NPR Accidentally Explains The #Occupy Kids

#Occupy Cat Fight

Have you noticed that those fun loving, crazy little #Occupy Wherever kids are angry about something, but not very focused about exactly what they are angry about?

Have you noticed how they react when people like National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke confronts them with some facts and their anger shrivels up, even for just a few moments?

NPR affiliate WBEZ took a visit to a middle school, found the same characteristics in a young boy and discovered that even a public school teacher can straighten out children better than any Liberal Arts program at an expensive university can.

Listen to ACT SIX. GRANDE WITH SUGAR  and understand how the #Occupy crowd is less emotionally developed than a middle school kid.

The boy is a victim of circumstance.  He takes care of his grandmother in a home without electricity or water, other than the water that pours through the roof when it rains.  In the real world of home, the child takes on and conquers adult problems that other children his age never think about.  Then he arrives at school in dirty clothes and frequently unwashed, with general complaining that the school was "unfair", nothing specific.

In the case of #OWS, the fault is mostly with the parents.  In the ages old truism that anybody can be whatever they like in America, the Baby Boomer parents left out a key ingredient: some careers don't pay much.  The OWS children were told to get a degree, but nobody told them that all degrees were not created equal.  However, they are not middle school children with problems at home, they are adults who made their own problems, possibly by following bad advice.

Today there are dozens of annoying hipsters and hippies wallowing in their own excrement, on private property in Manhattan, who have no concept that literature degrees are not very lucrative.  They think the American system is unfair because they have to pay back loans and work at being successful. They are shocked that the people they need to pay the loans back to are wealthy and cannot make the mental connection, so they assign "unfairness" to the predictable outcome.

Certainly there are children who grow up to be financially successful artists and poets, but none of these protestors are complaining about an "old boy network" in West Chelsea, they are whining that bankers made money when the bankers lent students money and the federal government guaranteed those loans.

They are not even whining that the education industry ripped them off, by rapidly expanding "staff" positions, overpaying faculty, and creating ostentatious monuments to academia.  No, their Socialist indoctrination about "fairness" overrides any facts that are flying in their face.

Socialist Of The Week: Lawrence O'Donnell

Socialist of the Week Ending 10/29/2011: Lawrence O'Donnell

I planned to feature major feats of typical, transparent socialism on this blog from the beginning  Here is the first winner:  Lawrence O'Donnell

Host O'Donnell tees up a question for a #OccupyOakland protestor, who whiffs it.

She knows to exaggerate tear gas into "chemical weapons," but she did not have the presence to lie about the rock and bottle throwing.

A transcript from Glenn Beck:

“At that point we were in a position where we had to deploy gas in order to stop the crowd and people from pelting us with bottles and rocks,” the Oakland Interim Chief of Police told reporters following scrutiny of the police response to the protesters in Oakland.

“Did you see people throwing bottles and rocks at the police before they used those tactics?” O’Donnell asked a protester.

“Umm, yeah. People were doing that,” the protester told the MSNBC host.

The Cosmotarians at Reason magazine even said the police were the ones doing the rioting:

Members of the Oakland Police Department rioted last night, firing tear gas and chasing residents. (Bonus: Slate explains why tear gas isn't illegal.)

One can only guess that Reason's inclusion of the Slate information is the way they share an affinity with the 'oppressed' Viet Cong 'victims' of tear gas, but I digress.

Occupy Oakland

This tactic employed by O'Donnell, lying about who initiated violence, was perfected in the American media during the 1960s by Soviet backed International Socialists, like David Horowitz.  Horowitz has spoken often, and in detail, abut the tactics he and his friends used through the Cold War to help the Soviets on every front and try to take down the United States.

The same thing is happening now, with MSNBC taking up the torch of Socialism against anybody in striking distance.

#OWS Socialists: NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Another story I heard about on the Limbaugh show:

Occupy Wall Street kitchen staff protesting fixing food for freeloaders

Interesting turn of phrase in this article.  The "professional homeless" is a phrase used by the #Occupy clowns for homeless people that they just do not like.

Apparently, if someone seeking a meal is not a young White snot with an expensive degree in the Arts, they are not welcome and the socialist kitchen staff is going on strike to get rid of these unsavory individuals.

For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.

They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.

Get that?  If you really are homeless, or if you look like you have the wrong kind of criminal record, then NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Officers made at least 10 arrests when rowdy demonstrators refused to get out of the street and stop blocking traffic. A dozen cops on scooters tried to force them back to the sidewalk.

Just a wild guess here, that those arrested get an exemption from the "no criminals served here" rule.

The College Scam

Rush Limbaugh was a wealth of information on this topic today.  If you can listen to the second hour of his 27 October 2011 show, do it.  Great callers with great points too.

The aspect that I plan to examine in Would You Like Borders With That Socialism? is how children of professors get steep discounts at institutions across America, a special sort of deal that regular folks do not get.  I heard of it decades ago, but never pursued the details and am not sure if it still exists.

