The thing about Barack Obama when he sticks his nose into other peoples or states business is – that he is always wrong. The unions have long been a subsidiary of the Democratic Party but their era is coming to an end. There is a reason why Boeing decided to locate to South Carolina and it is because the Palmetto State is a “right-to-work” state.
by Charles Krauthammer
For all the fury and fistfights outside the Lansing capitol, what happened in Michigan this week was a simple accommodation to reality. The most famously unionized state, birthplace of the United Auto Workers, royalty of the American working class, became right-to-work.
It’s shocking, except that it was inevitable. Indiana went that way earlier this year. The entire Rust Belt will eventually follow, because the heyday of the sovereign private-sector union is gone. Globalization has made splendid isolation impossible.
The nostalgics look back to the immediate postwar years when the UAW was all-powerful, the auto companies were highly profitable, and the world was flooded with American cars. In that Golden Age, the UAW won wages, benefits, and protections that were the envy of the world.
[.......]
For a generation, America had the run of the world. Then the others recovered. Soon global competition — from Volkswagen to Samsung — began to overtake American industry, which was saddled with protected, inflated, relatively uncompetitive wages, benefits, and work rules.
There’s a reason Detroit went bankrupt while the southern auto transplants did not. This is not to exonerate the incompetent, overpaid management that contributed to the fall. But clearly the wage, benefit, and work-rule gap between the unionized North and the right-to-work South was a major factor.
President Obama railed against the Michigan legislation, calling right-to-work “giving you the right to work for less money.” Well, there is a principle at stake here: A free country should allow its workers to choose whether or not to join a union. Moreover, it is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus, while denying it for such matters as choosing your child’s school or joining a union.
[........]Let’s be honest: Right-to-work laws do weaken unions. And de-unionization can lead to lower wages.
But there is another factor at play: having a job in the first place. In right-to-work states, the average wage is about 10 percent lower. But in right-to-work states, unemployment also is about 10 percent lower.
Higher wages or lower unemployment? It is a wrenching choice. Although, you would think that liberals would be more inclined to spread the wealth — i.e., the jobs — around, preferring somewhat lower pay in order to leave fewer fellow workers mired in unemployment.
[.......].
Nor does protectionism offer escape from this dilemma. Shutting out China and the others deprives less well-off Americans of access to the kinds of goods once reserved for the upper classes: quality clothing, furnishings, electronics, durable goods — from the Taiwanese-manufactured smartphone to the affordable, highly functional Kia.
Globalization taketh away. But it giveth more. The net benefit of free trade has been known since, oh, 1817. (See David Ricardo and the Law of Comparative Advantage.) There is no easy parachute from reality.
Obama calls this a race to the bottom. No, it’s a race to a new equilibrium that tries to maintain employment levels, albeit at the price of some modest wage decline. It is a choice not to be despised.
I have great admiration for the dignity and protections trade unionism has brought to American workers. I have no great desire to see the private-sector unions defenestrated. (Like FDR, Fiorello La Guardia, and George Meany, however, I don’t extend that sympathy to public-sector unions.)
But rigidity and nostalgia have a price. The industrial Midwest is littered with the resulting wreckage. Michigan most notably, where its formerly great metropolis of Detroit is reduced to boarded-up bankruptcy by its inability and unwillingness to adapt to global change.
It’s easy to understand why a state such as Michigan would seek to recover its competitiveness by emulating the success of neighboring Indiana. One can sympathize with those who pine for the union glory days, while at the same time welcoming the new realism that promises not an impossible restoration, but desperately needed — and doable — recalibration and recovery.
Obama in MI: right-to-work “about giving you right to work for less money” Yes, much better to be unemployed from a high paying job
#tcot
Read the rest – Right-to-work dilemma
Tags: Charles Krauthammer
I’ll defend someone’s right to join a union, but others must have the right not to join a union.
mfhorn wrote:
I long to see union’s go the way of leisure suits.
