'scuse me;
When Shrub said this, he was speaking in reference to a satirical website about him. Junior is notoriously thin-skinned and really believes that sites like this one should be censored. I'll take anarchy over fascism any day.
That's cuz "economic liberty" is aka fiscal conservatism- IOW, if you look at the (silly, simplistic and wrong, but somewhat appropriate here) idea of "left" and "right", a Libertarian is more on the left in terms of social issues, but more on the right in terms of economic issues. Bush and Gore are centrists almost to the point where the differences are blurred (but not totally, and there are important differences!), so I'd expect a Lib to vote either way, if not for the Lib. party candidate.
For the record, IA(O)NAL (I am (obvioiusly) not a libertarian).
BTW, I love it when people call me a "dangerous liberal," please fire away =)
It's really not hard to read the FAQ Actually, yeah it is. Whoever wrote that FAQ needs to go back to English 101 and learn that it's not acceptable to use block quotes for 3/4 of an essay. But that's not the point.
Why is it that almost every new activist I come into contact with identifies with anarchism? Try Lenin's "Left-wing communism: an infantile disorder".
Democracy (not Republic) Certainly sounds nice... like one of the Party guys said, the Party could have written 70% of his platform.
The problem is, he's still a captialist, and some of us are afraid that a Nader government would result in what we call "happy capitalism," where the exploitation continues, but we all feel ok about it. Think of your local evening news three months ago- sure, cops killed an unarmed man in the alley, but, DAMN, look at the stock market fly! What a great country!
Anyway, if Nader actually won the election, we'd be much beter off than if Gore won (won't even talk about Shrub). I'd jump for joy, but as it is, he's got like 7% in the polls. He might pick up as much as 15% when all is said and done, and I wish him and the Greens luck, but I have no false hopes.
Whoa, back the truck up...
I use my friend here as an example of an idea, not as an example of anarchists in general (hence the self-described). I know little to nothing about anarchists as a group- I know some about the black bloc (morons, in a word), and I listen to what my friend says, that's it.
Face it, man. Communism is dead. There's no possibility of a Communist revolution anymore. Anarchism, however, is gaining steam.
*snort*
Then why has the YCL tripled in size in the last year? Come to Algeria next August for the Youth Festival, and tell the 5000 expected attendees that communism is dead.
The best thing you could do for yourself right now is to educate yourself about anarchism, and not blindly accept the propaganda of your "leaders."
Pots and kettles, pal. And I'm not the one dressed all in black.
You think corporations need the government to fuck us? What had M$ been doing for over a decade? What were you paying for gas last month? What is the average American's standard of living today, in comparison to the 1950s? In a word, it's all fucked.
We're getting pricejacked left and right, but no one gets paid more. In today's money, the average laborer made $50,000 per year in the 50s, and had a good pension to retire on. Today, laborers are lucky to make $35,000, even though cost of living has jumped, and pensions are practically unheard of.
The government is body of officials elected to protect the people who put them in office- be it from big business, corrupt cops, gangs or hurricanes, and I think we'd be far better off if the wealthy 1% had their roles in our protection taken away.
Not to "me, too!", but, right on! While I'm not totally down with Nader (if these guys ran a candidate, s/he'd have my vote for sure), he's a helluva lot better than Bushgore, and I feel like the Libertarian party would just hand over totall control of the nation to corporations (not that they don't practically 0wn us already).
What gets me is that the Libertarians seem to extend laisse-faire to their own political actions: I protested at the Republican National Convention as part of the Young Communist League contingent. There were about 50 of us from around the country, hundreds of Greens, lots of anarchists, lots of ultra-leftist "free Mumia" types... and maybe 10 libertarians.
They all wore orange shirts, and I saw 'em march around in a circle chanting "hey hey, ho ho, the IRS has got to go" for about 20 minutes, then they disappeared. That was the first and last I saw of them. Way to stick it to the man, y'all.
Anyhoo, the way I see it, the Libertarian party is the "nice republicans." They've got the same "I've got mine, so fuck you" mentality, and only really differ on social issues like drug laws and separation of church and state.