Even if it does not exist, the phenomena of professors children getting into the "old boy" network is pretty interesting, especially when many of those "old boys" complain that "big business" operates on that system.  As we all know, when one sucks at business they get the boot.  Trust fund babies who don't know what they are doing with their money lose it in a generation.  in the case of the Kennedys and the Rockefellers, it takes a few generations to squander massive fortunes on political careers, but the shakedowns of viable businesses do make up some of the difference.

National Socialism, AKA, Communism Kills

Victim of Soviet Russian Socialism attempts to enlighten Che Guevara Socialists at #OccupyWallStreet about what really happens under a Socialist regime. via Glenn Beck

Taiwan vs. That Other China

Less Socialism Equals More Freedom and More Prosperity

A Mao Fan-boy

If you read and believe folks like Thomas L. Friedman, you would think that everybody in China now makes $40,000 per year and that their embrace of "Capitalism" done right brought them there.  Well, Friedman and his cronies are right, but not in the way that they think.  You must give them a little leeway.  They live in a world where Mao is a hero, "The Great Leap Forward" is viewed as a stroke of brilliance gone awry, "The Cultural Revolution" is a great awakening, and Chiang Kai-shek was the fly in the ointment who prevented a 'superior' International Socialist Utopia from emerging in Asia.

For many Chinese and other normal folk, the real government of China is in Taipei, Taiwan. Some hope that any day now the Maoist writers in the West will realize that true freedoms and commerce exist in Taiwan and the wise thing to do is spread that wiseness to the mainland.  Some of us are not holding our breath.  After all, the per capita GDP of Taiwan was $37,209 in 2010, with 1% inflation and less than 1.2% of the population below the poverty line.

A Maoist

Now, the China that Friedman and his lemmings think that they are talking about has some not so shining stats: GDP (PPP) $8,289, 4.1% unemployment and almost 3% below the poverty line.  The last two statistics are questionable.

The People's 'Republic' of China just began allowing private property in 2007 and the state still owns all land.  Proponents of the PRC's recent growth cite the adoption of "capitalism" in the same way that they throw other words around: without meaning or substance.  Sure, China has invited in corporations from the rest of the world and supplied slaves to work in the new factories as China becomes the biggest crony capitalist regime since Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.

Granted, Red China set some incredible records in the 20th century.  During Mao's "Great Leap Forward" Red China produced more unusable steel than all of the other nations of the world combined.  In the process, they destroyed forests (in the manner that American tree farms are falsely accused of) and starved tens of millions of people to death.

A Nationalist

In the mean time, that other China, Taiwan, endured a state of Martial Law, necessary to repel the Red Chinese military incursions that lasted well into the 1960s.  When the state of emergency eased, so did Martial Law, which was replaced by a democracy in the 1980s, that endures to this day.  Something key throughout the evolution of the Republic of China (Taiwan) was something known as the Taiwan Miracle.  This "miracle" was commerce, ownership of private property and a gold standard currency.  Taiwan 'suffered' the same "fate" as Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong.

A phrase I have heard a few times in the past from Socialists is "You are not more free, you just have more stuff."  In a tragic way, this backwards comment describes the current Red China perfectly.  It is a dictatorial regime without the simplest of freedoms, but the slaves have a bountiful choice in consumer goods.  George F. Will expressed some needed concern about this state of affairs on the Charlie Rose Show in 2008.  That a prosperous, market allocating, semi capitalistic economy and an unchanged oppressive regime is quite dangerous.

For some reason, to the likes of Friedman and others, Taiwan is invisible to them at best and the 'reason' for Red China's problems at worst.  It is as if Taiwan is the Israel of the Pacific for all of the failed Socialists to blame their problems.

What Is So Bad About Monopolies?

Can a monopoly be sexy?

A monopoly (from Greek monos / μονος (alone or single) + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.

Thankfully, the question in the subject line is not so alien today as it was in the mid 1990s when my Strategic Management instructor used that as a lecture topic.  I was in the same boat then as many reading this today, with my reaction somewhere along the lines of How can you even ask that?  Of course they are bad!  They destroy the competition in the marketplace!

He, being a great lecturer, listened to a few of our comments and then launched into a quick destruction of them all: monopolies are short lived and competition destroys them.  Barriers to entry eventually disappear with new innovations and alternate products.  Of course, the lecture was much longer than that.

Now, there has been this lie spread through non-business academia and the mainstream media that once a monopoly is established, nobody can compete with it any more.  The consumer is a captive slave of the monopolist and that is that until the government does something.  As usual, the poets and news readers get this as wrong as one can possibly get anything wrong.  The persistent monopoly exists because of the intervention of government, not a lack of government action.

Need a few examples?

One often cited is Standard Oil of New Jersey.  The way it is told by Professors of History is that Standard had taken over the oil business (omitting that it was primarily kerosine, a replacement for whale oil in lamps, and a replacement for coal fired engines) and was gouging consumers.  They beat their competitors to a pulp and ran the show from derrick to home.

In reality, Standard had about 20% of the refining capacity by the time their case came before the United States Supreme Court and gained that through buying out their competition.  Some monopoly, huh?  By the time the case got to court, crude oil and refining competitors were emerging in the Western States and Getty (the primary shareholder) was boycotting those States because they were not giving him favorable deals to expand Standard to that part of the country.

