http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/the-whitewashing-of-the-american-farmer-dodge-ram-super-bowl-ad-edition/272825/
The liberal viewpoint. Complete with racism and the bigotry of leaving some group out...
Obviously discrimination. "They" just can't leave an things alone, but must MUST detract and vilify.
tomw
The Super Bowl Farmers
February 13th, 2013 - 12:11 am
Farmers in the commercial also looked far poorer than their vast machinery and fields might have indicated. They often look worn and perpetually worried, given their paranoia that at any given moment a price crash, a sudden freeze, a bad case of pneumonia are not just bad tidings, but so bad that they can wipe out a year’s work. There is no such thing as PERS for those in the Super Bowl commercial, no concept of spiking your retirement package in the last two years on the job, no demonstration because you’re asked to chip in 10% of your health premium costs.
In the farmer’s twisted mind, $50 for new Levis is just the sort of splurge that marks the road to perdition of spending what you will soon not have. I’ll pass on their passing on the $200 eyeglasses and $300 sneakers that seem to be the favored target of the poor of flash mobs. (I was always amazed while at CSU that my students, deep in debt and working at minimum wage jobs, often had more expensive sneakers and shades than did I.) As a smart-alecky high school student body officer, forty-two years ago I used to have to go to the Selma school board meetings. Every time a teacher requested more money for a trip, a principle wanted a new project, or a committee demanded a conference outing, the five farmers on the dais — dressed in shabby jeans and scuffed boots — would drawl out “nope,” or better yet: “Show me where we get more money coming in, and I’ll let a little more go out.”
On Super Bowl Sunday, the sense of tragedy in rural faces apparently too hit a chord at a time when the wealthiest government in the history of civilization borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Should we assume that Americans suffer from malnutrition rather than obesity, and that big-screen TVs and iPhones are as rare as shoes and staples? To listen to the president is to really believe that a third of the nation has no decent shelter, heating, air conditioning, TV, electronics, or cars — and all because the other two-thirds somehow gobbled them up. (One of the strangest disconnects of my schizophrenic world of Stanford and Selma is to see the mostly overweight poor at the Selma Wal-Mart, and the mostly wealthy anorexic-looking at Whole Earth in Palo Alto; the deprived in stucco newer 1800 sq. ft. tract houses, the privileged crowded into old clapboard, shabby Menlo Park cottages; hoi polloi in shiny late-model 4×4 Ford and Chevy trucks, hoi aristoi often crammed into tiny five-year-old CRVs. But all that matters is that the “poor” are supposedly deprived of symphony, quality museums, and access to summers in Tuscany.)
It is a human characteristic not just to identify vicariously with something we are not but might like to be, but even to bond with something that we know we admire in the abstract but we would not like to be in the concrete. Who would prefer to stay out in the country in a drafty house day after day in rote labor, rather than visit the mall each evening?
He also made Barack Obama, showing that even God can lose his mojo.
God had no hand in the making of that demon-spawn.
G-d made him, the Left made him dangerous, and (saddest of all) lazy and foolish Americans made him powerful.
Sow. Reap. Repeat.
All the Farmers have the 1000 mile stare – like soldiers in a war zone.
It wasn’t God who made liberals.
The above is an acerbic parody of the Paul Harvey ad.
If you visit the Ram site and watch the commercial again, Ram will make a donation to the Future Farmers of America. It’s worth a click.
http://www.ramtrucks.com/en/keepplowing/
Nice! Thanks for the info.
More power to the Bauer! Great nations were all built through farming and ranching! These are the only people who know what “done” means when the day ends and none involved ever searched for a job or a handout in their nature bound lives.
“farmers then were about 15% of the population and now make up less than 1%”
Farmers are now about the same ratio as Soldiers in America…
And how poor we all are now because of it
If you want to find a place that still extols the family farmer (rancher) come to Wyoming. The old values still hold sway here except in Jackson which has become a “rich man’s” town. There is no income tax in Wyoming, property taxes are low and people are friendly. Property taxes are low because the oil, gas and coal industries pay taxes for the right to extract the nonrenewable resources. We LOVE this industry. We own a small ranch (112 acres), raised cattle for about 7 years and now lease our place to someone else to do the same. We are getting too old (late 70′s) to keep the ranch up so are hoping to sell it. The fishing and hunting on our place are great, as is the bird-watching, and the solitude. It’s a great life-style for someone wanting to get away from the “madding crowd”.
So those farm subsidies are just a mirage? Nostalgia is cute but so rarely based in reality.