I have a friend who's a self-described anarchist, who bases his political ideals on the idea that no one should have power over him. I see that same streak in the Libs: "I'm too smart to have people rule over me." Horse shit. As long as humans number in the billions, there's got to be an organizing structure. I, personally, am loathe to let corporations, religion or the wealthy 1% have any part of that structure, so I act. I'm out on the weekends, recruiting voters or YCL members, passing out campaign literature or the People's Weekly World newspaper or doing strike solidarity (go Verizon workers!).
It takes work to make a difference, and it also takes a clear idea of what's what. Libs, it's not the government that's fucking you, it's the corporations that own the government. Economics dictate politics in a capitalist society, not the other way around, and the only way to fix our political system is to fix our economic system.
The above is all widly disjointed, but I think my main points were in there someplace =). OT arguments, please use e-mail.
"Water is free... but I still pay a buck for it in a bottle... "
Right on. Not to mention the illusion that what you pay for is better than what you get free. My boss NEVER would have allowed us to use Linux for our intranet server, until he found out you could buy a RH distro for $180 (or whatever the "enterprise" edition costs). That's not to say that we wouldn't have used Linux anyway (vs. buying an AIX license- and we're pretending to be on a tight budget!), but this was the path of least resistance.
I realize that a bottle of Thorspring really IS a helluva lot better than what you get from the tap here in Chicago, and that the $180 gets you commerical software and support, but my point is that the mentality of "you get what you pay for" is still running rampant in corporation-land, and will be until capitalism eats itself (oops, did I say that? =).
I guess my last post was pretty far OT, but this is a fun discussion.
"Why, the government can just garnish the wages of the top 1% of wage-earners and use it to buy everybody sports cars! That is your socialist paradise, isn't it?"
Kinda, except part of the idea is to get people away from the capitalist idea of identity through consumerism. You are defined by your actions, not your posessions.
" Everybody's equal?" Right.
" Hard work means nothing? " Wrong. The idea is that 40 hours of work as a VP is not more vaulable than 40 hours of work flipping burgers. News flash, AC: people are POOR, and our capitalist system does everything it can to keep them that way. If we can help them and all it means is that Bill G. gets to buy one less porsche for his fleet, it think it's insane to do anything else. The wealthy generally aren't wealthy for being better people, and the poor generally aren't poor for being worse.
"If those in the working class were as "competent" as you claim, it's a wonder that they're still in the working class. Our society gives people the tools that they need to advance themselves, if they are talented enough."
Like a great, low- or no-cost eduacation, right? Like low- or no-cost health care so they can overcome physical disabilities or diseases without having to lower their standard of living? Bull shit. You're living in a rich suburban fantsy world. The simple fact is that racism, sexism, homophobia and burning arrogance blind the "upper class." They see what they want to see; people are happy, things are great, America is the land of opportunity, and we're rich becuase we're smart.
That's a fat load, and you know it. The rich are so because of the work other people do, not because they have some kind of fucking divine right to wealth. The assertion that "anyone can make it" has been an illusion from the very start. Wealth begets wealth; when was the last time you heard about a young black kid from a poor family making millions on a NASDAQ IPO? Never. They're always from families that were relatively well off to begin with.
"There is NO EXCUSE for not having enough retirement money to live on. If you didn't save, it's your fault."
Problem is, people used to have pensions to retire on. What do we have? IRAs, 401K's, which require you to set aside money from your paycheck. People who live hand-to-mouth can't afford that, so they have to live on SS. Not to mention the people with disabilities, and people who are widowed who can't support themselves or their families.
[ snip a lot of hysterical liberal gun-grabber crap ] Sorry, I just have an aversion to being shot.
"Jesus said that those who speak the truth will be attacked. Your comment here is just more evidence that our Lord was correct. "
Jesus also said that it is eaiser for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. Enjoy your Boxster.
I'm sorry, but I really don't think taxes are the worst thing in the world, if they're imposed fairly. When a "wealthy Londoner" buys a canoe online, why the hell shouldn't he cough up a few extra pounds so the rest of us have a shot at buying a canoe? WTF makes the wealthy Londoner any more worthy of a canoe than the rest of us?
