This is the largest gif that I've ever allowed. If it causes a problem I'll take it down and link it. Or put it behind "read more" or whatever. I already removed half the frames. And I could take out more and reduce even more, but I don't want to because I love it.
It's cheesy and crudely done, I know, but I still love, love it, love, and I love Rand Paul for being such a good sport.
106 comments:
I love it too chip.
I don't think he can do it. The left side of the country hates him, and everyone else except libertarians are a little scared of all that change.
To win the Presidency you need to talk a lot about change, and almost nothing else, even when you are the incumbent, but you also have to convince a lot of people you won't actually change much.
I think too many believe Rand Paul would actually change things.
Because
I find it mesmerizing.
But bagoh20, look how well he dances.
I don't know.
Something weird is happening in this country, but because the overwhelming majority of people are ok with it, I have to reduce the weirdness to the question - how do I adjust to it?
We don't rebuild our understanding from ground level every time we think about a familiar topic. We'd never get as far as we do putting ideas together if we had to stop and scrutinize and recheck every element of what we believe and what we think we know. Althouse
When the new information, that is supposed to help me understand what the hell is going on, when the new information is that everything I thought I knew is wrong... I cant do it, intellectually, emotionally or whatever.
I cant accept, for example, that there is a bottomless, everlasting spring of wealth that only needs signatures and printing presses to keep it going.
The very reason for having a so called debt limit is that something bad might happen when defied.
Something that has failed everytime it has been tried, from time immemorial, we seem to be sayting, not this time, this time we got it.
From Bernanke to Obama to Boehner.
I feel like those people stranded at the airport in Langoliers.
I shall not seek and I will not accept ...
Maybe that's why I 'accidentally' back dated the grandma eggplant post. Sensing that I was stuck, I sent my earlier self something to eat while I waited the inevitable.
If you are going to keep raising the debt ceiling... a freaking semantic to begin with... why have it at all?
I don't have much of an education, don't know much about economics. Except that for as long as I can remember, so this will be in the future.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
I remember the malaise of the late 70's - early eighties which in some measures was a worse recession (thousands of bank failures, along with crazy inflation, interest, a crippling oil embargo).
I remember being a young man in love with America and her accomplishments, but completely accepting, like many others, that the country was done, spent, worn out, and past her prime. It seemed that everyone thought so. We had lost all pride and drive and competitiveness. It wasn't sudden or short lived, we had watched it happening for a long time. Everyone expected emerging nations, especially Japan, were gonna clean our clock and and leave us in the dust, a rusted hulk.
Something else happened.
"But bagoh20, look how well he dances."
Sure, but if I was advising him, I'd have him in a pointy cone bra with tassels. If he's gonna fight the war on women he needs to be in uniform.
After 8 years of the Choom Gang, people just might be willing to face reality.
Something else happened.
I wish I had some of that optimism.
If it's some tired old white guy v Hillary.
-Or- Rand Paul - who is young and well spoken and offers the change v Hillary.
Who will win the day?
I think a young well spoken guy like Rand can beat the shit out of the old, over-hyped cackling leftist harpy.
My advice:
1. See what A*thouse advises, and run the opposite direction.
2. Put portions of trigger words on some PJs in your commercials.
Like in the GIF above, it is clear Rand Paul is spelling out NIG repeatedly.
What an asshole.
bagoh20 said...
Something else happened.
True enough. But back then our institutions weren't as overrun with the hardcore left committed to the very policies making us uncompetitive. Reagan won and empowered Volker to end the inflation even though it came at great short-term cost. Nowadays when policies fail, like the "stimulus", the left claims the failure ocurred because it wasn't twice as big.
Maybe Rand Paul could be another Reagan, but as you noted before the left's fearmongering has an effect. Whether the nominee is Paul or Cruz or any of a dozen others really doesn't matter. As a matter of routine electoral politics the media immediately attacks all Republicans as scary.
In Reagan's day there was a material segment of liberals resisting the fearmongering and willing to think independently. Now those people are gone as an electoral force. In their place we have people who vote for Democrats because they believe the US offers a tax credit to businesses who offshore jobs, and who are so economically illiterate they believe we can vastly increase the tax burden without a negative effect on the economy. The effect of ignorance can't be overstated, and since they have been trained to listen only to leftist approved media the chance they overcome their ignorance is essentially zero.
I can't even read the rest of the comments because I'm in such a hurry to tell Bag that that is my second most favorite movie and I have the entire thing memorized and I love that we brought that into an otherwise dreary Thursday morning where I have heartburn and have to go face the boss I got into a fight with yesterday.
OK I read the rest of the comments and I suggest that you guyz read Neocon's yesterday post about the left and cognitive dissonance. Their minds are so fucked that they won't ever vote for a Republican, no matter how much they accept that that their guy screwed up, because that would mean re-examining their entire world view and the things that they know to be "true" and that conveniently mean that they are good, right thinking people in their own eyes.
You can't dismantle a religious context in a culture without something else taking its place. Leftism took Christendom's place in our society. People who cling to leftism as their structure for understanding good and evil will not let it go until something else comes along.
And there are now too many of them (leftists) for us to recover, electorally.
We all need to go to DBQ's Mountain Redoubt with our bags of beans and ammo to ride it out--whatever it is that is coming.
Rand Paul should stop being white. And heterosexual. And libertarian.
And he should stop all that making sense stuff.
Only then could he be a good GOP candidate for Preezy.
