The Spychopath Who Loved Me

“Can Bond refuse to be what he is supposed to be: a mindless killer serving at the enjoyment of his masters”

Obviously the author doesn’t “get” Bond at all. But that would never stop him from writing, poor fellow. Obviously a fan of truthiness. :)

good god, does the anti-white agit-propaganda ever stop here ? even jfk loved bond.

Back several months ago, ITT ran a similar article on 24 Hours and Jack Bauer.  You can take this article and the Bauer article, interchange the heros’s names and the titles, and the two articles make equal nonsense. 

The Bauer article bemoaned the fact that Conservatives sit around and rejoice at Jack Bauer’s heroics.  In fact, I have some friends who enjoy 24 Hours with me, but our favorite recreation is looking for absurdities, of which there are LOTS. 

The best one last season was when the bad guy stole the CTU ID card and carried a standard brief case into CTU HQ.  Down in the basement, bad guy opened the brief case and extracted a cylinder of poison gas.  Cylinder was longer and bigger in diameter than the dimensions of the brief case.  Not to mention that Bauer entered and exited various airports in the LA area five different times in 24 hours, and killed various bad guys in his spare time, when in fact one trip to an LA airport is a major expedition. 

So this article is politically motivated clap-trap, and is designed to provide cover for real problems.  The leftists are going to raise our taxes to damage the economy to justify a big, expensive, worthless bureaucracy, restrict trade to reduce our employment to justify big expensive welfare programs, and push Kyoto as a means of social control, economic disaster and poverty enhancement. 

Enjoy.

White guys claiming to be persecuted by colored folk.

Aston Martin DB9............Such a beautiful car and a steal at three hundred thousand dollars.

scorp is right here. major, are you black ? your low iq prompts this query. texas, got a bridge to sell you...........

Right, Tex.  There’s nothing like an expensive, beautiful phallic symbol to get you all hard and horny, just like your hero.

MM -

You have a problem with hards, horniness, or heroes?  ‘what is YOUR problem, boy?

Hey, Tex.  If it’s a “steal” at 300 grand, does that make it rape?

And how about that stick shift?  Jerk it around a few times and you can make the engine roar.

Haven’t seen the movie yet but my kids did and said it was pretty good.  I never had an interest in seeing a James Bond before but I do plan to see this one.

But...James Bond for the focus on December 29th and not the hanging of Saddam Hussein?!  This publication must really rock!

Personally, I am saddened by the death of Saddam Hussein but believe that he was an evil man.  I do believe in the death penalty but that doesn’t mean I relish in that kind of justice.  Celebrating?  No.  I am thankful that that chapter in history has now closed.  I am afraid of what will happen next and deeply concerned for the safety of our troops.  All that I am empowered to do is to pray.

I can’t wait to see TNR’s review of “The Good Shephard”.  Sure to be a major political spit fit.

Jack, you’re a fine one to disparage another’s IQ.  Pot scrub thyself, to coin a phrase.

Here’s a good question to pursue for those of a shallow, self-important mind-set (you know who you are):  Did Ian Fleming invent product placement?

I,to, look forward to seeing THE GOOD SHEPHARD.

Interstingly, not only did Ian Fleming write the James Bonds novels but he wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as well.

All the more reason to read his exciting narratives once again.

Ya know....I always enjoyed watching a Bond movie , when I was a KID.....a kid .....But now unfortunately , Hollywood seems to be a clone for the military industrial complex....Yeah...Major Major....peeny men such as Scorp , TI or HJ , probably find more than just a wishful phallic readjustment...they also find a mythical justification for their misplaced socio / economic / political agendas....

kimberlyausten, “believing” is not the same as “knowing”, it is much more subjective and not based on actual experience and, therefore, of very little value for humanity. By the way, I “believe” MDW were never found, and Bin Laden is only an invention for you to “believe” he is also an evil man. Where were the righteous Empire leaders when Pinochet and Videla were “disappearing” people in Latin America by the thousands?

Yes Maria, I admit what I don’t know.  I believe what I suspect.  It is of some value to humanity for people to have belief and suspect so that they can speak out, engage in dialogue, and begin to find the truth.  Some people may ot believe that Osama Bin Lada ever existed, some believe he exists no more.  Due to his health issues, I suspect he may have died.

Regarding Pinochet, we are not the world’s police, that is for the UN to handle.  We can intevene for as much as we are able, independently.  Why the UN didn’t interven, I do not know.  Pinochet was not a perceived threat to the United States as he was not bluffing about having weapons of mass destruction nor was he refusing the UN to gain entry into his country for weapon inspections.

There are numerous tragedies occuring across the world, including Darfur and the Sudan.  The Sudan reportedly does not want UN interferece as it would consider it an act of war.  There are charitable organizations that you can contribute to to assist in your own small way.  You can also check out what is going on with Amnesty International and what they recommend.  Some people, actually go into harms way to help in any way that they can.  What you choose to do is your own choice and your efforts will be of benefit to humanity.

Allende a Anti Semite Marxist crackpot ruined the economy of Chile.  Allende was accused of disregarding the courts, attempting to restrict freedom of speech, and supporting unauthorized seizures of farms and private industry for the purpose of establishing state control of the economy. The Chamber of Deputies also attacked Allende for seeking to “establish a totalitarian system absolutely opposed to the representative system of government established by the Constitution.

Pinochet as General overthrew Allende and rebuilt Chile’s economy. The “disappeared” were 3000 Marxists killed and 30000 “tortured” Pinochet outlawed Communism and rebuilt a strong economy In contrast to most other nations in Latin America, prior to the coup, Chile had a long tradition of democratic civilian rule; military intervention in politics had been rare. Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn.

In 1980, a new constitution was approved, which prescribed a single-candidate presidential referendum in 1988, and a return to civilian rule in 1990. In May 1983, the opposition and labor movements began to organize demonstrations and strikes against the regime, provoking violent responses from government officials. In 1986, security forces discovered 80 tons of weapons smuggled into the country by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), the armed branch of the outlawed Communist Party. The shipment of Carrizal Bajo included C-4 plastic explosives, RPG-7 and M72 LAW rocket launchers as well as more than three thousand M-16 rifles. The operation was overseen by Cuban intelligence, and also involved East Germany and the Soviet Union.

In September, weapons from the same source were used in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Pinochet by the FPMR. Pinochet suffered only minor injuries, but five of his military bodyguards were killed. The beheading of leftist professor José Manuel Parada, and journalist Manuel Guerrero, and Santiago Nattino by the uniformed police (carabineros) led to the resignation of junta member General César Mendoza in 1985.

Pinochet lost the 1988 referendum, where 57% of the votes rejected the extension of the presidential term, against 43% for “Sí”, this triggered multi-candidate presidential elections in 1989 to choose his replacement. Open presidential elections were held the next year, at the same time as congressional elections that would have taken place in either case. Pinochet left the presidency on March 11, 1990 and transferred power to Patricio Aylwin, the new democratically elected president.

Due to the transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, until March 1998. He was then sworn in as a senator-for-life, a privilege first granted to former presidents with at least six years in office by the 1980 constitution. His senatorship and consequent immunity from prosecution protected him, and legal challenges began only after Pinochet had been arrested in the United Kingdom.

Pinochet crushed Marxism in Chile and passed a strong industrial economy back to civilian hands in ten years.

Good, TI.

You might point out that Heritage.org ranks countries as Free, Mostly Free, Mostly Unfree, and Repressed.  Chile is the only country in Latin America that is rated as Free, and it has the strongest economy in Latin America.  Venezuela and Cuba are rated Repressed, along with NorK, Iran, and Libya.