Another falsehood in this Liberal Arts Department fable is that Standard owned oil fields.  In fact, they did not own a single oil well and were delighted when suppliers undercut each other on the price of crude.  When the government "broke them up" they were "divided" into different firms, all with the same owners with the same proportion of ownership as Standard of New Jersey.  All the government did was add inefficiency to the mix.

In reality, Standard had a short lived spike in market dominance that was going away through competition and a lack of government support from Western States.

The AT&T story is a study in the other half of the monopoly lie.  The story goes that "Ma Bell" (American Bell Telephone Company) created and protected their monopoly on voice telephone service through various sorts of dastardly acts and they thwarted government action to break them up until the feds were finally able to break the monopoly in the early 1980s.

First, the only reason that "Ma Bell" had any monopoly at all was because the federal government granted them one, as a national utility, under the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration in 1934.  In spite of being granted a monopoly, the US Justice Department decided to muck around and make some headlines for themselves in the 1950s and got the monopoly throttled back to 85% of the US market, along with restrictions on their foreign business.

By the 1980s, the American Bell System had had enough and asked the government nicely to become a "regular" company and compete without the umbrella of government monopoly power.  The agreed settlement resulted in a breakup of the firm into regional operating companies and an explosion in innovation and profit due to normal competition.  Those profits came in spite of overwhelming persistant government regulation that continues to this day.

Note also, in both of the above examples, National Socialist regimes were behind all of the government meddling with businesses that would have succeeded just fine with normal competition.

AOL CD Throne

AOL disk dress

CD bikini

Now for a few "monopoly" examples that should make anybody laugh: AOL, Netflix, Walmart (also accused of being a 'monopsony', NBC, Microsoft, and IBM.

Who Thinks #OccupySomeplace Is Like The Tea Party or like Fight Club?

One thing that can possibly sillier than the #Occupy "movement" is the people who write about it.  Especially the ones looking for similarities to the Tea Party.

Other than being diametrically opposites, exactly like Socialism vs. Libertarianism, there are no similarities at all.  Yes, I said it that way on purpose.

If you want to find a similarity between #Occupy and anything modern, you must turn to fiction entertainment.  One film that comes to mind is Fight Club, a film from 1999 with the social message that we can all be equal if only the evil, bad, unfair credit bureau databases were erased.  In the movie, the domestic terrorism plot was financed through fraud against a corporation, resulting in billions of dollars worth of information and real property blown up in Manhattan.

The #Occupy crowd has a similar solution, although they have not yet used explosives.  They are calling for loan forgiveness on pretty much any loan that their members willingly received, typically for college degrees that employers find less valuable than a Commercial Driver's License.  Other loans are in there too, but this crowd expects the government to steal from "the rich" and "the banks" to pay for their collective bad consumer choice.

Somehow, they feel that the way to do this is by empowering the same government organs that now over regulate lenders even more power.  The sad thing is, these people would not have the debt they have if it were not for government programs proscribing this sort of haphazard lending to begin with.  The #Occupy crowd wishes to give even more power to the government people who bailed out the lenders several times in a row, with little or no relief to the people who ignorantly bumbled, or rushed, into these questionable loans to begin with.

If only the government were more Libertarian rather than Socialist, the government would be concerned with the properness of contracts and the people lending the money would be worried about getting their $100,000 back from an art student, or not.

Socialists and Marketing

Ex-Marxist, David Horowitz

Everybody 'educated' in the Marxist vein 'knows' that the only reason anybody buys anything is because of advertising.  David Horowitz mentioned this in his autobiographical book, Radical Son, and admitted to surprise that Ford executives actually worried that their new car creations might not sell.

You and I have heard this very same notion from folks in all walks of life.  People who swear to their core to being "conservative" will say the same thing, that the only reason anybody buys [insert something popular here] is because of advertising or marketing.  I had a marketing adjunct professor in college who said that post-WWII marketing was production driven, i.e., a company made stuff and expected their sales staff to get out there and sell it, even if nobody wanted a canary yellow station wagon.  She went on to say that consumers are pickier now and consumer demand drives the marketplace.

Renault Dauphine

I am not sure how true the post-WWII portion of her introduction to the course actually was (I am looking for evidence of this for the book).  I can see how after years of FDR's rationing of consumer goods, nationalization of industry, and the destruction of the industrial base of American competitors, that consumers were ready to buy almost anything new.  I can also see how business, even without excessive federal regulation, could be lulled into the illusion that they could produce anything and people would buy it.  I can also see how American came to the rude awakening that this approach does not work in the face of competition as soon as foreign competitors emerged.

The Socialist makes tremendous leaps of logic through flaming straw-men to sell the point that our consumer culture is, was and will always be the same as the post-WWII culture that my professor outlined.  The Socialists of all types are the most adamant about this false notion.

