Sunday, January 30, 2011

Egypt...

The "revolution" most often goes like this:

-groundswell for "democracy" erupts, driven by several different sources with different political ends (please note that very few of these people understand or have experienced democracy, so what results from initial proposals has no real resemblance)

-after much bloodshed, dictator government is ousted

-struggle to aim and control government ensues between these different sources

-after two or three botched elections, an extremist religious group takes over

-back to square one, with a much weaker country and opposition


Too bad religion plays such a large part in the politics of the region.

Terrorists and their supporting organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and their outside backers like Hamas and Iran would love for this to turn totally chaotic. Make it easier to subvert any attempts at organized democracy and turn it into another Iranian type situation. Look for Mullahs and Clerics to start speaking for the "revolutionaries".

We'll see if the educated westernized Egyptians can pull this together, or the religious extremists will take over.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Guvmint, jobs, reading the fine print and expectations...

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/28/133249970/loss-of-solar-jobs-has-mass-rethinking-state-aid


Uhhhh... guvmint stupid. Not read fine print. But politicos be last to lose jobs...

Face it. We can't compete in a world economy without tariffs and laws that make it hard for companies selling goods in America to manufacture them outside the good ol' USA.

But we done lost that fight.

One of the reasons - outside our own greed and short-sightedness (look at our work expectations, unions, pension funds, tax structure, everything adds up to failure) - is that both corporationalists and globalists want to even the world-wide economic playing field -- and if that means a lower SOL in the USA, then so be it... So we have persons of power in our own guvmint whose ends do not meet their own constituency's best interests.

Whole thing will backfire. End up with lower SOL for everyone, everywhere.

Mebbe NO SOL for anybody.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Paradox...

People have less money to spend, so they are spending less; and with less spending, the economy is having a difficult time getting back on track.

If employers hired more people and paid better wages then people could purchase more of their products and those businesses would be better off.

However, businesses don't have the money to hire new people and pay better wages because consumers are not buying their goods and services like they once did.

If you can figure this one out, I'll buy you a beer -- and, you get my vote for president...


But... Quoting a poster "Hermit" on a local forum:

"I think our economy's big problem is that it is built on the premise that people have to buy crap they don't need to keep the wheels of commerce in motion.

When people stop buying crap they don't need, the economy tanks. I'm not so sure it's a good idea for the government to pick up the crap-buying slack to get the wheels spinning again.


I never thought I'd see the day when the act of saving was considered bad for the economy."

Succinct!

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Tucson Shooter and "Political Discourse"...

"If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun" - Barack Obama


Both sides seem to be trying to "establish a narrative" and "manufacture a meta-meme" that absolutely ignores what known facts there are regarding the Tucson shootings, and to use whatever means, including outright lies, to promote those manufactured narratives as truths...

Funny how so many of us are just pulling statements and questionable "proofs" off of these sites and pasting them into our litte spats.

Disgustingly familiar. We are thinking it's a "media" problem, while we need to look in the miirror.

Maybe if we want to throw labels and call names, we need to do so in the privacy of our own homes and in that mirror...


Amazing the number of acquaintances of the shooter who come out of the wood-work and in effect say "I knew he was going to do something like this...”

Even given the probability that half of these people are just getting on camera, I don't think that it is a violation of personal rights for anyone who notes unusual and what they might consider dangerous behavior to at least take the action of contacting local law enforcement. Not that there would necessarily be action taken, but at least this would up the odds on such people being caught and even helped before something bad happens...

I also want to say that people who are pointing fingers at heightened political discourse as a trigger for what went wrong with this young man are probably mistaken. I think they will find that he has paranoid schizophrenia and suffers from delusions -- and there may be no telling why people with schizophrenia choose to latch onto and obsess over any particular subject or object.

That said, I do believe that this will have consequences on the ease of individual purchase of weapons, especially handguns; maybe only in Arizona, but there is going to be some serious anti-gun rhetoric coming down over the next little while. Of course, that will only worsen the "heightened political discourse" that is being mistakenly blamed for a crazy man's actions...