Plus, how's his golf game?
And can he start some gay rumors by hanging around his beefy trainer a lot?
What Pants said. We are too far gone and leftists will never see reason. They would fling themselves over a cliff first.
The game is rigged w/ our system of voting and the media pop culture alliance with the party.
Even the UN admits vote system is dreadful and full of holes.
Every chance the democrats get to exploit and corrupt our system of voting - they take it.
Little by little the integrity of the vote is eroded. All by design.
That's another thing that is very frustrating about politics these days.
When everything is evaluated by a warped common denominator. The idea that everything wrong with the world would be fixed if people somehow where not racists or homophobic. When that seems to permeate everything, it corrupts the ability of the very thing people purport to care about, people getting along.
The insidiousness of attacking people, mostly for things that whites and homophobes have very little control over, in such a way as to take control to lord over logic and rational thinking itself?
It's the stuff classic dictatorships are made off.
Liberals are creating the thought vacuum that is supposed to be filled by thinking inside their box only. if that makes any sense.
A great majority of the population of the United States are in harvest mode and they don't even know it.
It's enough bullshit noise to make one want to be what they keep insisting is going or it's in the verge of killing us.
Which is really fucked up I think about it. why would god drive me into the arms of the devil?
when I think about it...
It really does make Jhon Galt attractive.
maybe we should stop allowing the left to select our candidates? The Bob Dole/McCain next in line old dude deal isn't really working out.
Rand Paul has an excellent chance. I do agree with the demonization tactics of the left. I think Rand Paul has the answer to that. Fight back. Don't back down. Witness his dustup with Chris Rhino Christie.
If he runs on a platform of getting us out of wars in the Middle East, lowering government spending and taxes and ending the national security spying state he will get a lot of support.
He is the best alternative that I have seen so far.
Rand Paul will not be afraid to fight.
He does not care if he is accepted in the Georgetown cocktail circuit as he is already a pariah there. So he can tell some home truths.
Last week in DC while waiting to board the bus back to Jersey, coming back from the anti-obamacare rally, I spoke to this fellow tea partier who was telling me how much more right wing he has become, mostly, he surmised, as a reaction to the head long plunge the country seems to be in, turning over to a behemoth federal government every aspect of our lives.
He realized it when he joined the NRA and bought a gun. He said to me 'I was never, I never considered myself a gun guy, but I figured I got to do this.'
A true populist libertarian campaign has a great shot at winning.
I don't pay attention to these things.
Has Rand Paul given his silent majority speech or is it still too soon?
Another optimistic perspective:
The failure of what most of us here despise in domestic and foreign policy is now obvious to nearly every thinking person. No, many won't admit it, but they see the same facts as us. They spin them in their heads or look for pundits to help them do that, but they do see it. They are only trying to save face now. That's tough armour to break through, but it's all defense, and they do want things better. They just need a way out with plausible deniability on their part.
What I expect to happen is a softening of resistance to conservative direction change, some scaling back of the stupid mindless ambition to do things without consideration of sustainability.
The face saving way of doing this will be to blame Republicans for the failures while also claiming conservative ideas and solutions to fix things. People like Rand Paul will gain influence even if they don't win office which I think some of them will also do.
There will still be enormous damage coming down the road, but I expect we will not drive off the cliff, but slow down on approach enough to jump out at the last minute and only lose some stuff we valued, but not everything.
Remember that as a people we are very blessed and have much more than we really need - much more than people had in the days we imagine as better in the past. There is slop in the system that can be taken up, not painlessly, but there is enough their to allow us to survive and gain our balance again.
On a micro level the same is true. Our society and economy still has plenty of fertile ground and fruit is there to find. It's not as low hanging as it once was, but it's out there in niches and corners, in new ideas, and better execution of old ones.
Hard work, quality, and respect are rarer than ever, which means they are more valuable than ever, and we all have the capacity for those things.
We just can't give up. We need to work it, work it right, work it with love. In aviation when you are trying to land somewhere, you need to look ahead past that point. If you focus on the spot right in front of you, you will blow it. Keep your eyes up, relaxed, but sharp and ready to react just the right amount, but keep going.
"A great majority of the population of the United States are in harvest mode and they don't even know it."
This may be the primary problem we face in all this. People have lost the drive and belief that they are capable of being producers. No confidence.
"maybe we should stop allowing the left to select our candidates?"
Absolutely. I don't know how they do it, but they do. McCain was the prime example of this. Is there a less popular Republican among the base? Yet he was the nominee. I still don't know how that happened, and it was a disaster.
Trooper, And a true populist libertarian campaign will never come from the duopoly, only from outside it.
I remember the malaise of the late 70's - early eighties which in some measures was a worse recession (thousands of bank failures, along with crazy inflation, interest, a crippling oil embargo).
We've never had an employment situation that has been this bad for this long since the Great Depression.
Something else happened.
Something else didn't JUST happen. Reagan had been plugging away for about 20 years on the national political stage when he got elected in 1980, including running against an incumbent from his own party in 1976. There's no one like that out there now.
Our society and economy still has plenty of fertile ground and fruit is there to find. It's not as low hanging as it once was, but it's out there in niches and corners, in new ideas, and better execution of old ones.
What a fucking joke. Another rich guy telling me how wonderful things can be.
The economy is fucked. And it is going to stay fucked. The Republican Party is working as hard as it can to suppress wages while simultaneously shipping all the good jobs overseas on a libertarian mantra of "What can we do?" We lost over a third of our manufacturing jobs since the turn of the century, and a large chunk of that happened BEFORE the recession.