Now, pause for a moment and think this through.  You have evidence in your face that proves it false, so do they, and ignoring the evidence at hand is the only way to make the notion that marketing campaigns are the only reason that anybody eats, drinks, wears, drives, or rides anything rather than living in a cave.

East German Trabant, they were abandoned in great numbers.

Thousands of crappy products are introduced to the consumer market every year, accompanied by expensive advertising campaigns, that fail miserably.  If you have not visited a "Dollar Store," pop in for a visit and look at all of the products there, frequently marked down below cost, that failed to sell through big marketing campaigns.  The facts on the ground are, if you make a product that nobody wants, nobody will buy it no matter how much you talk about it.  Something else that is observably true, most of the crap that Socialist regimes shove on their consumers as "proper" is thrown into the trash heap of history as soon as they escape Socialism.

A recent set of examples, from the National Socialist Mayor of New York city, Michael Bloomberg and his war against consumer choice with food.  Specifically, his war against sellers of food in his domain.  In short, Mayor Bloomberg decided that everybody who sells prepared food needs to do what Subway does, provide certain types of nutrition information about every menu item.  Subway has done this for years and years.  The Mayor's notion is that if people were only 'educated' better about what they were eating, they would chose to eat 'healthier.'

Of course, the National Socialist solution to this 'bad' consumer choice is forcing everybody to provide the same information as Subway, at the great expense of reprinting every menu and advertising item that they have to please Bloomberg and his regime.  Never mind that the average, or even "sub-average" consumer with identical concerns as the Mayor can already buy from places that freely advertise the fat, sodium and whatever-else-content of their products.  If one is that concerned about this, they would avoid the places that do not reveal what is in their food.

Of course, to the Socialist, no consumer could possibly make the right choice in buying anything and the government needs to "help" them.  In every case, when the public 'fails' to heed the help of government, the government will enact stronger measures to help 'enlighten' the fools who will not listen.  See also Bloomberg and tobacco.

A corollary that refutes Marxist teaching, is that the customer sets the price.  We all hear people complaining about prices of this thing or that, like pharmaceuticals and gasoline.  Socialists (both closeted and "out) will have you believe that consumers have no choice at all in the price.  The Socialists may have done a good marketing job of convincing people of that myth, but more probably the Socialists tapped into the basic human complaint reflex.  In reality, no corporation or shopkeeper sets the price for anything.  They set an asking price and sell at whatever price they can get.  That is how places like dollar stores stay in business, by offering an outlet for failed products to consumers that did not sell in the bigger stores at higher prices.

Lydia Guevara markets carrots for PETA.

The Socialists, especially Marxists, should know better by now.  At least if they were as objective and scientific as they profess to be, they should know after decades of Marxist indoctrination spewing from most every educational, media, and entertainment outlet in Europe and the Americas that Marxism should be "catching on" by now if their theory were true.  The truth is that advertising does not force anybody to do anything that they do not want to do, short of a military takeover.

Sure, the Marxist/Socialists have convinced legions of mush-headed college students, high school dropouts, lone gunmen, and trust-fund hipsters of their obscure notions of "fairness" and "equality", but nobody else is buying the notion.  Of course, the Socialists fall back on arrogance to explain this effect away.  Only the "enlightened" people "get it" and the rest are just a bunch of ignorant rubes.

One area where the Marxists were successful, noted in an earlier post, is in the marketing of words.  These days, Capitalism polls pretty low, equal as low Socialism, which Michael Moore and other use as 'evidence' of Socialism being as popular as Capitalism.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  As you can see at the link, when the descriptive terms "Free Market" vs. a "Government Managed" economy, Free Market wins year after year.

Woody Guthrie, Socialist Song Writer

Yes, the Socialists have another excuse for results like this too.  They range from "Socialism has not been tried yet" (if not, why not with all this advertising?) to "the Capitalists brainwash people against Socialism" (what Michael Moore is quoted of saying at the link).

Just remember, when your favorite Socialists tries to convince you that the non-Apple computer you are using is due only to a Bill Gates advertisement, ask them this, "I have heard about the wonders of Marxism since I was taught Woody Guthrie songs in kindergarten, but I never bought any of that crap.  What makes you think I am as gullible as you?"

Finally: Anti-Semitism of #OccupyWallStreet Condemned (Not by Obama)

Sexy Nazi, the Socialist's true goal.

Finally, one group has come forward to condemn the Anti-Semitic rhetoric emanating spewing from the #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupyLA Marxist demonstrations.
Via Israel Today:
See some earlier posts for full context of the #Occupy crowd and their Jew hatred. Remember, the Nazi was a product of the Liberal Left and that is one of the few things they still manufacture.

Operation #OccupySmokyMountains

#OccupyShockTroop uses communal transportation.

Operation #OccupySmokyMountains strike force is launched.  The crack shock-troop is on the way to keep the wilderness corporate capitalists free.

"Would You Like Borders With That Socialism?" New Non-Fiction Project by John Tagliaferro.

More: No Leftist/Socialist Watches PBS

This is more of a note for references in How Many Borders Would You Like With That Socialism? than anything else.

Some think glasses automatically make you smarter.

