“..I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street…”.
Marine Colonel Smedley Butler

“Authoritarian Communism is, and should be, forever tainted by those real-world laboratories. But what of the contemporary crusade to liberate world markets? The coups, wars and slaughters to instill and maintain pro-corporate regimes have never been treated as capitalist crimes but have instead been written off as the excess of overzealous dictators, as hot fronts in the Cold War, and now of the War on Terror. If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the seventies or in Iraq today, that suppression is explained as part of the dirty fight against Communism or terrorism – almost never as the fight for the advancement of pure capitalism.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

For those that wont read that entire transcript this is a hack-sized-summary. Empire in action:

“…Well, I mean, it’s incredible this woman is a presidential candidate, that she’s doing like things like this, the fact that she would say we wanted to “render the question of Zelaya moot,” we wanted to bury the democratically elected president’s existence and act like the coup didn’t happen. I mean, that’s why it’s so terrifying that today—or rather, on Saturday, she would say—she would defend this coup, say it wasn’t a coup, and defend her actions in installing this terrifically horrific, scary post-coup regime. And, of course, that she would cut that out of her memoir, in the paperback version, is also very scary…”

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— X — wrote:

I love Fishing. Taught both my kids to fish too, and they’re gonna pass that along. At first my daughter was all, “this is boring and stupid.” After a couple of weeks it became, “can we go to the bait store and get some shiners?” We only did freshwater though. No deep sea fishing on huge boats. Standing on the side of a river or canal, strategically targeting spots of water and changing lures to target different depths, trying to find the perfect combination. It’s almost like meditation.

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
— Steven Wright

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Whats the best fishing movie ever made?

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— X — wrote:

wv wrote:

btw, i do ‘get’ the fact that the ‘racism’ issue really sets you and bnw off. You guys react strongly and swiftly to that issue/belief.

I hope you do understand no-one is calling you guys racists. Some of us do indeed believe that part of the Republican strategy is to pull in the ‘racist bloc’ of white folks in the south. I think its been a ‘strategy’ for a long time. Doesn’t even mean Nixon/Bush/Reagan were ‘racists’ — just means they wanted that voting-bloc so they exploited the issue.

I could be wrong of course. I haven’t studied on it much. I might change my mind after further review, who knows.

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I know *you guys* aren’t calling me a racist. That just happens to be the prevailing line of thought by the vocal majority of the left when it comes to describing Trump supporters. If we support Trump or Bannon or don’t actively speak out against political incorrectness, then it means we’re endorsers of racism or white supremacy, or whatever. Which, subsequently, and by default, means we’re also racists.

I understand the topic at hand, and I don’t entirely disagree with it. What I do have an issue with is the idea that Republicans are actively ‘pulling in racists’ with their policies or words. They’re not responsible for how racists interpret policy or political statements anymore than the left is responsible for the positions of Farrakhan or Sharpton or Jackson and all of their followers. Fucked up people are gonna be fucked up people.

But yeah, I’ll delve into it deeper with you. Who knows what we’ll find.

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Fwiw, I really like Sharpton’s policies. I looked at a list of his policy statements once and I couldnt find any that i disagreed with. I know he can be a self-serving pompous ass, but his policies are in line with mine. He’s a ‘leftist’ as the term is used on ‘this’ board.

Fair-a-con is another story. Though there’s plenty of things I’d agree with him about.

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bnw wrote:

You do realize the democrats are actively expressing the desire to kill those “Racists” economy by killing the coal economy? Don’t you think that has a lot to do with their not believing democrats represent their view?

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Well i think the coal-miners hated Hillary because they thought (wrongly) she would take their guns away from them, and they hated Hillary because they figured out she was a lying weasel who cared more about bankers than coal-miners, and i think they hated her because she was going to try to manage the decline of the coal industry, and they hated her because she was pro-choice, and they voted against her because the bought into Trumpism.

They will/would be disappointed in the end, with either Trump or Hillary.

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— X — wrote:

wv wrote:

So, to sum up. And imho.
1) There is indeed a real, active, much-discussed ‘southern strategy’ used by Nixon/Bush/Reagan/Bush/Trump. That strategy in subtle and not-so-subtle ways ‘invites’ the overt, organized, and unorganized White-Racist bloc of voters to feel at home in the Rep Party. The Dems do not ‘do that’. As bad as they are, they dont do ‘that’.
2) There are plenty of other NON-racist voting-blocs in the Rep Party. Evangelicals, Top 1 percenters, etc.
3) There are racist voters who vote Dem, too. But there is no ‘Dem Southern Strategy’ to capture them or “Dem northern strategy” to capture them, etc.
4) I think the Race issue leaned on too much by the left, and denied totally by the Right.

Themz my views, in an oversimplified way.