The Republicans want to ship in tens of million more immigrants to keep wages on a downward spiral and to keep unemployment high.
This is what the OPPOSITION to the Democrats wants. Which is to say, they want the same damned things the Democrats want, they just say it differently, and maybe want a somewhat fewer government jobs. (But remember that Bush signed giant farm bills and transportation bills and corporate welfare/Medicare expansion bills and even that last part seems like bullshit.)
You really think that is going to work? Shipping all the good jobs overseas while importing Third World peasants to keep wages down and unemployment high here?
And THIS is what you guys think will work better?
Christ Almighty, it really is hopeless.
Sarah Palin had the beginning of a populist campaign. Which is why the permanent ruling class of both parties jumped on her with both feet.
She was an outsider who was dangerous to them because she didn't care about their approval.
Rand Paul can do that. He is already a pariah.
Another guy who could is Scott Walker. He can run on a solid record of accomplishment. He can also run against the credential elites since like most Americans he didn't go to college. Or at least finish college. I just don't know if he is tough enough to fight back tooth and nail like Rand Paul would.
Something else happened.
Something else came from Tampico.
"What a fucking joke. Another rich guy telling me how wonderful things can be."
Icepick, my company lost over 80% of it's business in 2008-2009. We laid off most of our employees, and those that remained took a 20-40% pay cut. As top guy, I took a 60% cut. All our biggest customers went bankrupt, or shrunk to a fraction of their former self. It was so bad that the owner panicked and sold it to me for just the money it used to make in a year, which still required that I put my entire life up for hock to borrow the money. At that point, I was way in the red with people depending on me who were losing their homes and deep in debt. It was scary bad.
Today, every employee that wanted to come back has been rehired, pay levels have been restored and exceeded, and we have hired and trained dozens of new ones, and are more profitable than ever.
This is a labor intensive, mostly low tech manufacturing business which is probably the least likely business you could be in. We are in Los Angeles, CA, the most business UN-friendly place on earth. I'm a college drop out, and we don't have a single college degree in the whole company. If a bunch of losers like us, in a place, business, and time like this can succeed and prosper, anyone can.
Maybe we're just lucky, but I'll tell you one thing we don't do. We don't spend much time unproductively bitching, and never did.
The Republican Party is working as hard as it can ...shipping all the good jobs overseas on a libertarian mantra of "What can we do?"
What do you propose they do? The only suggestion I've ever heard is effectively a reprise of the Smoot-Hawley act, which turned a business cycle recession into the Great Depression.
Maybe we're just lucky, but I'll tell you one thing we don't do. We don't spend much time unproductively bitching, and never did.
See, this is why I just won't vote for a Republican ever again. As bad as the Democrats are, you guys are at best only marginally better, plus, every SINGLE one of you believe that every unemployed person in the country is only unemployed because of their own moral failings. This was at the heart of Mitt Romney's 47% comment. You guys piss all over the unemployed for being moral failures on the one hand, and complain on the other that the only reason you guys aren't richer is because Obama is holding you down. Fucking hypocrites, every last one of you. I have heard this from every single business man I have ever met, and also, when pressed, from every single Republican n voter I ever met. Even the unemployed ones.
I'm sure Bagoh thinks the bread lines should have been closed in the 1930s, because if those people had really wanted to they could have all been John D Rockerfeller II. I mean, look at how hard old John D. had to work to become the richest heir to the most famous monopoly in American history!
And after all, if Bagoh could make it coming along in the most demographically blessed generation ever in the most blessed region of the most blessed country ever, then gee, why can't everyone else do that as well as he can?
What happened was technology: computers, new manufacturing methods and philosophies, private sector unions lost power, and influence as the new big industries emerged mostly union-free. Then the internet was a turbo boost to the new methods. All this stuff America centered. That's what happened.
Is there something like that coming now? I think the energy industry could be like that, and produce a lot of offshoots, while using the stuff I mentioned above, which we still have.
We just need to get rid of the idiots in DC trying to stop any real energy development that's not windmills.
" I have heard this from every single business man I have ever met, and also, when pressed, from every single Republican n voter I ever met. Even the unemployed ones."
And of course, they were all wrong, but you have the answer right? I recommended the other day that people find work, any work they can, but you said that was below you. So you aspire to unemployment, and you succeed.
For example: I mentioned the other day that I had a low paying, non-skilled janitor position open. One of the few applications I got for it was a guy with a BA in Business. I don't want to hire someone like that for the job, because they will be unsatisfied from day one, and won't last.
But, I was impressed that he tried anyway, so I asked him to send me his resume, and I will probably meet him to see if we have a better spot for him. It could even be a great opportunity as an assistant to me researching new opportunities. I don't know, he may be terrible and it goes nowhere, but the fact that he was out there playing with an open mind and some humility may make all the difference.
Trooper, Walker is a very good governor. He would not make a good prez.
"And after all, if Bagoh could make it coming along in the most demographically blessed generation ever in the most blessed region of the most blessed country ever, then gee, why can't everyone else do that as well as he can?"
Aren't we both here at the same time?
1)I started out in a recession and business environment worse than this one. 1980 It was so dismal, I dropped out of college in my senior year because the prospects were so bad. I was unemployed for a long time and eventually homeless. There have been bad times over and over since then. This is just one, and like those other ones, it will end, and it's just a waste of time (your most valuable asset) waiting for it to lift you up. Regardless of whether the tide is high or low, you can still swim.
