The Battle of the Bads
The beating of journalist Steven Crowder by union supporters in Michigan highlights once again the role that extra-judicial intimidation plays in politics. We like to think that politics is about reasoned and civil debate. It never has been. The classic left wing understanding of politics was articulated by Mao Tse Tung.
Every Communist must grasp the truth; “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. … Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.
Left wing ideologues aren’t against guns or violence. They are only opposed to others breaking their monopoly on violence. A gun for me but not for thee is fine by them. Since this means only one side can have a monopoly street intimidation historical demagogues sponsored rival groups of thugs. For example Hitler created his own cadre of goons and his own labor unions. The Nazi labor union was called Deutsche Arbeitsfront.
And just look at the benefits they got for their members too.
Its leader was Robert Ley, who stated its aim as ‘to create a true social and productive community’ (Smelster, 1988). Theoretically, the DAF existed to act as a medium through which workers and owners could mutually represent their interests. Wages were set by the 12 DAF trustees. The employees were given relatively high set wages, security of work, dismissal was increasingly made difficult, social security programmes were started by the Arbeitsfront, leisure programmes were started, canteens, pauses and regular working times were established, and therefore generally the German workers were satisfied by what the DAF gave them in repaying for their absolute loyalty.
Employment contracts created under the Weimar Republic were abolished and renewed under new circumstances in the DAF. Employers could demand more of their workers, while at the same time workers were given increased security of work and increasingly enrolled into social security programmes for workers. The organisation, by its own definition, combated capitalism, liberalism, but also revolution against the factory owners and the national socialist state. The DAF however did openly prefer to have large companies nationalised by the German state, instead of privately owned companies.
And he famously created his own thugs, the Sturmabteilung or Stormtroopers. His rise to power in large part consisted of battles between Sturmabteilung versus the Rotfrontkämpferbund. For it goes without saying that the Left had its own unions and thugs.
The Rotfrontkämpferbund or Rotfront as it was known for short, was “a paramilitary organization under the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic that increasingly squared off against the Storm Detachment or Assault Division, or Brownshirts who were then the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.” We know from history that the Stormtroopers won, in part from their brutality and in part because they had nicer uniforms.
Hugo Boss started his clothing company in 1924 in Metzingen … the same year, he became a member of the Nazi party and a sponsoring member (“Förderndes Mitglied”) of the Schutzstaffel (SS) … He joined the German Labour Front in 1936 … Though he claimed in a 1934/1935 advertising that he had been a “supplier for Nazi uniforms since 1924″, such supplies are probable since 1928/1929 and certain since 1934, when he became an Reichszeugmeisterei-licensed (official) supplier of uniforms to the Sturmabteilung, Schutzstaffel, Hitler Youth, National Socialist Motor Corps, and other party organizations
The nice uniforms were a brilliant touch. “Radical chic” is compounded of one part danger, one part fashion and one part hogwash. Perhaps the reason why it’s never been as cool to be a Tea Party member as to be a camp follower in Occupy Wall Street is that as a Tea Party member you don’t get to scare people. In Occupy Wall Street you get to do ‘edgy’ things.
Street pressure is an important part of modern politics. People who wonder why liberals have such a difficult time competing against totalitarian or Islamic ideologies in Syria, Egypt or Libya need only look to history to understand why. The Jihadis have all the cool uniforms and scarves. That and AK-47s. Uniforms and bad boys make a mix that some girls find it hard to stay away from. The great tragedies of the 20th century had their origin, not in dry debate, but in the Battle of the Bads on German city streets.
We will we will rock you. We will we will rock you.
It is not for nothing that the Democratic party has cultivated a long association with organized labor. It gives them access to a pool of rough and ready people that extends into links with organized crime. It thus gives them a mix of capabilities that while not comparable to the gangs of yesteryear still creates an intimidation factor. Sometimes it’s not what you have but what others think you have that counts the most.
And who knows? They may have it after all.
Hitting Crowder was a signal. We can do this to you. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ Well what should one do about it? The issue that the Steven Crowder mauling incident raises is whether America will pursue the path of peaceful political discourse or whether it will degenerate into the Battle of the Bads.
In 1932, Daniel Guérin, a French homosexual writer, was traveling through Germany and had a chance to watch Hitler’s rise to power. Like many others, he too was drawn to the masculine romance of the street, which resulted in his book, The Brown Plague.
Like Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender, Guerin, a socialist and a homosexual, was drawn to Weimar Germany. It had the strongest workers’ party in Europe and, as Schwartzwald points out in his introduction, the emphasis on clean young men had an unmistakable erotic allure (“Sculptured knees emerged from Lederhosen. Legs were deeply tanned, muscles taut and hard. Thick socks tumbled down to strong, monumental shoes.”). Guerin made two trips, one in 1932 and another in the spring of 1933 following Hitler’s rise to power. Although Le Peste Brun originally included only the second journey, Guerin decided to add the earlier one. Unfortunately, it is of questionable value to anyone interested in how Germany appeared to outsiders as he decided to rewrite it when it strayed “from the essential topic: the rise of National Socialism.”
Of greater interest is the later material in which, willy nilly, Guerin’s comments on Communists and Social Democrats point to a connection between far left and far right. Not only did the Communist leadership come to see “Nazism as a necessary transitional stage on the road to proletarian dictatorship” but Guerin’s evidence suggests that workers steeped in the virulent anticapitalism and revolutionary struggle of Communists were ripe for the anti-Semitism and bloody chauvinism of the Nazis.
In other words despite their outward differences, Guérin recorded how much the two totalitarianisms had in common. It is often argued that the radical left is but one part of the spectrum of democracy. That is incorrect. Democracy is really a completely different thing from it. In the end Mao Tse Tungs vision of power must either be defeated by representative democracy or consume it.
Unlike your Soviet-style rags my uniform is cool
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And still we sit, lurking quietly, waiting for TSTHTF, powder dry,guns ready.
I dare say Crowder went easy on the guy, being on camera and all, He’s got some Guns on him that Boy does, on the street he would have messed that guy up,
Bob
Herein lies a dilemma:
I do hear talk of the “right” needing to be prepared to “punch back,” literally. That would mean large numbers of individuals willing and able to physically confront union goons and Black Block anarchists, etc.
But who are “our” goons, so to speak? And if “we” did go that route, what does that mean for how we are evolving or devolving? “Be careful what you wish for” applies most aptly here.
There’s also fact that our left-wing thuggery is a tacit, un-discussed fact, while Tea Party thuggery is overt yet non-existent.
It would be interesting to know how those guys involved in beating Crowder up see themselves…do they feel any remorse? Are they proud? Will they be lionized among their peers, yet have to keep to themselves? Will he take up Crowder’s offer to meet in a MMA bout?
And the music, “Horst Wessel Lied” (Hold the flag on high)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Mb5MjWZ7kxk#!
“Union meeting at the Hippodrome, a representative from the Emperor will present some points.”
