Women like cats, men like dogs. So goes the stereotype. In case nobody's told you, here's why:
Cats by and large are useless, prissy, self-important fluffballs who think they should be given food, shelter, love, and adoration merely because they exist. Cat loving women think this is admirable, because they wish the same for themselves. It's that simple.
Dogs by and large are slopppy, ill-kept spazzes that think that the depth of their affection should compensate for their lack of presentation and the fact that they lay around all day licking their private parts. Dog loving men think this is admirable, because they wish the same for themselves. It's that simple.
Cat loving men and dog loving women present another wrinkle, but not an unfathomable one.
Cat loving men, by implication, let their wives and girlfriends, or prospective wives and girlfriends, know that they are "in touch with their sensitive side," which is to say that buy into the idea that prissy, self-important fluffballs deserve love merely because they exist. Cat loving women, of course, love this, and the men get laid. End of story.
Dog loving women "admire the loyalty" of the sloppy, ill-kept spaz. Coming from a heterosexual woman, what this really means is that she knows she can't do any better. More than likely, though, said woman is a lesbian, who thinks that all the stereotypically feminine fluff and vanity is just that.
End of story.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
One Big Party
The notion of an effective one party system in this country is one I've been contemplating for several years. All one has to do is watch our political process with this hypothesis in mind, and evidence for it continues to accumulate in droves, while evidence against it looks more and more like a facade. One does not need to invoke secret societies like the Trilateral Commision or the Bilderbergers to see the pattern. As John Perkins, Author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," pointed out, most so-called conspiracies are not hidden from view; they take place in plain sight.
Since the government in all significant ways is effectively owned by those who "contribute" to it--ie, big business, the members of the plutocracy, I think it's most appropriate to call it the Party of Power, as power in this country is apparently not divided between two warring factions, but contained in one monolithic, two headed beast that hisses and spits at itself around issues that are not central while advancing an agenda of agreed upon goals that serve to enhance its control.
Neither faction, despite the rhetoric, really defends our civil rights--Republicans want to build up the police state "for our own good," and most recently justify invasions of privacy and Soviet-Style National ID on the basis of National Security. Democrats believe in “rights”—the supposed rights to food, shelter, health care, and generally a risk and effort free life at the expense of others. (Psst—it’s called Socialism, and it's Communism's capital-driven little brother). They want to tax away our earnings and take away our ability to resist the will of the government "for our own good." In truth it is for their own good. The real motivation is to keep would-be revolutionaries fat, happy, lazy, and ill-equipped. The most obvious and dangerous example is the recent fervor over gun control.
There is no major political party that really supports smaller government and advocates decentralization or increased individual rights. Democrats are utterly deluded about the beneficial effects of a larger state, but at least are at least honest about their desire to increase its size and decrease our personal power at our own expense. Republicans preach decentralization but instead practice militarization. Democrats grow the beaurocracy; Republicans grow the military. Both succeed to some extent; laws are passed with far more frequency than they are repealed. Inevitably we have less freedom than our parents did. There's no reason to think the trend will stop.
Hot button issues like abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and many other may make for good theater, but they really don't matter to the PoP. (But make no mistake, gun control does. More on this some other time.) I doubt they really care who we're screwing or what we're doing with the products of conception, so long as the products of conception grow up to be obedient little work drones who love Big Brother.
These issues do make for great distraction from more relevant issues, like who's really in charge and how they're doing a better and better job of taking control. The resulting debate is useful in creating the perception of a free society as embodied by the two party system engaged in open discourse on marginally relevant issues.
I think it's more telling to look at what both "parties" agree on then what they don't. I further think it’s telling when "Democratic" candidates enact policies that serve the "Republican" agenda and vice-versa. The most egregious example of this is NAFTA, a pro-corporate, anti-worker globalist coup signed into law by a member of the alleged Party of the People.
The differences between George Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 election were less significant than the fact that both were both hereditary oligarchs—children of wealthy, powerful, political families who did little on their own merit to earn the right to compete for the title of "Leader of the Free (sic) world." This seemed to speak quite clearly to the true nature of power here in the Land of the Free.
But most people are too busy blaming the other party to note the true source of the problem, or are too distracted by bread-and-circuses to care. My additional hypothesis is that this is no accident, and that every single institution in our society contributes to the creation of dutiful, unquestioning subjects as opposed to free thinking upstarts. One could at this point call me paranoid, but one could also consider, and examine the evidence for, a third hypothesis--that a government/society run largely by entrenched power and ivy league law school graduates is quite capable of this degree of deception and manipulation, and given the incentives and motivations, it is almost inevitable.
If you follow these trends to their logical conclusion, there is only one destination. Arguably we are already there. I personally cannot find a historical example where a government growing more powerful and centralized has led to better conditions for its citizens in the long run. It always seems to lead to tyranny, and "both" parties seem to be leading us inexorably in that direction.