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/downloads/Index05_EconFreedomMAP P.jpg

Similarly, freedomhouse.org has a looser rating system: Free, Partly Free, and Not Free.  Chile is rated Free, and is rated 1 (highest) for both political rights and for civil liberties, while Venezuela (Partly Free) is rated 4,4.  Cuba (Not Free) is rated 7,7, just like NorK.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/

The Economist runs a Quality of Life Index.  In 2005, Chile was rated highest in Latin America, number 31 in the world.  Venezuela was 59, and Cuba and NorK were not rated.

http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf

Leftists like to point fingers at Chile under Pinochet and South Korea a few years back, but refuse to acknowledge the much worse conditions that are endemic and epidemic in socialist states: mass murders, failing economies, fleeing populations.  But rightist thugs are historically less destructive than leftist thugs, and they universally have comparatively excellent final results.  But the leftist complaints never cease.

Interesting TI and Scorp.

I was wondering what life had been like for Chile before Pinochet.  I figured it had to be worse based on my knowledge of Mao Tse tung’s rule and Josef Stalin. 

It remeins tragic that so many had to die.  I guess it is true, freedom isn’t free.

If freedom is only the freedom to make money, if quality of life is averaged between the handful who experience great wealth against the multitudes who have nothing at all, then, yes, I suppose your right-wing foundation statistics are meaningful, scorpy.  Don’t forget that those figures you cite for Chile are under a Socialist government.

State sponsored deaths, political prisoners, torture victims and disappeared under Pinochet:  Tens of thousands.

Under Allende and the Socialist governments that have followed Pinochet:  0

Yes, Kimberley, freedom to be richer than anybody else is not free.  You should remind yourself everytime you use your computer that five million Congolese have died in recent history so the manufacturers of your PC can get their raw materials at the best market price.

If you are really curious, Kimberley, you might seek to discover why Henry Kissinger can’t travel to much of Europe.

Scorpy and JORGE, sittin’ in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G

More FRIENDS of scorp, fighting to keep the world free for right-wing thugs.

Freedoms outlined in our constitution and Bill of Rights…

Our capitalist system is what keeps our economy strong and the benefits that we currently enjoy icluding our public schools, Medicare, the welfare systems, health care systems for the poor, grants for education, etc...SSDI, I can go on, byut you get the picture.

Elected with only 36% of the vote and by a plurality of only 36,000 votes, Allende never enjoyed majority support in the Chilean Congress or broad popular support. Domestic production declined; severe shortages of consumer goods, food, and manufactured products were widespread; and inflation reached 1,000% per annum. Mass demonstrations, recurring strikes, violence by both government supporters and opponents, and widespread rural unrest ensued in response to the general deterioration of the economy and lead to the coup of Pinochet.

While Michelle Bachelet is a nominal socialist she is forbidden by the Constitution from nationalizing industries and redistributing personal wealth or property. Chile now enjoys a stable economy, and a growing foreign investment worth some 7 billion dollars. Banchelet can best be called a socialist on a very short leash. Perhaps the only acceptable kind.

In Guatemala, apparent US support for heavy-handed tactics used by the Guatemalan army and police in a war against a communist insurgency comes under question.

“This is not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as long as communists are being killed it is alright. Murder, torture and mutilation are alright if our side is doing it and the victims are communists. After all hasn’t man been a savage from the beginning of time so let us not be too queasy about terror. I have literally heard these arguments from our people.”

I’m really tired of you using the rubric of nominally ‘socialist’ dictators’ inhumanity to justify inhumanity on the part of the US security state, scorpy.

As Ghandi said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”.

“CIA actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende,� the report states. “Many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses....Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or US military.�

“The CIA’s Directorate of Operations is currently blocking the release of hundreds of secret records covering the history of U.S. covert intervention in Chile between 1962 and 1975.  The CIA issued “CIA Activities in Chileâ€� pursuant to the Hinchey amendment in the 2000 Intelligence Authorization Act--a clause inserted in last year’s legislation by New York Representative Maurice Hinchey calling on the CIA to provide Congress with a full report on its covert action in Chile at the time of the coup, and its relations to General Pinochet’s regime.”

Hey, Tex.  Is that a pistol in your pocket, or have you been dreaming of driving that car again?  Never mind.  Just curious.  What’s even more curious is your nasty little habit of lifting entire articles off the web and passing them off as your own.  The case in question is your selective quotation of a Wikipedia rough draft on the coup d’etat in Chile.  Unfortunately you failed to include the quotation marks which might have informed your audience that the opinion expressed was not your own.  On the other hand, you did manage to include a pair of extraneous quotes around the word “tortured” which were absent in the original article and appear to indicate your whole-hearted concurrence in the proposition that torture undertaken in the name of freedom is a fucking virtue.  Evidently you and your moronic cousin Scorp (a card-carrying member of Mensa, no less) actually believe that it was necessary to overthrow a democratically elected government in order to establish a militarilly-imposed democracy.  You should apply for position with the current administration.  I hear they’re looking for a few good imbeciles.  Have fun dreaming about that car.  Make sure you wear a condom.

Posted by kimberlyausten on Jan 1, 2007 at 10:03 AM

Yes, Kimberley, I do indeed get the picture.  Our capitalist system is so strong it is threatening to destroy the ecological balance of the planet.  But what does it matter what kind of world our grandchildren inherit, as long as ‘I get mine!’

Posted by Major Major on Jan 1, 2007 at 11:03 AM

It is an interesting fact that MENSA is a club for people with second-rate intellects.  Their motto could well be, “We’re no Einsteins, but we’re smarter than you. Nyah!  Nyah! Nyah!”

Loony Booty –

To quote myself:

But the leftist complaints never cease. 

All wealth is created. A mountain of gold is worthless unless someone mines the ore and processes it.  An unplowed field does not produce grain.  Trained workers, knowledge, factories, production machinery, and raw materials are forms of capital that are required to produce wealth. 

Free trade, including expanded knowledge, is required to increase wealth in poor countries: China and India are prominent current models, but Estonia, Ireland, and Chile have recently undergone radical transformations and upgrades in their ability to create wealth by following free trade capitalist models. 

Socialist redistribution of wealth results in the destruction of capital and universal poverty; that is why the Soviet Union collapsed.  Never in one hundred million years will you create prosperity by redistributing wealth from producers to non-producers.  The only hope for the world’s poor is to expand production, that is, follow a democratic capitalist model.

In 1970, freetheworld rated Chile dead last among the 54 countries evaluated.  In 2004, Chile is ranked number 20 in the world, among 130 countries evaluated.

http://www.freetheworld.com/cgi-bin/freetheworld/getinfo.cgi

So I am amused and bemused by your disparaging reference to “right-wing foundation statistics”.  The world is becoming more free and more prosperous following democratic, capitalistic models, after the death, destruction, and collapse of socialist models. 

State sponsored deaths, political prisoners, torture victims and disappeared under Pinochet:  Tens of thousands.

Not only are you exaggerating about the deaths under Pinochet, you are ignoring, as is the wont of socialists, the tens of millions of dead under socialism.

If your observations were not so tragic, they would be mildly amusing.  Why don’t you take your rant to the socialistworkers website, where it is appreciated?

“Revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him,” prompted a major scandal in the mid-1970s, and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate. Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976.

These documents include:

** Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry after Allende’s election, detailing conversations with President Eduardo Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.

** CIA memoranda and reports on “Project FUBELT"--the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende’s government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende’s government

** National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to “destabilize” Chile economically, and isolate Allende’s government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.