I long to see the unions go the way of the Mayans…only quicker.
Spreading the wealth by allowing everyone to have jobs doesn’t provide the oppertunity to buy votes though government handouts that spreading the wealth by jacking up unemployment benefits does. There was a time when most American swould have rejected that calculus, as not having a job was considered dishonorable or, at least, something to be avoided. In Barack Obama’s Brave New World a good many of the permanently unemployed apparently see it as not so bad. If the people who’ve dropped out of the work force under Obama had showed up at the polls in November and voted against him en masse, Obama would have been a one-term president.
Spreanza, What did you think of the Sandy relief concert?
@ Iron Fist:
Reminds me of an oldie but a goodie:
@ theoutsider:
McCartney’s Helter Skelter was awesome.
@ theoutsider:
Show biz “stars” get to feel good about themselves. BFD. Remember the great relief concerts after Ike, Andrew, Katrina, Rita, etc., etc., etc.? No -- neither do I.
bluliner10 wrote:
Well, they already have the bloodsport part down pat……..
@ Mike C.:
The Left is about “feelings” not results.
@ Iron Fist:
Another thing the Left can’t grasp. Lower unemployment leads to higher wages.
@ Rodan:
It also leads to greater tax revenue if the workers are making over a certain minimum. Just as lowering tax rates leads to greater tax revenue. The Left don’t want the revenue so much as they want the punative nature of taxes. They want to punish the producers more than anything else.
Exactly! It’s about “fairness”, not any real economic benefits.
hey I spoke with several people offline and they agree with an observation you made. There is a huge difference between the local Republican Party and the national party. The local parties are pretty good and actually get good results. The national Party loves rhetoric and are dysfunctional.
Rodan wrote:
Competition.
Iron Fist wrote:
Ask longtime unemployed in Europe and they’ll answer you: why should I work for the (more or less) same amount of money if I can get it without work ?
They don’t take into account that they are unskilled or that their skills are outdated.
@ Rodan:
All you had to do was hear Jay Carney’s economic revisionist comments yesterday -- which I’m supposed to accept as truth because “he was there?” Yeah, buddy, so was I, and everything you sputtered was bull. The economy stalled after Clinton raised taxes. It only started growing again after the Republicans took the House/Senate and LOWERED them again.
And don’t even get me started on the myth of the Clinton “surplus.”
@ Carolina Girl:
That’s true, the economy only started booming in early 96, a year after the Gingrich Congress’ policies took effect. Then it really took off after the 97 tax cuts.
@ Rodan:
Yep. The dot.com boom was fueled by huge amounts of venture capital. The real problem, of course, is that in so many cases, the internet geniuses took the money, bought themselves houses, paid themselves huge wages and outfitted offices like playgrounds, and in the end they didn’t have an internet idea that paid off. Lots of money lost, for sure, but it wasn’t TAXPAYER money, unlike our current Clown, who’s playing the same game with “alternative energy” and losing big time.
@ Rodan:
I’m still trying to figure out where the several billions raised for Katrina went since they still haven’t rebuilt the damn 9th Ward after 7 years. I had to stop watching Treme (well I cancelled HBO but it was before that) even though I loved the music and the scenes of NOLA because I was sick of the anti-Republican “pity party” the series kept throwing.
@ Rodan@ Carolina Girl:
There was a Clinton surplus, after Clinton raised taxes.
Looks like Virginia is moving to make card-check unconstitutional within its borders:
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/12/13/virginia-considering-preemptive-strike-against-the-unions-moves-to-make-card-check-unconstitutional/#disqus_thread
Via ZIP.
@ theoutsider:
GAZE
@ Carolina Girl:
GAZE
The Clinton Surplus Myth
@ theoutsider:
Not true at all. There was no surplus until 98. Look it up.
Bobby Jindal is proposing to take an issue away from the Left and telling the Santorum/Huckabee Socialist wing of the GOP to fuck off.
