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wvParticipantHow are the St.Louis stations gonna handle Rams games now?
I mean, I would think there are still a ton of Ram
fans in St.Louis. Most of the Loo fans just watched the Rams
on tv like the rest of us. A lot of em probly dont care
all that much about where they play. Yes? No?Just my opinion, but I think there’s an opportunity here
for a crafty-smart station. I bet there’s still plenty
of interest for a lot of St.Loo fans. Despite all the…ya know.w
vwvParticipantNo-one on the whole entire Internet
seems to like Josh Forrest.Thats reason enough for me to like him.
Forrest is my man, now. He’ll be a star.
He’ll be bigger than Don Knotts.
Mark my words.Josh Forrest will be the next Chris Massey.
There.
I’ve said it.w
vwvParticipantSo it’s only been 50 years since the poor were more than an afterthought to a US president? Then what’s the issue?
Hmm. I’ have to say, Yes. Very few of us are old enough to remember anything that the government did in our lifetime that actually helped poor people.
Although we have given them non-stop opportunities to go out in a blaze of glory defending our freedom from brown and yellow peasants. There’s that.
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I keep thinking of the Bernie quote about McDowell County in WV.
Average lifespan for males is 64. Six hour drive to Fairfax County in Va — 82 years. Think about that. But dont just think of the quantity of years, think about the ‘quality’ of life of poor people. In a gazillion ways they are dehumanized. Start with simple obvious things — like dental care. Think about daily ‘stress’. Think about trying to raise children under overwhelming ‘stress’… I could go on. But all the politicians (and voters) want to talk about is ‘the middle class.’ It makes me crazy.w
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Harold Laski (1930): “A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.”Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison (in Growing Prosperity, 2000): “If you pour enough wealth into the funnel at the top, those at the bottom eventually receive a little of the benefits themselves. One might ask, what kind of decent society requires making the rich that much richer to prevent everyone else from getting poorer?”
“Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential – that’s why they killed him.” Graef Crystal (compensation expert 1998)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):”It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the devil work hard.”
wvParticipantI see Goff in his Rams uniform and he looks very thin to me.
Maybe a year or two in the league will change that.
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I’m not really concerned about his weight anymore. I did
think he looked frail in the college vids, but its
not a concern anymore. I am guessing he’ll end up
around 235 or so.w
vMay 21, 2016 at 3:19 pm in reply to: how many are proud Rams will have a glittery showcase stadium? #44439wvParticipantOh, I dunno. I guess I’m always at odds with the Corporate side
of my little Rams hobby. Ya know. I don’t think i like any
of the big-money-corporate aspects of pro-football.So, i just focus on the ‘game’ and the coaching and plays
etc, etc.I dont wanna get into the ‘why’ i dont like the mega-corporate
aspects of pro-football, for all the obvious reasons. Aint the right
board for that, and the regulars already know what i think anywayz…I wish i understood more about the history of the Green Bay Communists
and just how exactly that whole thing (whatever it is) managed to
exist and thrive in the NFL.w
vMay 21, 2016 at 2:30 pm in reply to: Video on Republican takeover of Dem convention, and glyphosate #44434wvParticipantAwesome vid.
w
vwvParticipant“…Bill Clinton turned out to be a “New Democrat,” in other words a triangulating neoliberal corporatist…. Barack Obama has been a terrific President whose administration has been, nevertheless, not nearly as progressive as the two campaigns he waged to get into the White House led progressives to expect…”
First off jst let me say i HATE the word ‘neoliberal’ — I hate it
coz it confuses a lot of average joe and janes. People interested
in communicating with the masses should use a word like corporate-puppet
or rightwinger or somethin thats not an ‘insider’ word…Second….Obama has been a ‘terrific President’ ?