44 states have some form of open carry for sidearms. I would enjoy hearing the squealing of the left if it became a widespread practice for right-wing protesters to attend political rallies openly carrying their handguns.
The phrase we throw around here is “four on one is Union fun.” Intimidation isn’t part of it, it is all of it.
Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, them boys was snappy dressers.
“For it goes without saying that the Left had its own unions and thugs.”
That is, the “Lefter Left.” One of the most absurd ideas ever promulgated is that the Nazis were Right and the Commies were Left. The Nazis were far Left and the Commies further Left. And just to be complete, the Red Chinese were Lefter than the Commies and the Albanian Commies Lefter than the Chicoms.
A Far Right Dictator would be one who believes in a strong State apparatus to enure that everyone is free and unencumbered indivdual. It makes about as much sense as the phrase “Soviet Sports Car” or “Senate Intelligence Committee.”
Unfortunately, actions like the pummeling of Crowder as well as the Teacher’s Union misbehavior in Wisconsin’s uproar can only have one result: People start dropping dead under mysterious circumstances and with remarkable rapidity. I have heard that following Obama’s re-election an unsually large percentage of the Special Operations community are getting out of the service.
I heard Crowder on the radio this a.m. It turns out he is a martial arts guy and could have really responded and taken his assailant out.
Instead he took the high road. Crowder proposed to meet the guy in a fight or face charges – the assailant’s choice. I think they already have his name.
Outstanding, simply outstanding. I hope they televise the fight if the union guy has the stones to meet 1:1.
I noticed some time ago that the SA insignia bears an eerie resemblance to the anarchist symbol. Coincidence?
Wretchard said:
“[Robert Ley] famously created his own thugs, the Sturmabteilung or Stormtroopers. His rise to power in large part consisted of battles between Sturmabteilung versus the Rotfrontkämpferbund. For it goes without saying that the Left had its own unions and thugs.”
The main dynamic behind the fall of the Weimar Republic was the street battles between Nazi and Communist thugs. The analogy often used by German historians was German moderates were trapped between grind stones to the left and right that slowly ground the moderate middle away to nothing. Eventually the German people were left with only two sterile political options, i.e. Adolf Hitler of the Nazi party and Ernst Thälmann of the German Communist party.
Ernst Thälmann avoided military service during WW-I, was a violent radical, Soviet stooge and traitor against his own nation. Hitler was also an abomination but had served his country during WW-I and decorated with the Iron Cross First Class. When given the choice between these two men, the German people held their noses and opted for Hitler.
This political catastrophe that destroyed Germany could have happened to any other nation. We in America have flirted with people like Thälmann and Hitler but have not yet been tested.
Many of the union thugs were sporting cool high school letterman style jackets……as their uniform. Shocking how the networks have avoided this footage and the details about the destruction of the street vendors stand. Had a TEA party member thrown the punches or torn dow the stand it would be on continuous loop. The leftist propaganda teams are getting quite profeceint at controling the message.
Peaceful political discourse is now moot. We saw in November that the margin of fraud is not only larger than can be overcome by legal electoral means, but that it is protected by the State and the kept media. Further, the sogannante Opposition is cowed and refuses to even look at it.
Crowder is the latest sign that there will be bloodshed. But the signs were there in August of 2009. There, at one of the first TEA Party rallies, Kenneth Gladney was beaten by SEIU thugs. And not only SEIU, but also Democrat operatives and NAACP leaders. Gladney happens to be black. The NAACP declared that he “deserved” the beating for being there. Despite there being a video of the attack; neither the District Attorney, the local police, or the city attorney could file charges claiming that they did not have jurisdiction. When it was finally brought to court two years later, an SEIU jury found the SEIU assailant not guilty.
Noting that Crowder’s assailant has not been arrested, despite very clear pictures of the attack and of the assailant’s jacket which has his name across the back; we can expect that law enforcement will somehow let this slip away. Just as the Sturmabteilung was protected from the law, the Democrats and their allies are protected.
The only choices, and they have yet to be made, are whether the violence against those resisting the Regime will be committed by the forces of the State or by their street surrogates; and whether the response will be submission or retaliation. If circumstances force the choice to be retaliation, it cannot be less than equal to that committed by the enemy. That includes the threats to families so characteristic of gangsters, thugs, and union supporters. Granting the Left either superiority of force or sanctuaries they will not grant to others means defeat.
Do the supporters of the Constitution have the will to resist? I don’t know. I do know that if it does break out, that the forces of the State will be far from unbiased in their enforcement of the law. The Left’s actions will be ignored, and the Resistance will be targeted. I believe that our Gracious Host has had experience of similar unrest in his native land. The street forces supporting Marcos, I am pretty sure, did not have to worry about Marcos’ police.
The Crowder attack may not have been intended to start the whirlwind [but it well may have been so intended]; but one may result.
I am not a nice person, but I try to be a candid one.
Subotai Bahadur
fu nu neng ding ban bian tian… You think only young men lead revolutions, but in China women also showed reactionaries what’s what. Americans have only Founding Fathers to celebrate, but we δ Chinese have Founding Mothers too.
I suppose there could have been better ways, without all the guns and commotion, but none were obvious at the time. Foreign meddling in China’s noteworthy revolution brought many hardships, including White Terror to Taiwan, and Vietnam to Vietnam.
How would you like it if Russia attacked George Washington or compared him to Hitler? Look at your pal Chiang appearing in 1979′s Xiao Hua. A fair and balanced portrayal? (Yes, because you do it to us.)
We know from history that the Stormtroopers won, in part from their brutality and in part because they had nicer uniforms.…The nice uniforms were a brilliant touch. “Radical chic” is compounded of one part danger, one part fashion and one part hogwash…The Jihadis have all the cool uniforms and scarves. That and AK-47s. Uniforms and bad boys make a mix that some girls find it hard to stay away from.
I’ve also noticed that whenever the union thugs parade around a city in some protest, the union makes sure that ALL the idiots marching have matching T-shirts or jackets. They might not have a clue about WHAT or WHY they are protesting, but boy, do they look spiffy.
The only uniform I’ll ever wear, is the uniform of the US military, that I proudly wore for 20 years. But we can be sure that the idiots in Washington will “take us over the (self-induced) fiscal cliff,” and that military cuts will then be considered “inevitable.” I wonder if my camouflage fatigues still fit…
Personally, I think these idiots are dancing in a pool of gasoline while playing with a Ronson. People are preparing. Americans have probably purchased about 1 million small arms just since the election (1/3 of a million background checks in just three days). This is on top of nearly 400K background checks in just four days last Christmas season. Last year and this, Black Friday was Black Rifle Friday. When this is over, I doubt there will be much of the left left.
Well of course Nazis had nice uniforms: many of them were designed and supplied by Hugo Boss.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss
Say what you will, the uniforms of the Allgemeine- and Waffen-SS, in particular, have never been equaled in their stylish projections of power–they were deliberately designed in such a way that men wearing them would appear to be several inches taller. The only American military uniforms even remotely comparable to SS uniforms are the Dress Blues which I wore while in the Marines. (1975-1980, Semper Fi!) and, perhaps, WW II-era “Pinks and Greens”.
