"It is a world of victims. I think some people did very well out of meeting with Harvey and others didn't. The ones who did knew what they were doing. These are adults, we are talking about adults with a lot of ambition. Harvey opened the door for a few people, a night with Harvey -- that's the price you pay... Some people paid the price, other people suffered from it....
"It's crazy how simplified things are becoming. There is no intelligence anymore and people seem to be frightened to say what they really think. Now I am told even by my wife to keep my head a bit low... It's like when mob rule takes over, the mob is out there they are carrying their torches and they are going to burn down Frankenstein's castle.... I don't think Hollywood will change, power always takes advantage, it always does and always has. It's how you deal with power -- people have got to take responsibility for their own selves."
March 17, 2018
Speaking completely sensibly about Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo, it's Terry Gilliam.
Finally, a real and intelligent person speaks credibly and aptly.
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If people took responsibility for their own selves there wouldn't be any democrats.
Althouse, after having done her best to rile up the mob regarding Weinstein, is now shocked. Shocked, that there is a mob.
Walpole "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." (via derb)
It's the "That's not funny" deal.
Thank you for saving our city!
Splut!
Althouse is responsible for #metoo? I had no idea.
No one humped Weinstein harder.
"Harvey opened the door for a few people, a night with Harvey -- that's the price you pay..."
Prostitutes benefited. That's sensible.
Some people paid the price, other people suffered from it....
"Paying the price" is also suffering, but it's sensible to call them different things.
"Now I am told even by my wife to keep my head a bit low..."
Being afraid to speak is sensible.
Paco Wové said...
Althouse is responsible for #metoo? I had no idea.
Of course not and nobody claimed that.
But she was a cheerleader for the mob of professional victims.
It is ironic that a committed lefty and renounced-his-American citizenship guy like Gilliam can see this situation for what it is. Too bad more of these people don't understand what they have done with their group think politics and massive hypocrisy.
Althouse, after having done her best to rile up the mob regarding Weinstein, is now shocked. Shocked, that there is a mob.
Yeah, powerful Democrats should be left alone! But beloved is just jealous that the mob he’s been trying to incite with his incessant mentions of Stormy ‘The Squirrel” Daniels hasn’t produced a mob! And the mob that was whipped up? It was intended to work against Trump! This miscarriage of justice will be a national shame!
Hey, when you are the biggest of time Hollywood producer, they let you grab their pussy! My how Althouse’s thinking has evolved since that tape came out!
It's a nice, thoughtful sentiment by Mr. Gilliam. But I got a chuckle out of this:
"Gilliam said the biggest failure of the 1960s generation was not delivering true equality for women."
True equality for women? The 60s? Heh - the bulk of the '60s movement was based on nerdy, intellectual young men trying to get women on the pill to get laid! The drugs and rock n roll helped too!
Gilliam said the biggest failure of the 1960s generation was not delivering true equality for women.
"The only thing that we did not do well is get women paid the same money as men are paid for the same job, that's the one big failure of our time."
The Democratic Party subverted Feminism in the 90s -- when the 60s generation would have had the biggest impact -- because of the President at the time.
Of course I am now curious about how people are paid under Gilliam projects. He shouldn't be opening himself up like that. I also am uncomfortable with the simplistic comparison of "Same Job" -- when experience and talents can be so wildly disparate. I'm reminded of the recent brouhaha over Claire Foy being paid less than Matt Smith. Not many journalists thought to ask why Foy's Agent didn't negotiate a better deal than Smith's agent (Smith was wildly more famous anyway, so why shouldn't he draw a bigger paycheck. And after all: We saw Smith's ass in 'The Crown' and we didn't see Foy's!)
I do agree with Gilliam on many of his points, but then he starts talking about Trump and his argument goes off the rails.
Gilliam is right, but this is not a phenomenon caused simply by the Weinstein's.
I've been in the music biz my entire life. The first thing a promoter or manager asks when you talk to him about your band is: "Do you have a woman in the band?" Unstated is the preference for an physically, sexually attractive woman.
Your band will be booked automatically at the entry level clubs and venues if you show up for the interview with a pretty young woman.
This is what audiences want. The promoters and managers simply are supplying what the market demands.
The blame lies with the audience. Everybody wants to hear great music, and they'd prefer to hear it from very attractive young women. Take a look around at the flood of scantily clad pretty young female classical pianists out there. They are on YouTube.
... people have got to take responsibility for their own selves.
Gilliam uses a rather common but very peculiar turn of phrase.
It is ironic that a committed lefty and renounced-his-American citizenship guy like Gilliam can see this situation for what it is.
It’s not ironic at all. Lefties stick together. If this same exact mob had worked against Trump on exactly the same pretexts, he would be drinking martinis with Weinstein celebrating. It is always about power with them, same as it’s always about crack with a crack addict.
I love him.
ARM wrote: Althouse, after having done her best to rile up the mob regarding Weinstein, is now shocked. Shocked, that there is a mob.
Bullshit. (Oh, when is it ever not, Beloved Commenter?) The mob pre-existed and is the joint creation of Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and The New York Times editorial board. The mob has been known as the "Pussy Hat Brigade" until the mob decreed that having a pussy has nothing to do with being a woman, and its primary target is Donald Trump. However, Trump has remained a remarkably invulnerable target, much to the frustration of the mob. A frustrated mob must always turn to secondary targets lest the mob dissolve into apathy, ergo #MeToo and the conveniently situated Weinstein brothers, formerly honorary members of the very mob that now seeks their destruction.
Harvey Weinstein should invoke the shade of Ernst Röhm for some commiseration.
Shit is shit. Don't wallow in it, don't think about it, try not falling in it, avoid people associated with it, and don't spend too much time writing about it.
"The mob ... its primary target is Donald Trump."
I assume that the message of all Democratic campaign advertising this year will be "vote Democratic to strike a blow against that creepy guy in Accounts who always stares at your chest"
Let the Left keep devouring itself.