Well, let’s talk about *that* then. What are these subtle and not-so-subtle ways the right invites that fringe into the fold? By talking about real issues like immigration? Is there a way to do that without introducing the fact that it actually *is* other races that are pouring over the border in record numbers? As I said a little while back, I would feel the same about immigration reform if there were thousands of Swedes or Germans pouring across. It’s a security and economic issue (for me, at least).

Or maybe it’s using phrases like “inner city”? That’s a real thing. Inner cities. Talking about the very real problems within those areas isn’t done so at the expense of the African American race as a whole. But I did see it spun that way by the Dems. They more or less insinuated that Trump was saying there aren’t any functioning or affluent African American communities. So, yeah.

To that end, I submit that Dems *do* use a similar tactic. They distort the real meaning behind Republican talking points to that of ‘hate’ or ‘racism’ or ‘intolerance’, and they do that in order to attract and cater to the far left.

Am I off on any of that?

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Well, ok, good questions. I dont have time today to research the ‘Southern Strategy’ of the Reps but I’ll just start a thread and when i have time, I’ll see what kind of arguments and facts are out there.

btw, always keep in mind, my thing is Corporate-Capitalism and its little rosemary’s baby – Neoliberalism.

I think THOSE are the scourges that gave us Trump-Killary-Obama-Bush-Reagan. Race is not really my big issue. Its just something i notice and cant deny. I think the Reps play the race game in a dirty way and the proof is right there in the Racists themselves. I talk to them every week. THEY tell me Trump represents their views. They never tell me any Democrat represents their views. But still, i get your point about immigration and other urban issues. When is an issue just an issue and when is it subtly and in a tricky way being racist? Tough questions. Worth thinking about.

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— X — wrote:

wv wrote:

i dont see why racism would be any ‘more‘ of an issue than in 2012 or earlier.

It’s not. It wouldn’t even be a talking point if Killary was elected either. Now, all you have to do is hint at it existing within the system, and all hell breaks loose. Dog whistle politics.

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Well can agree to disagree. Like i said once before i think (and i thot u agreed)
The Dems Overestimate and overplay the “racism is a factor” meme.
And the Trump supporters (and Nixon supporters and Reagan supporters and Bush supporters) UNDER-estimate the “racism was a factor” meme.

Several factions make up the Republican base — one of them factions is the organized and unorganized White Racist faction. Here in WV, i know them well. I talk to many of them every week. They freely and breezily use the word nigger or monkey to describe Obama, they think blacks are lazy and violent, and they love Trump and hate Hillary. They have confederate flags on their pickup trucks. They are also very decent people in many ways. Blah blah blah.

I also would imagine there are plenty of closet-liberal racists voting for the Dems. There’s many shades and kinds of racism. I assume its impossible to know how many of those there are. Ya know.

So, to sum up. And imho.
1) There is indeed a real, active, much-discussed ‘southern strategy’ used by Nixon/Bush/Reagan/Bush/Trump. That strategy in subtle and not-so-subtle ways ‘invites’ the overt, organized, and unorganized White-Racist bloc of voters to feel at home in the Rep Party. The Dems do not ‘do that’. As bad as they are, they dont do ‘that’.
2) There are plenty of other NON-racist voting-blocs in the Rep Party. Evangelicals, Top 1 percenters, etc.
3) There are racist voters who vote Dem, too. But there is no ‘Dem Southern Strategy’ to capture them or “Dem northern strategy” to capture them, etc.
4) I think the Race issue leaned on too much by the left, and denied totally by the Right.

Themz my views, in an oversimplified way.

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from the article above:

“…The liberal media is now invoking facile memes like ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ to suggest that it was ‘irrational’ and false output on social media that helped deliver Trump and Brexit.

Yet, isn’t this media-hyped ‘problem’ of ‘false news’ the most brazen inversion of a truth? From the BBC’s complicit lies over Iraq, to the Guardian’s warnings that Corbyn cannot be trusted with the economy, there’s no more fake news than the state propaganda and neoliberal narratives peddled daily by our ‘mainstream’ media….”
…
……

“….This will go down as one of the greatest snake oil sales jobs of all political time. But it wasn’t hard to see why brooding, alienated Americans bought the mix. It wasn’t difficult to see how they embraced Trump’s seductive ‘remedies’ in emboldened rejection of Clinton.

Of course, alongside his immediate back-peddling on ‘platform policies’, like pledging to jail Clinton and end Obamacare, the list of Trump’s crony ‘transition team’ shows just how ‘determined’ he is to ‘drain the swamp’. If Clinton is the swamp, Trump and his coterie are part of the same sewer system.

There’s a short honeymoon now before Trump’s hardline constituency realise they’ve been played. But it may be considerably longer before the Clinton cabal openly concede their own venality in cheer-leading an arch-warmonger and Wall Street-serving villain…”

zn wrote:

Bernie Sanders on how Donald Trump won presidency

Man, that was hard to watch. Half the time the normal mainstream media interviewers just make me squirm…they can’t hear him, and they steer things away from what he was saying.

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Indeed.

America may have jumped the shark.

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