Spend a day talking to a farmer and at an FSA office. Subsidies (for no more than they exist today) are about control. For all intents and purposes, food is cheap.
Thank you for mentioning Paul Harvey’s deeply expressive resonant voice and how it compares to today’s fashionable, nasal and thin metrosexual voice. This transformation of both the male and female voice into something that can best be described as a whine has been disturbing me for a very long time. Not only does the New Voice make everyone sound alike, it also strips the humanity from what used to be a beautifully varied instrument of communication. Is it another unfortunate side-effect of modern media or a socialistic reduction of individuality or a little of both?
When I was a teenager working on our Iowa farm during the summer, I used to get totally burned out on the top-40 on AM radio (it’s all the tractor had!). Everyday I’d look forward to Paul Harvey news at noon when I was heading to the house for lunch. Then at 5:00 pm, as the day was dragging on in the tractor seat, I’d await Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”. For me, Paul Harvey, farming, and my youth are all rolled together.
For you it was likely WHO..Des Moines. For me it was “The Big Voice of The Big Business of Agriculture….this is WOWO, Fort Wayne, Indiana. And now, Paul Harvey”.
Oh, the memories!
Sadly for us all, WOWO has gone the way of all radio: Too boring to listen to.
I can hear the ladies singing “WOWO-Ft Wayne” now. Prolly get stuck in my head for a few days (but it dislodged “I’ve Got a Dream” which had been stuck in there since the boys decided to perform it for the Catholic Schools Week talent show so I’m good)
Would that have been the station I could pick up in southern NH and hear the exploits of George Yardley and the Ft. Wayne Pistons?
Every night of my high school days, grad. ’67, was spent with a transistor radio under my pillow tuned to either WOWO or WLS in Chicago.
Oh how I hate that metrosexual manufactured voice. Completely unappealing. Deep voices are common in our family and I love talking with my brothers and their sons, because I love them and because they sound like men.
Not sure I’m adding anything here other than to say three cheers for men who do not sound like adolescents. Or girly men. Billy Idol–yes. The Bee Gees–no.
I loved listening to Paul Harvey. I was a know-it-all, urban college student, but his newscasts at noon every day, the Rest of the Story during afternoon drive and the 5-minute Top of the News at 7:30 am kept me connected to my childhood, growing up in very rural Montana. Not to mention his 1/2-hour broadcasts on Saturday.
I think it was during the 2001 election recount that I really appreciated his commentary with the news. It was also about then I first noticed that his voice sounded tired, not the energetic tenor it had been for so many years.
Paul, I miss you. And I still shop at …True Value!
The only problem I had with the commercial was the unrealistic insertion of the new and expensive Dodge truck. My personal pickup is a 30 year old Ford. Meanwhile, a neighbor just proudly showed me his latest acquisition, a 1995 Ford with a bad transmission that he bought for $600. After replacing the tranny himself, he is as happy as a clam.
It’s not the Dodge that strikes the wrong note, it’s the delusion that God made the farmer. The first hominids were hunter/gatherers and they evolved , yes, evolved, into farmers because tilling the soil is more efficient at feeding the hungry than the hunting of prey.And, contrary to what Obama and the squaw now say on this subject, early man did this on his own, without the help of God who was too busy with sending plagues and floods, being bitchily jealous of all the other gods and encouraging ethnic cleansing.
Could anyone hear Carrstone types in the high nasalized tone VDH mentioned? For some reason whining atheist interruptions always sound like the came off mtv.
“It’s not the Dodge that strikes the wrong note, it’s the delusion that God made the farmer. The first hominids were hunter/gatherers and they evolved , yes, evolved, into farmers because tilling the soil is more efficient at feeding the hungry than the hunting of prey.”
You left out the “herdsman” phase.
Man had learned to keep and tend animals like cattle and horses, but that required being a nomad, moving with the seasons in order to find forage for the animals.
…until Man invented agriculture. Planting and tending crops to feed himself and his herds allowed him to stay in one place.
Note that we have few records of nomadic cultures. It is not for nothing that agriculture is often called the foundation of civilization.
Hahahah. That’s funny about Superbowl Extra Large. I’m gonna start telling people Spike Lee made “Malcolm Ten.”
And when Dr. Hanson passes on, there’ll be no more American farmers with a Greek accent.
Please: Obama knows We can get more cash from the U.S. Mint, or Mastercard. Where’s the problem? He doesn’t get a bill for anything.