The Cultural Left of the Entertainment Industry — Hollywood and the News Media and the NFL and NBA — is doing it.
The Socialist Left of the University and the Sanders and Warren DC Millionaire Socialists is doing it.
The Crony Capitalist Left of Wall Street and Silicon Valley is doing it.
Best part of the Age of Trump is watching the Fall of the Left.
The second best part of the Age of Trump is watching the Fall of the Globalist Right. Jeff Flake and McCain and Romney and their friends are in tears.
Good Times
"This is what audiences want. The promoters and managers simply are supplying what the market demands.
The blame lies with the audience."
Brilliant logic there.
Take a look around at the flood of scantily clad pretty young female classical pianists out there. They are on YouTube.
Gen Hirano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEDQAr0l5jg
There is a theory that this sort of thing primarily depends on the shape of an industry. It is rampant where there are a handful making huge amounts of money, and legions making almost nothing. Think acting, modeling, dancing, and music. Industries where the top people make thousands, maybe ten thousands, as much as almost everyone else. In those industries, you need an edge, a mentor, or something to separate you from the thousands wanting the same thing, and when the aspirants are women, and the gatekeepers are men, the commodity traded is very typically sex. Women have traded sex for what they wanted from men for eons. That is just the way of the world. Not all women of course, but enough that there is a thriving market.
That is essentially what my partner says, with a lot of vehemence, whenever this subject comes up. Those women knew the score. She has no sympathy for them. You don't go up to a guy's room for a drink, or to talk about a job, if you don't at least contemplate sex with him. You meet him downstairs in the bar or in a coffee shop. She first saw this sort of sexual quid pro quo type of exchange when her choreographer mother got her an audition for dancing in a Vegas show when she was 16. Guy liked her dancing, then asked to see a little T&A. Woke her right up, so that a couple years later, when her modeling agency was desperately trying to move her to NYC, she declined, knowing what it would ultimately require.
"Gilliam said the biggest failure of the 1960s generation was not delivering true equality for women."
Does he mean by making them eligible for the Draft, and sending them to Viet Nam ?
He's a witch!
"Intelligent" if this were an Althousian world. Since it isn't, he's also a little naive.
"It is a world of victims." Pretend victims, parading their violated innocence for strategic advantage, feeding the prog mob.
"These are adults, we are talking about adults with a lot of ambition." Sure, but a little naive to start attributing agency to women when for decades, nay centuries, they have been victims of the patriarchy.
"It's crazy how simplified things are becoming. There is no intelligence anymore" Actually, for any political movement simplification is the intelligent thing to do.
"It's like when mob rule takes over, the mob is out there they are carrying their torches" True, dat.
"people have got to take responsibility for their own selves." Sorry, Terry. For half a century feminists have taught us that inequality is due to oppression, that women suffer under the patriarchy. Wage gap? Mean men! Summers questions reasons for women trailing in science? Hysteria! Campus "sexual assault"? No woman is ever responsible for her own contribution, and the man is necessarily at fault. Responsibility never had anything to do with it. Especially not now. It's a male supremacist concept.
"Not all women of course, but enough that there is a thriving market. "
Of course. And it is important to be pretty.
Those who are not can work for lesbians. Like Huma.
rhhardin said...
Take a look around at the flood of scantily clad pretty young female classical pianists out there. They are on YouTube.
Gen Hirano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEDQAr0l5jg
3/17/18, 8:56 AM
RH can't tell man from woman. Noted.
Obvious, really.
people have got to take responsibility for their own selves.
#TerryGilliamNotOK
Wow, that's a loud and annoying video at link. Immediately closed the window.
The pretty woman thing is very true.
Works for opera singers also (Garanca, ahem).
And there is no such thing as "equality".
Which is a point against Gilliam, but its an extremely common delusion, or perhaps just an unexamined verbal formula.
I'm sure that there are men in every type of business who use their power to leverage sex. That said, only in Hollywood could a creature like Harvey exist and only in Hollywood could someone like Polanski receive a standing ovation from his peers. There's something bizarrely and uniquely out of kilter with the sexism in Hollywood as opposed to, say, the sexism in the auto industry.
It wasn't a night with Weinstein in exchange for an Oscar. It was being grabbed and felt up by a fat, ugly, sweating older man when any young good-looking woman went for an interview with this powerful Hollywood producer. And apparently a lot of fat, ugly older men who were powerful in the arts were doing the same. That isn't the same as having attractive women up on stage in your band. It isn't the same as conducting some sort of bargain like Monica Lewinski. It isn't an affair. It isn't flirting. It isn't attraction. It isn't joking. It isn't hook-ups. It's brutality. It's criminal. It's degenerate. It's what Hollywood has become.
Wait - is that bigotry vs fat, ugly older men?
Its time to form a civil rights group, isnt it?
Or some acronym-alphabet.
FUOM!
OK, I read what Gilliam said.
1. He's wrong as far as Weinstein raping people. You can't "deal with power" in that case because you are being physically coerced.
2. He's right about being able to walk away. If you aren't willing to sleep with producers to get ahead, then don't! Find a way to succeed with integrity, or go back to waiting tables with your honor intact. Waiting tables isn't prostitution.
3. The role of powerful gatekeepers is the key, here. As long as they exist, there will be abuse of power. I'm not sure how to get rid of them without creating new ones.
It's what Hollywood has become
Your tense is completely wrong. Hollywood has always been like this.
It's only noticed now in the era of Trump. The downfall of Hillary allowed the windowshades in Weinstein's office to be removed, so to speak.
4. As long as ANY aspiring artist is willing to sell their body to get ahead, the pressure is on EVERY artist to do it. There's some collective responsibility here.
"4. As long as ANY aspiring artist is willing to sell their body to get ahead, the pressure is on EVERY artist to do it. There's some collective responsibility here."
The problem with any "collective" action arises here.