** State Department and NSC memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the new military regime led by General Pinochet.

** FBI documents on Operation Condor--the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations.

These documents, and many thousands of other CIA, NSC, and Defense Department records that are still classified secret, remain relevant to ongoing human rights investigations in Chile, Spain and other countries, and unresolved acts of international terrorism conducted by the Chilean secret police. Eventually, international pressure, and concerted use of the U.S. laws on declassification will force more of the still-buried record into the public domain--providing evidence for future judicial, and historical accountability.”

See, TI.  This is how you do it. Quotation marks and links to sources.  You don’t want to be thought of as a plagiarist, do you?

Not only are you exaggerating about the deaths under Pinochet, you are ignoring, as is the wont of socialists, the tens of millions of dead under socialism.

If your observations were not so tragic, they would be mildly amusing.  Why don’t you take your rant to the socialistworkers website, where it is appreciated?
United States Posted by scorp on Jan 1, 2007 at 11:41 AM

I’m not exaggerating ‘deaths’ under Pinochet.  I was giving the cumulative totals of ‘deaths, torture victims, political prisoners, and disappeared’, nor am I ignoring the tens of millions dead under nominally ‘socialist’ dictatorships.  They simply are not relevant. 

It is a red herring and straw-man fallacy with which you have endeared yourself.

Why are you so intellectually dishonest?

Why don’t you take your rant to FrontPage.com, where it is appreciated?

You do realize ITT is a democratic socialist publication, don’t you?

Scorpy, I have plenty about which to disagree with the CPUSA, etc., and nearly all revolutionary marxist movements of the past and present.

But I am not a member of those organizations, nor a citizen of those countries.  What criticisms I have of them is secondary to my moral obligation to bring my own nation closer to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality it espouses.

If you think it is somehow a good moral argument to rationalize inhumane brutality on the premise that we aren’t as bad as them, there is little that I can do to convince you otherwise.

If there is a Christian ‘Hell’ perhaps an eternity there will straighten you out. I wouldn’t bet on it.

“Never in one hundred million years will you create prosperity by redistributing wealth from producers to non-producers.”

So, in your opinion, scorpy, wage earners, laborers, mechanics, technicians and subsistence farmers are not producers, only the investment and professional managerial classes produce anything?

I would ask, who should own the means of production?  Those who do the actual work of producing, or those who have merely inherited the lion’s share of equity in capital property?

Why are some of you trying to tell peole to post elsewhere.  Anyone can read anything at any time.  Anyone can post of the websites mentioned in previous posts despite their position.  If the intent of these posts is to provide feedback and ideas, it seems counterproductive.  Writing from different perspectives can be enlightening to the reader.  If the reader doesn’t like what he reads, he can stop reading it or refute it. 

Regarding Henry Kissinger, I don’t really know much about him as that was before my time and my interests are such that I’m not going to research him at this time.  My choice.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

Of course it is your choice, Kimberly.

Choose wisely is all I ask.

Good grief.  The Goober has gone and quoted himself again.  That’s definitely symptomatic of a terminal mental dysfunction, probably a premature manifestation of Alzheimer’s.  No, Dumbo, wealth is not created.  It’s stolen from the people who are forced to create it with half-assed appeals to patriotic self-interest, who themselves stole it from the people who originally possessed it.  It’s stolen by the people who kidnapped the people who produced it for them.  It’s a chain of theft, murder and dispossession that’s older than the Bible itself, that glorifies the crimes they commit to survive in a world ruled by brute self-interest, one which was marginally more efficient than the predatory natural order they sought to escape.  Your free market fundamentalism is just another pathetic attempt to rationalize the crimes we elect our leaders to convince us to commit to ensure our collective survival at the expense of the indigent and to the benefit of the affluent.  They don’t call it the human race for the hell of it.

Major,

It’s not just that he quotes hisself, but it is such a banal question-begging quotation.  Complaining about other’s complaints, as it were.

Much like blondemike, scorpy, for all his purported native intelligence, has never actually learned how to think.

Considering that I demolished you in every encounter that we had, LB,
if I never learned to think, would does that make you ??????????
You are reducing to recycling Scorp’s lines now ? How pathetic,
you farty old queen. This whole board except for Hawaii Jack,
Kimberly and now myself, reads like a dialogue between inmates
at an asylum for the criminally insane. The raunchiest, cheesiest
right and left extremists.
Scorp, you need to do something other than wank off and listen to
Rush. LB, you need to readjust your girdle because you’re bitchy
crotch rot is getting on everyone’s nerves and your smegma is starting
to rival Shitcago’s in terms of foul odor, Tex, grab another plate of
jumping beans & wipe that grease off your employer’s keyboard,
Buck Private, Buck Private you’re a disgrace to the African race and
you need to get a job, bro.
Wishing you all a happy new year but I realize you have other plans.

Yeah, Mikey,

You completely demolished me when you demonstrated the fact that you have the vaguest notion of what an axiom is.

Another lesson you need to learn; juvenile insults and shallow opinions are not rational nor logical rebuttals.

You need professional help, Bunky.

luminous beauty, it is always a pleasure to read your comments and I wish you a good year. I have ceased giving my opinions because I always find it difficult to do it with a couple of “machos” spreading insults and justifying any atrocity for the sake of the prevailing system and calling anyone who dissents a “a “leftie”, or whatever.
kimberly austen: Kissinger’s influence in world events was important and painful enough and more so in Latin America, which I suppose you must know is part of the American continent and inhabited by human beings just as your part of the American continent (you are not the only Americans, right?). The CIA, Mr. Kissinger and thousands of agents did very nasty things in your name, though you are too young to have met them and their successors keep on doing similar atrocities wherever they feel it necessary for the prevailing of an unjust system. WMD are not our invention, and it doesn’t make me feel any safer to know that your country may have them stacked away somewhere, particularly if I remember Hiroshima.

Mil gracias, Maria.

Y tu, tambien; ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Loony Booty -

The capitalist problem of distributing wealth after it is created is quite different from the socialist problem of destroying wealth. 

So, in your opinion, scorpy, wage earners, laborers, mechanics, technicians and subsistence farmers are not producers, only the investment and professional managerial classes produce anything?

Well, no.  That is not what I said, there is no interpretation of what I said that comes out the way you phrased it, and it is patently stupid of you to say such a thing.

I would ask, who should own the means of production?  Those who do the actual work of producing, or those who have merely inherited the lion’s share of equity in capital property?

You have a gross misunderstanding and misapprehension of the modern economy.  Many years ago, I recall that it took $30,000 (I’m sure it is more now) to create one new job: a building, tools, equipment, desk and typewriter, whatever.  If a worker needs a job, must he wait until he has $30,000 before he can start work?  Ummm, no.  If you confiscate the capital that the worker uses in his job and give it to the worker, how many more jobs will be created?  (Hint: zero.) Are workers, individually or collectively, capable of optimizing financing, logistics, transportation, management, research and development, and the dozens of other functions required in a modern industrial environment?  (Hint: no.)

Companies and workers earn money because they satisfy needs.  The more revenue a company generates is direct evidence of how well the company satisfies its customers’ needs.  If you wish to put General Motors and Exxon Mobil out of business, you can do so in about thirty days.  All you have to do is refuse to buy their products.  But too many people need cars and gasoline; this includes rich and poor, men and women, laborers and executives, all people.  And in fact, even lower income people generally own cars, air conditioners, TVs, etc. 