Um…no.
w
vwvParticipantNoam is just a laff a minute aint he:
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One final question: If the American dream is dead, as Donald Trump says it is, why do surveys continue to show that the majority of those interviewed say they still believe and even live the American dream? Was the American dream ever reality, or just a myth?The “American dream” was a very mixed story. It traces back to the 19th century, when free people could obtain land and pursue other opportunities in an expanding economy — thanks to annihilation of the [Indigenous] nations who populated the country and the huge contribution to the economy of the most vicious form of slavery that has yet existed….
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vwvParticipantThe thing about the rightwingers is they are usually quite honest. I mean this is a perfectly honest, up-front, direct encapsulation of their view:
“..The 1st Amendment guarantees freedom, not equality. Rights are exercised to radically unequal degrees, and the right to speech is no exception.”
That was, essentially what William F Buckley repeated over and over again for decades on his show. That same idea, right there.
Citizens United fosters Inequality. The Right is fine with Inequality.
(Buckley used to argue you cant have democracy without inequality)As a person of the left that whole notion is
appalling.…and i’m still not voting for Clinton 🙂
Cause she’s a crusher-of-poor-human-beings.w
vwvParticipantI try to make friends with the weeds.
Maybe they are doing some good,
i dunno.w
vwvParticipantThe arrival of the NFL significantly altered the list of the 50 Most Powerful in Southern California Sports
My first thought reading all this was…SFW.
My last thought, though, was…SFW.
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I heard, Mr. Kroenke has a golden toilet.
I also heard that he is so powerful that when the media is in his presence
they feel tingling sensations in their anuses.I dont even know what that means, but its what i heard.
w
vwvParticipantIs Affirmative Action a conservative policy to make rich white people
feel better? Yes? No?Check out the four minute mark of the Vid:
wvParticipant[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. ~Pat Robertson
That just sounds like a normal american teenager’s high school years.
.
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Well yeah, maybe in Maine.
Here in appalachia its more like …4-wheelin, witchcraft, anti-family, oxycontin, bath-salts, become lesbian, snake-handling, shoot deer,
shoot fish, do community service, Home-confinement, Probation, sing in the choir, get mining job, get laid off, get fracking job, get injured, apply for disability, find jesus.w
vMay 19, 2016 at 6:19 pm in reply to: audio: Snead interview (more than an hour)… must listen stuff #44361wvParticipantDon’t be so quick to go against facts that way.
An amphibian would never have drafted Gurley.
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Snead was there, in the stadium, the day
Gurley’s knee got blown out.Coincidence?
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vMay 19, 2016 at 5:32 pm in reply to: audio: Snead interview (more than an hour)… must listen stuff #44351wvParticipantWhat is this “guess what” thing,
Snead has fallen into.w
vIt’s the evolved, more adult version of what players always say–“you know.”
He used to be a college player, but, the brain changes as you grow older. You know?
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What if that’s not what’s happening.
What if his mind is slowly being taken over
by some evil mysterious force.I’m not even talkin about some Lizard type force.
Could be amphibians, for all we know.
w
vMay 19, 2016 at 4:39 pm in reply to: audio: Snead interview (more than an hour)… must listen stuff #44345wvParticipantWhat is this “guess what” thing,
Snead has fallen into.w
vwvParticipantGreat quotes, WV. I’ve never gotten a coherent response from Christians who believe the bible literally, when I talk about their god as genocidal madman. The trap is that literal belief…
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Well, havin been born-and-raized in the bible-belt
I can tell you, the usual response from evangelicals is simply this:God is a jealous and vengeful god.
They are fine with that. They dont question it.
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“An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.” Martin Luther“listen to feminists and all these radical gals – most of them are failures. They’ve blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house.
That’s all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they’re mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They’re sexist. They hate men – that’s their problem.”
~Reverend Jerry Falwell[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women
to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. ~Pat RobertsonwvParticipantThis is also pretty much the same exact thing that led to right-wing evangelicals becoming politically active back in the early 1970s. For them, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the ruling against Bob Jones University, on the issue of segregation. Samantha Bee explains: …
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I assume the Religious-evangelicals are still a powerful core faction
of the Rep Party. They may not be quite as visible as they used to be
but I assume they still carry a significant amount of weight on the Right.