Please prove to me that I'm wrong. I'd feel a whole lot better.
Since the government in all significant ways is effectively owned by those who "contribute" to it--ie, big business, the members of the plutocracy, I think it's most appropriate to call it the Party of Power, as power in this country is apparently not divided between two warring factions, but contained in one monolithic, two headed beast that hisses and spits at itself around issues that are not central while advancing an agenda of agreed upon goals that serve to enhance its control.
Neither faction, despite the rhetoric, really defends our civil rights--Republicans want to build up the police state "for our own good," and most recently justify invasions of privacy and Soviet-Style National ID on the basis of National Security. Democrats believe in “rights”—the supposed rights to food, shelter, health care, and generally a risk and effort free life at the expense of others. (Psst—it’s called Socialism, and it's Communism's capital-driven little brother). They want to tax away our earnings and take away our ability to resist the will of the government "for our own good." In truth it is for their own good. The real motivation is to keep would-be revolutionaries fat, happy, lazy, and ill-equipped. The most obvious and dangerous example is the recent fervor over gun control.
There is no major political party that really supports smaller government and advocates decentralization or increased individual rights. Democrats are utterly deluded about the beneficial effects of a larger state, but at least are at least honest about their desire to increase its size and decrease our personal power at our own expense. Republicans preach decentralization but instead practice militarization. Democrats grow the beaurocracy; Republicans grow the military. Both succeed to some extent; laws are passed with far more frequency than they are repealed. Inevitably we have less freedom than our parents did. There's no reason to think the trend will stop.
Hot button issues like abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and many other may make for good theater, but they really don't matter to the PoP. (But make no mistake, gun control does. More on this some other time.) I doubt they really care who we're screwing or what we're doing with the products of conception, so long as the products of conception grow up to be obedient little work drones who love Big Brother.
These issues do make for great distraction from more relevant issues, like who's really in charge and how they're doing a better and better job of taking control. The resulting debate is useful in creating the perception of a free society as embodied by the two party system engaged in open discourse on marginally relevant issues.
I think it's more telling to look at what both "parties" agree on then what they don't. I further think it’s telling when "Democratic" candidates enact policies that serve the "Republican" agenda and vice-versa. The most egregious example of this is NAFTA, a pro-corporate, anti-worker globalist coup signed into law by a member of the alleged Party of the People.
The differences between George Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 election were less significant than the fact that both were both hereditary oligarchs—children of wealthy, powerful, political families who did little on their own merit to earn the right to compete for the title of "Leader of the Free (sic) world." This seemed to speak quite clearly to the true nature of power here in the Land of the Free.
But most people are too busy blaming the other party to note the true source of the problem, or are too distracted by bread-and-circuses to care. My additional hypothesis is that this is no accident, and that every single institution in our society contributes to the creation of dutiful, unquestioning subjects as opposed to free thinking upstarts. One could at this point call me paranoid, but one could also consider, and examine the evidence for, a third hypothesis--that a government/society run largely by entrenched power and ivy league law school graduates is quite capable of this degree of deception and manipulation, and given the incentives and motivations, it is almost inevitable.
If you follow these trends to their logical conclusion, there is only one destination. Arguably we are already there. I personally cannot find a historical example where a government growing more powerful and centralized has led to better conditions for its citizens in the long run. It always seems to lead to tyranny, and "both" parties seem to be leading us inexorably in that direction.
Please prove to me that I'm wrong. I'd feel a whole lot better.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
To Bail Out Or Not to Be
Yikes! Another catastrophe. Mortgage lenders are up to their eyeballs in bad debt, and the sky is falling. Some conservatives say it's due to to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, some libs say it's due to a lack of government regulation.
Truth is, it's both. On one hand, liberals felt it necessary to tell mortgage lenders how to run their business and to compel them to give mortgages to people who were poor risks. This is the sort of rhetoric modern socialists use to justify their wealth redistribution schemes, since bald-faced communist rhetoric--"we're going to take it away from working people to give to others"--doesn't fly in this country. (Modern Socialists = "Liberals," even though they are only liberal in promoting promiscuity, drug use, and decadence, and otherwise tend towards totalitarian government control) Liberal mouthpieces have justified this by stating that some non-CRA lenders made more bad loans, and hypothesizing that making risky loans actually encouraged responsible lending. Well, sorry, it was either a good idea or a bad one. The evidence on this one is in. It is as if Liberals are saying that someone who used only half as much crack cocaine is responsible, whereas his more indulgent neighbor is not.