Your observation on “inherited” equity is particularly ludicrous.  Bill Gates didn’t inherit anything, but he has satisfied many people’s needs.  Glancing through the Fortune 100, many of the largest companies in the USA did not exist thirty years ago, or were very small at that time; ideas are capital also.  And a good idea saves much money and labor.  At a quick glance, these companies, based on entrepreneurial capital, are recent developments: Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Verizon, Dell, Target, Lowe’s, UPS, Microsoft, Intel, Sprint, and FedEx.  That is millions of jobs that would not have been created within a socialist scheme.

You do not say so directly, but you seem to have bought into the left-wind fiction that the poor are getting poorer.  That is nonsense, of course.  Paul Krugman perpetrates and perpetuates this fiction.  All five quintiles of adjusted income improve over time, and an arbitrarily defined middle-class and under-class are both growing smaller as the number and conditions of the better off continue to grow and improve.  We are working our way out of poverty, just as China and India are doing.  We are just doing it much more rapidly than anyone else.  Now if we could just get Congress to use the SS surplus for personal investments, everyone could retire early in comfort. 

http://www.madison.com/post/forum/viewtopic.php?p=159235&sid=cd90c598f95ae64 4fe48a859bc76d201b

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121306A

Income and Wealth, by economist Alan Reynolds

Loony Booty -

… nor am I ignoring the tens of millions dead under nominally “socialist” dictatorships.  They simply are not relevant.

You leftists universally ignore “the tens of millions dead under nominally “socialist” dictatorships”, but you may be the first person ever to say they are not relevant.  So, let’s try to provide a little bit of relevance. 

Marxist philosophy explicitly stated that the workers’ socialism would develop and evolve, and that capitalism would fade away, just as capitalism arose as feudalism faded away.  Lenin initiated the idea that, instead of the workers developing and evolving their socialism, professional agitatiors and criminals would accelerate the process, and lead the workers to a glorious future, whether the workers wanted to be led or not.  This was the entire argument between the Bolshevics and the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks won(?). 

So, under Lenin’s system, the Bolsheviks did not wait for capitalism to fade away.  After Lenin and his successors killed emough workers there was no more resistance to Lenin’s philosophy, and the next step was to exterminate the capitalists, whether the capitalists wanted to be exterminated or not.  The fatal flaw in Lenin’s Grand Plan was that a system founded by agitators and criminals was corrupt and inefficient, markedly more corrupt and inefficient than more conventional socialism, such as poor old Western Europe now. 

I do not know how the Cold War got its name, sometimes it was pretty damn hot.  And it was explicitly fought against people who were quite willing to kill us if we did not follow their political and economic philosophy.  And, yes, we made some mistakes, but nowhere near the order of tens of millions.

The Vaky quote dates to 1968.  Let’s have a quick review of the world at that time:

Much damage was done to Europe and Asia in WWII in defeating the fascists and Japanese militarists.  In Europe, the USA offered Marshall Plan aid to Western Europe and to the Soviet Union to help rebuild those countries.  The Soviet Union refused the aid, and instead launched an unprecedented peacetime military buildup, including the development of nuclear and strategic weapons. 

In 1950, North Korea committed naked aggression against South Korea, and was supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China.  Over 33,000 Americans, and many Allied troops, plus tens of thousands of South Korean civilians and troops, died defending South Korea in an inconclusive action.

In 1960, Premier Krushchev stated that, “We will bury you,” which was taken as a very hostile remark, though he subsequently backed off from a hard interpretation of the comment.

In 1962, the Soviets shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba, which was a strategic shift and a direct threat to the USA.

In the early 1960s, North Vietnam committed naked aggression against South Vietnam, and was supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China.  Over 58,000 Americans, and many Allied troops, plus tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians and troops, died defending South Vietnam in a losing action.  The loss was a direct result of the American Congress withdrawing promised aid from the South Vietnamese.  About two million South Vietnamese then died in labor and re-education camps under the North Vietnamese. 

The Soviet Union consolidated its industrial and military might, and liquidated tens of millions of protesting and/or inconvenient citizens.  The SU then launched, at various times, aggressive military and KGB actions, sometimes utilizing Cuban or other proxies, against Greece, the Philippines, Malaya, Vietnam, Guatemala, Laos, Angola, the Domincan Republic, Cambodia, Chile, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Grenada.  During this same time frame, the Soviets also formed specifically anti-Western alliances with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, and Libya.  The Soviets also violently suppressed anti-communist protesters in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland during this period.

If you do not think that tens of millions killed by relatively sane socialists is relevant, you probably do not think that thousands killed by insane Jihadists is relevant, either.  The difference is that, while the socialists had nuclear weapons, they were sane enough to realize that a nuclear exchange would be suicidal.  But the whole Jihadist philosophy is suicidal, and they will use such weapons if they have the chance. 

Enjoy.

They aren’t relevant to Chile in 1973.  Allende wasn’t Lenin or Stalin or Castro or Mao or Pol Pot.  His is a different case.  That Cold War mythology is just that, mythology.  The Soviet Union was never a real threat to the US on the global stage.  The level of support they gave to revolutionary movements was pathetically asymmetrical to the amount we contributed to stop them.  There were Soviet spies in Chile, but their own records show that they had virtually no influence on Allende.  If he had taken their advice, which was a condition of their support, and taken firmer control of the police and military, he would never have faced a coup. 

What a load of horseshit, in any case.  You re-write history like it is a cheap novel.  Your notions of human motivation are cut from cardboard.  And as far as the middle east goes, you aren’t solving problems, you’re creating them.

luminous beauty..............scorpy doodoo, yes.......Not horseshit....we horses don’t eat that kind of crap to begin with....

Scorpy is well known for attempting to dump the unsatisfactory fallout or blowback , from the industrial military complexes covert / overt , capitalist ventures onto the victims of the aforementioned disingenious economic policies....

See in the Scorpy world , he views issues such as Allende as situations that have to be dealt with in a violent but covert manner....Then hacks like Scorpy...rhetoricalize the issue to the point were the average guy ...could give a damn......

Scorpies like the trash guy..he comes around once a week and cleans up after the capitalist using shallow socio-historically based ,economic arguements.....

Loony Booty -

Allende wasn’t Lenin or Stalin or Castro or Mao or Pol Pot.  His is a different case.

Of course Allende is a different case.  Allende was a useless idiot, just like you, but on a global scale.  The history of Allende’s systematic destruction of the Chilean economy is well documented.  Who suffered when food shortages developed and inflation hit quadruple digits?  The capitalists?  Naah.  The people suffered, just like the Kulaks suffered under Lenin and Stalin. 

The Soviet Union was never a real threat to the US on the global stage. 

What a foolish, inconsistent girl you are.  You started out saying that, “ ...  nor am I ignoring the tens of millions dead under nominally “socialist” dictatorships.  They simply are not relevant.” So, a well armed, aggressive, murderous ideology spreading by force and subversion in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America was not “a real threat” to the USA?  At what point would it have become “relevant”?  At what point would it have become “a real threat”?  Did the Socialists have to take over half the nations in each area and kill 100 million people in each area before they became “a real threat”?

There were Soviet spies in Chile, but their own records show that they had virtually no influence on Allende. 

Well, I guess that I am gratified that you acknowledge the presence of the KGB in Chile; most of your fellows do not, despite the historical record.  The KGB, and the NKVD before it, were the chief instruments of terror and the primary killers of innocent civilians throughout the Soviet Union.  You may think that the KGB became benign in dealing with Allende, but there is absolutely nothing in the record that supports your thesis.