Argue all you want about how much harder he works, how much smarter he is, Social Darwinism, all that. Hooey, I say. The vast majority of "upper class" individuals (read, capitalists. See Websters if this confuses you) are far less competent than the vast majority of people in the working class. Typically, you don't get rich by being smart- you get rich by being well connected and generally nasty (ref Micro$oft).
I honestly can't speak for Mr. AC, but I'd be much happier if I knew my tax dollars were going to causes like welfare, medicaid, etc. than the military, NSA, CIA, Congress, or large corporations in the form of tax breaks. Corporate "welfare" accounts for something like 5X as much of the US budget than actual welfare going to the working-class poor.
"They've already got their foot in their door with socialist entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare."
Yeah, look at all those people just living it up on SS benefits. $600 a month, damn, that's almost enough to rent a two-bedroom apartment! Talk about the sweet life!
Get with it, AC. People get SS when they can't support themselves. There are people who cheat the system, but I'd rather support the cheaters than let the legitimate beneficiaries die on the streets.
"After they nationalize the health care system and shut down private, religious schools,"
then maybe we can get some decent funding for the education system. I grew up in Chicago in a low-income area; the schools were, in a word, SHIT. So what do I do? My parents can't afford private school, and neither could the parents of the other 1200 students. You want to close down the public schools and let them get replaced by Pepsi Cola Grammar and Microsoft High? Fuck that. Waivers don't help either- simple supply and demand laws that a capiatalist like you probably has tatooed on his arm will tell you that. In Chicago, there are over 515 public schools. I don't know how many private schools there are, but if you shut them down, supply of schools drops, demand stays the same, therefore price goes up. A waiver for schools (which is a pittance in most proposed bills) won't cover a kids education. Fewer educated people means more desperately poor people, which means more crime.
One more thing: "They'll be up against a firefight if they knock on my door"
It's bad for one's/. karma to come down on gun nuts, but this just line had me ROFL. One, WTF makes you think the government is gonna come after you? Let me be blunt here: you do NOT stand out in the eyes of the government. You are a gnat, and an armed gnat is still a gnat. If you get into a "firefight" with Big Brother, who do you think is gonna end up full of holes? Who do you think will notice if another armed gnat gets squished? What do you think the headline will read? "Patriot gunned down by oppresive governmnet agents," or "Looney with AK-47 gets what he asked for"?
I'm done now. It's just that Ayn Rand dipshits like this really get to me.
Since every president ever shot while in office was elected in a year that ended in 0 (Regan, Kennedy, Lincoln), I think we can expect this to happen, but not until after he's elected. That's why I'm voting for Bush- there's no one I'd like to see shot more than lil Shrub!
That's what I'm screaming. I've stopped watching TV- I'd rather entertain myself than be forcibly entertained by something as one-way as TV. What I'd like to see is broadcasters hooking me up with a piece of that 17Gbps bandwidth... But only if I could get it going at a nice high speed in _both_ directions. Don't think that'd work too well, since I can't have a VHF tower in my backyard.
"Due to flagrant inaccuracies this article has been pulled and is being re-written.Occasionally one of these slips through the editorial process. Computer Currents regrets the error."
Of course this means I won't get to read the article for myself, but judging from the above posts, it's not much of a loss. I wonder what the re-write will sound like?
It won't be a long wait- I read that the 2000 Pontiac Bonneville will have this feature available too. BTW- that car's base price is somethign like $30K, much less than the Caddy. Much sexier, too IMO.
I thought it rocked. The actors were totally believeable, and the style of it really drags you into the movie. I went to bed that night and was sure I'd wake up with rock piles around my bed . Every sound I heard while I was trying to sleep freaked me out. The only problem I had was that I went to see it at a big-name theater in Chicago for $8.50, when it would have been just as good (maybe better) at a small neighborhood multiplex. Plus, there were a lot of NOISY DUMBASS people in the audience, and you could hear the soundtrack of the movie playing next to us over the sound of the movie we were watching. Other than the atmosphere in the theater, it was an incredible experience!
Back in my Windoze days, I had First Aid and Norton CrashGuard- both of those God-awful resource hogs caused more crashes than they prevented. My uptime prior to using those programs was about 1-2 weeks (not bad for Win95), but after the install, it was like 5-6 hours. Sorry, I'm perfectly happy without loading crap like that on my Debian box.
