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Metalworking (rec.crafts.metalworking) Discuss various aspects of working with metal, such as machining, welding, metal joining, screwing, casting, hardening/tempering, blacksmithing/forging, spinning and hammer work, sheet metal work. |
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#1
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The Rat behind the Podium
distro pruned to rcm
On Thu, 20 May 2010 21:27:09 -0700, Hawke wrote: snip What's worse is the republicans have said they want to do more of what they did when they ran things. This is like the captain of the Titanic wanting to be a ship's captain again. And guys like him would give him another shot at hitting another iceberg. A football comparison is in order. The right wing guys need to understand that the two Bush terms were like the last few years of the Detroit Lions, the worst team in football and they set a record for the most losses in a season. No one is going to hire the head coach again. We'd be just as stupid if we hired the republicans to run the country again. Now, we are a dumb country. But not that dumb. Hawke ============ You're at least half-right. The problem is that in the aggregate over the last 30 years, both parties have become captives of special interest groups and the economic elite. This is called "regulatory capture" when it is "only" a department or agency rather than the entire government. To be sure some of the specific special interest groups may change with the parties in power, but the economic elite remains supreme. The serious and continual/accelerating socio-economic/cultural decline has been a totally bipartisan effort. It is tempting to attribute gross moral turpitude/failure to the people accountable, which may be true in some cases, but the evidence indicates that simply replacing the existing politicians with other ones is not a partial solution or even palliative/anodyne. One of the more depressing possibilities is that the U.S. specifically and the "west" in general have "shot their bolt" and reached the end of their life cycle as major powers, much as the occurred with the Chinese and Arab cultures. This will only be proven "after the fact," but prudence dictates considerable contingency planning should be occurring. Other factors include (1) grossly excessive legislative tenure in a highly toxic environment [i.e. the Washington D.C. "culture"] combined with disproportionate isolation from the "real world;" and (2) governmental service well past the onset of senility/dotage, where they are still living in the "reality" of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet Nelson." [For our younger readers see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adv...ie_and_Harriet and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver ] -- Unka George (George McDuffee) ............................... The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953). |
#2
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The Rat behind the Podium
"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message ... distro pruned to rcm On Thu, 20 May 2010 21:27:09 -0700, Hawke wrote: snip What's worse is the republicans have said they want to do more of what they did when they ran things. This is like the captain of the Titanic wanting to be a ship's captain again. And guys like him would give him another shot at hitting another iceberg. A football comparison is in order. The right wing guys need to understand that the two Bush terms were like the last few years of the Detroit Lions, the worst team in football and they set a record for the most losses in a season. No one is going to hire the head coach again. We'd be just as stupid if we hired the republicans to run the country again. Now, we are a dumb country. But not that dumb. Hawke ============ You're at least half-right. The problem is that in the aggregate over the last 30 years, both parties have become captives of special interest groups and the economic elite. This is called "regulatory capture" when it is "only" a department or agency rather than the entire government. To be sure some of the specific special interest groups may change with the parties in power, but the economic elite remains supreme. The serious and continual/accelerating socio-economic/cultural decline has been a totally bipartisan effort. It is tempting to attribute gross moral turpitude/failure to the people accountable, which may be true in some cases, but the evidence indicates that simply replacing the existing politicians with other ones is not a partial solution or even palliative/anodyne. One of the more depressing possibilities is that the U.S. specifically and the "west" in general have "shot their bolt" and reached the end of their life cycle as major powers, much as the occurred with the Chinese and Arab cultures. This will only be proven "after the fact," but prudence dictates considerable contingency planning should be occurring. Other factors include (1) grossly excessive legislative tenure in a highly toxic environment [i.e. the Washington D.C. "culture"] combined with disproportionate isolation from the "real world;" and (2) governmental service well past the onset of senility/dotage, where they are still living in the "reality" of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet Nelson." [For our younger readers see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adv...ie_and_Harriet and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver ] -- Unka George (George McDuffee) a guy in england talking about a "one party state", almost sounds like he's talking about here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0qdZANdKnQ funny commentary about the press. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cko7BImRAfQ |
#3
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The Rat behind the Podium
============ You're at least half-right. The problem is that in the aggregate over the last 30 years, both parties have become captives of special interest groups and the economic elite. This is called "regulatory capture" when it is "only" a department or agency rather than the entire government. To be sure some of the specific special interest groups may change with the parties in power, but the economic elite remains supreme. The serious and continual/accelerating socio-economic/cultural decline has been a totally bipartisan effort. Well, yes and no. It's true that corporate interests have been increasing their influence over the federal government in the last few decades. But there is a difference. The republican party is wholly owned by business interests and has been as long as I can remember. They have always been doing their best to help business and at the cost to the workers. Democrats are also susceptible to corporate interests too but they have a different agenda than the republicans do. The two parties have fought to varying degrees of success against each other to advance different agendas. Until 2000 when for the first time in my memory the republicans won the trifecta and were the one party government. That's when you saw the accelleration of the influence of corporations on government and on the policy of not regulating markets or corporations as a rule of thumb. You never would have seen anything like that under one party Democrat rule. We have that not and you are not seeing anything like the "capture" demonstrated under the republicans. It is tempting to attribute gross moral turpitude/failure to the people accountable, which may be true in some cases, but the evidence indicates that simply replacing the existing politicians with other ones is not a partial solution or even palliative/anodyne. No, it does help. Replacing someone like Dick Cheney with a Joe Biden is going to make a big difference. But the problem is structural. It's the electoral system. The privately financed electoral system is at the heart of the problem. Lobbyists are the other problem but that pales in comparison to the financing of elections. Not until we have public financing can we hope to eliminate the influence of the corporations. Now that the right wing Supreme Court has given corporations the green light to throw any amount of money they want into elections it's all the more important that we move to public financed elections. One of the more depressing possibilities is that the U.S. specifically and the "west" in general have "shot their bolt" and reached the end of their life cycle as major powers, much as the occurred with the Chinese and Arab cultures. This will only be proven "after the fact," but prudence dictates considerable contingency planning should be occurring. That is a possibility but not one that I subscribe to. We're experiencing a period of major changes to society and to the world right now. It's a bumpy period right now and the western powers still have a lot going for them. But even for the best empires it's not always smooth sailing. Now is one of those times for the west. They should come back strong in the coming decades. Other factors include (1) grossly excessive legislative tenure in a highly toxic environment [i.e. the Washington D.C. "culture"] combined with disproportionate isolation from the "real world;" and (2) governmental service well past the onset of senility/dotage, where they are still living in the "reality" of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet Nelson." [For our younger readers see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adv...ie_and_Harriet and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver ] The tea partiers and the electorate in general has been making like they have had it with most leaders. It remains to be seen if they actually follow through with their replacement. I believe they won't. But we are moving in the right direction. Evidence of that is that we were definitely moving in the wrong direction when Bush was president. Now we are doing so many things completely opposite of what the republicans did we must be headed in the right direction. Only time will tell but doing the opposite of what proved to be bad policy is usually the right thing to do. Hawke |
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