Some people enjoy selling their bodies. Some don't find selling their bodies particularly objectionable or shameful. This is not sex specific to women, although plenty of women do enjoy selling their bodies.
Nobody has talked about it, but the pressure on male actors to attend gay orgies is intense. The sex parties are very often where the networking business of the acting profession takes place. (Go ahead and joke. It's true.)
We assume the opposite with men than with women. We assume men voluntarily jump into the pig pile.
So the people who do find selling their bodies objectionable have to compete against those who don't.
I’ve been consistent. Don’t mischaracterize what I’ve said. Sorry I haven’t done tags yet or I’d say click on them and get informed about what I’ve said before attacking me.
I read the Gilliam interview. He speaks in defense of Matt Damon. Ok, but I can't imagine Damon or Gilliam or anyone in Hollywood ever speaking out in defense of those college students who were wrongly prosecuted. No one in Hollywood would ever contemplate making a movie out of their travail. This shows consistency on their part. Be silent about Weinstein's guilt and the UVA students' innocence. Be faithful to the narrative arc. White college boys are privileged and Hollywood types are fighting for a better tomorrow.
I just finished watching The Crown. I neve heard of Claire Foy or Matt Smith before watching this series. Claire Foy is unquestionably the star and the attraction. She imitates a few of Queen Elizabeth's gestures, but otherwise brings a level of humanity and appeal that is not present in the original. She's the reason to watch it......I'm so glad that she is now being paid more than her costar Matt Smith, and I'm outraged that she was ever paid less. This is the kind of injustice that makes my blood boil. Perhaps she was able to use this inequity to bring depth to her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth. I never knew until watching this series how much that poor woman has suffered.
John Lynch said...
"As long as ANY aspiring artist is willing to sell their body to get ahead, the pressure is on EVERY artist to do it."
Well, let's suppose we weren't talking about selling your body to get into movies. Let's suppose we were talking about possibly being burned or shot or stabbed or bombed to death, or just horribly maimed, in return for an opportunity to become a Lieutenant Colonel and retire with a nice pension at 45. Would we want to deny young women that deal?
William said...
"This is the kind of injustice that makes my blood boil"
Really. Too bad there isn't some way to harness that effect to generate electricity or something. Talk about a renewable resource.
Drudge reports that Trump's attorney is suing Stormy for breach of contract. He wants $20 million.
She's going to need a bigger lap dance.
About the pretty woman thing ~ Something I appreciate about men that life has taught me--which balances the 'women have to be pretty to be successful in most fields' unfairness--is that you guys are fairly forgiving. Women are harder on themselves and each other than you are on them. Your definition of 'pretty,' in my experience, obviously varies from man to man but the meaty part of the bell curve is as simple as: generally height-weight proportionate, clean, reasonably well groomed, cheerful aspect, smiling face + positive attitude. In my experience this is enough to be considered pretty for all practical purposes one is likely to encounter, and absent dramatic handicaps is achievable for every woman. This seems fair to me.
Entertainment requires a different level of hotness though, which, well, if that's what you want to do, you gotta deal.
"you guys are fairly forgiving. Women are harder on themselves and each other than you are on them."
The woman who was the trauma Nurse Supervisor when I ran a trauma center was a very trim and well dressed, and very intelligent, woman with a homely face.
I'm sure she was well aware of it and kept herself always at the best it was possible to be. Her husband was an ER doc and a tall nice looking guy. They had a couple of very nice looking and smart kids. One went to Dartmouth on a tennis scholarship, of all things.
Anything she could control, she had in good working order.
buwaya said...
Wait - is that bigotry vs fat, ugly older men? Its time to form a civil rights group, isnt it?
Or some acronym-alphabet. FUOM!
How about FRUM? Fat rightwing ugly men.
1) Old guard postmodernists flabbergasted by the new guard. They created the monster.
2) Postmodern culture seeks to blur distinctions, the core of Judeo-Christian civilization is about making distinctions. The process of civilization is the generational cycle of blurring what was inherited and drawing new distinctions. The meaning of what it is to be modern is to reconcile the things you make with the life you live. The postmodern problem is that new distinctions are prevented from being made anew. The postmodern solution is to find a way that it can be questioned so that a superseding generation can distinguish itself anew.
3) The idea that postmodernism must die is expressed interestingly in the much dismissed movie by John Boorman in 1974: Zardoz, starring Sean Connery in bandoliers, thigh boots and g-string.
How about FRUM? Fat rightwing ugly men.
Or LURC: Leftist Universally Reviled Commenter.
12 Monkeys is a great movie.
12 Monkeys is a great movie.
And an even better TV series.
Gilliam's crazy stop-action collage skits were the best part of Python. His comments are no surprise, he's always gone his own way.
1. How did he get Uma Thurman to pull out a breast in Baron Munchausen?
2. How much did she get paid?
Carly Simon's mile-long legs on piano.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCX5qGu60AY
Gets me every time.
No, FUOM must be non-political.
And international, as this bigotry crosses all borders and moreover has existed since time immemorial. This, of course, makes the whole situation even more intolerable.
Even D. Frum is welcome. And so also H. Weinstein.
Now its those bald guys who are trying to sneak in.
FUBOM indeed.
Jennifer Lawrence goes on a job interview.
Jennifer Lawrence in talks for Hunger Games.
Mob rule is leftwing rule.
Ask conservatives on twitter.
#MeeToo was all about giving Harvey(D) - mega democrat donor and dude responsible for making many leftwing Hillarywoodlanders VERY RICH, cover.
MeeToo# is mostly squirrel. Leftwing mobs in ever other aspect including this one, are never going away. Sorry leftists. Eat it. You are the mob.
Take your anti-free speech and your fascist assholes and cram it.
Poor poor progressives. They control Hillarywood, the media, higher education and now Twitter is censors free speech.
Terry Gilliam baffles me.
This perfectly reasonable, sane, sensible, dare I say "nuanced," perception of #MeToo is coming from the same guy who can't figure out why his movie "Brazil" is a hit with the American Right.