In this more frivolous age it’s, “We will, we will schlock you!” Be it attire or message – schlock.
And that’s been effective. So far.
I recall years ago seeing a diagram, IIRC, by Eysenck, that the political spectrum was horseshoe shaped, with the left, presumably communism, and the right, presumably Nazi and Fascism, nearly touching, each closer to each there than either was to democracy.
Hitting Crowder was a signal. We can do this to you.–RF
When you hit like a girl, you broadcast your weakness.
If you want to see a real beat-down, look what Scott Walker did. Also, Michigan (Michigan!) passed Right-to-Work legislation this week.
The unions have steadily lost membership for decades. International wage arbitrage will accelerate their decline. Fewer members and diminished incomes will lessen what little political clout they still hold.
Many years ago, a union representative with a heavy foreign accent attempted to throw me (and the construction crew with whom I was working) off a “union” job site. With my camouflage boonie cap perched atop my 6-foot frame, I strode up to him with my 20-ounce claw hammer prominently nestled in its hammer loop and defiantly demanded, “Is this why I fought in Viet Nam–so somebody with a foreign accent can tell me that ‘I no gonna work’ in my own country?!”
There was a stunned silence while the Italian job briefly stared at me in disbelief. Quietly, he turned and left.
“Did you really fight in Viet Nam?”
“No, but how was he to know that?”
The foreman grinned at me and said, “The times they are a-changing.”
And so we were left in peace to finish our contract. If I could fight back then, when they were strong, how much more effective would resistance be today when they are weak?
BTW, I am sure Bonito Monteiro had spiffy uniforms too.
Crowder was on the radio saying that if he fought back he would have been killed.
I leave y’all to deconstruct the meaning and implications of that.
“Crowder was on the radio saying that if he fought back he would have been killed”
he’s got a pretty wife. some things trump the “cause”.
I am reminded of what an Iranian dissident said a few years back during their uprising, talking about the armed thugs sent by the government to suppress their hope for freedom:”This is like Nazi Germany when you have young punks sent out with guns and told that they are important.”
I paraphrase of course. It’s been awhile.
23 @Josh
I hear that he’s an amateur MMA fighter, so I don’t think he’s a wimp and defer to his judgement in this matter. The implications are obvious. Prepare.
During the The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Colonel Molotov is supposed to have said “Fascism, Socialism – it all just a matter of taste.”
If Crowder is a martial arts guy he needs more work. He had his hands out front and was trying to go to the guys shoulders to block the punches but in the end he didn’t cover up and it looks like he was chasing the guys hands. The thug swung at Crowder in typical pissed off, drunk guy fashion with big looping punches. Two weeks of Gracie Jiu Jitsu could easily have stopped that guy. Hileo knows…
8. RWE
The Right-Left dichotomy is false.
The two are orthogonal.
A better conception would be centralized power (totalitarianism) VS decentralized power (liberty).
In this conception we have (in lust for power order )socialists, fascists, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and us anarchists.
I think this is a more useful and accurate description.
In other words despite their outward differences, Guérin recorded how much the two totalitarianisms had in common.
We tend to be blinded by the words and the slogans as to why people do what they do, and that path of thought just leads to a muddled and cluttered end that is difficult to break out of. I think it is more important to focus on what people actually do rather than analyzing their potential motives and/or the stated rationales for their behavior. Functionally the Nazis and the Soviets were the same. They were statist thugs who demanded complete control of society economically, socially, and personally, and thought nothing of killing or brutalizing anyone who opposed them. What possible difference does it make as to what their purported reasons were for doing it? Functionally they were the same. There were no boundaries based in culture or tradition which they respected. They crossed them all with impunity and with no guilt or reservations at all.
The scary thing is that this same thing is manifesting itself here and now. The extent to which they are tolerant is the extent to which they are weak at the present time. But the more statists consolidate their power the less and less tolerant they become to those who oppose them, and it becomes a death spiral. Literally.
Such people of course are never really tolerant at all. They are just little crocodiles waiting to grow big enough in the future to eat the prey that are too big to attack today.
Dunno about other states, but in my state (which has liberal concealed carry), “public gatherings” are an exception — no CCW. I imagine other states have similar restrictions. So that might not be an option.
Besides, I imagine a good attack lawyer can raise all sorts of suspicions in front of a jury as to why you were packing. “Looking for trouble, were yee?”
#28 Langley: If you lump all the statists to the left side of the spectrum (rightly so), then the only difference between the various “-isms” is the rationale behind the power structure and how power is shared.
Queen We will Rock You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk
Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise
Playin’ in the street gonna be a big man some day
You got mud on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Kickin’ your can all over the place
We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
Buddy you’re a young man hard man
Shoutin’ in the street gonna take on the world some day
You got blood on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Wavin’ your banner all over the place
We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
Buddy you’re an old man poor man
Pleadin’ with your eyes gonna make you some peace some day
You got mud on your face
You big disgrace
Somebody better put you back in your place
We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
QUEEN – Under Pressure (Live At Wembley Stadium 1986)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXOOwNS2qk0
Mm ba ba de
Um bum ba de
Um bu bu bum da de
Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you no man ask for
Under pressure that brings a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
Um ba ba be
Um ba ba be
De day da
Ee day da – that’s okay
It’s the terror of knowing
What the world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming ‘Let me out’
Pray tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people people on streets
Day day de mm hm
Da da da ba ba
Okay
Chippin’ around – kick my brains around the floor
These are the days it never rains but it pours
Ee do ba be
Ee da ba ba ba
Um bo bo
Be lap
People on streets – ee da de da de
People on streets – ee da de da de da de da
It’s the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming ‘Let me out’
Pray tomorrow – gets me higher higher high
Pressure on people people on streets
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don’t work
Keep coming up with love but it’s so slashed and torn
Why – why – why?
Love love love love love
Insanity laughs under pressure we’re breaking
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance
Why can’t we give love that one more chance
Why can’t we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the (People on streets) edge of the night
And loves (People on streets) dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
Queen – We are the champions, live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCrZfTkG1c
I’ve paid my dues -
Time after time -
I’ve done my sentence
But committed no crime -
And bad mistakes
I’ve made a few
I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face -
But I’ve come through
We are the champions – my friends
And we’ll keep on fighting – till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
‘Cause we are the champions – of the world -
I’ve taken my bows
And my curtain calls -
You brought me fame and fortuen and everything that goes with it
-
I thank you all -
But it’s been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise -
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race -
And I ain’t gonna lose -
We are the champions – my friends
And we’ll keep on fighting – till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
‘Cause we are the champions – of the world -
19. batman “… the political spectrum was horseshoe shaped, with the left, presumably communism, and the right, presumably Nazi and Fascism, nearly touching, each closer to each there than either was to democracy.”