One of the lessons learned the hard way in dealing with Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Saddam was that criminals should be dealt with promptly and decisively; it saves all kinds of lives and property.  We learn the same lesson repeatedly, but we are often slow to act on the knowledge, perhaps because a misstep could cause a major war.  So, when we do successfully apply this good principle in the case of the Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Grenada, you complain?  What is your problem, Toots?

scorp, as always, your “history"s pure fabrication. our involvement in ww1 to make the world safe for anglo plutocracy turned what would have been a desirable stalemate into a “victory” that produced the bolshevik takeover of russia, the versailles treaty, hitler’s rise in reaction to same, and ww2. ww2 produced the commie takeover of 1/3rd of the plant and a permanent war economy in the usa. our famed warfare-welfare state with govt expanding at all levels every year. the civil war
here produced the radical reconstruction then legal segregation in reaction to that, the 1898 war produced US mass murder of hundreds of thousands in the philippines and the takeover of cuba which eventually produced castro in reaction to 61 years of rightwing misrule.  so our attempt to deal with the criminal kaiser produced 40 million dead and hitler, then our attempt to deal with him produced 55 million dead and a huge chunk of the world to the commies which produced tens of millions dead in china alone. we supported saddam hssein first under nixon during his 1969 anti-left coup in iraq and then under carter & reagan in his US sponsored invasion of iran in 1980. as late as 1990 he was getting arms and dual technology and wheat from bush senior.
our attempt to deal with him in 1990-91 produced 200,000 dead in iraq, the tyrants being reinstalled in kuwait, al-sabah family, and eventually another two million iraqis killed under bush 1, clinton and bush 2. now another 700,000 iraqi casualties and 3,000 american casualties. our intervention in russian civil war produced the bolshevik victory and trotsky’s reign of red terror. our intervention in ww2 SAVED stalin. our intervention in nicaragua produced hundreds of thousands of casualties and the reinstallment of fascism in managua. our intervention in grenada killed hundreds of people in a mental hospital and was totally unnecessary as the commie factions were killing each other off. 700 medals were given by congress FOR NOTHING. our intervention in el salvador lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a fascist junta like the kind that we usually support. i already dealt with our intervention in the philpippines, it was US genocide pure and simple. our intervention in chile overthrew a democratically elected leftist govt and installed a fascist dictator who killed tens of thousands of chileans and exiled hundreds of thousands and tortured hundreds of thousands including murders in dc itself in may 1976.  our intervention in iran in 1953 overthrew another democratic left govt and installed the shah which led to khomeini.
so the USA which killed tens of millions of native indians and possibly 100 million black african slaves has killed AT LEAST 10 million more since ww2. there have been horrible leftwing dictators but many more rightwing ones and always supported by USA. btw, kgb was never in chile nor even eastern europe. only in ussr except for token spies who were killers just like our cia.
that answer your rhetorical question, penis breath ?

scorp, the few thousand killed by jihadists pale in comparison with the millions killed by US backed regimes OR the usa directly. war criminal gerald ford and war criminal kissinger gave indonesia the green light to invade east timor in 1975 killing one third (200,000) of the 600,000 population, equivalent to killing 100 million americans, the greatest proportional genocide in world history. and we have a holiday today to celbrate that dirty, genocidal piece of shit named gerald ford.
ergo for lbj in 65 backing the rightist coup in indonesia which killed over a million people from 1965-68. spare us your selective indignation at atrocities, scorp. you phony asshole, you not only greatly exaggerate official enemy killings but totally underplay usa killings, oh they weren’t listed in your cia “world fact” book ? no one but an insane asshole like you would confuse the sandinistas with pol pot or allende with stalin.
i wonder if the commies actually put you up to make the dumbest “arguments” for the right.
the khrushchev quote is a fake, saw it at the time, it only meant economic rivalry.  the soviets never used military or aggressive actions AGAINST cuba, dominican republic, nicaragua, chile. laos, guatemala, el salvador, ethiopia, vietnam, cambodia or mozambique. the USA
did in all of those countries except mozambique and we backed the renamo killers there who did. only afghanistan is correctly on your list.
ho chi minh is the george washington of vietnam and he never invaded “south” vietnam because there never was a real country of “south” vitnam, only a usa satrapy set up after geneva in 1954. ike refused to allow 56 elections because he knew ho would win as he admitted in his memoirs. USA killed 2-4 million in indochina, not the soviets. 
lb, mikey DID define an axiom, you are the one that apparently did not know what it meant if you reread the thread. you can’t debunk an axiom as you claimed. there was no need to respond to your silly example because it involved the fallacy of the stolen concept, using something you claim to dispute as the basis for your alleged refutation. using reason to discredit reason. you confused axioms with postulates.
as far as professional help goes, psychiatry’s a fraud, you need help in learning basic linear reasoning, aristotelian logic.

scorp, your wrong on the jihadists, they are not going to use weapons on israel which has 400-500 nukes or the usa which has 30,000 nukes. islamic pakistan hasn’t even used them on india. in fact we will be better if they DO get nukes because the world will revert to the stalemate of the cold war, the rosenbergs were HEROES, not traitors because by helping the soviets get nukes they PREVENTED a world war by insane unilateral US crazies, chomsky’s right that every us prez since ww2 is a war criminal by the very standards we invented at nuremberg and should be executed after a stacked trial like we had at nuremberg. you are an incredibly stupid neocon fuckface, scorp. part of the Dumb Right. i can see why usa war criminals did not want to sign the international treaty punishing war crimes because they know they will be in the dock.

“The history of Allende’s systematic destruction of the Chilean economy is well documented.”

No, it is not.  What is well documented is the CIA’s concerted and successful effort to undermine the Chilean economy under Allende.

Nixon said, “Make the economy scream”, and they did.

You just don’t understand that socialism can only work in a democratic society.  That is what undermined the Soviet Union.  Allende was well aware of this and is why he kept the Soviets at arms length.  Which is why all your ranting about the ‘evils of communism’ is not relevant. 

Capitalism (or what is called capitalism.  It is really more a brand of mercantilism), on the other hand, cannot abide democracy and does whatever it can to limit it to the most superficial and oligarchically controlled exercise thereof.

90% of the destruction of the chilean economy came as a result of us engineered strikes and economic sabotage. allende MIGHT have made a mess of things but we’ll never know since we criminally intervened to install a fascist mass murderer dictator who leaves 60% of chileans in poverty today after his welcome the other week. we are the ones bent on world domination as D. F. Fleming documented in his 2 volume 1961 work, The Cold War And Its Origins, see Horowitz’s The Free World Colossus, 1965 for a briefer treatment of same, the only good work he ever did. it’s 90% recycled fleming but he does give full credit.
redhorse, you’re being generous towards this buttface scorp, he is just
a knowing liar, deliberately throws up bullshit to see how much sticks
to the wall. removing scorp’s excrement is damn near fulltime work
and most of us do not get a govt stipend to do it as the scorp does.
btw, scorp, adjusted incomes have generally being going down in relation to purchasing power since 1973, see bartlett and steele in several books, jeff madrid and others.
do they have a neoconman lie central where you get this manufactured bullshit ? well, too bad, little scoopie, your lying ass gets nailed every time.

we actually agree here about the us in chile, beauty, though i was no allende fan. scorp recycles this neocon monomania shit ad infinitum. like many of the lefties here he reads the same old, same old to reinforce his ignorant prejudices. but you people let him get away with murder here, even much of his anti-soviet posturing is for the wrong reasons or based on lies, fabrications, gross exaggerations, half-truths, ad nauseum.

as chomsky correctly pointed out, we have nothing resembling laissez-faire or free market capitalism here in the usa. it’s a state propped up pentagon welfarism (for the rich) cum mercantilism. everything from computers to space to the internet is developed as a state monopoly and then turned over to so-called private sector which is the other cheek
of the same ass as the govt.