Forcing companies to make bad judgments is disastrous. Left to their own devices, they will do plenty of it all by themselves. Greed rules the financial world; one could argue it defines it. These apparent fits of misjudgment come to light every so often, with predictable results:
The house of cards which our current financial system appears to be is shaken when the inevitable corporate misbehavior comes to light. Investors panic, mutual funds plummet. 401ks and 403bs get pounded (But Warren Buffett, et. al. never seem to . . .) People demand accountability. They demand regulation, as if the two are the same thing.
What we get, courtesy of Repbulicans, is a slap on the wrist for some corporate offender with or without time at Club Fed, a redirection of middle class tax dollars to prop up some greedy corporation that knowingly made bad decisions, and from Democrats, some new bureaucracy to supposedly oversee big business and keep this sort of thing from happening in the future. Supposedly these things will be "good for us." The implication is that "us" equals the average working American. You decide if that's the case.
What really happens? The corporations get richer, government gets bigger, and the middle class loses money via three mechanisms--the bailout, the poorly managed mutual fund, and the increase in taxes to pay for the soon to be useless new bureaucracy. Someone is always making money in the stock market--when your 401k just went down 50%, it's likely to be a hedge fund manager or a career investor selling stocks short. Not Joe Middle Class, to be sure.
And more importantly, power is taken from the middle class and given to the government, in the form of regulation and tax dollars, and irresponsible swindlers who, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, "commit crimes against which no laws have been passed."
None of this makes sense, of course, unless one understands that our government and Big Business are devices to make the rich and powerful richer and more powerful at the expense of everyone else. And at this point I have to marvel at how the rich and powerful twist their self-generated calamities into opportunties.
So what do we do? And if one really has any belief in the notion of personal responsibility, big mortgage lenders are about as deserving of a financial bailout as a hard partying college kid who's maxed out his credit cards. Do you really think they're going to do anything but enrich themselves with the bailout money?
And anyone who took out a mortgage has personal responsibility to pay it.
Any reason mortgage lenders, and borrowers, can't experience the consequences of their actions?
Grownups, please?
Truth is, it's both. On one hand, liberals felt it necessary to tell mortgage lenders how to run their business and to compel them to give mortgages to people who were poor risks. This is the sort of rhetoric modern socialists use to justify their wealth redistribution schemes, since bald-faced communist rhetoric--"we're going to take it away from working people to give to others"--doesn't fly in this country. (Modern Socialists = "Liberals," even though they are only liberal in promoting promiscuity, drug use, and decadence, and otherwise tend towards totalitarian government control) Liberal mouthpieces have justified this by stating that some non-CRA lenders made more bad loans, and hypothesizing that making risky loans actually encouraged responsible lending. Well, sorry, it was either a good idea or a bad one. The evidence on this one is in. It is as if Liberals are saying that someone who used only half as much crack cocaine is responsible, whereas his more indulgent neighbor is not.
Forcing companies to make bad judgments is disastrous. Left to their own devices, they will do plenty of it all by themselves. Greed rules the financial world; one could argue it defines it. These apparent fits of misjudgment come to light every so often, with predictable results:
The house of cards which our current financial system appears to be is shaken when the inevitable corporate misbehavior comes to light. Investors panic, mutual funds plummet. 401ks and 403bs get pounded (But Warren Buffett, et. al. never seem to . . .) People demand accountability. They demand regulation, as if the two are the same thing.
What we get, courtesy of Repbulicans, is a slap on the wrist for some corporate offender with or without time at Club Fed, a redirection of middle class tax dollars to prop up some greedy corporation that knowingly made bad decisions, and from Democrats, some new bureaucracy to supposedly oversee big business and keep this sort of thing from happening in the future. Supposedly these things will be "good for us." The implication is that "us" equals the average working American. You decide if that's the case.
What really happens? The corporations get richer, government gets bigger, and the middle class loses money via three mechanisms--the bailout, the poorly managed mutual fund, and the increase in taxes to pay for the soon to be useless new bureaucracy. Someone is always making money in the stock market--when your 401k just went down 50%, it's likely to be a hedge fund manager or a career investor selling stocks short. Not Joe Middle Class, to be sure.
And more importantly, power is taken from the middle class and given to the government, in the form of regulation and tax dollars, and irresponsible swindlers who, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, "commit crimes against which no laws have been passed."
None of this makes sense, of course, unless one understands that our government and Big Business are devices to make the rich and powerful richer and more powerful at the expense of everyone else. And at this point I have to marvel at how the rich and powerful twist their self-generated calamities into opportunties.
So what do we do? And if one really has any belief in the notion of personal responsibility, big mortgage lenders are about as deserving of a financial bailout as a hard partying college kid who's maxed out his credit cards. Do you really think they're going to do anything but enrich themselves with the bailout money?
And anyone who took out a mortgage has personal responsibility to pay it.
Any reason mortgage lenders, and borrowers, can't experience the consequences of their actions?
Grownups, please?
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