Bobby Jindal proposes Birth Control should be over the counter
@ theoutsider:
There was never a real surplus. They were always pulling money out of the so-called Social Security Trust Fund. There is nothing there but a bunch of government IOUs. They started that in the late ’60s, IIRC.
Rodan wrote:
The theme of “revenge!” runs deep with this administration and its acolytes, Obama, himself used the word during the campaign. They’re not about leadership, they’re about punishment and reward, the state of The Republic be damned. He’s loading all of society’s ills on the backs of “the rich” with a quasi-theological fervor not seen since…..well, several decades ago in a Western European country with which we are all familiar. That one ended poorly, as it does every time it’s tried.
@ Guggi:
But the Democrats have been living off that ridiculous Surplus. It was also based on anticipated tax revenues that failed to materialize due to the bust of the dot.com bubble in the Spring of 2000. Also, like Kerry with Nixon ordering him into Cambodia at Christmas of 1968, libturds believe that because it happened in 2000, it’s somehow Bush’s fault.
Just like it was the Bush tax cuts that led to the economic implosion that started in 2007, if you listen to Jay Carney. It was the bursting of the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage market, which can be laid at the feet of one group -- the Democrats.
@ theoutsider:
Facts are a bitch, aren’t they?
1993 $255.1 Billion Deficit
1994 $203.2 Billion Deficit
1995 $164 Billion Deficit
1996 $107.5 Billion Deficit
1997 $22 Billion Deficit
1998 $69.2 Billion Surplus
The bolded colors are when the GOP took over Congress. Clinton raised them in 93. His tax increases did nothing. That said I do prefer Clinton’s post 94 economic policies to Bush’s soft Socialism anyday.
@ Rodan:
Also lost was the fact that Bush was actually reducing the deficit when the spend-happy Democrats took over Congress in 2007.
@ Carolina Girl:
To be fair Bush gets blame as well for the housing collapse. He promoted the Ownership society.
@ Rodan:
But also, Rodan, as I mentioned upthread, the supposed surplus in 2000 was based on calculations of tax revenues that never materialized.
Reagan slashed taxes -- really slashed them -- when he inherited an ecomomy that was far worse than anything Obama had -- everyone remember 18% home mortgage interest rates?
Here we go again: it’s all Bush’s fault.
Hi Democraticunderground I’m coming
Carolina Girl wrote:
That’s true, the fact that it was being done amidst two wars is noteworthy.
@ Carolina Girl:
It was coming down due to increase revenue. Not because Bush cut spending. But then the Dems with Bush’s quiescence blew the deficit right open.
Rodan wrote:
Great concept, poor technique.
Why aren’t you including the first Bush deficit, the first trillion dollar one.
@ Rodan:
He promoted ownership -- who wouldn’t? But it was the Community Investment Act that fueled it. Also, Bush tried desperately to stave off the crisis by getting Fannie and Freddie under control, and Barney Fwank and Chris Dodd fought hard against it. The revelation of the toxic assets of Bear Sterns and Lehman Bros. started the snowball -- it was Fannie and Freddie that turned it into an avalanche. Add the AIG credit swaps liability for the bad mortgages, and you have the perfect storm.
Carolina Girl wrote:
It was a Social Security surplus. It quickly vanished with the dot com collapse, the recession and 9/11.
@ Guggi:
LOL.
@ Carolina Girl:
Bush half heartily tried, but then jumped on the bandwagon. Promoting Home Ownership is NOT the government’s role.
Pentagon to send missiles, 400 troops to Turkey
Rodan wrote:
Actually, I think it is as it “promotes the general welfare” of our society. Like I said, poor technique and even worse Democrat alliances.
Rodan wrote:
Don’t telle this Germans or Austrians
@ MacDuff:
I agree. HUD, Fannie and Freddie are all in the home ownership business. The government was promoting home ownership long before George Bush arrived.
