public works, actually delivering public goods for the benefit of the people. This is not even pro or con capitalism.

What side are you on ?; 7/3/15, 3:42 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Check out R&B's cretinous inability to read and judge a simple chart. If he could read it, he would notice that real wages peaked under Nixon (R), had by far their steepest drop under Carter (D), and hardly differed at all under later presidents of both parties. That's supposed to embarrass me somehow?

Sure is. You didn't even know about it, let alone think it was a problem worth addressing in any way.

But that is because you are a low-information voter, just like the majority of your party.

I will continue to point that out at every opportunity you provide me to do so.; 7/3/15, 3:43 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: But again, the fact is, America's poverty rate today is essentially the same as it was before those programs were started. So, what are we gaining by those programs?

God damn are you a dumbass. Medicare made health care available for the elderly and SSI made a decent standard of living available for the elderly. If you are against the elderly having those things, then advocate for taking them away. They weren't for the "general population" so go ahead and argue for programs for the "general population" if that's your gripe - rather than this disingenuous bs of flubbing the purpose of the program with the nature of a problem that it never addressed.

Your good feelings?

Lol. Your bad feelings? Your hatred of elderly people who are not in poverty? Your hatred of elderly people who are cared for when sick?

Who can even begin to understand your bizarre motivations when you're not even motivated to understand what Medicare and Social Security actually ARE before you rail against them?

Just go away. How many errors that gargantuan do you have to make before you actually have the social responsibility to feel disqualified from making more or at least learning what most American knows about it first?

I understand that an aggressive ignorance is a virtue in your party, but not so for the rest of the country, or for me. You've given me ample evidence of your inability and/or unwillingness to learn the basics of any fact worth debating.

But you do know your ideology very well. Isn't it great that you can learn to parrot a philosophy before learning the most basic facts about how you intend to apply it? It's very cute. Like a toddler jumping off a second-story balcony because learning to crawl, walk or run first was just not ambitious enough for him.

Seriously, go away. You're an embarrassment even to other retrograde Republicans.; 7/3/15, 3:50 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Quite possibly: he's certainly surpassed Carter's incompetence in other ways.

And thankfully nowhere near as incompetent as the drain pipe of a president who left us the economy of October 2008.

But I bet he might just be another one of the Republicans you'd pretend not to like though, just like Reagan and Nixon. How convenient.; 7/3/15, 3:53 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: God damn are you a dumbass. Medicare made health care available for the elderly and SSI made a decent standard of living available for the elderly.

Oh, I see. So the way you see it, before you and other God-like liberals descended to Earth from socialist heaven, people were incapable of providing for their own healthcare and their own income?

Now I see where you're coming from. You're a God-like being, armed with the wrath of the righteous, here to smite all those who don't believe in the power of free stuff!

Haha. Lovely.; 7/3/15, 3:56 PM
Anonymous said...: So if 'antisocial' is bad, and 'social' is good, therefore Socialism is a good thing?

As luck would have it, the adjective "capital" means "better than good".; 7/3/15, 3:56 PM
Dr Weevil said...: I "didn't even know about" what, R&B? Your antecedent is entirely unclear.

Do you mean that one particular chart that, as I have already pointed out, (a) doesn't prove what you think it proves, and (b) can't possibly be correct? Why should I care about one stupid economic chart from a "radical political economist" at UMich, when there are tens of thousands of others, some of them undoubtedly more accurate and up-to-date?

Or do you mean that I "didn't even know about" wage-stagnation as a problem in general? Because I know all about that, often from personal experience, and know it is characteristic of socialist systems like the ones you support. The most wage-stagnant administrations in my lifetime have been Carter (bad) and Obama (worse). Any chart that doesn't show that is as useless as a Global Warming chart that omits or disguises the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Those are all over the web, too.; 7/3/15, 3:59 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "And SSI dramatically reduced the poverty rate among the elderly."
It's a transfer payment. Economics textbooks will tell you that income equality would be about 3x worse than it is without transfer payments.
Read your Keynes. It's all in his "Economic Consequences of the Peace" (1919). It's short and it is in the public domain. After WWI the economy had changed and Victorian economic ideas didn't seem to work anymore. Keynes said the problem was that classical economics was not suited to the new modern age. Classical economics had looked at the behavior of the individual more than the state. After WWI you couldn't expect people to save like victorians when the state could just inflate the value of your savings away. After WWI it didn't make sense to spend income on a child's education when the state could just grab him and send him off to be killed in a war. The government, said Keynes, would have to assume the economic duties once borne by citizens. Keynes did not say that the vast wealth created during the Victorian Age did not exist, he said that a new system was needed.; 7/3/15, 4:01 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Oh, I see. So the way you see it, before you and other God-like liberals descended to Earth from socialist heaven, people were incapable of providing for their own healthcare and their own income?