They both like red. I think since colors have symbolic and psychological value, somebody chose blue to represent western democracy. Equating Nazis with Communists isn’t nice, but that’s what they do… And by controlling these colors, globalists think they are keeping us safe.
Indeed, one can see a conspiracy to control the color red (by Blue-bloods presumably) and to “target” anything they paint with the color (as in the department store, abstractly speaking). England’s Cross of St. George was reshaped into prison bars on the American flag, with a blue field of stars reigning freely above. Japan’s red sun sits in a white field of surrender. The Russian Federation has an obvious dye hierarchy. James Cameron made Avatar blue for some reason… I’ll be explaining the Google logo after I research that.
It’s not just in the West — before the revolution you couldn’t wear yellow in China without losing your head. I think even Rome had some issues with purple (which is almost blue).
Yes, the mad antics of the left have inspired a change in my behavior, at least. No, I’m not running around doing street actions or statehouse occupations, like the OWS crowd, the union thugs, and such brownshirts. But I’m openly hostile, vocally, to all the leftist canards and nostrums that get floated by me. Formerly, I’d not want to be impolite, not want to get into an argument, etc. But now I give pushback to all this stuff. It has caused some consternation and alarm among my leftist friends and family. One of them came to me expressing great concern that I might actually be poisoning my very soul with this new negativity. It never fails to amaze me how such things as comity and bartisanship are always a one way street with leftists. The well-behaved opposition is only the meek one who simply stands there and takes it.
In truth, the left has been the aggressor on every cultural, political and economic front in my whole life. Those guys running around the streets of Michigan literally calling for blood and civil war, those weren’t my guys. There does exist a political philosophy premised on class struggle, on cultural warfare and social revolution. It ain’t me, babe.
Hugo Boss did not design the uniforms he manufactured. After the old man died essentially penniless his heirs decided to revive the company. They paid their assessed reparations and resumed business. Later they hired a historian to write a report on Boss’s conduct and the use of forced labor during the war. The extent of the white washing might be comments that they fed the workers and that when it came to abuse his managers were worse. The report is available in pdf form from the company website under the history links. We always say that it is the coverup that festers. What more could they do? I wear Boss clothes.
One point to consider in counterpoint to the Sexy Bad Boy theory is the Inverse Law of Martial Display. The fancier the uniform the less effective the combat force. In daily wear Americans Brits and Israelis rarely show gold braid. In Israel there may be one tie that gets passed around. Dunnigan pointed out that for all their finery and machismo Spain hasn’t won a war in hundreds of years. Germany/Prussia has a fearsome reputation. In the last 200 years they won 1 war against Austria (other Germans) and 1 war against France. If looking for friends in a fight I’d cultivate the gentle English & Canadians, the argumentative Celts & Aussies, and the slovenly Israelis.
Right to work laws are an existential threat to industrial unions like the Teamsters, and the UAW. maybe a little less so to government unions and the SEIU. Still those folks will fight and violently if need be to protect their ever dwindling corner of the ever shrinking US economy. Their real enemy is globalism and the need to compete with Chinamen, Indians, Brazilians, and a billion or so other folks in emerging countries. Oddly these unions have aligned themselves with the ultimate pro-globalist politician Bronco Bama who I think actually thinks of himself as third world.
Is this street thuggery they start of something bigger, a civil war? I don’t think so. This is the prelude to the prelude though I have no doubt street battles will be part of the coming struggle as this country crumbles under fiscal and monetary collapse. The toboggan has started down the mountain and soon the momentum is going to be obvious.
Right now in any projected street clash between totalitarianism and liberty the totalitarians hold the clear edge. They are better organized, equipped and indoctrinated. Plus they hold the media, the institutional power, and the urban centers, ports, transport hubs, and communications centers. Liberty has vaster territory, food, water, fuel, and ultimately ideological cohesion. In the the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but in the short term that is sure the way to bet.
jh @ 38: This is the prelude to the prelude though I have no doubt street battles will be part of the coming struggle as this country crumbles under fiscal and monetary collapse.
Yes on all, but it’s also a social collapse and a civil war all at the same time. There’s going to be a lot of ugly before it’s over.
I would agree that the left-right dichotomy isn’t an accurate depiction of a political scale, unless you grant that we really are all socialists and just differentiate between “international” and “national” varieties. One of the hallmarks of the totalitarian left is that — like wolves eliminating coyotes in their hunting grounds — that their intellectual brothers and sisters are purged along with the rest of us. Solzhenitsyn wrote in regards to this in his Gulag Archipelago:
“But even restricting ourselves to ordinary arrests, we can note
that by the spring of 1918 a torrent of socialist traitors had
already begun that was to continue without slackening for many
years. All these parties — the SR’s, the Mensheviks, the An-
archists, the Popular Socialists — had for decades only pretended
to be revolutionaries; they had worn socialism only as a mask,
and for that they went to hard labor, still pretending.”
It is a distinction without a difference between Hitler’s National Socialists and Lenin’s Communists in my opinion. It’s more of a question of who won. See also Stalin vs Trotsky.
The left-right dichotomy has proven to be a particularly effective mental straight jacket though.
“Left wing ideologues aren’t against guns or violence. They are only opposed to others breaking their monopoly on violence.” –Richard
The left also has a monopoly on huge sectors of the economy (The Unions, the MSM, Hollywood, most police units and so on).
Power corrupts. Absolute power absolutely corrupts.
I am surprised that 0bama has not unionized the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Or, maybe he has?
Charles, clicked on the “we are the champions” video. Freddie Mercury in his hot pants and no shirt will probably give me nightmares.
I like Lawrence Person’s take on what happened to Steve Crowder:
This illustration seems a good fit, too.
Let’s see thugs in uniform violating city and state laws. Police “unable” to control them. Evidence that the fix is in with National law enforcement. Governor calls out the militia (adult males between the ages of 18 and 45 by legal definition) He issues them uniforms and arms them, recruits military veterans who have urban warfare experience, declare martial law and send in his militia to kill uniformed troops who are trying to take over state capital. Hey I can dream can’t I.
Brief History of Labor Union Violence: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/labor-union-violence-in-america-a-brief-history/
The Michigan dust-up was, by union standards, pretty mild. The UAW tried to unionize a printing plant where I worked in Nashville in the 1980s. I was in my early 20s and pro-union, but they did their usual goon tactics of slashing tires, breaking windows, and threatening people. Pretty scary, and meant to be.
If the Dimwit goobermint DOES get around to confiscating our 401Ks and forcing us to buy government notes instead, there really WILL be a revolution.
So says a legacy union Democrat (60s) of my acquaintance here in New Fork City. Just the notion of it made her blood boil, and she’s an Obot. (Or, as I like to say these days, “she’s been Absorbed by the Hive Mind.”)
The government is already confiscating 401Ks.
It’s called QE1,QE2,QE3……..
Joe Hill @ 38 – The biggest threat to industrial unions is their linkage to “intellectuals” in the Democrat Party. Those “Intellectuals” are academics, not Real World “Doers”. You know what they say, “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.”