BTW, I started in the business I now own by accepting a job at 1/3 what my previous job paid. The first thing I did was convince my boss to let me work double shifts for free. He told me later that he never thought I would work out when he hired me, but what would you do if someone offered you that deal. He gave me a shot.
LINK. My advice, though, is don't put Homer Simpson in charge of your R&D.
What's the longest any of you have ever looked for a job? I don't mean a career, or a job in your career, or even an okay job that was something to keep your head above water during the rough patches. I mean, what has the longest you ever had to search to get ANY job, including a shit job for low pay, few hours and no benefits?
I lost my job in April of 2008. Unlike my former corporate masters, who were insisting that GDP would grow by 4.5% in 2008 and at a 5% clip from 2009 through 2012, I knew we were already in a recession.
As such, I was willing to make a somewhat drastic switch from numbers guy (finance, actuarial work) to HR guy, because there were already too few jobs to go around in my old career. I interviewed for a new position the week after I lost my job. I was lucky in that the guy who would have been my boss was also a former finance guy, and he liked finance guys. The interviews went well and I thought I had it nailed. I didn't get it.
I asked why they had turned me down. It was because they could only offer me, at best, 75% of what I had been making, and they thought I'd be unhappy even if I took the job and would leave soon. Huh. This wouldn't be the only time I'd hear that.
I got several other interviews through that summer. I had another strong interview for a finance position in late August, I believe it was. I didn't get that job either, because the company in question decided to close that entire division, putting several thousands more people out of work in the local economy. (Big division in a big company.)
That happened right around the time Lehman went under, and then the bottom fell out. Hundreds of thousands of people, on net, were losing their jobs every month, and pretty much NO ONE was hiring. I stopped getting interviews with companies.
I did keep getting called into employment agencies for another six months. I tested well on their tests, I interviewed well, etc, and nothing ever came of any of that.
After about nine months of this I decided even more drastic measures were needed, and I went in for some 're-education' to get an entirely new set of skills. I did that for a few months while still trying to get work on the side. There was no work on the side. At this point I met people who were going through the re-training thing for the SECOND time. Three careers in three years kind of people. None of them that I ever heard of ever got a job in our new field.
By the time I was done with the re-training, the employers that had started hiring again were either (a) insisting on only hiring people that had at least two years experience (I put in for those jobs anyway) and/or (b) were openly stating that they did not want anyone to apply that didn't already have a job. I set my sights lower for the next few months, with no results.
After two years of this, my wife gave birth. It was a stupid decision in some respects, but we had had high hopes that I would get SOME kind of employment in my new field when the decision was made. Anyway, my child was born with an APGAR score of 1, and in the ensuing ten days my wife almost died twice. For the next six months I focused on them.
After those six months (which included lots of other chaos), I started looking again on the sly. There was nothing. I mean, not even dishwasher jobs were available unless you were somebody's nephew. Then we discovered my mother was dying of cancer. So I focused on that until she was dead, and for a few months after that was dealing with the fallout of that.
Then, in early 2012, I started looking for a job again. I couldn't even get the managers at WalMart and McDonalds to talk to me, because no one hires people who have been out of work this long in this economy, unless they know them personally. They won't even talk to you. At that point I quit. Over two years of continuous searching, along with a willingness to do anything and even a demonstrated desire to retrain did nothing. Not one goddamned thing. Off and on after that, willing to take anything. And not even one goddamned little nibble.
That's one person's sad sack tale. What of others?
I've been working as a volunteer with a group that seeks to help unemployed professionals get back on their feet. I've seen lots and lots of unemployed professionals in the last four years, up to and including a couple of people that can rightfully claim to be rocket scientists, come through the doors, and if they don't get rehired within a couple of months they just don't get rehired. And I mean at anything.
THAT is the economy. And yet, Republicans and rich businessmen tell me again and again that this is all the fault of us unemployed folk. It's only because we're moral failures. Of course, they turn around in the next breath and complain that the only reason they're not richer is because Obama's economy is dragging THEM down, but the unemployed people should all die already to be replaced by Mexicans, because fuck 'em.
I know LOTS of people in my boat. I know of lots more because I still follow the data cursorily, and I used to follow it in detail when I still had some illusion of keeping my old skills sharp.
This is the worst employment environment in 80 years, and all the Bagohs and Romneys of the world can offer any of us is "It's your fault, and fuck you. We don't have time for you losers, we want another 30 or 40 million Mexicans to take you place."
Now, why should any unemployed or underemployed person vote for THAT? There's no reason to vote for the Dems either, but the Republicans offer NOTHING to us except the promise of more people competing against us, and more rules to make it easier for companies that ARE here to ship their current jobs overseas, PLUS moral censure for not being one of the Koch brothers.
Yeah, not voting for any goddamned Republicans again, either.
Aren't we both here at the same time?
Not unless you're about 15 years younger than you've claimed in the past.
I don't want to give the wrong impression. I'm not some kind of workaholic A-type personality. I've always been mostly a low-rent hedonist, hippie-type bum, but I found a way to enjoy working, and found joy in hard dirty work and long hours, regardless of pay, and I never ask for a raise in my life. I got lucky, but my luck was mostly learning to love work, and to have the right attitude about it.