Dear Mr. Gilliam: how about because the American Right understands perfectly well, as did British socialist Eric Arthur Blair, from whom you obviously drew inspiration, that the kind of totalitarianism "Brazil" depicts is a phenomenon of the Left, as these terms are understood in America? (No, I don't know why "Mr. Orwell" failed to appreciate the implications of his own story with respect to his own political beliefs.)
You can keep lying and call Nazism ("National Socialism") "right-wing," for example. But any informed person knows better, even without having the "Socialism" part spelled out for them.
Poor Old Harvey Wein-pig and those gross Hollywood producers.
Lets all shed a tear.
Its become so "crazy" and "totalitarian".
Its outta control!
Gee, maybe if it stays "crazy" actresses will be able to get a gig without sucking a producers dick.
Well, the guy's a British subject. Europeans are way more sensible about what's really going on here. Sex is complex. So is barter. The two intersect. Just because he assaulted doesn't mean his every sexual interaction was an assault.
Trump has remained a remarkably invulnerable target...
Because his antagonists refuse to grasp that class/economic disparities ALWAYS "trump" any other disparity - racial/ethnic/gender/whatEVER - and they will never have more credibility than him until they own up to and act on that fact. Until they do, he will always have the political high ground.
And yet, you're not on his side!
Because he's a liar. Why should I be "on his side"? He talks the talk but his actions are still dominated by the concerns of the plutocrats and aristocrats. He's doing the bare minimum to seem like he's staying one step ahead of the left while being disgustingly on the right. (Although I like what he's doing on cigarettes). I still don't think the right will become a pro-working class movement. I just don't. BJC might have Republicanized the Democrats with the DLC but at least I have FDR as a model - however far back in time that was. The right has never done anything for the working class. Reagan got their votes but his administration kicked off all this outsourcing, declining living standards and capture to Wall Street in the first place. And those sentiments are still very much alive and strong on the right - including among the many that aren't even with Trump. There's no reason for me to trust the right on working class issues. IN a sense I think the whole Trump candidacy (less so his presidency) is about rejecting the Wall-Streetification of the right, at least in name only, while not really doing it practice. They want to appear to be atoning for/repudiating/making up for all the things they did to fuck up the working class and our economic stability as a society from 38 to 2 years ago, while still doing it to this very day.
Also, the right is looking to the stock market in the same way they did in the 1920s. We don't need to rehash what that led to. (Global economic depression, a deadly world war [which we could have lost], and the rise of fascism and communism). Who wants all that stuff again? This is what right-wing neglect of everything but how rich some people are getting leads to. It's disaster every time. And pretty amazing how much they keep raising that debt. Well, no it isn't, actually. They only pretend to be concerned about debt so that they can get in power. This is another reason not to vote for the right: How discrepant their words and actions are.
Although I like what he's doing on cigarettes
???
ANd also Trump is a lunatic who can't figure out how to put planet above country.
People say Tillerson was out the day after he came forward as the only cabinet member to admit that Russia was behind the latest assassination they pulled off in London.
Trump's worked hand in glove with mobsters all his life. Read David Cay Johnston.
Denying AGW doesn't even do a damn thing for us anyway. Russia gets more ice-free seaports, though. Hmmm.
He is clearly not working for the American people.
???
Jesus Christ. If you love him so much why is it so hard to stay up on his policy moves? Slow news day at FOX? Stop relying on them. The recent FDA changes were widely reported. I don't know who you're reading/relying on that caused you to miss that.
Trump's enemy is The Man, or if you prefer, The Swamp. I don't know how that could be any more clear.
He's not Superman, he's just Batman. He's not the hero we want, he's the hero we've getting. The hero we deserve. Hopefully, the hero we need.
If not him, Ritmo, what/who next? Conor Lamb? He'll be old enough by then, he seems honest and decent at first glance. Sure, till he shows one sign of independence from the leadership and they leak his after-action reports from the sandbox and he turns out to have shot somebody by mistake or stepped on a Koran or beat up a child molester. Or his sister does dope. Whatever. They'll break him. They always do.
Trump is a liar? Go watch Glengarry Glen Ross and see Al Pacino's first scene again in the restaurant. So. What?
If not now, when?
I think this is it. Best we can do. I thought we could do is the best we can do. Would you feel better if it was Jeb Bush?
Jesus Christ. If you love him so much why is it so hard to stay up on his policy moves? Slow news day at FOX? Stop relying on them. The recent FDA changes were widely reported. I don't know who you're reading/relying on that caused you to miss that.
Life, man, life. I'm not God, I don't see every f****** sparrow fall.
Voice to text typo. Sorry. All we can do is the best we can do. Embrace the suck. More constructively.
Trump's enemy is The Man, or if you prefer, The Swamp. I don't know how that could be any more clear.
Because it's not clear at all. It's a bunch of meaningless fucking jabber. Slang. Do you mean he's against wealth controlling all our strings? He's not. He's for that. Which billionaire is he against controlling the economy? And which billionaire in his cabinet of more billionaires in any other cabinet in history is he against? The fossil fuel industries' captains? He appointed one as Secretary of State. I-banker and Goldman Sachs guy Steve Mnuchen? Banker Wilbur Ross? With his $700 million in net worth? Billionaire Nancy DeVos who profits off of for-profit schools? Scott Pruitt - who lost 14 suits against EPA before deciding he wanted to run it and change its mission? The coal industry employs less dudes than Arby's. Is saving Arby's from bankruptcy a national priority? Give me a fucking break. They're now slashing regulations that keep financial firms from pushing more risky investment schemes onto you. Who does that benefit? Cui bono?