Thank you Dr. Hanson. The sad part about it all is farming today bears little resemblance to what it was even as little as 20 years ago. Today it is over regulated, over subsidized, and under appreciated. We also lease out our 40 acres but I guess the bright spot is working away from the farm has allowed me to buy a 3 year old pickup.
I am reminded of a story about a farmer who won a ten million dollar lottery. He was asked, with all that money, do you intend to keep farming? He replied, yes, until the money runs out.
“I am reminded of a story about a farmer who won a ten million dollar lottery. He was asked, with all that money, do you intend to keep farming? He replied, yes, until the money runs out.”
We live in inflationary times.
The first time I heard this joke, it was, “What would you do if you inherited a MILLION dollars?”
The answer was the same: I’d keep right on farming as long as the money lasted.
Knowing the high regard that I have for your thinking and writing, my wife gave me ‘Who Killed Homer’ for Christmas. Then she spent nights pouring over it. I think she’ll let me read it soon.
The commercial brought me to tears over the loss of, ironically, our once shared feeling of individuality. “We had THIS, we WERE this,” I said to my sons.
After the brief elation of hearing Paul Harvey’s voice over those images, after breathing deeply for a few moments, my wife and I settled once more into our benign despondency. We could have had those images, those muses, all along. But we chose spandex. As the ancients knew, it is separateness from good which defines hell.
I could never have imagined that you could get that much out of the beautiful commercial. A little overdoing it, don’t you think. It is not always good to make much out of so little.
Maggie: I could never imagine someone could get so little out of something so profound.
Obviously not the Maggie of Maggie’s Farm fame…
Wake up maggie…
Maggie – those Whole Foods prepared fruits and veggies you buy weren’t grown in plastic. Your steak was carved out of an animal, not a plastic tray. You can’t be too grateful to those who make your life so easy.
Just read a few Tolstoy short stories over the past few days. It is impossible to read the Russians and not think we were better off when we were more intimate with nature. Yes, life is more comfortable today, but no, we are not more whole because of it.
Orwell called Tolstoy a “literary prostitute,” apparently because Tolstoy was compromised and self-censored. Tolstoy also thought Shakespeare completely overrated.
Having finally read War and Peace a few years ago, I would say it was Tolstoy that was over-rated.
Not that I’ve really liked Shakespeare that much either….
My condolences.
Thank you, Dr. Hanson. Thank you for making me realize that I am blessed with the rural American lifestyle that I lead. It makes me feel both rich and lucky. The former I am not but the latter I am.
When I taught Government & Econ in high school, I developed a lesson plan on how to choose a president. My students always rated veracity as the prime virtue in a candidate. Ironic in a profession where falsity is the stock in trade.
Just to give those of you who don’t have close contact with what is going on out here in farm country, this little factoid. I know of an Indiana farm family that farms over 30,000 acres. Yes, Indiana. Not Wyoming. The acreage is not contiguous, of course. Folks, that’s nearly 47 square miles (“sections”) of acreage. The combines that they drive have cabs that look more like an airliner cockpit than a piece of farm equipment with its GPS autopilot and computer managed control systems including “synchronic combine-to-truck off-loading management systems” (the combine never stops to off-load as a semi-truck moves alongside at the same pace while the combine continues to harvest….all computer and GPS coordinated). Ah, the family farm. Welcome to the backward world of fly-over country. Just leave us alone…we’ll get the job done.
Yes, but there are still dairy farmers who get up in the middle of the night to milk and grow their own feed for the animals. There are still people who grow tomatoes and potatoes and cabbage on much less acreage.
Yes, and may God bless them. But let’s not get too romantic about it. We’ve got a nation and a world to feed. The folks with the roadside stand and a tomato patch may well be living an enjoyable and healthful life….. until they sell out their 1/4 section at $8,000 an acre and head for Florida. But they won’t meet our needs. My farmer friend in Ohio that started when he was just out of college (with a degree in economics) with 40 acres of tomatoes and was producing from over 1,100 when he retired will.
Great article, as always from Professor Hanson.
One grammatical error I noticed – shouldn’t “principle” be “principal”? As a child, I was taught to remember the difference on the basis that the principal was your “pal”
Mark, I’m sure many readers noticed, but out of respect for Dr. Hanson ignored the misspelling. Maybe he was just tired.
“Mark, I’m sure many readers noticed, but out of respect for Dr. Hanson ignored the misspelling. Maybe he was just tired.”
My sentiments exactly.
In “Two Californias” and subsequent essays, Dr. Hanson has written of the deterioration of the civil order where he lives. Late last year, he concluded an essay by noting that he was inventorying the family firearms. I stopped “thinking” about getting another pistol and ordered one (9mm, 15+1). Safely received in December. Thank you, Dr. Hanson.