Listen, you incompetent spitball throwing twat - the programs were instituted because their rates of healthcare access and income provision were deplorable, not because anyone did or does prevent them from getting those things on their own. Further, you should know that they're not going anywhere. The elderly themselves won't allow it. They vote in greater number. So Republicans are forced to retreat from this nonsense tactic that you're trying now. You don't even know that these are political lost causes even for Republicans. So you just make up bullshit about their continuation being based on paternalism or whatever. What a joke you are.

Now I see where you're coming from. You're a God-like being, armed with the wrath of the righteous, here to smite all those who don't believe in the power of free stuff!

Yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah see above. You don't know what you're talking about so just make up some nonsense crap to feel like you got an insult off in the skirmish anyway. This is the way of someone who knows of no responsibilities in life, which is just the kind of voter the RNC is looking for. Talk about a world that doesn't conform to your ideological fantasies.; 7/3/15, 4:05 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: It's a transfer payment. Economics textbooks will tell you that income equality would be about 3x worse than it is without transfer payments.

Yes, no shit. That's what your lackey "Paul Jacobsen" failed to understand. Now go school him on it. Don't you even read these threads before responding?

It's like you're the grown-up Republican who just doesn't read the thread and Paul's the junior Republican who doesn't read anything. Except for philosophy and ideology.

Terry - be the big Republican and let little Paul know that he at least has to get a fact or two straight before starting with the insults. Be the example that you need little Republicans like him to follow.; 7/3/15, 4:08 PM
Babaluigi said...: The "callous and ruthless treatment of America's people" comes at the hands of those chipping away at the freedoms we enjoy. There is more to freedom than being able to have whatever kind of sex with whomever or whatever, wherever and whenever one wants. That seems to be the limited definition of "freedom" for those on the left. Meanwhile, what other facet of life do they not wish to regulate?...

America (hopefully still) is a place where one can strive for the life one wishes to build with their own efforts. People can fail at their honest endeavors here, and as long as they have the gumption, can get up and try again, reinventing themselves over and over until they get what they want.

People came here to have the freedom to live their lives as they thought right, not as their oppressive governments or societies governed. Russian immigrants I know think the American electorate has lost its mind, embracing the very collectivist ideals they sought to escape by coming here.

Wanting to keep what you have earned by your own efforts is not a crime, and it hurts no one. Claiming the fruits of the labor of another is theft, and that is a crime. No decent human being would wish a another to starve, and we are a generous people when it comes to helping those who are truly needy, but things have gone way beyond that and it is still not enough for the left. There can be many roadblocks on the way to "The American Dream", but along the way the government has also been setting up way too many tollgates which charge those working hard to achieve that dream with the expenses of those who do not.; 7/3/15, 4:10 PM
Michael K said...: " Like the ignoramus holding the sign saying "Government Hands Off My Medicare", you don't even know that they're not for poverty."

Now we know where ritmo gets his "facts." Right out of the DNC playbook for LIVs.

That is the mythological source of leftist wisdom.; 7/3/15, 4:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Rhythm and Balls, why not tell us, specifically,m what it is that you "do" that allows you to mock engineers and their "Erector Sets"?

(a reference btw that marks you as every bit a geezer as Bernie Sanders)

What wealth do you create?

Or are you just another tit-sucker?; 7/3/15, 4:13 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: jelink-
You don't understand the most productive thing a citizen can do is criticize others while remaining free from criticism himself. Entire branches of the social sciences have been built on this assumption.
If go to the Chronicle of Higher Education and check the comments to the articles, you will see that there is an entire army of academics who are aghast at the idea that the hard working taxpayers (who fund their positions) actually want to have a say in what they teach.; 7/3/15, 4:18 PM
Dr Weevil said...: jelink:
There's at least 60% chance that R&B's job is just what we see: defending the left and attacking the right on this website. It's interesting that he accuses of us of following RNC talking points: apparently he hasn't heard that actual conservatives and free-marketers despise the RNC and a lot of Republican office-holders. Is he just projecting? Because he's repeating DNC talking points for money, he assumes we're doing the same on the other side? That's just a hypothesis, but it explains the R&B phenomenon better than most.; 7/3/15, 4:19 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: Listen, you incompetent spitball throwing twat - the programs were instituted because their rates of healthcare access and income provision were deplorable, not because anyone did or does prevent them from getting those things on their own.