Lots of votes out there, among the fundamentalist-christian crowd.w
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“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” ― Mark Twain“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.” — Robert Anton Wilson
wvParticipantWell, they keep winning and winning and winning, so
I am gonna assume they are putting good players on the field
year after year after yearArguably…I don’t think that’s an accurate assessment. They do have a pretty decent drafting track record (but then when was the last time the Rams dumped 2 first-round picks?) So they are okay. Pretty good. But….IMO they win year after year because they have a seasoned Brady in a system he has played in his whole career. Plus they have a couple of key players. There is coaching too but then…that still depends on Brady.
But when the Denver got to Brady last year, or when the Giants got to him in that first superbowl, New England was not as gifted and dominant, suddenly.
That leads me to a hypothetical. Put Brady on last year’s Rams and they are certainly better than 7-9. Put the 2015 Foles and the 2015 Keenum on last year’s Patz and they might be better than 7-9 but not by much.
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Well i know you know more about the Pats than i do. I never watchem and I dont really know a damn thing about any team other than the rams.So i admit i’m totally ignorant.
But i just dont buy your notion that its mainly Brady and a few other key players.
I’ve watched Belichick do wonders with that Patriot Defense even when he was starting WRs at DB. I’ve seen’em plug-and-play too many ‘depth players’ over the years. And there was the year Cassell won eleven games or so.
I think you are minimizing the Organization and the Personnel Evaluators, coupled with the mastermind Belichex. The fact that they jettison first rounders and still win, just tells me they do well with 2nd rounders or 3rd rounders, etc.
But again, what do i know.
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vwvParticipant….was listening to NPR on the car radio and i heard that Bruce Springsteen and Itzak Perlman and a bunch of glittering celebrities were boycotting North Carolina.
Cause of the Identity politix thing. Trans people cant use bathrooms of their choice.
They have to use the other bathroom.THAT brings about a boycott.
Meanwhile… NC can pass laws the crush the poor every legislative session, and that gets
no reaction from the rich celebs.And so it goes.
wv grouch
wvParticipant“He was at his best when we went out on the field and we started making things more complicated” — Gruden
wvParticipantThey just cut one first round pick and traded away another.
And both ended up in the NFC West (Chandler and Easley).
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Well, they keep winning and winning and winning, so
I am gonna assume they are putting good players on the field
year after year after year. So then, that would mean
they are Personnel Wizards. Somehow, someway they are
evaluating, finding, signing bunches of good players.
Maybe they are good in the lower rounds? Maybe they find
a way to have more draft picks? Maybe they do a great job
in free agency? I dunno. But i doubt they just have
such a great scheme and such a great coach that they make
bad players look good.PS, i do not believe its just ‘Brady’. So dont go there.
Dont say the B word. I wont have it.w
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This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by
wv.
wvParticipantI can’t see how that could happen. Such a being would be inherently non kosher. Was recently in Everglades National Park and watched dolphins doing it. Always in threesomes that they called a pod. Unfortunately from my perspective its always dude-gal-dude for the pod. Good news is calf support is nonexistent.
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I’m not a hundred percent sure i wanna be a dolphin, anymore.
wvParticipantThen unless he is an experienced PT he seems like trouble to me. Who is going to step up in the locker room to counteract such behavior?
Well, this is all just (partly) informed guesswork, but, the Rams have a famously stable locker room, with leaders (on the DL no less) like Hayes and Donald. Plus I don’t imagine the Rams would sign him unless they made their parameters clear. That’s leveraged by the fact that he knows he can’t get cut again—and he also knows (from watching Fairley get signed) that being a good and productive citizen on the Rams DL leads to down the road benefits.
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Plus he gets to be on Hard Knocks.