Bush Budget:
2000 $236.4 Billion Surplus
2001 $127.3 Billion Surplus
2002 $157.8 Billion Deficit
2003 $377.6 Billion Deficit
2004 $413 Billion Deficit
2005 $318 Billion Deficit
2006 $248 Billion Deficit
2007 $161 Billion Deficit
2008 $459 Billion Deficit
Obama Budget:
2009 $1413 Billion Deficit
2010 $1294 Billion Deficit
2011 $1299 Billion Deficit
2012 $1100 Billion Deficit
mskelly wrote:
Republicans should protest this. oops, I forgot. The National GOP are Islamic stooges. Nothing to see.
@ MacDuff:
There’s nothing wrong with renting. In fact in today’s economy owning a home is a burden. You can’t move around.
@ Carolina Girl:
See my #48. I put that up there for our buddy the Outsider!
@ Rodan:
In better days, this would have been welcomed. Remember when they were a great NATO ally? Heck, I remember my brother-in-law and family being stationed there.
You’re damned right this needs to be stopped. And you’re also damned right that it won’t.
Rodan wrote:
Tell that to people who own homes in neighborhoods that have been overtaken by renters.
@ Rodan:
Yeah, I figured that! Hee.
@ Carolina Girl:
I have been very anti-NATO since 95 (1st Bombing of Serbia). What was an honorable institution meant to stop Communism is now a Corrupt Organization bought and paid for by Islamic interests.
Rand Paul will speak out against this. But he is a lone voice.
@ MacDuff:
And let’s not forget those Section 8 jerks who don’t have to answer to landlords and trash the homes they live in, get kicked out an move on. The classifieds in my paper for rentals almost all include “NO SECTION 8.”
@ MacDuff:
This could be a good debate thread actually. Renting vs. owning. I see your point, but in today’s economy people need to move around. This is a grey area with no right or wrong.
You are right,. some renters are irresponsible, but not all. Like I said, this is a very grey area.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Section 8 needs to go.
Carolina Girl wrote:
That was in part due to the economy. There were other factors at work as well. The late 70′s was when the Baby Boomers really started buying houses. Property at that time was at a premium due to the lack of houses available. Think about it. The baby boom was about twice the size of their parents. Not many people were moving out of their homes at that time as well. The whole supply and demand curve was at work here.
There was little supply of houses, and a huge demand for them. There was also a huge demand for mortgages and a limited supply of money at the the time for lending.
Learned some of this in a finance course I took. This was also the start of real estate investment and house flipping as a sideline. Now the supply of houses and condos is enough to meet the demand. A lot of the older generation has moved to nursing homes or retirement communities. Housing construction was accelerated, and is now slowing. The bust in the housing market was inevitable. CRA just helped it out.
@ Carolina Girl:
Try want to be tough? Let me know
@ Rodan:
I’ve never really stopped to conduct some in-depth research on NATO. This may be a good rainy day weekend fun with computer project.
@ Rodan:
Comedian Mitch Hedeberg (sp?) once remarked there should be a store called “Apartment Depot” where people just stood around and said “hell, we don’t have to fix S--t!”
@ theoutsider:
GAZE
@ PaladinPhil:
Well, that, and the raising of the prime interest rate.
@ Rodan:
Not everyone can be home owners, and not everyone can be renters. I will probably rent till I die. Is this a failure? No. Currently I am single and buying a house or a condo is not worth the effort or funds. Things could change. With renting though I have more options and can still move up as needed.
@ theoutsider:
LOL! Tough man? She’d squish your pixels geek.
Rodan wrote:
Not to argue, but when you’ve bought your home (as I have) and invested considerable money in it (as I have), only to have a rental property next door with overgrown grass and trees growing in the gutters, your view on “rental property” changes (as mine has).
Yeah, I know it’s about the economy, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable. Not at all.