Swamp is just a way for you to say that you're not pro-worker, you're pro-owner - and you do it all while calling yourself a nationalist who supports policies that are somehow all pro-Russian. His trade war just weakens Europe - more of Putin's bidding. Disengaging from TPP strengthens China. Everything he says is bullshit. The people and places he props up while convincing you that he's doing a thing for you are just something else. Incredible. His tax bill cut the numbers permanently for his fellow billionaires, while cutting things temporarily for me or you. He's not on your side. What more proof do you need?
Probably a hell of a lot because you're not going to listen to anything. You're reduced to comparing him to superheroes and using rap slang to prop up this master liar. How gullible.
Class certainly doesnt trump race/ethnicity, and to add, religion.
History and any number of modern cases disprove this.
Not even in the US.
Do you mean he's against wealth controlling all our strings? He's not. He's for that.
Some of what you say is just unrealistic. Of course 'wealth controls strings'. That's what it DOES! That's like saying knobs controller radio. Would you rather hit it with a wrench? Would you rather hit the economy with a wrench? Would you rather hit Society with a wrench?
Your blue collar skilled-labor types, with whom I consort a great deal, have a generally "the man" attitude towards - corporate management, politicians, government bureaucracy, schools, universities. Wall Street is simply unfathomable other than being another bunch of suits, and small-medium businesses are of the people.
The current thinking is Trump is, regardless of wealth, a man of the people, and the NRA is the organization they trust most. They invest a great deal of identity in the NRA, way beyond issues to do with guns, and moreover guns are symbolic of their disaffection vs official and cultural authority.
My report from the tribe-lands.
And which billionaire in his cabinet of more billionaires in any other cabinet in history is he against?
Why is that bad? You think it's about stuffing their pockets for Wilbur Ross or Rex Tillerson or Steve Mnuchin? The best people in an industry are typically wealthy. Corruption? Nobody's giving these people $3 million to come to their wedding.
If one President can be understood to hire billionaires, it would be a billionaire President. This is, I don't know the phrase, mere signaling. GWB's administration wasn't a den of thieves and neither is Trump's. (Both had the accusation flung wildly at them, and the first vitiates the second. Clinton, Obama meanwhile, they know how to feed. But you never listen and you never learn.)
The billionaires, the real ones, hate him passionately, and they did from the first day. And that was everyone, you can check Forbes for the list and see what they have been saying.
This is very very easy to verify.
As for AGW, the actual effect of every policy in this regard is to raise consumer prices for energy. Thats it. Its a scam to squeeze the people through legislated cost recovery by licensed players, with a dose of taxation added. There are any number of cases where even if ALL electric generation was as carbon-dioxide free as anywhere ever, California or Ontario say, AGW policies are still required. Europe is even worse.
AGW is simply legislated robbery, BY billionaires.
You know, these things could be done in a way where consumer prices are not multiplied, through great expansions of nuclear generation above all. That is by far the best, cheapest, most practical current technology that scales easily and is universally available. There is tremendous scope to simplify and rationalize it also. You could have your emission free electric economy, this is actually a proximate option.
But no.
The coal industry employs less dudes than Arby's. Is saving Arby's from bankruptcy a national priority? Give me a fucking break.
Average Arby's hourly pay ranges from approximately $7.98 per hour for Cashier/Stocker to $12.86 per hour for General Manager. The average Arby's salary ranges from approximately $15,000 per year for Front End Associate to $60,933 per year for Track Manager.
Arby's Salaries in the United States | ...
Indeed.com › cmp › Arby's › salaries
Vs.
The average starting salary for a coal mine worker is $60,000. "You can come right out of high school and make $70,000 a year," said Missy Perdue, 22, a stay-at-home mother whose husband, Jeff Perdue, Jr., 22, is a miner.Apr 7, 2010
West Virginia Coal Miners on Allure of Dangerous Profession - ABC .
Underground miners have the ability to earn more than $150,000 a year compared to surface miners, whose annual salary ranges between $50,000 and $85,000. The salary for technicians can range anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, with operators earning upwards of $165,000 per year.Aug 25, 2014
TOP 10: Highest Paying Jobs in the Mining Industry - Mining Global
www.miningglobal.com › top-10 › top-1...
$16K starting wage vs $60-70K. The starting miner makes more than the Arby's manager ever will. And if Arby's vanished tomorrow, McD and BK would pick up the slack. Vanish the coal industry and exactly which other segment of the economy is prepared to switch in the energy equivalent of 8 billion tons of coal?
Of course 'wealth controls strings'. That's what it DOES!
For you, maybe. But clearly we have different internal values. If you're just a whore to the system, to any system that can buy you, if there's nothing you can do to say no to/turn down however much money offered, then our discussion is done. You're a whore and I'm not. You see every American in power as just another whore to be bought but I don't hire whores. I'm not one and I won't hire them.
Buwaya,
We have time. Temperatures are only rising by an average 0.13 degree C per decade. We can do that for a long time without danger. Probably. Based on past global temperatures that have been higher than today, including as recently as 8,000 years ago, we'd probably even be better off as long as we don't allow it to go on for more than several hundred years.
We can't legislate a solution in any case. A huge fraction of the emissions are coming from the many countries that we cannot force to do what we want.
To me the obvious best strategy is to encourage research into new energy generating technologies that are cheaper. I believe some are more likely to be successful than others, but I think the research money should go to anything that seems like it has a chance. Obviously, we should have no problem financing this research given that it would cost far less than the so-called 'solutions' that the global warming lobby is advocating.
Vanish the coal industry and exactly which other segment of the economy is prepared to switch in the energy equivalent of 8 billion tons of coal?
Notwithstanding that the coal industry has been on its way to vanishing for quite some time then obviously the growing sectors would take up its slack: solar, wind, natural gas, other emerging technologies, etc. - solar alone employs half a million. How many does coal "employ" and what does it need to pay them in health care costs to pension them out by the time they get black lung disease at age 40? This is an industry with an extremely limited number of productive worker lifespan years that the government then has to pay for. But you subsidize it while cutting other energy subsidies and then go even further by allowing it to have special pollution exemptions - asking it to cut the costs of keeping run-off from flowing into rivers and streams. The amount of favoritism you need the government to exert just to keep that almost-dead industry from collapsing is ridiculous. You're propping up an economically withering industry that kills people, while going on the attack against the cleaner ones that are becoming cheaper and employing more, just because. What a loser of a policy.