“mikey DID define an axiom, you are the one that apparently did not know what it meant if you reread the thread. you can’t debunk an axiom as you claimed. there was no need to respond to your silly example because it involved the fallacy of the stolen concept, using something you claim to dispute as the basis for your alleged refutation. using reason to discredit reason. you confused axioms with postulates.”

Jack, you are wrong.  There is nothing in what I wrote that denied or disputed existence or reason.  What I used to dispute the absurd illogic of the common truism ‘you can’t prove a negative’ was Aristotelian Logic.  If anyone was using the ‘fallacy of the stolen concept’ it was Mikey.  ‘You can’t prove a negative’ is generally the mantra of theists against atheists.  It is not logical nor reasonable, it is absurd on its face.  It is a negative. If you can’t prove a negative, then you can’t prove that you can’t prove a negative.  Meaningless bullshit.

‘Existence exists’ is not an axiom of logic, nor is it a definition of an axiom.  It is a specious philosophical premise at best.  It is a naive tautology. Begging the question. Circular reasoning.  Ayn Rand on meth.

‘That which you can not go beyond’, is even less a definition of an axiom.  Braindead hand-waving is more like it.

lb, are you insane ? basic logic teaches you that you cannot prove a negative, a negative is that which doesn’t exist, so by definition it can’t be “proved.”
existence exists is the basic axiom at the root of everything. if you don’t recognize you need to be hospitalized, don’t waste my further time here.

Jack,

In Logic, a negative proposition is one that states that something is not true.  E.g.  ‘dogs are not cats’, or ‘Batman is not as powerful as Superman’.  The fact that neither Batman nor Superman actually exist in a physical sense is immaterial.  The proposition exists.

If death means the end of human existence, then according to your reasoning, death cannot exist, since it produces non-existence and non-existence doesn’t exist, only existence exists.

You need to put away the Ayn Rand and take basic courses in logic and philosophy.

Don’t piss him off, LB.  He’ll stop taking the meds and create another sock puppet..  MH speaking through BM speaking through HJ is more than we can tolerate as it is.

But, wait!  He’s got another hand, two feet and a periodically rampant penis, which means…

LB, say it ain’t so!

Not YOU!!!!!!

lb, you need to take the same basic logic courses or read the books that rand and every sane person did. death means the end of our particular lives, not the end of existence. we gradually disintegrate, go study a pathology textbook if you have any further questions.
if you believe that you do not exist and are unconscious i’ll take you at your word. your propositions never have any referents in objective reality as your two above examples show.

major, what are you a major IN ? can’t understand your latest wordsalad, can it be translated into english or ebonics ?

Excuse me, but I’m trying to resolve an existential crisis here, and you keep interrupting the process.  Give me second to suspend my disbelief.

There.  That’s better.

your propositions never have any referents in objective reality as your two above examples show.
United States Posted by hawaii jack on Jan 2, 2007 at 4:52 PM

You mean dogs and cats are not objectively real?  That ought to save me lots in pet food expenses.

It’s reassuring that I’ll go on existing while my body rots.  Or maybe not.

Major, Shhhh!  You’ll be giving Jay Cline more strange ideas.

where did i ever write that animals are not real ? your consciousness goes out when you die but in your case it may not make a cognitive difference....................
sorry, major, are you sitting on the pot trying to free willie ? my apologies for disturbing your non-thought process.

Working backwards:

I quote Jack:

“where did i ever write that animals are not real ?”

I quote myself:

“You mean dogs and cats are not objectively real?”

I quote Jack:

“your propositions never have any referents in objective reality as your two above examples show.”

I quote myself: 

“In Logic, a negative proposition is one that states that something is not true.  E.g., ‘dogs are not cats’, or ‘Batman is not as powerful as Superman’.”

‘Nuff said?

“your consciousness goes out when you die”

In your inestimable opinion, Jack, does ‘goes out’ here mean ‘ceases to exist’ or maybe something more like ‘goes out on a date’?

Enquiring minds need to know!

ceases to exist, imbecile.

Thank you kindly, Jack.  Aristotle would be so proud!

Loony Booty -

You just don’t understand that socialism can only work in a democratic society.

Socialism is a flawed idea that works poorly in a democratic society, and terribly in a totalitarian society.  The socialist bureaucracy in Europe has stifled growth and has long-term high unemployment for over fifteen years.  European natives are dying off and Europe is being infiltrated by millions of Muslims, and the socialist Euros do not have a clue what to do about it.  Muslim crimes, riots, and destruction are standing fixtures in France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden.  I guarantee you we will have to go back into Europe for the third time in a century and straighten out their incompetent bumbling.  Instead of whining about Chile, why don’t you try to figure out how to help Europe?

Chile was basically a cold encounter in the Cold War, unlike, say, the communist aggressive wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.  Given the murder and repression that characterized the Soviet Union, commumist China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cambodia, the USA was not welcoming toward an avowed Marxist like Salvadore Allende in the Western Hemisphere. 

These are the actions that Allende and his supporters took that destroyed the Chilean economy.  The USA had little or no involvement in most of them.

First Allende froze prices and started spending money, some of it to “helpâ€Â� the needy.  But there are ways to help the needy without creating inflation, which is what happens when you freeze prices and spend extra money. 

(Allende) moved to put more wealth in the hands of common folk by raising wages, freezing prices and creating public works. He initiated a program that gave free milk to children. Common people and small business were offered tax relief, and pensions were raised for the elderly.

The rise in inflation created demands for higher wages with no increase in productivity.  On the contrary, Allende began stealing property and turning it over to the inefficient bureaucracy, guaranteeing that falling productivity would be faced with higher wage demands: more inflation.

Allende nationalized the copper industry, without compensating its owners. He nationalized other foreign owned businesses and some Chilean-owned businesses considered monopolies. State run businesses came to control 60 percent of Chile’s Gross National Product. Workers in business that remained privately owned clamored for nationalization of their industry, hoping for the better pay and working conditions they believed were accruing to public-sector employees. Some industrial workers in privately owned companies took over their factories. 

As the socialist bureaucracy destroyed productivity and discipline, inflation got worse and social cohesion started to fail.

Worker discipline and productivity in other industries fell. Government owned industries were suffering from political appointments rather than appointments based on expertise. Bad weather and social turmoil was diminishing food production. Allende was pursuing more agrarian reform, and impatient peasants, encouraged by the call for equality and for revolutionary change, were seizing land illegally.

Allende’s inflation was damaging to the people and to the nation, and he took good socialist measures that made matters worse.

Allende’s attempt to control inflation by freezing prices did not work. More money chasing few goods contributed to more inflation, as did the continuing demand from labor for higher wages. The money supply had doubled. The continual rise in prices was hurting people. The Nixon administration had stopped aid to Chile, and investment in Chile from abroad had dried - as was to be expected given the nationalizations and hostilities toward foreign capital within Chile. To the Left it seemed that Allende’s Chile was under attack from hostile forces. There had also been withdrawals from bank deposits and an exodus of capital from Chile.

The social and economic turmoil led to rightist defensive measures, and to Allende’s downfall.

People opposed to Allende marched in the streets. Denunciations abounded. A threat to massacre communists was declared. Incidents of violence by the Right and by the Left increased. Armed anti-Leftists vigilante defense groups appeared in middleclass suburbs. Landowners were defending themselves violently against attempted seizures of their land. The toleration needed for democracy to work was disappearing.