I don't know how many times I have been called some version of racist bigot for my "stupid belief" that West Coast Africans sold their fellow men, women, and children into slavery.  Sold to the slave traders of the West.  Any attempt at an intellectual discussion on the topic quickly spiraled into a list of pejoratives directed at yours truly.

At least sometimes Angela Davis speaks the truth on this topic:

“We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.”
― Angela Davis

My wonder of how the Europeans, and later Americans, managed to run about an entire continent, unimpeded, snatching up Black men and women made-to-order for customers in Whitelandia (link to Ron Kuby, who coined the term) began later in life, since I believed the Leftist party line: White people just took any Black person they wanted as a slave and traded them like we trade baseball cards now.

Well, that theory did not hold up to any scrutiny whatsoever.  For example: why weren't the invaders taken prisoner by their much more numerous opponents?  An easier theory to believe is one of slave merchants making contact with Africans, neither side being stupid, and the merchants making offers of value to the powerful African natives for surplus human beings.  I never pursued the details much, but noted what I heard over the years.

Low and behold!  PBS came to the rescue again, albeit with watered down language, supporting the facts that African people were captured by fellow Africans, used as slaves there, with the surplus sold to Europeans:

Enslavement was most often a byproduct of local warfare, kidnapping, or the manipulation of religious and judicial institutions. Military, political, and religious authority within West Africa determined who controlled access to the Atlantic slave trade. And some African elites, such as those in the Dahomey and Ashanti empires, took advantage of this control and used it to their profit by enslaving and selling other Africans to European traders.

This from the PBS special The Slave Kingdoms.

A favorite slave of geeks.

Here is a longer passage.  Read the whole thing here.

In fact, Europeans often acted as junior partners to African rulers, merchants, and middlemen in the slave trade along the West African coast from the mid-15th century on. Two factors contributed to this dependency: the coastal geography and the diseases of West Africa. Seasonal wind patterns along the Atlantic coast of Africa generated heavy surf and dangerous crosscurrents, which in turn buffeted a land almost entirely lacking in natural harbors. Hazardous offshore reefs and sandbars complicated the matter even further for seafarers along the West African coast. European commerce in West Africa took place, therefore, most often on ships anchored well away from shore and dependent on skilled African canoe-men whose ability to negotiate across the hazardous stretch of water between the mainland and the waiting ships made the Atlantic trade possible. Even in places where Europeans were able to conduct trade on the mainland, their presence was limited by an epidemiological situation that impeded their livelihood and threatened their lives. Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state of ill health and earned Africa the name "white man's grave." In this environment, European merchants were rarely in a position to call the shots.

Furthermore, when Europeans first initiated a trading relationship with West Africans in the mid-15th century they encountered well-established and highly-developed political organizations and competitive regional commercial networks. Europeans relied heavily on the African rulers and mercantile classes at whose mercy, more often than not, they gained access to the commodities they desired. European military technology was not effective enough to allow them this access by means of force on a consistent basis until the 19th century. Therefore it was most often Africans, especially those elite coastal rulers and merchants who controlled the means of coastal and river navigation, under whose authority and to whose advantage the Atlantic trade was conducted.

The next time some do-gooder leftoid  touts the value of PBS and the need for public funding of television, ask them if they actually watch any of the shows.  Then segue into this slave thing and see how things go.  I do not recommend this approach to chat up someone you are attracted to hoping to end up in angry sex with a happy ending.

There is a tie-in to my latest book project in here someplace.  Right now I am looking at the nuance of how the Socialists enslave without much regard to race, although racism is core to their worldview.

Socialists Love To Play With Words

Did you know that Capitalism polls much lower than Free Market?  Michael Moore does and he uses it for another big lie.

No, not that Marx, but Groucho always made more sense.

The Socialists of today, neigh, the Socialists of all time have loved to play with words.  One of their favorites is playing with the word Capitalism until it has become an invective.

When rational, sane, normal people say capitalism, they usually mean it in the sense of a Free-Market, where people put their capital at risk in hopes of accomplishing something.  Usually they wish to increase their capital through an investment or business venture.  Sometimes, they use their capital in an altruistic manner, with making someone (even themselves) feel better or have a better go at life as their objective.

However, today when professors, news writers and script writers (sorry for the redundancy) use the word capitalism, it has a more sinister meaning, that of class division and worker exploitation.  'Oddly, ' the World Socialist Movement definition just happens to be the version that has been embedded in the minds of every student of anything in the Western world from those broadcasting it from "the commanding heights of society."

Now, even the dimmest of the wealthy useful idiots thinks this (from the "facts" behind Capitalism: A Love Story):

More Socialistic tripe from Michael Moore

Despite fear-mongering about the word "socialism," particularly around the time of the 2008 Presidential election, only 37% of young people prefer capitalism over socialism, while 33% prefer socialism to capitalism.
Rasmussen Poll: "Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided."