And again, you put words in my mouth, all the better so you can refute something that I never said.

You said that because of the great vision and benificence of you and other Angels of the Socialist Lord, the elderly and infirm were finally...Finally!...Because of you and people like you! Were provided with health care and income! And where did that income come from? Why from other people, of course!

And I never said anyone "prevented" them from getting it on their own - you simply said that because of people like you (and ONLY because of people like you), they were finally provided with health care. And again, you have illusions of grandeur.

It's no wonder you have such contempt for anyone who disagrees with your socialist schemes. If you style yourself as a God and a prophet of the righteous, who but could disagree with you but the spawn of Satan, those evil-doers who would deny the elderly and infirm with all those wonderful things which you, and only you in your greater wisdom and infinite moral superiority,can provide! With other peoples' money, of course?

Haha you're great amusement. Well worth the price of admission.; 7/3/15, 4:21 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Like the parting shots fired by scattered troops in a lost war that has already been ended by its generals, a few random Republican reactionaries will continue to post comments that demonstrate how little responsibility they're willing to take for what they say.; 7/3/15, 4:34 PM
404 Page Not Found said...: "Like the parting shots fired by scattered troops in a lost war that has already been ended by its generals, a few random Republican reactionaries will continue to post comments that demonstrate how little responsibility they're willing to take for what they say."

Yes, Comrade, socialism is the future.; 7/3/15, 4:37 PM
Gary Rosen said...: "'The years come and go,' Mr. Sanders wrote, in all apparent seriousness. 'Suicide, nervous breakdown, cancer, sexual deadness, heart attack, alcoholism, senility at 50. Slow death, fast death. DEATH.'"

Old joke: A government researcher goes to the backwoods of Maine, asks a local what the death rate is in that county. "Oh, about one per person".; 7/3/15, 4:40 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Notice that R&B can't be bothered to deny that he's paid to comment here, or to adjust his arguments when they are shown to be stupid - I've already pointed out that most conservatives are none to fond of today's Republican party but he insists that we're all "Republican reactionaries" as if he couldn't be bothered to reply to my actual point. Moron, liar, or paid provocateur? A bit of all three, I would guess.; 7/3/15, 4:42 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: When you look at what the Soviets did in the 1930s it all makes sense from a socialist standpoint. Peasant-run farms aren't efficient. People need to be workers given a task to do. Sentimental attachment to a piece of land goes against the common interest. They do not own their labor, it's owned by the commons, represented by the state. So you go to Ukraine and force every person into a train and send them 2,000 miles east to the Taiga to build another village along strict, communitarian lines. And you repopulate the Ukrainian village with herdsmen from Uzbekistan. The only part of the operation that was not a result of socialist principles was the unexpected decrease in agricultural production. The deaths that resulted were expected, but not thought to be important, and were certainly not be considered a problem with socialism.; 7/3/15, 4:43 PM
Bob Ellison said...: lying about it

This is standard operating procedure.; 7/3/15, 4:45 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: You don't have to repeat the whole thing, dingbat. It's right above the comment. But please tell us more about the glorious corporatist future you envision for America. Where is your place in it? Do they hire and pay off people who speak before they think, who have no sense of responsibility? Do tell us what the corporatist vision for the country is. I would especially love to hear that take from someone like you, who doesn't seem to have ever had a job in the first place.; 7/3/15, 4:46 PM
Bob Ellison said...: The Communists invented baseball.; 7/3/15, 4:49 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Notice that R&B can't be bothered to deny that he's paid to comment here, or to adjust his arguments when they are shown to be stupid - I've already pointed out that most conservatives are none to fond of today's Republican party but he insists that we're all "Republican reactionaries" as if he couldn't be bothered to reply to my actual point. Moron, liar, or paid provocateur? A bit of all three, I would guess.

One of the greatest ironies in reactionary American "conservatism", (and there are a great many), is if a guy like Cotton Weevil convinced himself that the blame for the abomination that is the Republican Party today should be laid at the feet of Democrats or its other political adversaries. I mean, they already lack the ability to take responsibility for anything, including what they say. So, why not? Sure, the abominable state of the Republican party is the Democrats' fault. Why not? Just make a law that says no Republican should ever take responsibility for anything. That should solve this partisanship issue for all time. Maybe the country will learn to stop expecting anything sensible from any of them.; 7/3/15, 4:50 PM
Dr Weevil said...: "Do they hire and pay off people who speak before they think, who have no sense of responsibility?" Sounds like R&B is looking for a new job!; 7/3/15, 4:51 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: It will be like when Senator John Kyl said that his statement in Congress about how 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion, and he corrected that gigantically retarded whopper with a clarification (via Twitter IIRC) that it wasn't "intended to be a factual statement."