Slashdot Mirror
'scuse me;
When Shrub said this, he was speaking in reference to a satirical website about him. Junior is notoriously thin-skinned and really believes that sites like this one should be censored. I'll take anarchy over fascism any day.
That's cuz "economic liberty" is aka fiscal conservatism- IOW, if you look at the (silly, simplistic and wrong, but somewhat appropriate here) idea of "left" and "right", a Libertarian is more on the left in terms of social issues, but more on the right in terms of economic issues. Bush and Gore are centrists almost to the point where the differences are blurred (but not totally, and there are important differences!), so I'd expect a Lib to vote either way, if not for the Lib. party candidate.
For the record, IA(O)NAL (I am (obvioiusly) not a libertarian).
BTW, I love it when people call me a "dangerous liberal," please fire away =)
It's really not hard to read the FAQ
Actually, yeah it is. Whoever wrote that FAQ needs to go back to English 101 and learn that it's not acceptable to use block quotes for 3/4 of an essay. But that's not the point.
Why is it that almost every new activist I come into contact with identifies with anarchism?
Try Lenin's "Left-wing communism: an infantile disorder".
Democracy (not Republic)
Certainly sounds nice... like one of the Party guys said, the Party could have written 70% of his platform.
The problem is, he's still a captialist, and some of us are afraid that a Nader government would result in what we call "happy capitalism," where the exploitation continues, but we all feel ok about it. Think of your local evening news three months ago- sure, cops killed an unarmed man in the alley, but, DAMN, look at the stock market fly! What a great country!
Anyway, if Nader actually won the election, we'd be much beter off than if Gore won (won't even talk about Shrub). I'd jump for joy, but as it is, he's got like 7% in the polls. He might pick up as much as 15% when all is said and done, and I wish him and the Greens luck, but I have no false hopes.
Whoa, back the truck up...
I use my friend here as an example of an idea, not as an example of anarchists in general (hence the self-described). I know little to nothing about anarchists as a group- I know some about the black bloc (morons, in a word), and I listen to what my friend says, that's it.
Face it, man. Communism is dead. There's no possibility of a Communist revolution anymore. Anarchism, however, is gaining steam.
*snort*
Then why has the YCL tripled in size in the last year? Come to Algeria next August for the Youth Festival, and tell the 5000 expected attendees that communism is dead.
The best thing you could do for yourself right now is to educate yourself about anarchism, and not blindly accept the propaganda of your "leaders."
Pots and kettles, pal. And I'm not the one dressed all in black.
We're getting pricejacked left and right, but no one gets paid more. In today's money, the average laborer made $50,000 per year in the 50s, and had a good pension to retire on. Today, laborers are lucky to make $35,000, even though cost of living has jumped, and pensions are practically unheard of.
The government is body of officials elected to protect the people who put them in office- be it from big business, corrupt cops, gangs or hurricanes, and I think we'd be far better off if the wealthy 1% had their roles in our protection taken away.
What gets me is that the Libertarians seem to extend laisse-faire to their own political actions: I protested at the Republican National Convention as part of the Young Communist League contingent. There were about 50 of us from around the country, hundreds of Greens, lots of anarchists, lots of ultra-leftist "free Mumia" types... and maybe 10 libertarians.
They all wore orange shirts, and I saw 'em march around in a circle chanting "hey hey, ho ho, the IRS has got to go" for about 20 minutes, then they disappeared. That was the first and last I saw of them. Way to stick it to the man, y'all.
Anyhoo, the way I see it, the Libertarian party is the "nice republicans." They've got the same "I've got mine, so fuck you" mentality, and only really differ on social issues like drug laws and separation of church and state.
I have a friend who's a self-described anarchist, who bases his political ideals on the idea that no one should have power over him. I see that same streak in the Libs: "I'm too smart to have people rule over me." Horse shit. As long as humans number in the billions, there's got to be an organizing structure. I, personally, am loathe to let corporations, religion or the wealthy 1% have any part of that structure, so I act. I'm out on the weekends, recruiting voters or YCL members, passing out campaign literature or the People's Weekly World newspaper or doing strike solidarity (go Verizon workers!).