Yes, Michael Moore and others of his stripe, truly believe that the poll he cites "proves" that Socialism is a,most equally desired as a US national economic system as capitalism.  But is this really true?  As we have seen over the years since the mid-1930s, the English, French and German speaking world has been under the illusion that Nazism is interchangeable with Fascism (not true) or the opposite of Communism, when in fact they are all just different flavors of Socialism. That is the problem that we run into when we allow the illiberal left to define our language.  Eventually, the words mean nothing beyond something to fling at an opponent that may or may not have anything to do with anything, really.

So, that sly little Rasmussen fellow came out with another poll, using equivalently descriptive terms rather than nicknames: 72% Favor Free Market Economy Over One Managed by the Government


Now, when your favorite little Socialist friends quote Michael Moore to you, you have a good fact for a response.  The Free Market vs Government Managed numbers have been pretty close for years.

#OccupyDC And Their Version Of Freedom

The default position of the Socialist is Authoritarian.  Stalin, Lenin and Mao adorn the t-shirts of the loyal Socialist for exactly this reason.

So this is what the "General Assembly" of #OccupyDC thinks of the "public space" that they occupy.  Once they squat, it is their private property and you better not watch what they do in public.

Reason magazine has more on the circus surrounding the act recorded in this ring.

So You Thought FDR Ended The Great Depression With The New Deal? WRONG!

This bum and FDR have a lot in common.

One of the persistent myths perpetuated by both Socialistic academics and their news writing mouth pieces alike is the myth of the New Deal ending the Great Depression.  Even though there is ample evidence against that notion, even though the most casual observation indicates that it is patently false.

Jim Powell, Michale Barone (C-SPAN Video) and others have researched this extensively.  The only reply that the socialists can give is "everybody knows that FDR ended the Great Depression."  Well, there is something to the socialistic/Keynesian view in that everybody who attended government run schools in the English speaking world has had this myth beaten into their noggins.

Here is another item exposing the truth about the FDR myth:

FDR's New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

A groundbreaking study by UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian demonstrates that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s excessively pro-labor, anti-competitive New Deal actually prolonged for seven long years the severe economic pain immortalized in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”

Using 1929 data, the two researchers calculated what wages and prices would have been had without the New Deal, and then compared them to actual wages and prices at the time. Their findings were startling: In 11 key industries, actual wages averaged 25 percent higher than market conditions warranted, but unemployment was also 25 percent higher as well. Meanwhile, the New Deal pushed up prices 23 percent higher than they should have been, so consumers couldn’t afford to buy, leading to even more unemployment.

Cole and Ohanian blame FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act for “short-circuiting the market’s self-correcting forces.” Instead of stimulating the economy, they argue, FDR managed to depress it even further. Without government intervention, the Great Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of 1943. If FDR unnecessarily prolonged the Great Depression, thank the Federal Reserve Bank for starting it. Current Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke conceded the central bank’s culpability in a Nov. 8, 2002 speech honoring University of Chicago free market economist Milton Friedman on his 90th birthday.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/editorials/2008/10/fdrs-new-deal-prolonged-great-depression#ixzz1ab6ID89x

Get it on Amazon.

#OccupyWallStreet Transgendered Red Chinese Female Impersonator Perspective

This is a quite interesting perspective and is common with the typical Socialist.  As the Caucasian male, impersonating a woman in Red Chinese Army garb gives his/her perspective on history.  The basics: no history that documents any ill of Communism is correct.  He cites The Black Book of Communism (link in left column) as some sort of propaganda.

His mate, in the rainbow cowl-neck sweater, expands on the notion that if we were not present to witness the history, then it was pure conjecture.  Of course, his conjecture is superior.



I prefer these Red Chinese chicks:

The only improvement I would suggest, besides dropping the Communism, would be higher heels.

Occupy Wall Street: Let's Party Like It's 1884

This is the best Google image for "Sexy OccupyWallStreet"?

I suspected that the #OccupyWallStreet crowd would continue to recycle the same old tricks from the 1800s.  If you read any "news" source that says anything this ensemble of street theater clowns is doing is new, just stop reading and block the site from your Google results.

Today, Becket Adams, of Glen Beck's website The Blaze, reports:

In the update they write:

Wanna “see how the 1% lives”? Then join us on a walking tour of the homes of some of the bank and corporate executives that don’t pay taxes, cut jobs, engaged in mortgage fraud, tanked our economy…..all while giving themselves record setting bonuses!
Occupy wall street will join community groups fighting for economic justice.
You can meet at Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park at 11:00 am and we will take the subway together or you can meet at 59th and 5th ave at 12:30pm. (please indicate if you will travel with us front he square) [sic]
We’ll be meeting at 59th Street and 5th Avenue at 12:30 pm, and then march from house to house, demanding accountability for Wall Street crimes, and an extension of the Millionaire’s tax.
Who will we be visiting exactly? Well….you’re just gonna have to come to find out.

Adams notes the similarity to SEIU harassment of Greg Baer of Bank of America.  I will add, this is nothing new.  View an earlier post about Chicago in 1884 and the Red/Black Alliance march down Prairie Avenue to harass "capitalists" in their homes.  Stay tuned for when the Leftists resort to explosives when they fail to gain any traction at the ballot box.