So you see industrial unions pitted against teachers unions over the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, for instance. Nixon’s “Silent Majority” had a huge union contingent, while McGovern had the hippies of Woodstock Nation. How’s that Hope and Change hippie-ism working out for you, Joe Sixpack? Should we spend more money on teachers and other public sector unions, or infrastructure?
The problem for workers is they don’t know how to distinguish between a Democrat boss and a Republican boss. Being uneducated in STEM education, they don’t know the difference. Check out Coots Mathews’ obit from the New York Times http://tinyurl.com/a6tlr9n
Yo Coots! Did you get any help from those dastardly “engineers” in fighting “The Hellfires of Kuwait”? That dumbass put tribalism before common sense. But his daughter had his number
DUMBASS!
Only imbeciles vote Democrat!
Back in Detriot’s heydey, the bosses had sales and/or engineering backgrounds (e.g. Lee Iacocca). Now, due to government regulations, they are lawyers, accountants or MBAs. What you see today is the result of putting Yuppy-Puppies in charge.
Fire any CEO who can’t do long division without a calculator!
Some intrepid reporter (Steven Crowder perhaps?) ought to ask low information voters how stupid someone would have to be to vote for a party whose symbol is a jackass?
Do you get it Mr/Ms Voter, you have been PUNK’D!
The two most dangerous things about this incident are:
1. That none of the MSM outlets and neither PBS nor NPR put it on the air
2. The president, by acknowledging that it happened but refusing to condemn the violence, has given his approval.
The lack of press coverage is absolute proof that things have now gone way beyond simple bias to collusion with totalitarianism. The mainstream press is, as Reynolds and others have accurately said, composed of Democrat operatives with bylines. For the low information voters who get all their information from the MSM and for the pseudointellectuals who get theirs from public broadcasting this lack of coverage allows them to either blissfully remain unaware of this sort of behavior (behavior for which their voting habits are individually and personally responsible), of course. But there is a much more sinister force at work here. It allows plausible deniability. The response, which we are already seeing, to someone who presents low information and/or left colluding NPR listening voters with the facts about the video, will simply be “You are making it up, if it really happened they’d be talking about it on All Things Considered”, or words to that effect. This permits these types of voters the philosophical validation to go forward thinking that they have made no mistakes in their “reasoning” and to continue voting the way they have without an honest assessment of the results of their voting. This means the problem of their voting errors will get worse.
The support of Obama for this violence is perhaps more troubling. The obvious thing is that it will encourage more incidents and more violence per incident. Less obvious is that it is proof of the quid pro quo from the last election cycle. “Vote for me and I will give you air cover to do your worst in pursuit of the magic checks.” This further delgitimizes the government not only on the level of our nation but in the eyes of the rest of the world. Given everything else that has been poorly handled by this administration in the past four years, we can ill afford any less legitimacy than we currently have.
The foreign policy implications of a de facto takeover of a once free press in order to stifle any information which might lead to a public discussion on how to repair our broken economy, combined with a central government happy to allow totalitarian thugs to visit violence onto private individuals in order to quell discussion about how to rescue the economy, are extremely grave. If Obama and his minions in the press were purposely tempting bad actors to start a war, what would they be doing differently?
So glad I don’t live in or near a city. The hatred Obama and the left have for suburbs and rural America is a wheels within wheels thing. Yes, they hate that the people who live in those place tend to be conservative, possess authentic religious beliefs, own guns, be in favor of free enterprise, and are not depend on government. But they also hate the fact that ascending violence they are and will continue to support in the cities cannot be brought to bear as effectively in terms of a terror tactic. Move everyone back into the city like in my grandparents generation and the fear of a riot exists for everyone. Move me fifty miles away, and the intimidation factor diminishes. Not saying our country folk have nothing to worry about. But if the cities are filled with union members and minorities whose riot violence is directed primarily against SWPL, NPR listening pseudointellectuals who voted for the clown posse in the first place, perhaps that is the corrective that is needed for those types to finally get it. I’ll regret the violence and loss of life but at least I won’t worry about myself and my family.
I am surprised no one has commented on how much the protest/tent video looked like a scene from a Zombie Apocalypse movie. You see a bunch of brain dead, murmuring, cow-like bodies milling around a small group of live individuals. When they get close to the live individuals, they get active and aggressive. Seems to me the correct defense would be strategic retreat out of the mob while issuing headshots to any zombie behaving aggressively.
Question: How bad does the zombie memetic virus of leftism need to get before the response from the non-zombie community gets around to organizing militias? And will these militias include the disgusted veterans who are leaving the service? Will the militias be labeled as domestic terror groups? Will federal forces be employed to target the militias? How far and how fast will thing deteriorate? Nevermind the fiscal cliff, are we approaching a civilizational or societal cliff more rapidly than Thelma & Louise?
With regard to the lack of press coverage, recall the conundrum about the tree falling in a deserted forest. That is the paradigm the MSM operates on. There’s no conspiracy, no whispering back and forth, no email, no meeting behind closed doors to decide what will or will not be covered. Every true MSMer can tell if a story is “poison”. If it is, it’s a tree falling in a forest without a sound. For example, imagine an extreme “poison” story. Barack Obama could stick up a liquor store in broad daylight and we would never hear of it. Come to think of it, maybe he already has.
Lets not forget that the two best armies of the the 19th century could not march in step or dress properly — the Union and Confederate Armies
Challenging the goon to an MMA match is a losing proposition. Not only does the challenge legitimize the goon, it removes the force of law from the equation. The goon must be charged with assault and must face a jury of his peers.
Whether or not the goon is convicted isn’t as important as documenting the rule of law and its execution. All must know where it is that they stand.
“Union meeting at the Hippodrome, a representative from the Emperor will present some points.”
Hehehehhe.
“How would you like it if Russia attacked George Washington or compared him to Hitler?”
Washington didn’t murder nearly as many people as Mao did. You may be proud of your Father Butcher, but we’ll still tell the truth about him.
“Crowder was on the radio saying that if he fought back he would have been killed.
I leave y’all to deconstruct the meaning and implications of that.”
He was surrounded and outnumbered.
Even crediting all of WW2′s casualties to him, Hitler only had 40 – 50 million deaths on his account. Mao brought about at least 100 million dead, and was quite proud of what he’d done.
Hitler was a distinctly second rate butcher next to Mao.
“The Michigan dust-up was, by union standards, pretty mild. The UAW tried to unionize a printing plant where I worked in Nashville in the 1980s. I was in my early 20s and pro-union, but they did their usual goon tactics of slashing tires, breaking windows, and threatening people.”
A newspaper strike in Detroit in the early ’90s featured star nails and pipe bombs in newspaper vending machines.
I hope the Michigan Republicans have good security.