It takes work to make a difference, and it also takes a clear idea of what's what. Libs, it's not the government that's fucking you, it's the corporations that own the government. Economics dictate politics in a capitalist society, not the other way around, and the only way to fix our political system is to fix our economic system.
The above is all widly disjointed, but I think my main points were in there someplace =). OT arguments, please use e-mail.
"Water is free... but I still pay a buck for it in a bottle... "
Right on. Not to mention the illusion that what you pay for is better than what you get free. My boss NEVER would have allowed us to use Linux for our intranet server, until he found out you could buy a RH distro for $180 (or whatever the "enterprise" edition costs). That's not to say that we wouldn't have used Linux anyway (vs. buying an AIX license- and we're pretending to be on a tight budget!), but this was the path of least resistance.
I realize that a bottle of Thorspring really IS a helluva lot better than what you get from the tap here in Chicago, and that the $180 gets you commerical software and support, but my point is that the mentality of "you get what you pay for" is still running rampant in corporation-land, and will be until capitalism eats itself (oops, did I say that? =).
I guess my last post was pretty far OT, but this is a fun discussion.
"Why, the government can just garnish the wages of the top 1% of wage-earners and use it to buy everybody sports cars! That is your socialist paradise, isn't it?"
Kinda, except part of the idea is to get people away from the capitalist idea of identity through consumerism. You are defined by your actions, not your posessions.
" Everybody's equal?"
Right.
" Hard work means nothing? "
Wrong.
The idea is that 40 hours of work as a VP is not more vaulable than 40 hours of work flipping burgers. News flash, AC: people are POOR, and our capitalist system does everything it can to keep them that way. If we can help them and all it means is that Bill G. gets to buy one less porsche for his fleet, it think it's insane to do anything else. The wealthy generally aren't wealthy for being better people, and the poor generally aren't poor for being worse.
"If those in the working class were as "competent" as you claim, it's a wonder that they're still in the working class. Our society gives people the tools that they need to advance themselves, if they are talented enough."
Like a great, low- or no-cost eduacation, right? Like low- or no-cost health care so they can overcome physical disabilities or diseases without having to lower their standard of living? Bull shit. You're living in a rich suburban fantsy world. The simple fact is that racism, sexism, homophobia and burning arrogance blind the "upper class." They see what they want to see; people are happy, things are great, America is the land of opportunity, and we're rich becuase we're smart.
That's a fat load, and you know it. The rich are so because of the work other people do, not because they have some kind of fucking divine right to wealth. The assertion that "anyone can make it" has been an illusion from the very start. Wealth begets wealth; when was the last time you heard about a young black kid from a poor family making millions on a NASDAQ IPO? Never. They're always from families that were relatively well off to begin with.
"There is NO EXCUSE for not having enough retirement money to live on. If you didn't save, it's your fault."
Problem is, people used to have pensions to retire on. What do we have? IRAs, 401K's, which require you to set aside money from your paycheck. People who live hand-to-mouth can't afford that, so they have to live on SS. Not to mention the people with disabilities, and people who are widowed who can't support themselves or their families.
[ snip a lot of hysterical liberal gun-grabber crap ]
Sorry, I just have an aversion to being shot.
"Jesus said that those who speak the truth will be attacked. Your comment here is just more evidence that our Lord was correct. "
Jesus also said that it is eaiser for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. Enjoy your Boxster.
I'm sorry, but I really don't think taxes are the worst thing in the world, if they're imposed fairly. When a "wealthy Londoner" buys a canoe online, why the hell shouldn't he cough up a few extra pounds so the rest of us have a shot at buying a canoe? WTF makes the wealthy Londoner any more worthy of a canoe than the rest of us?
/. karma to come down on gun nuts, but this just line had me ROFL. One, WTF makes you think the government is gonna come after you? Let me be blunt here: you do NOT stand out in the eyes of the government. You are a gnat, and an armed gnat is still a gnat. If you get into a "firefight" with Big Brother, who do you think is gonna end up full of holes? Who do you think will notice if another armed gnat gets squished?