Be a tee-vee star.w
vwvParticipantUnless the body parts are kosher count the jews out.
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Indeed. ..but…what if…a Pig/Human Hybrid was born, and…it converted/became Jewish? What then?I personally wouldnt mind my DNA being mixed with a
Dolphin. Or one of those Aliens they have at Roswell.Seriously, i cannot quite wrap my head around this — they really are
doing this. Mixing pigs and humans. For profit. It blows my mind.Will these beings be ‘owned’ by corporations?
w
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This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by wv.
wvParticipant“Conservatives can at least say, “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t care because other people aren’t my problem. I’m in it for me.”
I would say I don’t want other people making their problems, mine. Especially if they choose to live what I consider an immoral, extravagant, reckless life. That definitely should not be my problem.————————
Well, i think you summed up a core fundamental difference between Left
and Right, right there with that paragraph.I am always looking for statements with that kind of clarity.
That was very clear. I also talked to a liberal, Catholic, Grad-School-Educated professional the other day who said exactly the same thing. He was a Clinton supporter, btw.
At any rate, the core difference I am talking about here, stems from how to view human “choices” and the question of how/when do conditions overwhelm or influence ‘choices’.
w
vwvParticipantAnd, yes, I agree with him that, in America especially, liberal elites have often used the issues of race, gender and sexuality to forestall any discussion of economic inequality and class
Just jumping in, I have to say…meaning no offense to anyone…that this is all old. I think it’s important to recognize that…it puts the discussion more in context, IMO.
Liberals who buy into multiculturalism (my preferred term) often, yes, ignore, misunderstand, or don’t get class.
But then the left opposition to that particular construction is old. In fact Michaels was writing in the 80s and 90s.
The left opposition to all that liberal stuff goes way back, and it does not make the corresponding error of ignoring race, gender, and sexuality.
And that has been true for a few decades.
The left is fragmented into pockets, and sometimes, one given section of it has not heard about other sections of it.
What’s interesting to me is that in the last few years, this stuff has gone much more mainstream. That is, access to it and interest in it has gone up.
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I agree, its old. But I started noticing the dynamic more and more in the corporate-media, and it started bugging me more and more.
The ‘trans-gender’ thing just totally set me off. Cause I look at the house burning down and i see the media absolutely going ga-ga over identity-politix issues, and….blah blah blah.And to state what i assume is obvious — i am not saying identity politix issues are unimportant. Of course they are important. But when they are used as a diversion from ‘class’ or inequality or what i call ‘poor people issues’ then it sets me off.
But yeah, its an old game. Lots of things have been used over the centuries as ‘bread and circuses’ to divert the masses from
looking behind the curtain.Michael wrote the Trouble with Diversity in 2006, btw. Apparently he thought the dynamic still needed talkin about.
w
vwvParticipantWV,
I see that. And perhaps I’m being too “literal” about definitions. But from where I sit, even if we get to the point where you want to see things go, and I’m with you all the way, it’s not “capitalism” any longer. It’s something else. Not sure what the word would be, but it’s not “capitalism.”
Along with that, yes, you’re right. We aren’t in any position at the moment to replace the current system. But the tragedy is, we’re not even in the position to “tame” it. We don’t have the political will — or access, or resources, or power — to stop it from moving further to the right, becoming more and more “neoliberal” in country after country. So, personally, it’s even pie in the sky to talk about “reform” in this point in time. Which then leads me to think, since pretty much all discussions regarding system change are massive longshots, why not talk about (and aspire to) something that would really improve the lives of billions, give everyone dignity and autonomy over their economic life and prevent ecological catastrophe? As in, if it’s all a pipe dream, why not go big?