Based on past global temperatures that have been higher than today, including as recently as 8,000 years ago, we'd probably even be better off as long as we don't allow it to go on for more than several hundred years.
Yep. I really see a modern civilization of 8 - 10 billion people accommodating to the conditions of 8,000 years ago. Do you guys even think before you type? Apparently not. I think you just want to see how many species you can kill off before, whoops, there go a few dozen that keep the modern ecosystem humans depend on from going kaput. Sorry. Guess hindsight is always 20/20. Not like we could have valued sustainability when it might have done us some good. Oh well.
Coal is cheap.
The value of coal in most places is just that. The leverage of cheap fuel in an economy is vastly greater than the wages of a few miners.
Coal fired generation and industrial heating leads to lower cost of everything, leading to more bang for the buck, higher production and higher standards of living.
If you want something better, it must compete with coal on price, $/kw-hour and $/kw installed capacity.
Solar won't do that, ever, even if you dont factor in indirect and opportunity costs (land use say), not to mention its own environmental impact.
That, availability of cheap energy, is the absolute civilizational necessity that AGW policies ignore. Deliberately. Because it is all a scam.
Ritmo, it's called the Global Climatic Optimum, or Holocene Climatic Optimum. It's when, perhaps coincidently, human civilization started, and agriculture started to really expand. It means a wetter world, shrunken deserts, and temperatures a few degrees higher than today.
Species extinction is a separate issue largely driven by our destruction of many ecosystems, not the slight increase in temperature. It's the bigger issue, and it's the one I believe our descendants will hate us for, if we don't solve it.
Coal is cheap.
The value of coal in most places is just that.
Only if you subtract the environmental and health costs. You really aren't capable of reading, are you? I already went over this. The lives it ruins are not cheap. If you want to pay for all that black lung treatment, start your own fund.
Ritmo, it's called the Global Climatic Optimum, or Holocene Climatic Optimum. It's when, perhaps coincidently, human civilization started, and agriculture started to really expand. It means a wetter world, shrunken deserts, and temperatures a few degrees higher than today.
Whether it's when it started or not doesn't mean that more of it will work out positively for a world of 8 to 10 billion. Coastlines are needed for a massive, urbanized global population.
Even if you think a wetter (but not for frogs) possibly moldier world is good for us farming can now be done indoors anyway.
Hmm, if the cost of black lung and etc. is so terrible, then there should never have been an Industrial Revolution, with its exploding populations. Because of course all the engines, the sine qua non of modern history, were coal-fired. Petroleum just sped it all up.
Underneath all of modernity is energy. The more the better, the cheaper the better. The only populations that can escape this occupy special-case niches
Even if you think a wetter (but not for frogs) possibly moldier world is good for us farming can now be done indoors anyway.
3/17/18, 8:25 PM
Sure - with cheap electricity powered by coal.
As for the argument about agricultural revolutions supporting larger populations - energy again.
Your farm equipment, your economic surplus to support specialists, your pumps and pipes for irrigation, your energy intensive organic chemistry, most of your fertilizer, and transport/distribution and storage.
Those 8-10 billion - live off energy, coal and petroleum and nat gas in parts, and a bit of hydro and nuke. More than anything else, thats what they need.
solar alone employs half a million.
and generates less of our energy than coal! what does that tell you about the relative efficiency and productivity?
As for black lung? Go ahead and live near the waste streams for solar production. You won't like it.
Oh and BL - almost forgot. Trump's FCC reversed the internet rules to sell it off to the telecoms so that running it according to what the consumers uploading and downloading content is no longer the priority. Now the telecoms can change your download speeds depending on the deal they have with that website or charge you more based on content access. Clearly an anti-consumer "BIG SWAMP" move if I'd ever heard of one - and opposed overwhelmingly by the public. Yet proceed with it he did, along with his handpicked FCC chair swamp scumbag - Ajit Pai - sitting closely in the pockets of big telecom. That's what your so-called man of the people did. Took control of the internet away from you and over to the big telecoms. Because clearly they lacked for enough control over the internet already. Try defending that bullshit - assuming you even knew about it. Which it seems you might not, given all the other Trump abominations you've blocked out. Didn't this used to be known as "low information voting?" I guess that's what the administration wants. Low info voting.
and generates less of our energy than coal! what does that tell you about the relative efficiency and productivity?
I don't know, but your comment tells me that you think it's important that our economy employs fewer people, since that what coal does relative to solar. Interesting position to take. Is that how the Trump defenders go about positioning themselves as "pro-worker?" Funny.
Hmm, if the cost of black lung and etc. is so terrible -
Well, not for you since you're not putting yourself at risk for it or (as a right-wing jerk) care about those who do or apparently - as a Filipino - paying for it. But I don't want to pay for it and I live here. So again, go ahead and pay that portion of my tax bill or just shut up and quit changing the subject, you freeloading propagandist mooch. Do I tell you what you should pay more for in the Philippines? No.
Your farm equipment, your economic surplus to support specialists, your pumps and pipes for irrigation, your energy intensive organic chemistry, most of your fertilizer, and transport/distribution and storage.
Here goes the easily confused buwaya Phillipines tricking himself into believing that anyone proposed a war on farming.
Coal is cheap.
So are your arguments.
I guess that's why they constantly break down and have nothing to do with the point.
They're just very low quality.
You get what you pay for.
Low quality buwaya puti. The low quality debater.
1. I'm against net neutrality. If forced to choose, I'd rather favor Verizon, if I must, than Google. There's a whole area of networking called QoS-quality of service-it exists precisely to tailor network traffic for maximum efficiency, specifically including traffic classification and priority. Net neutrality is literally anti-science.