If I may be so bold, the observation about Tommy Lee Jones and Rober jDuvall is dead on, but I would include Sam Elliott.
Keep up the good work.
I was also thinking of Sam Elliott, who usually does the voice-overs for Dodge trucks, except for this one. (I love Sam Elliott being the cowboy in “The Golden Compass”)
However, I think Timothy Olyphant of FX’s “Justified” will continue the American tradition of archetypes like cowboys.
I no longer watch the Superbowl, but after Downton Abbey was over, I flipped to see any commercials (I love the Budweiser Clydesdales), and my timing was perfect: an inspiring Paul Harvey’s paean to farmers. Not that I would buy a Doge Ram. In this right-to-farm village in western Mass (there are two sheep farms on Main Street!), GMC trucks rule, and not just because of Scott Brown, but GMC is better in snow and ice.
You do know that a GMC Truck is merely a Chevrolet Truck rebadged so that Buick and Cadillac dealers don’t have to sell declasse Chevrolets to their high-status customers?
I’ve had a couple of Dodges; tough trucks! The only knocks I have on them is most models have a farm truck turning radius so they’re unhandy in confined spaces and while the mechanicals may well last forever if properly maintained, the door handles and such will fall off or break.
I’ve driven almost every maker’s trucks at some time or another; no 2WD pickup is worth a tinker’s damn on ice or snow, even with the bed full of sand. The strictly mechanical 4WDs are all about the same in low traction conditions, and a lot depends on whether they have a limited slip rear differential. I haven’t driven enough of the newer ones with traction control and electronic or mechanical torque shifting to know if there’s much difference between the makes. I know there is a LOT of difference between my Mercedes ML 430 AWD with traction control and my kid’s Ford Explorer with conventional 4WD. The ML will go in anything and you don’t have to think about it. In low traction conditions, you have to pay some considerable attention to the Ford. That said, there are times I want to just scream “Let Me Drive” at the Mercedes.
“The ML will go in anything and you don’t have to think about it”
Yeah you do…
All that fancy-pants E-lectronic nonsense wont keep you from going off a slippery road when you take a turn way too fast for the weather conditions…they pull you along real nice, but will never prevent you from spinning in a circle when the back end breaks loose.
I see LOTS of lovely gals in fur coats and high heels, on their cell phones by the side of the road with their Audi, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, Acura, and Cadilac SUV’s in a ditch, or on their ROOFS, every time it RAINS around here…never MIND the snow.
You just cant drive like its “August”, in the middle of February because the Laws of Physics always apply…
No matter WHAT the crafty Lawyers say Engineers should (or should HAVE) done to change that.
I can’t account for idiots or women; the ML is a very competent vehicle in the hands of somebody who has a clue about driving but you do need to turn off the computer sometimes. I dunno, I think the ML engineers thought that at the slightest sign of wheelspin the driver would throw his/her hands in the air and scream, so they do everything they can to prevent wheelspin all the way to practically shutting down the engine. It’s a pain in the ass to me, but I’m one of those guys who learned to drive in a farm truck on a dirt road; I’m happy with the tail hanging out. All that said, my ML is a good vehicle for driving to work on ice and snow as casually as you might drive to work down in America on dry pavement – and I have a Kick Ass Stereo!
People complain about the incongruity of the expensive Dodge truck in the commercial, but they could have easily put the truck through a grueling display of macho power to showcase the truck, and America’s testosterone challenged would’ve said, “Hey that’s cool.” I know the truck well, I bought my second one ton diesel a year ago, after putting 650,000 kms on a ’94. The ’94 was a good truck, but it doesn’t compare to the new one.
Dodge didn’t concentrate on the truck; they honored the farmer, and it’s not as though the farmer/rancher is a huge demographic for new trucks, the farmer/rancher represents a small portion of the market. However, for a few moments, during America’s most blatant example of commercialism and capitalism, they made America pause and reflect on the humble farmer/rancher. I am sure there were more than a few lumps in the throats of millions of former farmer/ranchers like myself, who feel guilty about being seduced by the easy money of the city and denying your heritage and integrity in the process.
It was the ability to make America stop and think for a few moments on the humble lives of those who insure America will not starve that was quite an accomplishment. I would like to think the creativity of the marketing harpies of Madison Avenue had a higher motivation than making a buck and perhaps that was their ruse, but I will feel confident when it is time to buy another Dodge truck, assuming Obama’s energy policies and proposals for taxing carbon don’t make the concept of driving luxurious diesel trucks obsolete.