Chile’s independent truckers did not care for threats to create socialist trucking. On July 26, 1973, the truckers began another of their strikes, crippling commerce. Allende was not moving to appease centrists, and, in August, Congress moved against him, declaring that the Allende’s government was in fundamental violation of Chile’s constitution. Chile’s judiciary joined in and asked the military to step in and put an end to infringements on the nation’s constitution and laws. The military responded, believing that they were saving Chile. The military stormed the presidential palace, and Allende died with his machine gun in his hands. (The AK-47 was from Infidel Castro, and had an inscribed plate on the stock showing it to be a gift to Allende.)

Given Allende’s superb capacity for doing all the wrong things, Nixon could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just letting Allende destroy himself.  But Nixon was correct that we did not need another crackpot Marxist in a responsible position.

All the above quotes from:

http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch24y.htm

You don’t give up do you, scorpy.  You’d murder commie babies with your bare hands and suck their blood through a straw, for a buck, wouldn’t you?

Back to the subject, have you seen “The Good Shephard?”

Maria:  I consider myself an American as in a legal resident of the United States.  To be geographically specific, I live in North America.  I do consider both Noth and South American residents to be a people of great and equal value.  I do not break Canadians down by provinces but refer to them as Canadians.  I refer to Mexicans as those reside in Mexico.  I normally refer to South Americans by the country in which they reside.  I do have a dear friend who happens to be living in the United States of America illegally as he is waiting for the paperwork to be completed and receive U.S. citizenship.  He is a native of Guadalajara.  He is married to an Indiana native who has lived in Arizona for the last 10 years.  I normally think of her as an Arizonan.  They have a beautiful baby girl now and are expecting their second child this summer.  He is not able to leave the U.S. without risking the chance he will not get back in.  His wife and her parents will be traveling to Guadalajara after the second child is born so that the Guadalajaran grandparents and family will be able to see his precious family.  I consider the three of them American but only his wife and chlldren residents of the United States.  I hope that he will become legalized soon so that he too is able to travel freely back and forth between the two countries.

LB:  I was not aware of the connection between PC’s and the Congo.  I guess you feel pretty comfortable about it as you seem to use your PC quite a bit, rather than boycotting the products and refusing to enjoy the technology.

I do have a great problem in wearing my wedding ring, however.  It is a beautiful gold ring with three diamonds and two rubies.  After becoming more aware of what happened to the people in Rwanda, I began to not see my diamonds as so beautiful.  I watched a special where some company in Africa cuts off the hands of children whose nails are dirty as it could be an indication of digging in the dirt, looking for diamonds.  I saw pictures of a precious little girl who had had her hands cut off.  It was so unnerving that I began no longer requesting gifts in diamonds and infact, stopped wearing my wedding as a practice in general. 

Regarding Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, I will talk to my son in law who happens to teach history in a high school setting.  If my interest is sparked, I will read on.

Loony Booty -

You don’t give up do you, scorpy.  You’d murder commie babies with your bare hands and suck their blood through a straw, for a buck, wouldn’t you?

That is a pretty stupid statement, even for you.

The left has this romantic, pathetic, mythic, false image of Allende which it actively promotes.  Based on what?  The most distinguishing feature of Allende’s career was the haste with which he installed failed socialist policies, and the speed of the disastrous results, followed quickly by the reactions of people who feared for their well being and their hard-earned property.  Allende’s Chile is a fast-forward of every socialist government everywhere.  Even China, Vietnam, and most of the nations of the former Soviet Union are seeking capitalist trade and aid, which we are glad to give, in the belief that prosperity leads to personal well being and personal freedom.  Witness Chile.

Let me guess.  Movie?  Religious movie?  I seldom watch movies, certainly not religious movies.  Tell me about it.

Yeah, scorpy,

You only go after me because I’m so stoopid.  Yeah. Right. 

You’re a fairly bright guy, but you are obsessively anti-socialist.  I have no idea what caused you to adopt such a lop-sided and narrow mental frame, but it does not flatter you.  I suspect you are just one of those block-headed Midwestern boyscouts who have attained a certain financial and social standing and consequentially believe the sun shines out of their butts. 

Allende started a free milk program.  Omigod!  That right there is reason enough to round up all the lefties in Chile, beat them, imprison them without any contact with their families or legal representation, torture them most cruelly and murder thousands. 

You are all right with that.

You are morally bankrupt.  You are exactly the kind of banal, ethically challenged and mindless drone that fits so easily into Nazi Germany’s SS, or the Soviet Kremlin, or resides in the upper floors at Langley.

We’ve been having this conversation for how long now?  In all that time you haven’t altered your propagandized political nonsense rant one whit.  It is ‘all socialists are the same as Stalin, Europe’s going to hell in a handbasket, the jihadist, islamo-fascist bogeymen are coming to murder us in our beds.’ Oooh! Oooh! Oooo!  I’m so scared.

You unceasingly spout bullshit.  One small part truth, one large helping of disinformation and sanctimonious nonsense.  When caught out, the silence of your blithe disregard is deafening.

I assume you used your MBA to get into middle management and not sales or marketing, because you very obviously have no talent for it.

“The Good Shephard” is a spy movie.  If you glance at the film review with which this discussion is supposedly concerned, it is about a spy movie.  Unlike the James Bond thriller marketed for adolescents and those like yourself whose moral development is stunted at the adolescent level, “The Good Shephard” is a film for adults. 

You should see it.  A little culcha might be just what you need to break out of the mindless rut in which you find yourself.

what’s the particular far right wing source that you are quoting from now, scorp ? you pull this shit all the time, long rightist boilerplate rants from ultra-right sources that just happen to coincide with your preconceived prejudices. europe in its western and northern parts is far more prosperous and far better off than the usa. our interventions in ww1, ww2 and the cold war were disasters and no one in europe wants us there again, most people there disdain the mcdonalds’-walmart way of life. your caricature of democratic socialism is a farce, they are plenty of good arguments against it but you never present one. time to hang it up, everyone is getting sick of your hijacking threads to post your illiterate rightist monologues. it’s no coincidence that chile and every place in south amercia but colombia has now elected democratic socialist govts and colombia will next.
lb, he is NOT bright, what the hell’s wrong with you ?

lb, shockingly i actually agree with most of your post above on scorp.
he does this hit and run number repeatedly. probably need not to feed
into it but i’m guilty of it because i hate to see his BS unrefuted.

Well, shet mah mouth.  So, tell me.  If we’re all sock puppets, does that mean there’s a Master Puppeteer somewhere out there in Puppetland, the universal set of all puppet sets?

Including the empty puppet set and the universal puppet set itself?

And, finally, if he slips the sock on his cock, does that make him a peckerhead?

Perhaps, a master baiter?

O jeez!  I’m sorry.  I hate puns.  Sometimes one just can’t help oneself.

Don’t forget the imaginary puppet set, the mandelbrot puppet set, or puppet events mapped into hilbert space.

MM & LB, is it hard writing from a straitjacket ?

Jack,

Don’t you mean from inside a sock, puppet?

Loony Booty -

... but you are obsessively anti-socialist.

Well, that is not true, of course.  I am anti-murder.  I am against corruption.  I am against inefficiency.  I am anti-bureaucracy.  I am against the Soviet nomenclatura and the American “elite liberals” (same thing).  So, yes, I can see how a person such as yourself might think that I am “anti-socialist”.

I have absolutely no quarrel with socialist objectives.  Children do need milk.  People need to have their basic needs met.  The Soviet Constitution reads like a human rights document.  So, how is it that we follow the road of good intentions and end up in the hellish reality that was the Twentieth Century?  More importantly, where do we go now?