Hank Williams Jr. vs the Illiberal Left

Hank Williams Jr. has a response to ESPN and FOX news.  For those unfamiliar, about one week ago Hank Jr. was on Fox and Friends where he had this exchange:


As you saw and heard after the 1:31 mark, Hank Williams Jr. never called Obama Hitler.  He compared the "golf summit" between Obama and Bonner to a meeting between mortal enemies.  Somehow, this became translated into Hank calling B. Hussein Obama "Hitler".  Oddly, this construct is the very thing that is joked about the most on SAT tests, and a bunch of pundits who like to use SAT scores as bragging or bashing rights did not get it.  Actually, they probably got it and they just don't think you could possibly understand it due to their core arrogance driven biases.

FOX and others keep mischaracterizing  what was said, just Google "Hank Williams compares Obama to Hitler" and see all of the articles written by people who never saw the exchange, or chose to lie about it.

Also, Williams also endorses Herman Cain at the 2:00 mark.

Now, for the Hank Williams Jr. response -(video first, then audio)


Audio only version of Keep the Change:  

LYRICS: 

I'll keep my freedom
I'll keep my guns
Try to keep my money
And my religion too

Try to keep on workin'
Try to keep on smilin'
I will keep my Christian name and y'all can keep the change

I will keep my heroes
Pictures on the wall
I'll keep my family safe
You bluff when I call
I'm gonna keep my big V8
Keep my friends the same
Keep the government outta my business
And y'all can keep the change

This country sure as hell been goin' down the drain
We know what we need
We know who to blame
United Socialist States of America
How do ya like that name?
I'll keep the USA and y'all can keep the change

So FOX and friends
Wanna put me down
Ask for my opinions
Then twist it all around
Supposed to be talkin' about my father's new CD
Well two can play that "Gotcha' Game" just wait and see
Don't tread on me

This country sure as hell been goin' down the drain
We know what we need
We know who to blame
United Socialist States of America
Don't ya just LOVE that name?
I'll keep the USA and y'all can keep the change

I'll keep the USA and y'all can keep the change

Yeah, you can keep FOX and friends and ESPN outta your homes too
Cuz Bocephus and all his rowdy friends and his song is outta there!

Yessir!

I Hate Stuff Too Guy - #OccupyWallStreet

This is a Lotion Man free post.
National Review captures another bit of the essence of OWS: Here is Tim Robbins explaining what corporations do. These two videos make more sense than any "serious" #OccupyWallStreet squatter:

If you are still looking for a better picture of what this smelly band of whiners is about, try this:

Down With Evil Corporations

The Cosmotarian Take on #OccupyWallStreet

Some interesting footage shot by a Reason magazine staffer during the #OccupyWallStreet demonstrations. Lotion Man, aka Information Man, aka Danny Cline makes an appearance and tells the camera how smart he is compared to the rest of the clowns. There is also an apparent Zeitgeist fan in the video demanding a "resource based economy."

Those Zeitgeist Clowns

I have a researcher looking into the Zeitgeist clowns, interested in other input too.  From the Wikipedia entry, they sound like a bunch of scientific socialists who are giving the leadership promise to the techno geeks.  One core claim, that machines rather than people will not decide the resourcing of earth, can only be believed by Luddites or idiots who do not know that computers are just tools that people use.  You know, the people (apparently they still exist) who think computers do your homework for you.

Thinking this will get a whole section, since there seem to be many people following it but not much in print comparing it to the other Socialisms or demonstrating that it is nothing more than prettied-up theft.

More on these fools here: http://zeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com/

Socialism A Product Of The Industrial Age? HA!

If you thought Socialism began around the time of the steam engine, you are horribly wrong.










As John Derbyshire has noted in the past and in today's National Review blog, it is a part of the human condition that has appeared in literature as early as 391 BC in the play The Congresswoman. I will add, it is as part of the human condition as is jealousy, theft, rape and murder.

Steve Jobs Has Died

I was never a big fan of Jobs, mostly because I was never a big fan of his expensive products.  Perhaps if I were more of a graphic artist I would appreciate them, and the price tag more.  Don't get me wrong, I loved using them when someone else was buying them, like my employer or school.  When it came down to outfitting my home and office, I always bought Toshiba.  It is all about the price/utility tradeoff.  I do use an iPhone and complaints about it could fill another post.

Part of my attitude was influenced by Steve Wozniak, who never spoke ill of Jobs, I just did not like how he described the way Jobs behaved.  I am a big fan of Woz and have met him in person, for a couple of hours.  It was more of a valued opinion sort of thing.  Woz can say anything and I tend to believe it.

Perhaps it was my lack of knowledge about how he ran Apple.  I never studied it, never went out of my way anyway.  I appreciate him more now that I know he really ran Apple computer.  From what I thought I knew in the past, I had the impression that Jobs kept wrecking the company and everybody else around him shored it up.  Not true, not even close.  However, when the press begins heaping praise on Jobs for inventions and engineering, because that was Woz, not Jobs.

I see that there are already comparison wars erupting, comparing Jobs to Edison.  Jobs was no Edison, he was no Wozniak either.  He was a fantastic marketer and knew good ways to package products.