Well stated.
“One of the strangest disconnects of my schizophrenic world of Stanford and Selma is to see the mostly overweight poor at the Selma Wal-Mart….”
Of course, there would be no disconnect if the professor had any knowledge of nutrition.
‘But all that matters is that the “poor” are supposedly deprived of symphony, quality museums, and access to summers in Tuscany.’
Yep, that’s what the safety net is all about…in the wingnut mind.
“Of course, there would be no disconnect if the professor had any knowledge of nutrition”
I think its up to those FAT poor people, to learn a little bit more about nutrition, dont you?
At what point is someone COMPLETELY irresponsible for their own selves?
And it then becomes MY FAULT that they are fat, ignorant, lazy, and SUBSIDIZED in perpetuity with the debt promised upon the sweat of my (yet unborn) granchildrens brow brow?
Ignorant lefty punk, here’s what your lefty teachers and professors didn’t tell you: lefty and smart are not synonyms! I’m willing to bet that Professor Davis knows more about most anything than you do. I’m willing to bet that he has done more than you have. You’re just another ignorant punk with lots of self-esteem and NO reason to have it.
Careful, Art. HillelA has a room full of ribbons he was awarded for participation and nice behavior plus attendance, and a couple of those powerful liberal arts degrees.
HillelA is a formidable opponent in the battle of discussing idiocy – an expert, in fact.
It costs less to learn to cook with fresh, healthy ingredients than it does to buy a bevy of fetty convenience meals that you throw in the nuker three times a day.
But that would mean that those poor people would have to actually make some wise choices and shoulder some responsibility for themselves rather than have everything handed to them. Daddy government does a poor job of that.
I thought people of your ilk embraced irony as emblematic of your own clever sophistication. Ah, I guess it’s irony of the gentle wistful sort that you don’t get.
I detect a man with a mission, a devotee of carping and deconstruction, a Progressive’s jihadi. (Don’t let the Hillel fool you; he shows no restraint in inflicting upon others the hateful he would not want inflicted upon him).
“Of course, there would be no disconnect if the professor had any knowledge of nutrition.”
Huh? What would his knowledge of nutrition have to do with his observation? Are there or are there not a lot of overweight people with smartphones, SUVs and EBT cards frequenting the stores in the Central Valley? But I understand . . when your deluded world view is called into question you lash out in any way you can. Doesn’t matter if it makes any sense . . just hoping to deflect attention from the obvious reality staring us all in the face.
“Yep, that’s what the safety net is all about…in the wingnut mind.”
I have fallen into the safety net a time or two in my life. Managed to clamber back out. For me, it wasn’t comfortable enough that I could have lounged around in it for the rest of my life.
I can’t watch the news. I can listen to the news, I can read the news, I can bear the news but I can’t bear to look at the newscasters’ fake faces. I gazed at the men in the commercial, didn’t really listen to the words much. They’ve lived lives and the news anchors have not and it shows on their faces.
So God Made A Liberal
You can eat very healthy from even a Walmart. Last time I was there which was as long ago as last weekend, they had vast refrigerated shelves of leafy spinach, bins of bananas, rows of tomatoes, a virtual smorgasbord of low calorie produce and low fat meats.
I had no problem gaining access to the bananas or spinach. The cupcake, snack and potato chip shelves were wait in line. And the seasonal candy shelves? Take a number and enter at your own risk. Costs no matter for rich and poor alike, as it’s every American’s right and Benevolent Dear Leader Barack’s responsibility to make sure all families have the three pound box of Russell Stover.
Once again, our resident nanny proponent who knows better than all else, excuses the poor personal choices, and plays the Good Samaritan and Wise Counselor on someone else dime.
You won the rube vote and lost the country. Enjoy the excess while it lasts, poseur.
Land rich and cash poor.
That’s the farmer’s life. Sure they might has assets worth a million dollars but only if they sell their land and equipment. So they use those productive assets worth a pile of money to make a middle class income in the good years.
But that 50% Death Tax is killing off all the small/midsized open land parcels around here (Bucks County PA)
If your family HAD a farm, the government assesses the land at “current market” (read: McMansionville development) prices….
So, you have a couple million worth of land when Pop dies?
You’ll have to sell a chunk just to pay the tax…
And in two generations its all gone.
Keep it? Pass it down?
HA HA!
The Government has other plans for your “wealth”.
You can go be a wage-slave after they’re done taking your land.