To follow along on the theme of engineers as CEOs and the current prevailing “ruling class”, just look at the family tree of Lester B. Knight. The original was a titan of American business. His obituary reads…
http://tinyurl.com/bhrlfcm
His son with the MBA, Charles F. “Chuck” Knight, was a long time Wall Street favorite for a long string of 15% annual increases in earnings while he was chairman of Emerson Electric. His string eventually came to an end when his efforts to massage earnings met the Clinton Administration’s dot com bubble http://www.google.com/finance?cid=10631
Chuck Knight was the template for guys like the felon Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kozlowski, a run and gun quarterly earnings growth darling of Wall Street.
Chuck’s progeny, also named Lester B. Knight, was at Allegiance Corp when it got acquired by a bigger fish, Cardinal Health during the Clinton Administration. He is now a Chicago Republican Crony Capitalist (an RCC is leftward of a RINO) at Aon Corp.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics in action!!!!
Chuck Knight and Jack Welch of GE were once quite the media darlings. Of course Jack’s progeny include MSNBC, home of the “Lipstick Lesbian” Rachel Maddow, whose network is getting its clock cleaned in the ratings war with the babes of Fox News and Sean Hannity. The way those babes pop buns in the oven, one might be excused for thinking Roger Ailes was the Pillsbury Doughboy in disguise. But even Megyn Kelly, who looks good in the http://tinyurl.com/GQ-photo-spread , relies on appeals to authority when she says “I’m a lawyer!”. Sorry Megyn, but Harvey Levin does that line better, and he is smart enough to use an ironic tone when he says it.
——-
28. Langley
8. RWE
`The Right-Left dichotomy is false.
The two are orthogonal.
A better conception would be centralized power (totalitarianism) VS decentralized power (liberty).
In this conception we have (in lust for power order )socialists, fascists, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and us anarchists.
I think this is a more useful and accurate description.
—–
Langley has it right. The Nazis were socialists/Marxists. Every implementation of Marxism is different. Mao did it differently then Lenin/Stalin, then Tito, then Kim Il Sung, then Castro, then Pol Pot etc.
I’ve for a long time described the political spectrum as slavery on the left, freedom on the right
Offered solely as a point of discussion.
Some years back in the city of Belgrade during the death throes of the Milosevic regime, I had a conversation with a British gentleman who worked for OSCE in the region.
We were talking about the kind of phenomenon under discussion here, and he remarked (I believe quoting someone, though I can’t remember who) to the effect that, “These people are fascists, and the way to deal with fascists is, when they take to the streets you take to the streets and boot their heads. Because control of the streets is important to them.”
Case in point. Over at CNN the article on “Faces of the Right to Work Protest” didn’t mention the beating Steve Crowder got in the love fest for the union protestors, but one commenter who called himself “Yungfam” was nice enough to draw attention to it thusly:
“I liked it when my union brothers…
stood up and punched out the FOXnews Idiots – and especially when they stormed the tent of those weenie capitalists out to destroy the greatness that UNIONs built in Michigan – that’s right UNIONs built what we enjoy here today in Michigan and they and its members will not give up what is theirs without putting some SERIOUS hurt on anyone who gets in their way. As the only non- traitor state legislature said “there is going to be. ” – IT’s ON!!!!”
If it’s still up it’s here: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-893872?hpt=hp_bn1
Private sector unions are in decline and, literally, fighting is a means to project power they are losing.
It’s the public sector unions that are in ascendance, with more and more being added to government rolls every day. When teachers, police, firefighters, TSA, etc. public employees get knocked down a notch (in reduced overtime, pensions, salaries and other goodies) we’ll see some real push back. A lot of those folks have equipment at their disposal or provide services that can cause real damage if they’re used against or withheld from the taxpayers who paid for it. That, or we’ll all eventually be in a government job or killed off. As I recall, the Soviet Union and East Germany had 0% unemployment because the centralized government made sure everyone earned their keep. “So, you’re not working? Here’s a broom. Sweep the streets. And don’t complain because we’re providing your food stamps, clothing, housing, an Obamaphone, a TV (PBS only) and Obamacare. Oh, so you want to complain anyway? Here’s a one way ticket to a place you can complain all you want to. It’s called Siberia”.
nmu @ 50: The lack of press coverage is absolute proof that things have now gone way beyond simple bias to collusion with totalitarianism.
Why, this is the revolution, nor are we out of it.
Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Granted, the unions have been socialist snakepits since the days of Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman. No doubt, stupid contracts let people smoke weed all day on the clock and keep their jobs.
On the other hand though what this is is a paroxysm of the death of blue collar America. I grew up in the Rust Belt and we had comfortable enough lives because of the factories. Now they’re gone and despair is setting in. Most of these guys could care less about Obama or leftist agitprop. What they care about is their world is collapsing around them and they feel impotent and powerless. They are prime cannon fodder for the man on the white horse to ride in. If that happens don’t be surprised to see politicians hanging from lamp posts. This situation is very fluid and volatile.
35. Baobo
19. batman “… the political spectrum was horseshoe shaped, with the left, presumably communism, and the right, presumably Nazi and Fascism, nearly touching, each closer to each there than either was to democracy.”
They both like red. I think since colors have symbolic and psychological value,
……………….
I was in Munich a couple years ago and did the tourist tour that included a drive the the old nazi headquarters building downtown.
What was most remarkable about the building was that it had exactly the same squat ugly bureaucratic appearance as communist architecture of the period.
42. trangbang68
Charles, clicked on the “we are the champions” video. Freddie Mercury in his hot pants and no shirt will probably give me nightmares.
………….
Sorry about that.
I was actually thinking that freddy mercury looked like Saddam Hussein or Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler singing in hot pants–a communist/fascist dictator singing in hot pants.
That may be why when you compare England of 1980 to 2012–it seems like the trajectory of that nation is one of slow decline.
Blast from the Past has a point. As effective as the Wehrmacht was it was not very comfortable with hand to hand fighting. They suffered in Stalingrad and had problems suppressing the Warsaw ghetto uprising. They were an army that triumphed through the plane and the tank. Decentralized small arms engagements were not to their liking. Rounding up civilians was.
The Japanese on the other hand were known to prefer hand to hand fighting.
@14 Baobao
Mercy Warren, Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, Molly Pitcher, to name a few of the more famous ones….Martha Washington spent the entire winter at Valley Forge nursing the sick and wounded…. we have Founding Mothers too
#64 Josh-
I’m not sure I understand you comment, Josh. Could you please clarify?
#65 trang bang 68-
Devil indeed.
Look, I get what you are saying in terms of reporting events. I have family living in the Rust Belt and I understand the dynamic all too well because I’ve seen it first hand. Their cheese has moved, to use the hackneyed phrase. It must be pointed out, however, that numerous times they have aided and abetted the cheese movers on many levels. Supporting politicians who were in the front pockets of the unions, and arrogating to themselves a level of compensation which was far in excess of the value of their labor (at least after Europe and then much of the rest of the world built up a trained work force and industrial base), and refusing to take time away grom pursuing money and fun to learn and train, really hamstrung these guys and did not provide the correct incentives and outlook to change with the times. Now they are stuck. The bitter clinging, in the end, for many of these guys is not to guns and religion – two things which give genuine solace and empowerment – but to the failed Blue State economic policy, and to the relief from economic anxiety that the Blue model pretended it could provide forever.