2. Geothermal, solar and wind together provided 3% of US primary energy production in 2016. Coal provided 15%. With, apparently, less than 10% as many people. So, you think you can destroy 80,000 coal jobs and replace them with 4 million solar jobs? Prices then...go down? Other industries then get staff...where?
Farming used to be the employment of half the adult male population - now less than 2% of Americans are farmers/ag workers. Probably more people are employed in government. More work for Walmart and at McDonald's. Which would you sacrifice - the retailers, or the food?
You want both. Dumb question. Just like comparing coal mining employment to Arby's.
Expensive energy = big trouble for farming
Or, food gets expensive.
The ag productivity revolutions of the 19th-20th centuries were above all a function of energy.
An interesting quality of intensity in agriculture is that you end up needing less land. Expensive energy = less intensity, so more land needed, and that much more strain on wilderness.
So, now what do you do with that extra couple of billion Africans that are about to show up? Solar? Uh huh.
I don't know, but your comment tells me that you think it's important that our economy employs fewer people, since that what coal does relative to solar. Interesting position to take. Is that how the Trump defenders go about positioning themselves as "pro-worker?" Funny.
I thought of the following anecdote earlier, but decided to spare you... But you're literally asking for it :
...
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
Anyone near Ritmo who owns a shillelagh?
I can't believe how immoral the right is. They're actually arguing to:
1. Resuscitate a dying industry, that
2. Kills its workers at an early age and incapacitates them by age 40
3. That's horrible environmentally, and
4. Requires a special government-funded health pension to care for the workers made invalids by this work, because
5. It's currently cheaper than the quickly cheapening if not parity-induced competitor industries that,
6. Are cleaner, and
7. Employ way more, AND
8. Encourage further innovation and competition in the energy sector.
Eight things that would be either great to encourage or get rid of that the fucked-up Republicans want to tax you more to keep from changing.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the anti-consumer, anti-worker, anti-planet, pro-billionaire "swamp drainers."
You can't make this shit up. Sometimes I think they're in it just to convince themselves of how desperately horrible an idea they can find their way to supporting, or how obviously great an idea they can oppose. Just an all-out war on common sense. No wonder they fear the government so much. It's easier to carry out mind control on the simple minded and weak-willed.
As for the Philippines and coal, an excellent case can be made that the critical economic improvement, which is now at "economic takeoff", came in the late 1990s with the development of coal-fired generation on Luzon and elsewhere finally solving electricity shortages. The coal came from further development of open-pit mines on the "coal island" of Semirara. This contributed a net add of something between 1-3% annual economic growth, depending.
A developing country is often a good place to observe fundamentals.
If forced to choose, I'd rather favor Verizon, if I must, than Google.
Google doesn't control the internet, subject-changer. They're not an ISP. You literally just said something that had nothing to do with the actual issue. No wonder you favor big business; you seem very easy to control. If you don't like Google, guess what: Choose another search engine. Without having to pay more for it. Google doesn't charge you for anything you don't want to pay for. The telecoms do. And boy do they need egregiously uninformed consumer-voters like you to do their bidding - even though your stance is, like so many others favored by the Trumps, a greatly outnumbered (and for good reason) minority opinion.
A developing country is often a good place to observe fundamentals.
America is not a developing country. Although people who argue as you do seem to want to make it more and more like one every day. I think we can afford to behave like the mature economy that we're supposed to be.
2. Geothermal, solar and wind together provided 3% of US primary energy production in 2016. Coal provided 15%. With, apparently, less than 10% as many people. So, you think you can destroy 80,000 coal jobs and replace them with 4 million solar jobs? Prices then...go down? Other industries then get staff...where?
Solar prices ARE going down. But that's because there's incentive for developing technologies to do something called "compete." Without the subsidy that coal gets for killing its workers an early death and polluting our drinking water. As well as other favoritism I'm sure. You're literally arguing to employ less people, kill them earlier, and charge the taxpayer for sickening them and the taxpayer who has to drink that polluted water with greater taxes to them and health and environmental clean-up costs to the rest of us. All so that you can stack the deck against the superior, emerging technologies that are achieving cost parity with it and hypothetically pay a little bit less now. How immoral of you. How short-sighted. How greatly in opposition to America's interests and its future. You just like coal because it has more old wealth execs with more money and power to lobby congress. That's all. And you are surely in opposition to any energy that a consumer can produce on their own without having to go to a utility that has paid for expensive land and extraction rights. How much do you hate America?
You will save more lives through reducing electric rates by 2 cents a kw/hour, reducing the cost of living thus improving real incomes and stimulating economic growth and employment, and consequently public health and psychological outlook, than is being achieved by every government program active today. Including anything to do with "public health".
And you can probably get that 2 cents/kwhour by eliminating every Fed and State AGW mandate.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
Because Milton Friedman was an ideologue who liked silly slippery slope fallacies disguised as arguments and did not understand that there are trade-offs and limits to different interests - every one of them. Trump is himself raising prices on the consumer with his trade wars and hatred for free trade. So what? You neo-progressives told yourselves that that's what we had to do. It's a question of where the balance is. With spoons the job would never get done. Obviously Friedman did not perceive that only a single objective wasn't the only one that mattered. But normal people like to see progress and the opportunity to achieve as many objectives as they can, at once if possible. His generation suffered from a lot of that. Just couldn't see the big picture and everything was always black and white. Huge ideologues, too. Born of the atomic age.
How much do you hate America?
Now I know you're just playing around. Enjoy the rest of your night, Toothy. It was fun for a while. Let's not rub it raw.
You will save more lives through reducing electric rates by 2 cents a kw/hour, reducing the cost of living thus improving real incomes and stimulating economic growth and employment, and consequently public health and psychological outlook, than is being achieved by every government program active today. Including anything to do with "public health".
And you can probably get that 2 cents/kwhour by eliminating every Fed and State AGW mandate.