This is why our family land is in a trust. This was seen to be a problem and possibility long ago, and somewhere in my grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ time, it was all put in a trust. The government can try to take it when my parents pass on, but it won’t work.
Exactly right. There are still some ways to avoid the reaper just that most people don’t know about about.
Another part of the problem is that government at all levels think in terms of tax revenue particularly from property taxes. They’d rather have a bunch of houses on former farmland bringing in considerably higher tax revenues than the farm itself. It’s just like government to prefer a non-productive use to a productive one.
So true…
And even in town, in our (founded in 1682) historic borough 5 miles from where Washington Crossed the Delaware, all they care about is Revenue…
Endless zoning “variances” are approved (by the good, guilty white liberals in this “sophistcated” elitest place?) for developers to build double the height and triple the density of whats currently “allowed”.
A Five Story Parking Garage, in the open lot next to a church from 1690, that is currently zoned as single family residential….because they want the constant flow of Parking Revenue rather than the quarterly or anually submitted Property Tax from one or “maybe” two average sized homes….
Is it any wonder or 4-man police department has FIVE vehicles, including a new “undercover” Black Sports Car?
I still have first cousins, once removed Aunts and Uncles, that work those relatively small farms, raise cattle and scratch out a living. Felt like Ma and Pa Kettle for this city boy when we went there. As a young man, I looked down at them – now older and wiser, I look up.
Thirty year old pickups, rusted and smelling of mold line the property here and there. Like everything else in America, the worry of weather has become secondary to the yearly increase from the county assessor’s office – and slowly but surely, dividing the property up for sale to meet the tax obligations will eventually be the demise.
Fond memories of Uncle John’s place on Sunday afternoons. Screen doors and flies galore, a window air conditioning unit the only cool in the house on a blazing summer day in Oklahoma, the fried chicken was to die for plucked fresh. Few of them have seen the halls of academia but have an uncanny ability to fix things with just wrenches and screwdrivers – not a compound miter saw to be found and an electric drill a luxury. Dawn to dusk is the rule and no one complained or even noticed. Sunday was for the Lord.
Those uneducated flyover types without a college degree and too unsophisticated to recognize the pleasure of humanism taught me how to cinch a horse, learn to drive at 13 on plowed roads, operate a tractor, even lift the bucket on a old backhoe. First my first shot on their farm.
They’ve never left home and I would like to think that they’re immune to the decadence. But I’m afraid TV ruined that for them long ago and in passing conversation as an adult, I’ve learned they were a lot more attuned to reality than I ever was.
Our family land is going slower because it’s in a trust, but as it’s divided up between relatives, some of it is sold because what else are they going to do with it? We already lost one parcel because one cousin lives in Sand Diego. Why should she keep it? And at the cost of land, the rest of us couldn’t put together the money to buy it back. I don’t know what will happen when my aunt and my mother go. The current land will be split four ways again.
I’d like to be able to buy all or part of it back because my husband and I have plans, and our cousins still rent the land for their farming, so there’s some extra income from that, too.
That is a problem and I’ve seen it happen a lot. Land get divided up amongst family and most want to sell it and the ones that want to keep it can’t afford to buy them out. So the land gets broken up, and usually so do the families as they all squabble over the money. Whatever they get they typically blow pretty fast and up up worse off than they were before in no small part because they’ve alienated their family.
Or, like happened by me….
The folks in those cheek-by-jowel McMansions (without a tree or sidewalk anywhere in the development) suddenly dont like the “smell” of the farm they moved next-door to….
And the TOWN COUNCIL these New-fangled Yuppies sit on, uses Eminent Domain to first condemn, and then SEIZE the remaining farmland, for a PRIVATE GOLF COURSE…
Yup, we can all thank to Kelo for that one.
That happens a LOT. Of course when the farm is in production the government does all it can to get the land classified as residential for the high taxes so you have to fight them every single year to keep the agricultural zoning and much lower tax. However, when they seize land, it is the lower value they will pay at, not the higher residential rate.
The problem around my place now is the expanding park land. This is mostly done by the state but they keep buying up land to put into parks that no one goes to visit. They’re steadily creeping my way and it is worrisome.
I work with horses, and my work has forced me to travel across North America and Europe. I have heard and seen many stories of farm and ranch humor, but the funniest for me was while working in an upscale rural neighborhood in Eastern Pennsylvania for a dairy farmer who had horses. His farm was divided by a narrow two lane road and his pastures were on the opposite side of the road from his milking parlor; consequently, he crossed the road with his dairy herd four times a day.