Carolina Girl wrote:
When I originally bought the home I’m currently in, my rate was 18% -- it was like buying a house on VISA.
@ MacDuff:
Not all renters are like that, we know. But you can sure pick out the one rental house in my sub-division with nooooo problem…
@ theoutsider:
Since you mention trillion dollar deficits, what is your plan for what we do when the National Debt hits 150% of GDP at the end of Obama’s second term? How do you propose we continue getting our creditors to loan us money at near 0% effective interest rates? On that second one, the Obama answer is that we aren’t, relally. To keep the interest rates where they are we are printing the money. Because that has worked out so well in Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic. What is your proposed solution to inflation?
As a rule, people have little or no respect for property they don’t own and those who actually own the rental property simply don’t have the incentive to do anything to property where they don’t live.
Neighborhoods with high percentages of rented single-family homes are blights.
@ Iron Fist:
You’re insistent
@ MacDuff:
My house needs a lot of work (roof and back yard) but I make sure at least the part that people have to look at is lovely and presentable.
mskelly wrote:
Yep, and that’s the problem.
@ mskelly:
XXOO.
@ Iron Fist:
Don’t forget, Fist, we probably have another downgrading of our credit rating in the future. I believe Fitch’s has already advised that they’re planning to do so after the new year.
@ Carolina Girl:
But the economy is booming!!!11ty!!
Carolina Girl wrote:
God bless ye. Owning a home is always a succession of maintenance issues, I know all about that and I have empathy for anyone dealing with that, I do so every day. That said, when one’s gutters contain more vegetation than the lawn, that’s an issue.
MacDuff wrote:
A double edged sword
Rodan wrote:
Heck, no—now the government’s role is to promote homo partnership.
@ Iron Fist:
hm, every time you ask him this question he’s gone….fleeing the blog…futsch….you won’t get an answer
@ MacDuff:
My neighbor next door has two HUGE pine trees right on the property line. The branches drop needles everywhere, clogging the gutters and ruining my lawn. It will cost me over $10,000 to have the branches chopped back and even then, my lawyer says that if in doing so I render the tree structurally unsound and it topples over in a storm and causes damage to their home, I could be sued. Talk about your Catch-22′s. His solution is to advise the homeowner that the tree is creating a nuisance and that under law I’m allowed to remove the branches. Put him on notice that such could render the tree unsound. Give him a chance to perhaps remove it.
Iron Fist wrote:
Printing the money, and using it to “buy back” our own debt. It’s the latter that’s really going to come back and bite us on the ass.
@ Iron Fist:
Yeah -- I chair dance every time the new GDP growth figures show up.
And still Obummer is seen in a positive light. I’m going to be curious how everyone sees the Wonder Prez by this time next year.
Hey -- love home to the Velvet Glove.
PaladinPhil wrote:
It’s a grey area. It depends on job situation and other factors.
Carolina Girl wrote:
It’s California, right? He’ll just tell you he’s engaging in a constitutionally-protected free needle distribution program.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Iron Fist wrote:
The greatest economy ever!
One of the other real problems, at least where I live in Cali, is that people who had to leave their homes are trying to rent them to avoid foreclosure. As a result, we have sky-high rental rates that rival San Francisco, and we’re in the sticks.
My son and a couple of friends thought about renting a house -- a three bedroom, one bath, about 1000 square feet -- and the guy wanted $2,500 for it. I said “live at home -- it’s cheaper and I have someone to feed the cats when I go out of town.”
@ MacDuff:
No argument and you are bringing up a valid point.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
The Cal EPA will be all over my butt for it anyway if I try.
Thanks, Governor Ah-nold.
@ Carolina Girl:
@ Carolina Girl:
Love back to you! Yeah, I can’t believe that Obama has the approval he does. I still find it astounding that he was re-elected. It isn’t the economy, stupid! It is the stupid that vote. He got the dumb to come out for him in drove by promising to have other people pay for their birth control pills and such. All while we are running trillion dollar deficits every year, and for what? We are retiring aircraft carriers.