I think the first problem is that Marx’s program was adopted wholesale by socialists and, for whatever reason, it closed off all subsequent thought.  By adopting Marxist slogans as the answer to all problems, no subsequent thought was required, or appropriate, or appreciated.  In this regard, socialists tend to cult-like sameness, and all answers are found in the socialist catechism on class and conflict.  The only variation in the socialist theme was whether to follow Bolshevik or Menshevik principles.  Bolshevism has a bad name, as you acknowledge, but you follow a bastard Bolshevik-Menshevik hybrid, and it isn’t doing too well, either.  Regardless, you keep striving for power in order to install your socialist medicine in a world that gets healthier and healthier without you. 

Not only do socialists have a Ninteenth Century take on matters of class and conflict, they are ignorant (and unappreciative) of the very real progress in scientific, economic, and political thought that has taken place in the last one hundred years.  Socialists can use modern developments, like a Jihadist can use a cellphone, but where are the socialist scientists and entrepreneurs and thinkers and cellphone inventors?  Socialist Europe is an entrepreneurial and innovative wasteland.  Even the Google founders have installed one basic idea on a platform invented by someone else.  Ben and Jerry produce good ice cream but they did not invent ice cream.  Who else?

Another problem is the socialist class system (!).  The Soviets had their nomenclatura, who had access to money and to autos and to western goods in stores that were denied to the Proles; the nomenclatura were utterly corrupt.  We have our own elite liberals who have, until recently, kept tight control of news sources, and Academia.  But Old Media has been caught in too many corrupt lies (Rathergate, fauxtography, Jamil Hussein, hyperinflated Iraqi casualty figures), and they are losing readers, and viewers, and revenue, and profits.  Incidentally, Leon Trotsky coined the term “elite liberalâ€Â� early in the 1900s to describe the lordly ways of the German socialist leaders. 

To illustrate how far off base the Bolshevik-Menshevik hybrid is trying to take us, consider the following examples. 

Example:  We know (WE KNOW!) that lowering taxes in 2001 was the correct thing to do to correct the excesses and turmoil in the economy at that time, and we now see record high employment and markets, and excellent growth, and a falling deficit. 

Example:  We know (WE KNOW!) that free trade promotes wealth and jobs for everyone, and we know that restrictions on free trade (the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs) prolonged the Great Depression and increased unemployment.

So, the Democrats are in Congress, and their solution to our non-problems include raising taxes and limiting trade.  Oh, Boy!

That is just like Allende in Chile whose first official acts included freezing prices and increasing wages.  Oh, Boy!  These and other similar policies soon drove inflation up like the Wiemar Republic, and the Chilean economy was ruined.

Fortunately, every time the Democrats fuck up the economy, Reagan or George Bush or someRepublican comes along and fixes it.  Thank God for democracy, or we would all be stuck in the Soviet Union or a Democratic Administration, poor, abused, and ignorant.

Scorpy,

If you are so anti-murder then why can’t you admit that Pinochet was a murderer?  Why try to pin all the blame on Allende?

What destroyed the Chilean economy was the bottom falling out of the copper market.  Who was in a position to flood the market with copper? 

Hint: it wasn’t Allende.

Loony Booty –

If ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest little girl in Creation.  In one short post you have made four erroneous and unjustified assumptions. 

… Pinochet was a murderer?

Of course Pinochet was a murderer.  That is bad.  But it is not as bad as allowing Allende to wreck a country and leave the people poor, abused, and ignorant, like his fellow socialists were doing in the Soviet Union and Asia.

As long as we are condemning torturers and murderers, I haven’t heard your comments on the men Che personally shot or the people who were tortured in Castro’s prisons.

… all the blame on Allende?

I certainly did not place “all the blame on Allende”.  Allende was a useless idiot for the Soviets and their Cuban proxies.  In referring to Allende at all, it was in his role as figurehead, but he was the one who signed the destructive inflation-producing laws, regardless of who wrote them.  Nixon did not write those laws, as you once tried to convince us.  But Nixon was well justified in his opposition to the spread of socialism.

What destroyed the Chilean economy was the bottom falling out of the copper market. 

Ummm, no.  The price of copper was $66/ton in 1970 when Allende took office.  Allende promptly nationalized the copper mines and the banks, and the big landed estates.  He also froze prices, raised wages, and started printing money to pay for it.  By 1971, food production was down and Chile had to start importing food.  Copper prices dropped in 1971, and went down to $48/ton in 1972, a drop of about 27%.  Meanwhile, the price of a basket of consumer goods rose 120% in the month of August, 1972. 

Who was in a position to flood the market with copper? 

Hint: it wasn’t Allende.

You make the most ridiculous damn comments.  Allende was the single person in the whole world who had the capability to flood the copper markets if he wanted to do so.  Chile has more than one-third of the copper reserves in the world, more than any other country.  Chile has higher production of copper than any other country, and Allende had just stolen the entire amount from its rightful owners.  Who was in a better “position to flood the market with copper”?

My horseback estimate is that the Vietnam War was starting to unwind, and copper demand was falling like a rock.  Your unstated assumption that the USA was flooding the market is unwarranted and flaky.

The prices of copper and oil, the subject of your last ridiculous comment on commodity markets, are notoriously volatile.  You really ought to read up on commodity markets before embarrassing yourself further.

In Those Times

Scorpy,

I am glad you have admitted that Pinochet was a murderer, at long last.

Can you tell me if commodity prices can be manipulated by intentional over-production?  (volatility is short term variability, annual or semi-annual.  The steady increases in petroleum prices are long term trends on a decadal scale.  You do understand the difference?)

There were indeed structural problems that Allende was trying to address prior to the fall of copper prices.  Price controls and Keynesian spending were short term emergency measures brought about by the loss of international investment.  They were working for about 18 mos. when the shit hit the fan.  Allende was most certainly mistaken in believing that he could move as quickly to nationalize industry as he did.  He totally misjudged the ferocity with which the oligarchy would turn on him. 

None of his mistakes justified the horrors of Pinochet.

scorp, you can produce all the phony rightist think tank figures but at the end of the day Allende was a democratically elected President who tried to help the great majority of less well off people in Chile and Pinochet was a vicious murderer and fascist dictator whose policies to this day have left 60% of Chileans worse off including 40% of the Santiago population. you say maybe Allende would have done this or that and falsely try to connect him to the Soviet bloc but that’s your standard redbaiting hoopla, nobody is fooled. you have never apologized for the 250,000 Guatemalans murdered by the US financed rightwing from 1954-1991, the 200,000 Nicaraguans murdered by the US backed fascist contras, the 300.000 Salavadoreans murdered by the US financed rightists there, the 200,0000 East Timorese murdered by Moron Jerry Ford when he gave the green light to the Indonesian Army to invade in 1975 and the four million civilians the US directly muredred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during their CIVIL war.
The one million murdered by the US backed Indonesian junta from 1965-68. Chile has now elected another democratic socialist President and Pinochet died in disgrace exposed as a common thief as well as mass murderer. You should stick to the commodities markets because you know nothing of politics, economics or history.  You are as shortchanged in the mental department as you are in that other sensitive area.

Scorpy,

What I find most disingenuous is your insistent obliviousness to the concerted efforts, both overt and covert, of the most powerful nation in the world to de-stabilize the Chilean economy, implying they had no effect at all.

“Who was in a better “position to flood the market with copperâ€�?”

Anaconda, Kennecott and ITT had oligopolistic control of international markets and production.  Chilean copper producers were limited in who they could sell to and how much they coul