For example: I mentioned the other day that I had a low paying, non-skilled janitor position open. One of the few applications I got for it was a guy with a BA in Business. I don't want to hire someone like that for the job, because they will be unsatisfied from day one, and won't last.
Fucking A, he's turning people down who are trying, and telling me that I should try for everything anyway, knowing full well IT WON'T WORK.
Note too that Bagoh implicitly wants someone that will be happy to be a janitor for the rest of their life. The idea of someone moving on from that role actually makes applicants undesirable. No fucking advancement in Bagoh's world, because THAT would be a bad thing for HIS interest.
It's funny how the left rally around political candidates who are terrible, unfit, lack experience etc... (but they do have a nice crease in their pant leg and a dazzling hypnotic smile)...
Meanwhile, we on the "right" find fault with EVERYONE. No one is good enough.
No wonder we keep losing.
Icepick, I know I've been lucky, and maybe you have not, but that's just up till now. The future starts today. I DO think it's all luck, but you can't get lucky unless you play a lot. You need to put yourself out there as much as possible. Just keep playing. You never know which door is the one, and the shiny ones have a line in front, so try the others too.
AprilApple said...
It's funny how the left rally around political candidates who are terrible, unfit, lack experience etc... (but they do have a nice crease in their pant leg and a dazzling hypnotic smile)...
Meanwhile, we on the "right" find fault with EVERYONE. No one is good enough.
No wonder we keep losing.
No, we keep losing because some of us look for ideological purity and if they don't get it, they stay home. Ridiculous.
Icepick, I know I've been lucky, and maybe you have not, but that's just up till now. The future starts today. I DO think it's all luck, but you can't get lucky unless you play a lot. You need to put yourself out there as much as possible. Just keep playing. You never know which door is the one, and the shiny ones have a line in front, so try the others too.
What part of working as as a dishwasher or cleaning toilets sounds like a shiny door to you? I've tried for those jobs, and the hiring managers won't even talk to me.
Not to mention you just said YOU wouldn't hire someone with a thick resume for a low end job. What makes you think any other employer out there is any different?
Fucking A, he's turning people down who are trying, and telling me that I should try for everything anyway, knowing full well IT WON'T WORK.
Icepick, did you just skip over & not see what bag wrote next? I.e.:
But, I was impressed that he tried anyway, so I asked him to send me his resume, and I will probably meet him to see if we have a better spot for him. It could even be a great opportunity as an assistant to me researching new opportunities. I don't know, he may be terrible and it goes nowhere, but the fact that he was out there playing with an open mind and some humility may make all the difference.
Don't have the time (or energy) to intervene in this discussion right now. (I do sympathize with your frustration.) But just saying, doesn't help your argument to completely misrepresent what someone else has written.
"Note too that Bagoh implicitly wants someone that will be happy to be a janitor for the rest of their life."
That's the job. It needs done. Just how do you suppose we get that work done? Get a janitor robot.
If the person starts and shows abilities beyond that, then they will be moved up. You know why? Because that's in my interest too. Its' best for me when that happens, but they need to stay long enough to learn the job and train the next person.
Everyone at the top pay rungs of my company including me, started out at the lowest levels, and trained their successors. There is nothing wrong with that.
Meth
Not good enough and ideological purity are two sides of the same coin.
Whatever our problem, the left have us beat when it comes to rallying around their Comedy Central candidate.
I don't think we are capable of such blind faith, but in order to win, we have to loosen up on the purity tests.
"It all sucks. It all sucks! I'm going to take my ball and go home!"
Yeah - that will work.
I share frustration with those of us who feel disenfranchised from the establishment republicans inside the beltway.
I don't understand why Rudio and Paul Ryan are pushing amnesty. Perhaps I don't know what they know.
I do know that other nations have strict immigration laws, so why can't we? Why do we let so many unassimilated masses who are unwilling to learn English -in- to drain our economy, use our recourses and our welfare, then give them a drivers licenses and an opportunity to vote.
It's insane.
I do know for a fact that the democrats ruined Detroit and that Detroit is the model they work off of to ruin the entire nation. That, in addition to the left's obsession with single payer, will destroy our once great nation.
It won't work. There are not enough people to tax to make it work.
manufacturing moves over seas because Americans are not allowed to make a profit. Too many taxes and regulations stand in the way and then you get call centers in India.
Why can't we have call centers here? No profit. Regulations.
Punitive taxes.
btw - the democrats are attempting to unionize low skilled entry level jobs at fast food joints in order to fund their lavish under-funded (broke) pension funds for the big wigs.
http://workercenters.com/
Nothing more I can offer here except hope. I've been destitute, and it got much better, and that happened more than once. I'm not well educated, nor especially hard-working or driven, I'm just optimistic most of the time, and look for opportunities. My best moves have been in the worst economic periods, because that's when opportunities appear. I expect I'll be broke again someday, and I'll do it again.
Icepick, I think you are much better equipped to succeed than me. You're better educated, better credentialled, younger, and probably smarter, but I would never take the attitude you have, and write what you have here. I just never thought like that. Think about that. Maybe it will help.
Just 4 years ago, my job was up for sale, and my grand plan was to sell everything I owned and live as a minimalist in an RV, so I wouldn't have to work much, maybe just some odd jobs. The crappy economy opened a door, and it really changed that quick. It can happen.
Bagoh, you said you wouldn't hire the guy because he wouldn't like it and would want to do something else. SO you want someone that will like being a janitor and has no ambitions whatsoever. Otherwise, you could hire the BA and let him prove that he really is willing and capable of doing that before moving on. It's a fucking janitor job, and you don't want anyone that might want to do something else. There's no fucking sense in that, none, if you really ARE looking to see who can do what.