Carolina Girl wrote:
‘Tis the age-old quandary of what happens when one’s rights conflict with another’s. On a somewhat related issue, I was in the whirlpool at the health club the other day thinking about “social contracts”, like the one that says “you don’t pee in the whirlpool because you don’t want anyone else to pee in the whirlpool”. I considered the state of our country and the seeming disappearance of “social contracts” and then, while sitting in the whirlpool, I decided to think of something else.
@ Carolina Girl:
One of your neighbors probably started this:
@ lobo91:
Boy, some people have way too much time on their hands.
The last group of people I’d be wanting to piss off, if you really believe them to be “terror” organizations, are the ones with, you know, the GUNS…..
@ lobo91:
I would not dismiss this lunacy lightly. How many times have we seen progressives come up with a theme and it becomes accepted fact. I would not be shock if the NRA get’s labeled a Hate group by the SPLC, then the Dems push to label them a terror group. Watch this.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Yes, what we have going on right now is completely unsustainable, and the people who’ve set it up have to know that. They are deliberately setting us up for a fall, hoping that they won;t be around to take the blame when it happens. And the vast mjority of the population are so pig ignorant that they think this situation represents a boom. My contempt for my fellow citizens grows by the day.
@ Rodan:
Well goodness knows there’s nothing more Obummer would like than to completely disarm the populace, despite his phoney protestations to the contrary. We know where he stands on the Second Amendment.
@ Carolina Girl:
When I first saw the headline, I assumed that it was going to be more of the “NRA is arming inner city youth so they’ll kill each other” crap. Once I saw what it was really about, I was amazed.
Do these idiots really believe that hunters want animals “hunted to the brink of extinction”? If they were, wouldn’t that mean that there wouldn’t be anything left to hunt?
@ Carolina Girl:
That is why I am not laughing at what Lobo posted. I fear this will be the next line of attack on the NRA.
Rodan wrote:
I don’t think the SPLC is dumb enough to tangle with the NRA.
@ lobo91:
I’d also like to point out to those clowns that prominent NRA member Ted Nugent hunts deer with a bow and arrow.
Guggi wrote:
I.F.’s Troll Hammer?
/
@ lobo91:
I hope you are right. I never underestimate the Left. hey you want to do that link as a headline?
@ lobo91:
@ Rodan:
No, they’re not lunatics, they’re harbingers. I remember when the anti-smoking zealots were all the rage, I told my wife “eventually, they’ll come after the burgers and fries” and she laughed.
She’s no longer laughing.
@ MacDuff:
That is why I am not dismissing this. I can see the Left labeling the NRA a hate/Terror group. That is the best way to go after guns.
That link actually sent chills down my spine.
lobo91 wrote:
These idiots don’t even know what “decimate” means.
@ lobo91:
Oh, lest I forget this point. Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay, and destination point for liberals with a picnic basket on a Sunday, became overrun with deer. They had to close the island to site-seers and sent a plea to local hunters to assist them. Two deer limit.
Oh my God, when San Francisco found out about it, they said they were planning to get over there and do what they could to “save the deer” -- never mind that the population was so overgrown that come winter, deer would be dying from starvation.
So they planned their expedition. Only one problem. The ferries weren’t running to Angel Island that day and the Coast Guard was keeping private boats at bay. There was newsreel footage of crying San Franciscans saying that they could hear the shots of deer being killed and they cringed every time they heard it.
One problem — as the newscast pointed out -- you were only allowed to hunt with a bow and arrow.
@ MacDuff:
Their ideal society is one in which everything that isn’t compulsory is forbidden. They’ll eventually mandate what kind of exercise regimen you have to have. Just like in 1984, when Winston Smith had to work out in front of the telescreen. They don’t see 1984 as a warning. They see it as a blueprint.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Or GAZE, as it turns out.
citizen_q wrote:
yep
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
You mean as in killing 10% of the population? Just another word that’s been redefined, like “literally”.
