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Sunday, September 25. 2011

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View from the Wkly Std: The Reactionary in the White House - Barack Obama, throwback.



Obama is quite a throwback. In some ways, he would return us to centuries past. His administration is spending trillions to build high-speed trains, despite minimal consumer demand. Trains are a 19th-century technology. Subsidies are also doled out for wind power, a medieval technology. Meanwhile, the space program is all but jettisoned.


Rather than rely on fossil fuels, the president would make America run on renewable energy. The last renewable in widespread use was the horse.



View at the WaPo: It's time to begin the class war:



Imagine millions of Americans withholding mortgage payments to banks that refuse to adjust underwater loans. Imagine divestment campaigns to pressure public pension funds and universities to pull their money from the private sector and put it into government bonds. Imagine students staging sit-ins to protest teacher layoffs. Imagine families who have lost their homes squatting in vacant, bank-owned properties. Imagine a nationwide call to arms, as passionately nonviolent but as violently passionate as the pro-democracy movements sweeping the Arab world.


Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 07:55 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

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I find pro-democracy movement a strange way to spell califate. They could at least spell it Ottoman empire.
#1 KF on 2011-09-25 08:46 (Reply)
So true.

BTW, why the continued fretting over "underwater"? Folks owe more than they think they can sell that property for are suddenly allowed to "adjust" what they owe?
Can I "adjust" what I owe on my truck, as following the same definition it was "underwater" the second I drove it off of the lot?
How 'bout an iPad? Folks who bought them w/credit cards & roll over payments certainly "owe" more than a used iPad is "worth", so can they "adjust"?

Sally Kohn & her ilk should be cautious @ agitating for class war - they may just get it, and I can assure her that she's not on the winning side...
#1.1 Jess on 2011-09-25 09:23 (Reply)
No, you cannot "adjust" your payments on your truck or your iPad. But you can join the pro-democracy movement and try "adjusting" what you owe on your WaPo subscription to see how long they'd continue to deliver the print edition to your front door. My guess is that the service would stop pretty quickly in the face of your courageous exercise of democracy in defense of your right to public information.
#1.1.1 Agent Cooper on 2011-09-25 15:31 (Reply)
"Trains are a 19th-century technology"....so is electricity. The fact that something is an old technology hardly means it is valueless. Freight rail has been one of the great success stories of the last 20 years.

"The last renewable in widespread use was the horse"..actually, the last renewable in widespread use was/in hydroelectric power..which is basically solar energy with an integral storage capability.

I agree with the point that Obama is a reactionary, but the WS assertions about technology are pretty simplistic. A conservative magazine should not fall for the new=good equivalence.
#2 david foster (Link) on 2011-09-25 10:00 (Reply)
Imagine taxpayers refusing to pay taxes. Looks like that's beginning to happen in Greece. WaPo doesn't even think about that.

And what Jess said--class war, who's got the guns?
#3 Sam L. on 2011-09-25 10:11 (Reply)
"Trains are a 19th-century technology"....so is electricity"

Agreed. So why are our "betters" trying to shove it down our throats when superior systems are available?

As far as the WS piece - their assertions are @ paying for "technology" (much of which isn't), not the technology itself. Major distinction there...
#4 Jess on 2011-09-25 10:11 (Reply)
There are different forms of "class" warfare.

Imagine millions of Americans withholding tax payments to federal, state, and local governments that refuse to adjust their spending, borrowing, and regulatory habits.

And the way to do so legally is to have Atlas shrug.
Gee, anybody see this already happening?

I also find it disturbing that our "leaders" continue to embrace this delusion of "pro-democracy movement" in the Middle East. First, just because a dictatorial government is overthrown doesn't mean it will be replaced by a pro-democracy government. Second, even if it were democratic doesn't mean it will be benevolent; weren't the Nazi's voted in with an overwhelming plurality of the popular vote of Germany? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_1933
The composition of the people and their beliefs determines whether 'democratic' is good or bad.
#5 ruralcounsel on 2011-09-25 10:24 (Reply)
Divesting all the money from the private sector and giving it to the government is too complex. Eliminate the middle man. Just stack it all in piles and burn it.
Trains are the shizzle because they're like urban and hip and ...like Duke Ellington wrote a song about the A train...
#6 bill on 2011-09-25 10:38 (Reply)
Precisely. Woodie Guthrie rode trains. Trains are romantic.

I get that. I like trains myself. But I'm not sure I want to spend millions so that other people can ride them cheap. Railroads are cost effective between very high population density areas. By that, I don't just mean between city A and city B, but down to the neighborhood level. Once you start putting in a lot of stops, the efficiency drops fast.
#6.1 Assistant VIllage Idiot (Link) on 2011-09-25 13:18 (Reply)
Obama's infatuation with trains can be blamed on the Obama-Buffett complex that President Eisenhower once warned us against (just kidding). Actually, Warren Buffett loves railroads as long-term investments for his company, Berkshire Hathaway. I can picture Buffett whispering in The One's ear, "I have two words of advice for you: railroad trains." And I can imagine how Buffett might be scheming to make sure he profits by huge government spending on railroads. Remember, when it comes to Obama, never attribute to incompetence what can be explained by corruption.
#6.2 Agent Cooper on 2011-09-25 15:45 (Reply)
No money leaves the private sector when you sell your stock.
#7 rhhardin (Link) on 2011-09-25 10:50 (Reply)
Yes, let's have a class war. The leach class against the productive class, only we'll need to make sure the vampire class in government are collateral damage.

Of course, the battles will be short like in Greece where the few taxpayers, the small business owners, have sent word, "we won't pay"

Making a profit is hard work. Not like sucking off the life blood as the vampire class does. Over and over again, the government has been show to be unable to make a profit from a whorehouse, from a bar.
#8 JKB on 2011-09-25 11:06 (Reply)
Once you have the rulers of this country declaring that, because we are in financial trouble, ANYONE/EVERYONE is, potentially, the one we are going to TAKE from in order to fulfill the ruling class's needs....you have sent a message to your society it is open season to hunt/steal/co-opt someone/anyone else's property. Liberals in charge always seem to mean that our people are going to riot. It is like letting the least cooperative, must disruptive student run the classroom.....chaos ensues.
#9 J on 2011-09-25 11:06 (Reply)
Renewable energy does not exist. When you use the energy, it's gone, turned into work or heat, and you can't renew sometning that does not exist. Renewable energy is a term used to make windmills and solar panels look good. After all, who could be against renewable energy?
#10 Ray on 2011-09-25 12:42 (Reply)
"Imagine students staging sit-ins to protest teacher layoffs. "

My imagination doesn't extend to masses of students doing this. It does extend to masses of students protesting not firing incompetents, however.
#11 ErisGuy on 2011-09-27 05:16 (Reply)

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