BTW, I do think there is about a 50/50 chance that the combination of federal and state stupidity such as the ACA, brought about by the voters, will make us uncompetitive enough to put me out of business in the next few years, but what are you gonna do? Keep on truckin', shuffle and dash. I got nothing else, but I expect to win anyway.
April, I'm from Florida and I knew that Rubio was going to do exactly what he's done. He because a Tea Party darling for the simple reason that, in 2010, his name wasn't Charlie Crist. That's it. Other than that, he's a nice Florida Establishment Republican who has never done anything OTHER than work in government. That's his career. It's all he's done as an adult. It's all he'll ever do.
So, why should I vote for the next Republican to come along that will fit the exact same mold? Rand Paul has already indicated that he's in favor of high unemployment and low wages by his immigration stance. Why should I vote for him?
Romney had at least done something other than politics in his life, but he was also in favor of more unemployment and low wages. Plus, lest we forget, ObamaCare was modeled on his plans in Mass. (And we shouldn't forget that a good part of that came out of a REPUBLICAN think tank in the 1990s.)
Why should I vote for that? McCain is worse than all those guys, as he is the most war crazy person this country has seen, possibly ever.
I haven't even touched upon the McConnells and Boehners of the party.
In all seriousness, what do the Republicans have to offer other than the mantra, "We can't suck as much as the Democrats"?
When was the last time you heard any major political figure talk about the employment problem in this country in a serious, sustained way? Or about the declining median income? Obama trots these things out about once ever 14 months, and then they're forgotten again. The Republicans can't even be pressed upon to do that, as I do believe that Romney's clandestine comments about the 47% were the last time any Republican addressed the issue.
Democrats are happy about high unemployment and low wages because they're likely Democratic votes. Republicans are unhappy about high unemployment because they want the unemployed dead because they're leeches. They're thrilled with a low wage economy, though.
Why should anyone that isn't on the take for one of these parties vote for either of them?
Icepick, the guy with the BA was likely never gonna last long enough to be worth hiring in the first place. I do have experience with this stuff and can anticipate to some degree.
For every job there is a person who does think it's a good job for them. We aren't all management material. I have people who have done the same boring job for years, and refuse any offer to advance. They found their sweet spot, and they like it. It's crazy to me, but I can't convince them to try harder. They don't get many raises, but they get good benefits, they are comfortable, valuable, and get bonuses when the company does well. It might not be enough for you or me, but people are different.
Regardless, that all misses the point, which is that your opportunity is out there somewhere just as sure as shit. You just have to find it, and attitude is everything.
Ice,
The startup I worked for died in the crash, funding simply became unavailable. It was so bad our lending venture fund fired their CEO and replaced him with a workout specialist. It wasn't easy to find new positions.
Nevertheless I did, and the last two people I've hired were unemployed 6 months and 1 year. Hiring in finance is much better now than last year. It's better now than any time since the crash.
Tell people you took time off to care for your wife & kids (I had a son born with a cleft palate during my job interregnum, so I did this) and start with project or temp work.
If a huge sea change happens like electing a libertarian, it won't fix the problems, but it will indicate that enough voters have wised up a little. The problem we have are primarily with our people. The answer is to get them to start choosing something different instead of just saying they want it, and then voting for the old shit again.
Step one is put the option on the ballot. We need to nominate change if we want people to choose it. I would like to see a Rand Paul type as the nominee just to give the nation a choice for once. I think they just might try it.
Icepick, the guy with the BA was likely never gonna last long enough to be worth hiring in the first place. I do have experience with this stuff and can anticipate to some degree.
This is what every hiring manager says about everyone that trying to get a job below what they were doing before. So if you're out of work you can't move down.
You can't move sideways, because the thinking is that either you weren't good enough to keep your old job, or you'll want to much and anyway we can hire some kid out of college to do it more cheaply.
And of course, you can't move up.
So once you're out of work, you're completely fucked. Completely because of your own bad attitude and moral failings, of course.
Every single Republican voted against Obamacare.
Criticize them (and there's much to criticize) for all the things they've done (or haven't done). But the fact remains, if more Republicans had been in power back then, Obamacare would likely never have passed in the first place.
I agree with Meth & April about the perils of too much purity/ perfectionism on the right, amounting to utter defeatism. A related phenomenon is this attitude of complete moral (or political) equivalence. Why bother voting, who cares who wins, it all comes to the same thing.
I'm sorry, but Romney is NOT equivalent to Obama. Boehner is NOT equivalent to Pelosi.
You think GOP/ Dem, tomato/ tomahto, what's the difference? You think there's nothing more to lose, really?
There's A LOT more that can be lost, A LOT more that can be destroyed. Obama's "transformation" of the USA has gone a long way, but not as far as his vision extends. The "let it burn" refrain, coming from the right, actually makes me angry. Depressed. Angry.
As Ace has wisely noted, politics is a long game. The left knows that, and plays that, very well. The right, it seems lately, does not.
Of course, fight for better (by your lights) candidates, in the primaries. Of course, there are very good reasons for conservatives & Tea Partiers to be disappointed, distrustful, resentful of the "establishment" GOP.
But as far as I'm concerned, at the end of the day, EVERY politician is by nature, something of a douchebag and asshole. That's what it takes to be in politics. "Lesser of two evils" in politics doesn't mean "compromise" to me. It just means basic fucking fact of life.