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/not-intended-to-be-a-factual-statement

This is where the reactionary partisan dildos of the Althouse commentary get their understanding of political responsibility.

But yes, they will teach American the proper lessons on how there is no free ride, by Golly!

Dildos. Talk about a party of, by and for the useless.; 7/3/15, 4:54 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Where have I blamed the state of the Republican Party on the Democrats? Beuler . . . Beuler . . . Anyone? Just another pathetic lie from R&B, who still can't be bothered to deny that he's paid to write his lies here.; 7/3/15, 4:54 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: I grant you The reactionary Republican (or "anti-Republican") conservative commenters of The Althouse Blog.

So that government of the useless, by the useless, for the useless, shall not perish from the earth.; 7/3/15, 4:58 PM
Dr Weevil said...: And I grant you a far superior knowledge and experience of the use and deployment of dildos than I have, or ever will have, R&B. Fair enough?; 7/3/15, 4:59 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Gosh, what is this thing that R&B calls "corporatism'?

corporatism, Italian corporativismo, also called corporativism, the theory and practice of organizing society into “corporations” subordinate to the state. According to corporatist theory, workers and employers would be organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and controlling to a large extent the persons and activities within their jurisdiction. However, as the “corporate state” was put into effect in fascist Italy between World Wars I and II, it reflected the will of the country’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, rather than the adjusted interests of economic groups.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/corporatism

Mama mia! Atsa' some plan you got there R&Benito!; 7/3/15, 5:00 PM
Bob Ellison said...: "The Parting Glass" by The Wailin' Jennys.; 7/3/15, 5:00 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "So that government of the useless, by the useless, for the useless, shall not perish from the earth."
Useless? I think the word you are looking for is "gusanos" or maybe "kulacs."; 7/3/15, 5:01 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: If that's your proud way of conceding that you know nearly nothing, Weevil, than so be it. Consider it just another section in your grand, master plan of deliberate ignorance.; 7/3/15, 5:01 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Nah, Terry - the statement worked well enough as is.

I think Republicans (and their self-appointed reactionary conservative "betters") should pick it up. It certainly describes very well what they're all about, politically speaking.; 7/3/15, 5:03 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Politics are human relations, not self-proclaimed socialists telling people how to behave.; 7/3/15, 5:06 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Four score and seven deletions ago, our fathers brought forth, in this section of cyberspace, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all reactionary Republicans are created useless.

We are now engaged in a great battle, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met in a great field of that battle, where many of our more useless ones have given their respectability and reputation so that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this website. Through their sacrifice, they have done so much more than we.

They will little note what we say here, but they will long remember what was done here. That this bunch of layabout oafs shall experience a new birth, and that political commentary of the useless, by the useless for the useless, shall not perish from the earth.

There you go.; 7/3/15, 5:09 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Useless, BTW, is what socialists usually call people before they kill them. That or "enemies of the people." I think that R&B has used both terms here.; 7/3/15, 5:11 PM
Michael K said...: " I would especially love to hear that take from someone like you, who doesn't seem to have ever had a job in the first place."

I think you may have hit upon something by suggesting that ritmo is a paid troll. We have one at Chicago Boyz who seems to be a Russian commenter.

I would suggest that, if this should be true, Democrats are showing their usual inability to get their money's worth from their features.

I don't know if "Erector Set" is such an indicator of age, though. I went into the story in some detail at one time. Maybe others have, as well, although probably not Democrats who don't do math well.; 7/3/15, 5:13 PM
Michael K said...: "their creatures" Autocorrect is quick at screwing up comments.; 7/3/15, 5:14 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Poor stupid R&B seems to think that knowing (and caring) very little about dildos is the same as knowing "nearly nothing" about anything. Are dildos such a large and essential part of his world? (That's a rhetorical question: I don't really want to know.) Perhaps if he spent less time on the dildos, and more on the basics of economics, history, logic, rhetoric, and dialectic he wouldn't come across as such a fool.; 7/3/15, 5:14 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Don't worry Terry. You and the rest can be as useless as you want.

Just don't expect sympathy welfare for useless political rabble.; 7/3/15, 5:17 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Are dildos such a large and essential part of his world? (That's a rhetorical question: I don't really want to know.)