This is not an argument. This is a vague, overly broad scattershot ideology/idea in search of a specific fact or two to actually apply to a real situation. Again, foreigner: Go pay for those lung deaths. Set up your own fund. I realize you believe that lives are expendable and taxpayer funded care for dangerous work something Americans owe you. But we don't. Why don't you just ask Duterte to get you. You're worse than Soros. At least he just collapses currencies. You are out to collapse countries' entire bases for any social or political stability.
Go away. You're not wanted, foreigner. Your shitty ideas are better used in the third-world country you live in full of other backward people for whom concern for their own lives is an economically "expendable" luxury.
Go away.
Freidman was right.
This was a big argument in development economics way long ago. Back in my Asian Development Bank days.
The argument was - are poor people better off
1. being hired in large masses for low-tech employment - like those road-builders with shovels, in order to improve employment - or,
2. through the development of as much infrastructure as possible within available budgets, by the most efficient means.
The answer, unequivocably, is now understood to be #2
Good night.
When you wake up, you might want to ask yourself how much good for America does it do to be a rent-seeking, mature industry shill.
Solar is not being pursued because it's a "low-tech" industry that employs more. Though only an America hater would seek to employ less with an industry that is older and uses its greater governmental power to sicken more and extend its life beyond viability through a mechanism that consumers have less opportunity to own on their own.
Filipino foreigner low quality debater puti is not the economist he pretends to be. He's just an engineer - probably in old, well-politically supported industries. Engineers do what they're told to do: Solve the problem their owner wants solved. To become owners however they need vision and entrepreneurs - which means a better understanding of markets and trends. Engineers are usually too hard-headed to have the creativity and foresight required for that. Not all. But most. You could tell them, "Design me this gas chamber, rauss!" and that's what they'd do. No questions asked. We need people like that to follow the orders that the businesspeople who own them and are responsive to us dictate. It's good that uncreative, visionless, myopic orders-followers like that have a role and a profession available to them. But occasionally they seem to think that they have answers to the things that they're lifelong slaves to. They don't.
Buwaya,
Isn't it "unequivocally?" Is "unequivocably" a word? That said, of course you're right.
Ritmo,
C'mon, man. Really, we were being real and then you got your back up. Let it go for tonight...to continue would just get bitter.
But that's nothing. For me, I can take it, until I can't, then I say goodnight.
The way you treat Buwaya, however, reminds me a little bit of Cedarford. Don't be Cedarford. ...You and Inga, I'm surprised at you if not her. If instead of typing the 37-word paragraph beginning with:
Go away. You're not wanted, foreigner...
You just typed "wog" or "nigger" 37 times,
What difference would it make?
I'd much rather read about how I am in bed with Big Coal or stupid or whatever. Far less distasteful than being subjected to the spectacle of your lowering yourself so while seeking to degrade another.
Or please, call me a sheeny or a rootless cosmopolitan thirty-seven times instead (I won't hit you); I'd find it less personally offensive, believe it or not, to have such addressed to me, than to accept the like directed at another in my presence with my implied consent.
I apologize for the high horse, quite unlike me. Do what you want, but you should understand how it seems to others. Really, it's rotten and I feel sure you know better. I can excuse you by saying "oh he's angry" but if you're really THAT angry... Why?
At some point the argument needs to be less important than acting decently and treating one another decently. If not, it ceases to be argument and becomes, I dunno, war. Or at least divorce, lol.
Two survival techniques that slaves develop which provide a curious power: look dumb and keep your ears open.
He's not entirely wrong, but Harvey Weinstein is accused of literal rape. This is a problem -- even if, in some other cases, women did sleep with him to help their careers and knew exactly what they were doing.
What bothers me is I clearly recall Terry Gilliam was one of those who signed the petition supporting Roman Polanski against his being expedited to the US to face his rape conviction. I recall this because I love his films and was sad to see he had joined such a terrible and indefensible cause.
Here again, it is troubling to see Gilliam waving aside (alleged) actual forcible rape when the accused is a member of the entertainment elite. His point may stand for those women who took the bargain, but not for those Weinstein made victims of without their consent.
You just typed "wog" or "nigger" 37 times,
What difference would it make?
I dunno. Trump says "America First" al the time. Even at his inauguration. How did that sound?
47 times this buwaya guy tells me what American policy should be. And not just on this thread. He does it all the time.
I don't tell people from other countries how they should work their own tax policy and if buwaya puti the guy who never stops telling me about how awesome being a Filiipino is wants to tell me how my tax dollars should be spent then he can come here and pay them himself. I'm sick of his condescension and ignorance and hypocrisy.
Ahem,
I live here and have worked here for 30+ years, pay your taxes, and moreover I am the father of several of your citizens, and the husband of another.
And, note, there are entire US government departments, private foundations (or CIA fronts, look up the Asia Foundation) and US controlled international agencies, plus countless US academics, whose purpose is to tell other countries what to do. It is a remarkable number of Americans who make a living giving foreigners advice, often enough unsolicited. I knew quite a number of these people, many very nice.
So, deal.
And moreover, I own property, land and equity, in your country.
I have an interest in your foolishness.
I dunno. Trump says "America First" al the time. Even at his inauguration. How did that sound?
So it's I never meant to hit you, it's just the war, and that lying son of a b**** Johnson? You insult Full Moon just fine without giving reference to his color or national origin. I'm not saying leave him alone, I'm saying get a hold of yourself. You can even try to defeat his arguments.
I agree that he can be annoying at times. Believe it or not, so can you! :-)
The Hollywood people have power because there are so many who want so badly to be famous.
moreover I am the father of several of your citizens, and the husband of another.
So give your penis an award. I'm so impressed.
I have an interest in your foolishness.
But not your own, apparently.
Consider me an engineer. Your foolishness is the problem and I am engineering you out of here.
Looks like Ellen Barkin has a problem with Gilliam.
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