We should be so lucky to elect someone like Rand Paul. We're lucky to have a voice like that in the GOP (and national politics in general), right now.
Icepick said...
In all seriousness, what do the Republicans have to offer other than the mantra, "We can't suck as much as the Democrats"?
This is true for most political parties, everywhere, all of the time. The sole appeal of most non-incumbent parties is change for changes sake. It is a powerful appeal if things are going badly.
As badly as you guys seem to think the country is going at the moment, most people are judging things by the standards of the Bush presidency. It will depend on how long their memories last.
I agree with Meth & April about the perils of too much purity/ perfectionism on the right, amounting to utter defeatism.
What perfectionism? The Republican has managed to do one thing half-right in the last 13 years, voting against Obamacare. And they only mustered the courage to do that ONCE.
They've done nation building in some of the assholes of the world (Afghanistan, Iraq). They've passed massive governmental bills that they couldn't pay for (the farm & transportation bills of the Bush years, Medicare Part D). They passed a bunch of tax cuts at a time when they were insisting on spending even more. (So much for that conservative fiscal position.) They've done nothing positive about the employment crisis in this country and instead want to make matters worse (immigration). The party reformers are guys like Rubio that agree with the old guard guys like McCain on pretty much everything. And on, and on, and on, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
This isn't a matter of purity. This is a matter of searching hard to find one goddamned thing they've done right on a sustained basis since Bush got elected.
Oh, and let us not forget that they've also been big movers for ever more government surveillance of the population, too. Obama has accelerated the process, but it was a process that predates him.
Let's see, what else? They supported (or enough of them, including the President at the time) that atrocity of a law that was Sarbannes-Oxley. They have supported bailing out the banks and other major financial players at the expense of EVERYONE else. Enough of them (and the President) supported a bankruptcy reform act many years back that favored financial players over everyone else. They supported getting John Roberts made Chief Justice, and how well has that worked out?
The Party leadership remains firmly in the hands of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.
Forget perfection. Forget purity. How about making me a drink that isn't 99 44/100% camel piss and trying to sell it off as diluted apple juice? Seriously, how about a drink that's only 96% camel piss? Or even only 5% camel piss?
This isn't a matter of purity. This is a matter of searching hard to find one goddamned thing they've done right on a sustained basis since Bush got elected.
And by this I do NOT mean some issue on which they suck the farts out of Satan's ass slightly less hard than the Dems do. You're sucking farts out of Satan's ass either way.
Thank you, Yashu.
Bingo.
They supported getting John Roberts made Chief Justice, and how well has that worked out?
You don't get a crystal ball with which to vet potential Supreme Court justices.
Yes, the Obamacare decision was a great disappointment-- even a travesty. But it was close. And actually, IMO the present make-up, current balance of the Supreme Court gets the law right, at least half of the time. There are some good jurists there. Getting old.
You know what not voting, not caring who gets to get their picks on the Supreme Court-- because you think Roberts is so awful-- might well lead to? A Supreme Court filled with wise Latinas and the likes of Eric Holder. Why not? What's to stop them? If you don't care, the left cares.
We're lucky the Second Amendment, so far, remains strong. And other Constitutional principles, which a more "progressive" Court may well deem old-fashioned encumbrances, blocking the way to a brave new world. To be (re)interpreted in the light of contemporary needs. E.g. of social justice.
Yes, I'll take a John Roberts over an Eric Holder on the Supreme Court, thank you. Please.
yashu, being happy that the Supreme Court gets about half the things right isn't really much of a positive testament to the usefulness of Conservative justices.
And you still haven't given me a reason to vote FOR the Republican Party, only reasons to vote AGAINST the Democratic Party. Fuck 'em both. I'm tired of voting for Republicans because they'll only screw me the vast majority of the time, instead of all the time. Things will never get better under such circumstances.
Not to mention that the Republican Party has repeatedly told me and people like me to fuck off. I'm not going to vote for bastards whose only advice to me is to fuck off and die already.
And you still haven't given me a reason to vote FOR the Republican Party, only reasons to vote AGAINST the Democratic Party.
I've always found this phrasing-- the dichotomy of voting FOR vs. AGAINST-- uncongenial and illogical, especially insofar as I'm libertarian/ conservative.
Government is a necessary evil. Human beings are fundamentally flawed creatures.
What would I vote FOR, in a purely positive sense? "Hope and change"? A "fundamental transformation" of America? You can vote FOR someone on American Idol.
Most reasons I have to vote, are negative reasons. Implicitly "against." And most of the time, the comparison is a relative one-- not a choice between absolute polarities, but along a scale or spectrum.
I can't & don't expect absolute "cures" or "solutions" to anything.
Generally speaking (bracketing policy), I vote for A over B because I think A's going to manage things less incompetently, less irresponsibly, with less corruption and less opacity, infringing less on my (and my fellow citizens') freedom. He/she's going to fuck things up less. He/she's going to do LESS HARM. He/she's going to face up to realistic diagnoses of our nation's ills and (within the limits of the politically possible, which are narrow indeed) plot a course, navigate, and react on the fly to unforeseen gales and storms, so as best to avoid & avert catastrophes (present and future).
And hopefully, facilitate the convalescence, relative return to health of the economy. Not so much by administering new medicine, but cutting back (somewhat) on the bad medicine & bloodletting administered.