I was loading my gear to leave when I saw the farmer cleaning the road of cow pies with a push broom and a scoop shovel. I laughed and told him, I didn’t realize dairies required so much clean-up.
He was unimpressed with my attempt at humor, and told me of how he started milking on the farm as a boy without problems. However, as yuppies decided to go back to nature and move to the country outside of Philadelphia, they decided collectively, that they didn’t want cow manure on their Beamers. So they passed an ordinance requiring him to clean up the road after each crossing. I looked at him in disbelief as he explained how they initially tried to prevent him from crossing the road with his Global Warming cattle, but he agreed to a compromise, and today, he is probably still cleaning up after his cattle in all sorts of weather to protect the paint jobs on those fancy German cars.
Professor Hanson,
Really enjoyed reading your essay “The New Age of Falsity”.
The broader points about life and society Mr. Davis makes are wonderful. However, I am compelled to point out that (a) this commercial was made by and the time slot purchased by a company that should be bankrupt but has been bailed out by the federal government (taxpayers) twice in my lifetime and (b) lauds a way of life that has been heavily dependent on various federal and state programs (taxpayers again), subsidies, price controls, etc since at least the New Deal. That two wards of the state are thrust up as paragons of virtue says a lot about why our country is in its current desperate straights.
” However, I am compelled to point out that (a) this commercial was made by and the time slot purchased by a company that should be bankrupt but has been bailed out by the federal government (taxpayers) twice in my lifetime…”
1. The first Chrysler “bailout” was a government-guaranteed bank loan which was paid back ahead of schedule. Concessions from the UAW were part of the deal.
2. That was 1979, after which Chrysler spent several decades making a profit and meeting a payroll.
3. The more recent bailout of GM & Chrysler was a payoff for the UAW.
Greetings:
As the good Professor so often demonstrates, the ways of the world are knowable. And to prove that point California’s current Governor Brown recently, and in the afterglow of having foisted another in perpetuity tax increase on the low-information voters of his formerly great state, stepped to the podium to disparage the efforts of the state of Texas’s governor to lure California businesses to the latter’s state.
Governor Brown comment was something along the line of “Who wants to spend their summers in 110 degree heat”. And he made the comment with the look of a man who had just totally destroyed his debate opponent who, in reality wasn’t there at all.
The Governor’s bravado performance left me wondering, what else doesn’t he know about California and its Central Valley.
Read an article the next day on this commercial and it went on that there was no diversity in the ad. I’m so sick and tired of this politically correct garbage. I believe it was the WAPO that published it and that says it all.
“Even if they wanted to lie, to whom exactly can farmers lie to most days, when they work alone in a mute world? ”
Livestock, crops, and pests are not taken in by lies.
My time dairy farming during the 1980s makes all of this very real to me. You are right on, Professor.
A movie that makes the point of juxtaposing earthy honesty and modern cluelessness and immorality is “The Big Lebowski,” where Sam Elliot makes an appearance in his cowboy role.
Remember that Chrysler is now run by a guy with a green card. Perhaps he sees something in America that we no longer can — like many immigrants. He has certainly been a gust of fresh air in this town (Detroit) where platitudes are policy. He brought a company back from the dead — as he did with Fiat. There just isn’t a substitute for giving a damn. I have seen it again and again — most frequently during my years in publishing and the book industry. I watch those old movies on YouTube and you realize that — British or American — those kind of men are not so much gone, but like faith, driven from sight. I don’t see how it can go on.
Yup.
Apologies of Paul Harvey
And on the eighth day, the Devil looked up through the brimstone smoke of hell to the fledgling earth above and said, “It looks too green and pleasant–I need a pestilence….”
So the Devil created the politician….
The Devil said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, put on a suit, make calls to lobbyists, work all day scheming, glad-hand campaign contributors, make more calls, eat at a campaign fund-raising dinner, then go to the capitol and stay past midnight in a smoke-filled room colluding with colleagues….”
So The Devil made a politician….
“I need somebody with a strong enough stomach to wrestle with moral issues, yet devious enough to ignore morality, someone to smile incessantly, trash opponents. Somebody to flatter ladies, sleep with some of them, describe himself as pious, condemn sin, show off his happy family, espouse virtue, try to legislate it and not mean a word of it.”
So the Devil made a politician.
The Devil said, “I need somebody to propose legislation based on his own prejudices that serves no purpose but to burnish his image, see it fail, shrug and introduce the same bill next year. I need somebody who can confuse, change the subject, fashion an argument out of air, promise the undoable, reward the lazy, punish his enemies, form a dagger with words, who can do two days work in five, wallow in the perks of office, take free trips and meals and still find time to take kickbacks, dispense favors and form slush funds.”