Rush Limbaugh was always touting Apple products, reportedly without any compensation, just because he liked their stuff.  Perhaps if I were not as frugal as I am on certain things, I would be in the same Apple camp as Rush.  His show tomorrow should be interesting.

What does this have to do with How Many Borders Would You Like With That Socialism?  Nothing really.  Not much, really.  I recall in the 1980s(?) Jobs did a big computer "giveaway" to any schools that wanted to buy Apple products at cost.  As I recall, it was an effort to keep the company open during an economic slump.  This deserves more research and could be relevant to my current project.  It was like a reverse of rent-seeking, with Apple marketing and selling to government without seeking a government enforced monopoly.

On the surface, it is similar to the story of tobacco companies giving cigarettes to the US government for Soldiers in WWI.  I am still researching that one, but the story goes on that the returning Soldiers, of all walks of life, retained the habit and introduced cigarette smoking to sectors of society that had shunned the habit in the past.

The Apple giveaway, from memory, placed Apple computers as the introductory platform for school children of all ages for decades.  In college, it was my preferred platform and where I learned to use MS Word and Excel when MS Windows was not yet ready for prime time.  As this group grew older, a significant portion of them continued to purchase and use Apple products.  IIRC, the recent boom in Apple sales did not start until they began producing non-computer products, like the iPod and iPhone.

One of the critical mistakes they made in the early days of Apple was their insistence on making the Apple Graphic User Interface operating system incompatible with other platforms.  Unix, then Microsoft owned the government and business markets.  Apple acted like their hardware platform was superior and it would become obvious to everybody "any day now."  That event never happened and Microsoft expanded their rule over the non-academic computing market.

Eventually Apple did make their computing platforms compatible with Microsoft, but it was too little, too late.  Even today, non-Apple users cite Apple incompatibility with their favorite programs, which has been false for over a decade.

I need to do more research into the Apple federal lobbying efforts over the years.  Apparently, they never lobbied to get their platforms into the federal government.  If they did, it was a colossal waste of money, however I have never heard a hint of that.  Microsoft had problems because they began, and won, the business and government desktop war on the coattails of IBM.  They retain that position today, after being bullied by the federal court system into playing the crony capitalism game and positioning lobbyists to shower money on government officials in DC.

In retrospect, Steve Jobs is more of a great marketer to the masses, rather than a technological innovator, who knew what people wanted before they did, a little more like George Gilder.

A 9/11 Truther Weighs In As A 99 Percenter

Shock! A 9/11 Truther, protesting "capitalism" does not have a clue what capitalism really is.

The Truthers need some sexier posters.

If this sort of thing is any surprise to you, gentle reader, then get out from behind your computer and onto the street to see for yourself who these people really are and what they stand for.

No matter what issue they use as a Trojan horse to get some attention, the bottom line is they want to take the wealth from those who have earned it and give it to people who have not.

Here, I can save you a little trouble.  View my playlist of a Socialist demonstration in Washington, DC on 2 October 2011 (the 10-2 Demonstration).  I shot all of the video myself without edits, other than making the video chunks fit YouTube size/length restrictions.

My personal favorite gem of the set is the Lyndon LaRouche Democrat expressing what those National Socialists are all about (30 seconds in):

The Occupy Wall Street 99 Percenters

The "Lotion Man" (Danny Cline): The Anti-Semitic Face of #OccupyWallstreet

The latest Socialistic foot stomping fetish is the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd.  It is nothing new, nothing unique, in the history of the Socialist core belief: "Others have stuff, let's beat them up and steal it!"  This latest eruption of the fetish began with a group of whiny crybabies who were against something, but not for anything.  It is yet another in endless reruns of 1884 Chicago, with less focus.

Occupy Wall Street is now a catchall for any and all whiny persons who decided to borrow money for a liberal arts degree, or worse, but did not manage to become rich in the process.  Their messages are the same, "nobody gave us enough stuff, so we want the government to take it from others."  The "movement" is full of the examples captured at latf99p.com

Let me rephrase that for the bitch.

I am 22. I have been fucking around on him for 3 years.

When he was 19, he joined the Navy to make something of himself. I was too self-absorbed to follow him and nobody told me I needed to cut the cord to mom & dad when I got married.

He is stationed out West begging me to join him. I have two or three fuckbuddies on the side and am enjoying his BAQ so I can't be bothered to move, even though the Navy would pay for it.

HE never wanted this. I'm kinda okay with this, at least until he ETS's and comes home.

I am the 99%. He is the 1% who is doing something with his life.

 This one stands on its own:

 "If you can't afford to eat, why do you have cable TV?"

This is just the latest street theater (what better way for a bunch of unemployed artists to express themselves?) is no different than the antics of Albert Parson's in 19th century Chicago.  Expect this bunch to head to the suburbs soon, knocking on the doors of the "capitalists" who "deprived" them.  Don't expect them to march, they have public funded transportation now.

Note: More videos of the obnoxious Danny Cline, aka Lotion Man, can be found here.