They could ride along to a guy on a white horse. But many of them could ride along to the guy on the black horse just as easily. We’ve seen that in the past week.
Harol #61:
That’s my point.
Visualize on the “Right” the situation where you get off the boat with an axe and a rifle over your shoulders, hike out into the verdant untouched forest, cut down some trees, build a cabin, plant a garden, hunt, etc. Eventually someone does the same thing 3 miles away from you and you can either go over and suggest you will plant carrots if he will plant potatoes and you will trade – or you murder him and take his stuff. Eventually someone may not agree with what you did and either try to kill you to avenge the pioneer’s death or kill both of you and take what you both have – or build his own cabin halfway between the two others and make it a store where you and others can trade. That is Liberty.
The other end of the spectrum, on the Left, is an ant colony. Heading to the Right from there you have Maoist Marxism, Russian Marxism, Nazi socialism, Italian Fascism, TR’s government, Wilson’s Government, FDR’s government, LBJ’s government, Nixon’s government and so on until you get to Reagan’s government, and finally to George Washington’s government. After Washington’s government, moving Right, is the Old West, etc.
Of course, this is very simplistic. Gun control does not match too well for the Left in some ways and Right to Life does not match too well for the Right in some ways, for example.
The truly remarkable thing to me is that the Left says that their ideas protect liberty more than those of the Right. Now I cannot figure that one out. In the election of 2004 John Kerry warned that the Right will try to control “everything that you do.” This sounds nuts. I do not know if they really believe that, or if it is simply propaganda, but I suspect they do believe that, but they mean that the Right requires that you control Yourself in everything that you do or else suffer the consequences.
Of course, the Right also says that the Left wants to control everything you do, and I think we have a far better basis for that claim. But the Right does not in turn copy the Left say that their beliefs make things easier for everyone – they just say they make them better, overall, because people are freer; some people probably will indeed be worse off if everyone is freer.
Doctor Faustus, speaking to Mephistopheles, not quite realizing where things are at:
http://www.bartleby.com/19/2/13.html
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593). Doctor Faustus.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Scene III
[A Grove.]
Enter FAUSTUS to conjure
…
Faust. Was not that Lucifer an angel once?
Meph. Yes, Faustus, and most dearly lov’d of God.
Faust. How comes it then that he is Prince of devils?
Meph. O, by aspiring pride and insolence; 65
For which God threw him from the face of Heaven.
Faust. And what are you that you live with Lucifer?
Meph. Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,
Conspir’d against our God with Lucifer,
And are for ever damn’d with Lucifer. 70
Faust. Where are you damn’d?
Meph. In hell.
Faust. How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Meph. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
42. trangbang68
Charles, clicked on the “we are the champions” video. Freddie Mercury in his hot pants and no shirt will probably give me nightmares.
………….
Sorry about that.
I was actually thinking that freddy mercury looked like Saddam Hussein
………………….
Similiarly, here is Harry Belefonte singing that great 1960′s Bananna boat song as a young man. After that I post a line of his on CSNBC recently
Harry Belafonte – Banana Boat Song (Day-O)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tou8-Cz8is
Day-o, day-o
Daylight come and we want go home
Day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day-o
Daylight come and we want go home
Work all night on a drink of rum
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Stack banana ’til the morning come
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Come Mister Tally Man, tally me banana
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Come Mister Tally Man, tally me banana
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Day, is a day-o
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day-o
(Daylight come and we want go home)
A beautiful bunch of ripe banana
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Hide the deadly black tarantula
(Daylight come and we want go home)
During an appearance on the program of MSNBC’s race-baiter-in-chief Al Sharpton, entertainer Harry Belafonte lashed out at Republicans, saying that their continued presence in Washington, DC constituted an “infection” of sorts. He also told his host that the only thing left for Obama to do with opposition figures who continue to disagree with him was to “Work like a Third World dictator and just put all these guys in jail.”
Belafonte’s totalitarian prescription elicited a laugh rather than horror from Sharpton. View video below the jump.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2012/12/13/washed-singer-harry-belafonte-blasts-gop-infestation-america-pond#ixzz2ExOSZghC
Ok, Josh.
Now, whose revolution?
RWE
Where does western EUroland sit on your spectrum?
“We will we will rock you”
Charles, I’ve always picked up a very Leni Riefenstahl vibe from some of the Queen footage (eg Radio Ga Ga). It has been hypothesized that the rise of the “Rock Gods” (Elvis, Beatles, …) served as a safety valve. Young people could be swept up in a mindless frenzy of worshiping these essentially harmless charismatic figures, instead of the more dangerous political figures and causes of the past.
Tim Burton thought Harry Belafonte a perfect to parody Demonic Possession in the movie BeatleJuice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3j9jpBez8g
69. marymcl
@14 Baobao
Mercy Warren, Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, Molly Pitcher, to name a few of the more famous ones
Good points, but I should also point out that there was no “Molly Pitcher” per se. A “Molly Pitcher” was an 18th-century artillery wife. The most famous one at the battle of Monmouth was a girl of German extraction named Mary, and her husband was Irish. Molly Pitchers carried the water bucket for both drinking water and to wet the ramrod sponge. If a man went down on the battery team, the Molly Pitcher would step in, because she (all of them) knew how to man a cannon. There still is an Army Artillery Wives association, and they verified this information for me.
Also, as old movies attest to realistically, women and girls on the frontier of the time were expected to know how to load a musket or rifle. And if they knew how to load it, they knew how to shoot it. They also knew how to mold bullets
Josh, are you familiar with the tune “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger”?
no mo uro @ 70 – “Their cheese has moved?” More like their employer was bankrupted by asbestos litigation by the Dems’ pals in the trial bar.
The Wall Street Journal had an editorial on 12/11 http://tinyurl.com/b7wwqzv (subscription only)
Busting the Trust Fraud
Ohio cleans up the tort bar’s asbestos bankruptcy scam.
A bit too late for all those Ohio manufacturers!
Once upon a time Barberton Ohio was the world headquarters for Babcock & Wilcox. All those steam boilers that could have been made by union workers in Ohio went to other manufacturers.
And the biggest winners were the 1% of the population consisting of white shoe litigators. Asbestos litigation was largely a scam. It got so bad they now have to constantly advertise for shipyard workers who contracted mesothelioma, in a shipbuilding industry that hasn’t built an American steamship in decades. Pretty soon all those WWII workers will have died of natural causes and they will be stuck with huge trust funds and no one to pay for legitimate health issues.
But I don’t think they will return the money to the former stockholders.
Meanwhile the union workers blame their former employers and not the scam artist trial bar.
RWE@71: ‘Visualize on the “Right” the situation where you get off the boat with an axe and a rifle over your shoulders, hike out into the verdant untouched forest, cut down some trees, build a cabin, plant a garden, hunt, etc.’