I’m pretty eclectic in my thinking, but if I had to choose just one “school” right now, I’d take libertarian socialist. Your favorite, Noam Chomsky, is perhaps the leading representative of that currently. But he’s coming from, as you know, a long line of left-libertarians, like William Morris, Elisee Reclus and Petr Kropotkin, who also sometimes called themselves anarchist-socialists, anarchist-communists, or just socialists. To me, none of their dreams can be realized under the capitalist system, and we can’t “tame” our way there, either. It really does need to be replaced. Because, fundamentally, capitalism is all about controlling the work of others and profiting from that work. It’s all about, at its core, ownership — of humans, goods and services, resources, the earth. From where I sit, I just can’t conceive of any kind of human emancipation that includes people having that ability — to own the production of others, their time, their bodies, their autonomy, even if it’s just eight hours a day. And I can’t see how private ownership of the means of production, which necessarily includes resources and the earth, could ever lead to any liberation for humans, and it’s just not environmentally sustainable.
Anyway, hope all is well, and thanks again for introducing me to those other writers.
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Oh, we are on the same page, BT. Comrad 🙂We just talk with different accents, different writing styles,
different emphasis, but we are on the same page.I despise corporate-capitalism. And if i could waive my magic wand, and heal the peepulz, and magically create a citizenry that was less stressed and thus had the time/energy/health to ‘think critically,’
then I’d bet we would end up with one version or another of — libertarian-socialism.The only question for me would be — should there be a small dose of some form of capitalism in the mix. Would that create a positive spark of creative-energy or would that…light the fuse. Again.
w
vwvParticipantWV,
I agree with you a ton on these issues, but I think — just guessing — I’m even more opposed to capitalism than you are. If I understand you correctly, you’re opposed to a certain kind of capitalism — corporate. To me, it’s just a natural evolution already contained within the system itself. Capitalism itself, IMO, leads to globalization and corporatization globally and can’t really avoid it. .
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Well two things. First this kind of Mega-Macro-Uber Issue stuff is…a bit academic to me sometimes. Which is not to say its trivial or unimportant or useless. It just means i lose energy rather quickly on these questions about eliminating entire Mega-systems. I mean it just aint gonna happen, and even if it did it would take a long time, and the groundwork has not been laid, blah blah blah. So, i dont have too much energy for the mega-macro “what if” questions.But. Having said that….to address your post, I’d say, I will always ‘wrestle’ with the question of whether there might be a decent form of capitalism. I think about it everyday. Can there be a capitalism with a human face? Can it be controlled, tamed, limited? Or is capitalism like the baby dragons on Game Of Thrones. Cute, when young, but eventually, inexorably, it grows into a flaming, murderous monster.
I dunno the answer to that. I kinda think its…a mystery. Unwritten. Maybe its possible to have a nice mix of capitalism and socialism and anarchism. Maybe. Probably not…but maybe.
It certainly does not seem possible to me with the citizens we now have. The citizenry seems too wounded by corporate-capitalism. Too many generations have been infected by propaganda and corporate-ideology, imho. That combined with the prevalence of pro-corporate-Religion has created….the situation, we iz in.
No amount of ‘academic’ utopian conversation is gonna change the fact that right now, on the ground, the masses of Amerikans have been
drenched, deluged, inundated with and drowned in misinformation, disinformation, and corporate and religious ideology. So thats where we are at. Surrounded by that. If we could wave a magic wand and eliminated decades of ‘history’ then we could start talking
about new systems and socialism and anti-captialism, etc.In order for a huge revolution to take place, poor people, the poor-masses would have to be the driving force. And if you talk to actual poor people, they are too stressed out, and too damaged to
even think about ‘capitalism’. They are consumed with the fact that their teeth hurt, their kids are unhealthy, they have no money to pay the rent, and they cant pay for their latest anti-depressant prescription….So where does that leave us? I dunno. I got no answers, other than an occasional gesture, like voting for Jill.
w
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“You have reached the shore. There are no directions”
LevertovwvParticipantYes, i like him too. I bin skimming his book. Got it for a penny at amazon. I came across him in an Adolph Reed article. He influenced Reed, apparently.
(Reed is in this thread:w
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This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by
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