Argue all you want about how much harder he works, how much smarter he is, Social Darwinism, all that. Hooey, I say. The vast majority of "upper class" individuals (read, capitalists. See Websters if this confuses you) are far less competent than the vast majority of people in the working class. Typically, you don't get rich by being smart- you get rich by being well connected and generally nasty (ref Micro$oft).
I honestly can't speak for Mr. AC, but I'd be much happier if I knew my tax dollars were going to causes like welfare, medicaid, etc. than the military, NSA, CIA, Congress, or large corporations in the form of tax breaks. Corporate "welfare" accounts for something like 5X as much of the US budget than actual welfare going to the working-class poor.
"They've already got their foot in their door with socialist entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare."
Yeah, look at all those people just living it up on SS benefits. $600 a month, damn, that's almost enough to rent a two-bedroom apartment! Talk about the sweet life!
Get with it, AC. People get SS when they can't support themselves. There are people who cheat the system, but I'd rather support the cheaters than let the legitimate beneficiaries die on the streets.
"After they nationalize the health care system and shut down private, religious schools,"
then maybe we can get some decent funding for the education system. I grew up in Chicago in a low-income area; the schools were, in a word, SHIT. So what do I do? My parents can't afford private school, and neither could the parents of the other 1200 students. You want to close down the public schools and let them get replaced by Pepsi Cola Grammar and Microsoft High? Fuck that.
Waivers don't help either- simple supply and demand laws that a capiatalist like you probably has tatooed on his arm will tell you that. In Chicago, there are over 515 public schools. I don't know how many private schools there are, but if you shut them down, supply of schools drops, demand stays the same, therefore price goes up. A waiver for schools (which is a pittance in most proposed bills) won't cover a kids education. Fewer educated people means more desperately poor people, which means more crime.
One more thing:
"They'll be up against a firefight if they knock on my door"
It's bad for one's
What do you think the headline will read? "Patriot gunned down by oppresive governmnet agents," or "Looney with AK-47 gets what he asked for"?
I'm done now. It's just that Ayn Rand dipshits like this really get to me.
Since every president ever shot while in office was elected in a year that ended in 0 (Regan, Kennedy, Lincoln), I think we can expect this to happen, but not until after he's elected. That's why I'm voting for Bush- there's no one I'd like to see shot more than lil Shrub!
That's what I'm screaming. I've stopped watching TV- I'd rather entertain myself than be forcibly entertained by something as one-way as TV. What I'd like to see is broadcasters hooking me up with a piece of that 17Gbps bandwidth... But only if I could get it going at a nice high speed in _both_ directions. Don't think that'd work too well, since I can't have a VHF tower in my backyard.
The article's gone:
"Due to flagrant inaccuracies this article has been pulled and is being re-written.Occasionally one of these slips through the editorial process. Computer Currents regrets the error."
Of course this means I won't get to read the article for myself, but judging from the above posts, it's not much of a loss. I wonder what the re-write will sound like?
It won't be a long wait- I read that the 2000 Pontiac Bonneville will have this feature available too. BTW- that car's base price is somethign like $30K, much less than the Caddy. Much sexier, too IMO.
I thought it rocked. The actors were totally believeable, and the style of it really drags you into the movie. I went to bed that night and was sure I'd wake up with rock piles around my bed . Every sound I heard while I was trying to sleep freaked me out. The only problem I had was that I went to see it at a big-name theater in Chicago for $8.50, when it would have been just as good (maybe better) at a small neighborhood multiplex. Plus, there were a lot of NOISY DUMBASS people in the audience, and you could hear the soundtrack of the movie playing next to us over the sound of the movie we were watching. Other than the atmosphere in the theater, it was an incredible experience!
What are they?? Wine's been kickin my ass when I try to do anything fun...
I've got a PCS phone, so if someone is listening to my transmission, doesn't it just sound like modem noise to them? Or am I missing a step?
Back in my Windoze days, I had First Aid and Norton CrashGuard- both of those God-awful resource hogs caused more crashes than they prevented. My uptime prior to using those programs was about 1-2 weeks (not bad for Win95), but after the install, it was like 5-6 hours. Sorry, I'm perfectly happy without loading crap like that on my Debian box.