Gotta skedaddle now, but I'll think about your question.
It's cheesy and crudely done, I know...
As is pretty much everything you do.
Personally, I think Rand Paul has a lot of crossover appeal, assuming he's able to stick to his "enough with the damned wars, already" position.
It would put the Democratic candidate (Biden or Hillary) in the position of having to defend hawkish policies from the left at a time when the American people are overwhelmingly against further warfare.
I'm sorry, but Romney is NOT equivalent to Obama.
They differ on social issues. I.e., the least important issues facing America.
On the big issues they differed only in their rhetoric. E.g., Obama painted Romney as the small-government guy and Romney let him do it -- but if you did the math, you found that Romney's announced plans increased government spending and the deficit, just like Obama's did.
Similarly, Obama talked about rolling back the post-9/11 security state, and Romney talked about the importance of growing it. But as we've seen, Obama's on the same page as Romney there. And so on.
The Republican Party is working as hard as it can to suppress wages while simultaneously shipping all the good jobs overseas on a libertarian mantra of "What can we do?"
That's an economic mantra, not a libertarian one. There isn't a solution to the "problem" of offshoring that isn't worse than the problem itself. Did you think it was just some sort of freakish coincidence that no nation on Earth has ever gotten rich by forbidding the hiring of foreigners? Like nobody thought of it before now?
For once Revenant and I totally agree. Rand Paul has a lot of crossover appeal.
He can force Hillary to defend the national security state from the left and the cognitive dissonance will hopefully make her cankles explode.
Also Rand Paul can throw a little economic populism in there. It can be a potent brew.
You have no right to bitch about jobs going overseas if you go out and buy Chinese crap because it's half price. It's exactly the same.
I manufacturer clothing and everything is made in the USA. But many, many people don't care and go for the lower price/lower quality. It is just the way it is.
We manufacture all our stuff here too, and I do personally buy imports for some situations, like when quality isn't important, but I also don't bitch about jobs going over seas. That's my competition, and I understand why they do it. They have to compete with my people, and that's a bitch.
On the big issues they differed only in their rhetoric.
Yeah, I know you believe that (or say you believe that). That's why you didn't bother to vote in the election (sigh).
We've argued about this elsewhere. I know I'm not going to change your mind, so. Shrug.
You're still WRONG. :)
But I agree with you (Rev) and Trooper about Rand Paul.
Some good news:
Made in the U.S.A
http://business.time.com/made-in-the-u-s-a/?iid=nf-article-moreontime
Rand Paul has a good chance of bringing in some libertarian-ish youth, who've harshly awoken from the Obama trance.
On the other hand, Rand Paul will have to convincingly distance himself from some of his father's nuttiest pronouncements and associations.
The MSM is going to milk the hell out of that linkage. And some of that stuff-- even stuff Ron Paul is doing right now-- is BAD.
If you don't care, the left cares.
This, precisely.
I don't want to have anything to do with electoral politics. I want to have as little to do with government as possible.
But it's my duty, because otherwise the only people participating will be the statists. And they are monumentally destructive people.
Others' mileage varies and I respect that, but that's my position.
Everybody here envies Chip for one reason or another, Ritmo just can't contain his envy. He's weak.
All Rand Paul has to say is "I love my father but I am not responsible for what he says. Do you want to be held responsible for what your father says? I didn't think so."
You never know what will get someone elected.
Look Bill De Blassio won the primary because his son looks like Coolidge from "The White Shadow."
"There isn't a solution to the "problem" of offshoring that isn't worse than the problem itself. "
Yeah, off-shoring of jobs, open borders, one-sided trade deals - Yep, nothing can be done. Its always been like this.
Oh wait, it never was like this until 20-30 years ago, and we got along just fine. Somehow the fruit got picked, people had jobs,etc. The median family income peaked in 1973.
You're still WRONG.
So are you saying that Romney's budgetary plans didn't grow the government, or that you think the size of the government now is such that it should be grown for the good of the country?
Oh wait, it never was like this until 20-30 years ago, and we got along just fine. Somehow the fruit got picked, people had jobs,etc. The median family income peaked in 1973.
rc, you aren't allowed to mention this. Just like one is not allowed to mention that immigration restriction was instituted in the 1920s and was an important part of the Great Compression. But then, hardly anyone knows what the fuck I'm talking about when I mention this stuff. They jsut know that THEIR party is for open borders, so that must be the only way for anything to be done in a reasonable manner.
Also, none of them have ever considered that such economic policies might have unintended and unpleasant second and third order effects, and so on. Charlie Munger is the only rich person I've seen mention that. Of course that was back before he was telling everyone that we should be happy that the government bailed out rich people, because only rich people are worthy of being bailed out, so that they can feed the crumbs to the rest of us.
Voting for Republicans right now is like voting for driving off the cliff at 60 miles per hour instead of 80 miles per hours. Not gonna make one fucking bit of difference on the way down.
But many, many people don't care and go for the lower price/lower quality.
If people DIDN'T go for lower price and lower quality, who would American car makers sell to? Everyone would drive a Mercedes-Benz.
The same's true across the board, really. American products have seldom been the best made ones in the world. If it weren't for people willing to pay less to get less, we'd still be farmers importing manufactured goods from Europe.
All Rand Paul has to say is "I love my father but I am not responsible for what he says. Do you want to be held responsible for what your father says? I didn't think so."
This is especially true if Hillary's his opponent. Her dad was a die-hard Republican. :)
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