Dick Proenneke flew into the Alaska Wilderness in 1968 and built a cabin, planted carrots, etc. It’s a very interesting story; here is a short 10 min. video
no mo uro, the guy on the white horse is the guy on the black horse. I’m talking about a populist dictator riding into town on the message of class envy, nativism, racial hatred (directed toward Whitey),whatever demon crawls out of Pandora’s box. I have long taken the position that when we no longer manufacture things we’re done as a prosperous nation. This has happened pretty much. I know somebody’s going to trot out the latest stats about our booming manufacturing base, but take a drive through the Rust Belt or Appalachia where furniture and textiles are no longer made,
When people are desperate they are going to strike out at someone. I believe there’s plenty of blame to go around. Obviously the left who seem to purposely want to knock America down a notch. There are the Unions who priced themselves out of existence. There are the crapitalists as Jerry Doyle calls them who have stolen every thing they could. There are craven, lying, stupid politicians. There is a generation of brainwashed young people drinking the hemlock. There is a media that would give Goebbels a run for the worthless deutchmarks.
I know it will be mocked and ridiculed by the enlightened, but this humble carpenter believes that outside of divine intervention and a gully washing Christian revival we’re finished as a nation.
No Mo #74:
Well, those are countries and not political philosophies. But overall, Western Europe governments I would say are somewhat to the Left of FDR. That’s probably even true of the ones that are sliding back to the right somewhat.
MSO #80:
Yes, I think I have seen that. The local college TV channel showed that entire movie – I guess an hour long – a number of times. He had a small movie camera with him. Amazing what you can make with nothing more than hand tools, very basic raw materials, and knowledge.
Privateer #79:
It is amazing to me that the Unions do not see that the people they support are the same ones who did things like drive up the price of gasoline and therefore hurt their job prospects. The unions have shown the same “gimme some of the stash” attitude as those people standing in line for the free money to pay their utility bills.
#79:
Asbestos litigation was largely a scam. It got so bad they now have to constantly advertise for shipyard workers who contracted mesothelioma, in a shipbuilding industry that hasn’t built an American steamship in decades.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed that! Guys in the Navy in WWII contracting mesothiliomia 60 years later? When I explained this to my liberal friends while watching that ad, I got the proverbial liberal blank look of uncomprehension.
Don…
You’re kidding yourself with that one.
Asbestos was massively installed right on through the 1960s in such things as ceiling tiles for school classrooms. ( typically mandated by contract )
This means that there are still plenty of souls with exposure.
The ‘problem’ for the hearse chasers is that the clock is running out. IIRC, to qualify the plaintiffs have to file by some magic date. Then the trust winds up.
It’s not a perpetual trust — which are banned, IIRC.
BTW, lest one get the wrong impression: you don’t even need an attorney to collect from the trust. If you’ve got the ailment — then you qualify – period, stop.
That’s because the trust was an industry-wide all inclusive settlement. All and every instance of the ailment is conceded by the trust to be a direct result of producer malefeasance. There’s absolutely nothing to litigate/ prove.
All that is required is the medical diagnosis.
The payout is highly formulamatic, starting with picking up all of ones medical expenses….
MSO I’ve lived in Alaska nearly thirty years and have spent varying amounts of time in the Bush as it’s called here. One of the amazing things about the Bush is the creativity of the people who live there.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” as one Bush writer, I don’t recall who, put it.
It’s also one of the freest places left in America, although BLM and NPS rangers are doing their best to change that.
marymcl – Those were all loyal women, but nothing like these flowers experienced. Although the movie was better than what President Nixon enjoyed, by then it had to be banned since the director went soft with his Stage Sisters bomb. (Xie Jin later redeemed himself by winning 3 Golden Roosters – something like your Nobel Prize.)
Some people call it propaganda… Some even say, it’s a twisted Asian girl fetish taken to the absurd. I remember their names and don’t talk to them.
73. Charles
Since the election, they’re feeling their oats. They’re starting to drop the masks, and are telling us what they really think.
87. rickl
They’re starting to drop the masks, and are telling us what they really think.
,,,,,,,,,
Yeah that may be one of the benefits of this election.
Some people say things like: “It had to be banned since the director went soft with his Stage Sisters.” I remember their names and don’t talk to them.
6. AW:
“The phrase we throw around here is ‘four on one is Union fun.’”
Canceled out by one with a gun. Of course it might make a little sense to start with stun zappers, pepper gas & rubber bullets…Still it seems dubious that many on the Left would be willing to die for their cause . Some of us burly folk in coordinated clothing, present in certain places, may yet deter malefactors. But I’m not sure there are so many potential assignments. I wouldn’t abandon cameras & the Net yet.
13. Subothai Bahadur:
“Noting that Crowder’s assailant has not been arrested, despite very clear pictures of the attack and of the assailant’s jacket which has his name across the back; we can expect that law enforcement will somehow let this slip away. Just as the Sturmabteilung was protected from the law, the Democrats and their allies are protected.”
But they’re not protected from citizens! Know who the guy is? You can have hours of fun at his expense. (Disclaimer: I don’t know who the ‘hole is, don’t want to, & assume no responsibility for others’ actions.}
“If circumstances force the choice to be retaliation, it cannot be less than equal to that committed by the enemy. That includes the threats to families so characteristic of gangsters, thugs, and union supporters.”
With enough info we needn’t expressly menace their families, but it should help that they know that we know…
“Granting the Left either superiority of force or sanctuaries they will not grant to others means defeat.”
…Which leads to an earlier suggestion of mine, O wise Sith Lord. Demonstrate to these goonions–with a little imagination–that their sacred temples of labor are mere soft targets.
16. Long-time-lurker:
“Personally, I think these idiots are dancing in a pool of gasoline while playing with a Ronson.”
Indeed.
“When this is over, I doubt there will be much of the left left.”
I like your optimism.
35. Baobo:
“…before the revolution you couldn’t wear yellow in China without losing your head.”
Reserved, of course, for the Son O’Heaven himself.
57. Rob Crawford:
“’Crowder was on the radio saying that if he fought back he would have been killed.
I leave y’all to deconstruct the meaning and implications of that.’
He was surrounded and outnumbered.”
He was unarmed.
59. Rob Crawford:
“…A newspaper strike in Detroit in the early ’90s featured star nails and pipe bombs in newspaper vending machines.
I hope the Michigan Republicans have good security.”
In my country the goonions should worry about their own.
We are supposed to learn from history, so we never repeat the mistakes.
Godwin’s law exists to mock anyone trying to do so.
84. blert
Don…
You’re kidding yourself with that one.
blert. I was referring to specific ads on TV, as was Machias Privateer. Those TV ads were specifically mentioning WWII vets who had not been exposed to asbestos directly in six decades and had only died very recently.
I do not dispute your overall points, and thanks for making them.
Blert @ 84 – Two words “Dickie Scruggs”
http://tinyurl.com/cq3h84t