Yes you do. You're the one still dwelling on it.; 7/3/15, 5:18 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "Just don't expect sympathy welfare for useless political rabble."
Or, as NY Times reporter Duranty said of Stalin's mass murders "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."
To which Orwell responded "yes, but where is the omelette?"; 7/3/15, 5:26 PM
Dr Weevil said...: R&B blames me for "dwelling on" a subject that he introduced when all I have done is briefly reply to the stupid and dishonest things he said about it. Typical R&B: obviously aiming at some prize for trolliest troll in the Blogosphere, but too stupid to achieve even that.; 7/3/15, 5:27 PM
Rusty said...: But please tell us more about the glorious corporatist future you envision for America.

Not a corporatist future R&B. That's just welfare for big business. Like the ACA.
How about a future where our government doesn't try and pick the winners and losers of the marketplace.
I'm more thn willing to endure a future without Elon Musk if it mens the taxpqyers no longer have to subsidize grand corporate ideas.

Denmark? Really? You want to hold up tiny Denmark as an example of socialist success? Don't you have something bigger? Something to scale?
At least you didn't try to convince us that Cuba is a success.; 7/3/15, 9:45 PM
Lydia said...: Interesting profile at the Guardian: Inside the mind of Bernie Sanders: unbowed, unchanged, and unafraid of a good fight

In which we learn that he and wife honeymooned in the USSR.

I think he's a socialist for real.; 7/3/15, 11:27 PM
Unknown said...: ------Their grandparents came to this country determined to be good Americans. They succeeded in this endeavor, probably more than they could ever know. Whatever is good about me, I got from them. God bless them, and God bless America.----

God Bless America!; 7/3/15, 11:39 PM
Unknown said...: God Bless Free, Hard Working, Free-market America.; 7/4/15, 12:08 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Sanders says he is a socialist. Believe him.; 7/4/15, 12:36 AM
gadfly said...: I know that guy - its Arnold Poindexter from "Revenge of the Nerds."; 7/4/15, 1:14 AM
Blue@9 said...: What a fucking detestable idiot. I assure you that when my parents immigrated to the US and worked 12+ hrs a day as janitors and at commercial laundries that they would have *loved* to have put on suits and done that "monotonous work." The reality of life for 90% of humanity involves "moron work." And yet it's work that has to be done, both for the sake of civilization and for the workers who are trying to put food on the table. Only a soulless asshole would think about work (and workers) this way. Goddamn, I didn't think it was possible for me to dislike Sanders even more, but damn. What a creepy fucking asshole.; 7/4/15, 4:14 AM
Carl Pham said...: It was very typical for younger people of that time to regard ordinary middle-class people going to work as shuffling, horrifying zombies.

No it wasn't. It was only typical of narcissistic assholes, of any age, then and now.; 7/4/15, 4:25 AM
Rusty said...: Dr Weevil said...
R&B blames me for "dwelling on" a subject that he introduced when all I have done is briefly reply to the stupid and dishonest things he said about it. Typical R&B: obviously aiming at some prize for trolliest troll in the Blogosphere, but too stupid to achieve even that.

To be fair to R&B I think he's just a wee bit coked up when he posts. Nobody is that pissed off all the time. Unless, of course, you're garage.; 7/4/15, 7:04 AM
Alex said...: Shouting thomas has an obsession with "fag hags". He seems to know a lot about them.; 7/4/15, 8:23 AM
Alex said...: R&B is paid to comment here by Cenk.; 7/4/15, 8:24 AM
Moneyrunner said...: Bernie Sanders is living the Socialist Leader Dream. He’s part of the ruling class, earning very good money, doesn’t have to worry about his old age pension, and gets big crowds. If the whole world were peopled by Bernie Sanders humanity would quickly go extinct. He is like Matthew’s flowers in the field. The problem with a flower in the field is that it’s naked and dies quickly.; 7/4/15, 9:06 AM
jr565 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/4/15, 9:12 AM
jr565 said...: His idea is for every man to do the grunt work, then have govt fund people like him off the backs of that grunt work. People who are earning below a living wage or even earning good money but working till they drop are the exact people dying of the heart attacks. The suckers.

As a socialist he thinks he can somehow tax the rich till all the people who are doing the grunt work get to live a life of leisure. Only the only way he has to do it is to strangle the goose that lays the golden eggs.; 7/4/15, 9:20 AM
jr565 said...: Or, like all socialists he hasn't yet run out of other people's money to spend and waste. But he will.; 7/4/15, 9:22 AM