@ Iron Fist:
That link Lobo had about that leftist trying to label the NRA a terror group is really getting me nervous. I can see the Left using the terror issue to go after guns.
@ citizen_q:
Maybe he had to get to school -- to his first period 7th grade class in remedial reading.
lobo91 wrote:
If they felt politically strong enough, the SPLC would crush the NRA like a bug without a single qualm.
Rodan wrote:
I know you hate GW, but bringing the issue to congress 13 times does not constitute a half hearted effort. If anything, it shows how corrupt the democrat who were in charge of HUD and Fanny/Freddie were and are.
@ doriangrey:
You know what you never hear about, DG? The outrageous bonuses paid out to the Democrat operatives that sat on the Boards of Fannie and Freddie. The libturds harassed the AIG executives and workers for their bonuses but oddly, I don’t recall anyone camping out on Jamie Gorelick’s lawn.
Carolina Girl wrote:
You just can’t fix stupid…
Carolina Girl wrote:
Well, clearly that because when a Democrat get’s a bonus, it isn’t a bonus-bonus…
Carolina Girl wrote:
(Shudder)
@ doriangrey:
“Tell them what we love them and we don’t want them to die!”
Pretty egocentric -- thinking that the first language of trees is English.
@ Carolina Girl:
Given the timing of his and ferb’s appearances, if they are not the same person, I had thought them both bored students.
@ doriangrey:
Sorry, he promoted Home Ownership with his Ownership Society crap. The fact is if he really wanted to do something he could have. he didn’t because as a Progressive he believed in the same goals as The Democrats.
Carolina Girl wrote:
“Hoom, hoom, hoom…”
—Treebeard
@ citizen_q:
My answer on those two is always the same -- GAZE if they direct a comment to me personally. My attitude is if I wanted to deal with a 12-year-old mentality, I’d teach junior high history.
I come here to converse with my friends and colleagues. Neither of them qualify.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
If you broadcast that on television, I swear, I’d be waiting for the Saturday Night Live punchline.
@ doriangrey:
“Bring me to this rock that has the most incredible life”
I’ll be willing to bet every one of these morons are students at a local university.
@ MacDuff:
No way -- they are INSTRUCTORS at a local university!
@ Carolina Girl:
Others appear to enjoy engaging them, go for it.
I just skip their comments. They often do not debate in good faith IMHO, and if I wanted to listen to that mind-set my attention would be elsewhere.
Carolina Girl wrote:
ROTFLMAO… no doubt. These imbeciles are proof that Darwin was not 100 percent correct. But clearly their family tree’s needs some serious trimming.
@ doriangrey:
@ MacDuff:
Just as “Lord of the Flies” showed how thin the veneer of civilization is, and how rapidly, by degrees, people can descend into barbarism, so groups like Earth First! show the reality of what paganism is—and why, despite the gorgeous accoutrements of the pagan civilizations of the ancient world, they were a morass, morally speaking.
The modern-day pagans are parasites off the Biblically-based civilization which still, increasingly tenuously, surrounds them, just as those who refuse to get vaccinated are protected because most of the people around them have been vaccinated, and thereby protect the unvaccinated from virulent diseases by not providing a host. But if the pagan parasites reach great enough numbers, this civilization is done.
@ doriangrey:
Of course, I’m sure these clowns enjoy a good fireplace from time to time. Or, let’s see ….. live in a house and not a cave. Write on paper, that sort of thing.
They remind me of the animal activists who screech like banshees over fur and eating meat but are wearing the most adorable Nine West leather shoes.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Funny you should bring up Lord of the Flies -- the recent version was playing over the weekend on TV -- the one where they’re rescued by the marines.
I know it’s a fable type thing on the regression of man, but I’m the type that comes out of it wondering in the aftermath if they tried those creeps for murder. You know me, Buzz -- I always revert to the legal consequences.
Now Earth First! really IS a terrorist group!!
Carolina Girl wrote:
I’m merely trying to point out that the Earth First! video is an example of the kind of garbage that fills the mind once you empty it of genuine religion. An Amazon Indian living in Stone Age primitiveness has a more sophisticated worldview than these people.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Oh, Buzz -- I’m sorry, I wasn’t meaning to contradict you, and I do apologize if that’s what you took away from my comment. I was just saying that I’m such a legal nerd here’s the incredible story about the swift decline of civilization and I sit there at the end saying “I hope they locked those bastards up and threw away the key!”
I’ve always hoped that there’d be one season of “Survivor” where it got out of control and the contestants turned it into an adult version of Lord of the Flies.
Dear God, the amateurism is getting worse and worse:
Carolina Girl wrote:
No apology necessary, and I didn’t take it that way. I just wanted to underscore the point that Earth First! is an example of the lapse into religious/spiritual barbarism, just as much as “Lord of the Flies” shows a lapse into civic barbarism.
I actually think your wondering about what “happens” to the characters after the film stops rolling is a point well taken (and pretty funny, too!)—but I’ve been spending too much time over at WZ lately, and have learned to my cost that there are an awful lot of folks there who are incapable of following a sustained intellectual discussion. As a result, I’m suffering from a reflex tendency to want to belabor a few things.
Carolina Girl wrote:
I’ve told you my “reality show” idea, haven’t I? I want to see a bunch of “human shield” types captured by jihadis, and each week they have to vote on who gets their head sawn off on video.
Now for something even dumber than calling the NRA a terrorist group:
Two obvious questions:
1. If the world ends, how is some overpriced camping gear going to help you survive it? Maybe they have a different understanding of the meaning of “world ends” than I do…
2. Why would you care about charging an iPhone?
@ Carolina Girl:
Amazing. Someday I may work for some of these tools…sigh
lobo91 wrote:
I’ve heard iPhones charge when they’re wounded…
Carolina Girl wrote:
The country’s in the very best of hands…
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I’m shocked that they would use a term like “Christmas,” personally.
//
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I’m starting to hear the theme song for The Little Rascals every time someone from the Obama Administration appears on the screen.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Damn it, Buzz! I just got that mocha from Starbucks! (though the pattern on the computer screen can certainly be described as festive!)
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I have noticed, by the way, that there are libby-toes that post comments to long-dead threads at ZIP lately -- no doubt so that they gather them up like the little rodents they are and take them back to their blog trees to show the other rodents that they gave the evil GOP rats “what for.” I had a comment posted answering one of mine on Zip on December 12th. Of course, my original post in a long-dead thread was December 10th. However, since I get Discus notifications when someone answers me, I couldn’t resist going back and telling me what a brave little tailor they truly were. Then I told them to sod off.
@ Carolina Girl:
I’ve resisted registering with Disqus; I’m getting increasingly queasy about the number of legally unaccountable private entities that go a-gathering information.
I ended up mixing it up with some idiots in yesterday’s threads about abortion and the new “gay Bible”—a foolish move on my part. There are a lot of rather ignorant fundie types at WZ who may be lovely people in many ways (and occasional political allies) but who cannot understand that there are significant differences between the way Jews and Christians view the Bible, study it, and discuss it.
Somebody keeps posting my blog articles to their facebook page, where is Calo? I don’t know who it is and would really like a link to the facebook page, anyone know who it is?
New Thread.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Yeah, I think I’m going to do that as well. I’m not all that crazy about notifications that someone answered me -- it’s like Junk mail in my in-box and I have enough offers for penile enlargement without this as well.
doriangrey wrote:
Dorian, I deleted my FB a year ago.
I don’t know who it is.
Calo wrote:
Any idea how I would find out?
@ doriangrey:
Axe Bunk maybe.
I think he still has an account