So the Devil made a politician.
The Devil had to have somebody willing to spend any amount of time and do anything in the race to get elected but still have time to ignore the powerlless and race to condemn a colleague in trouble or bully a questioning constituant.
So the Devil made a politician.
The Devil said, “I need somebody tough enough to intimidate opponents and ignore suffering but actor enough to kiss babies, parade small children in political theatre and let no crisis go to waste in emotional pandering for his own ends; who will stop at nothing but will stop to stoop to put his hand up a dress or down the pants of a pretty face.” It had to be somebody tireless in deceit, rapacious in greed who would go straight for the throat of those who disagree; somebody who could pander, bribe, betray, lie, persuade without compromise, threaten, cheat, steal and yet appear prominently at church on Sunday. Someone who could enrich his own family members with plum jobs and further the careers of those in his favor. Somebody who will sigh and have no remorse when, at the end of his career finds himself friendless in disfavor and out of office or in jail.
So the Devil made a politician.
I imagined crafting something like that, but you beat me to it…
And did a MUCH better job than I would have, too!
Awesome job.
Brilliant.
IThanks.
Now I can’t get the image of Biden out of my head…
I farm for a living, or at least attempt to do. As one who struggled through Cicero, trying to develop a translation both accurate and fluid, I hear the stories behind your commentary. What I experience these days is tragically akin to what eventually befell the ‘latifundia’ system of late Rome. I sense myself going down that same orrible path — realising it’s not worth it anymore, not with regulations, constraints, and taxes arrayed in a manner that if I actually have a good year most of my good fortune will be taken away, thus preventing me from elimination of my remaining debt. I am beginning to trade my crops in exchange for the services of others in the region. That’s how it unfolded in Fourth Century Rome as well. It’s not comforting.
– Niners lost, Doc. That’s all that matters in the entire universe.
I was a Steelers fan growing up in the 70′s
My son was born in February ’06, a few days before they won #5
# 6 came on his birthday two years later.
This year (like every Superbowl without The Steelers!) was Utterly Meaningless
A contest between:
THE most Pretentious City on Earth, verses…
An east-coast a Sh*thole destined to be set on fire, win OR lose…
Pity they BOTH couldn’t lose is all I can say about it
I’ll take “ Immaculate Reception” re-runs over the Blackout and
(What was her name? Bounce? Beyond?) any day of the week
It never ceases to amaze me to read/hear a conservative go off on one of these God-and-country riffs and slobber all over themselves with nostalgia for some long-ago imagined era before the shallow, calloused metrosexuals ruined America and it’s hard-working, God-fearing ethos. Please, give me a freaking break and get a freaking clue.
You are the same people that stood by and said nothing while case after case of pedophilia by Catholic priests were revealed. You were the ones that railed against the “leftist” media for making those revelations public, not at the Catholic Church all the way up to and including the Pope for hiding the truth.
You were the ones that shouted down the whistleblowers that revealed the atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Viet Nam and Afghanistan and Iraq. People like John Kerry who famously testified about what happened in Viet Nam were vilified and accused of treason and, in Kerry’s case, Swiftboated with false accusations in revenge. You who are still blind “patriots” who are actually stupid enough to be taken in by your own government’s propaganda, I suggest you read Nick Turse’s new book about the atrocities in Viet Nam, Kill Anything that Moves.
And, the next time you’re tempted to wax nostalgic about how great America was before it was brought down by the forces of Godless liberalism, breathe deep the air of hypocrisy hanging over you. As a wise man once said, “Evil is manifest by our inability to conceive of causing it.”
Understand, lefty idiot, that many of us hate you far more than you hate us. You punks don’t really believe in anything, so you don’t have much of a place to draw from; we do, and we hate you for what you’re doing to the place we draw from. Some day, maybe soon, we’re going to have a serious disagreement.
That phony sonovabitch jon kary went to Vietnam to scam the system, get a few scratches, get his three purple hearts, and go back home a war hero like his war hero, hero, J F Kennedy, another phoney sonovabitch. Tell me, punk, how do you get your 40 knot PT boat run over by a 20-30 knot destroyer? The only things worthwhile that JFK had were Daddy’s money, good writers, and an expensive piece of ass for a wife. Hell, he was only in the Pacific with a PT boat because Daddy pulled some strings and got him out of DC before his banging the spy caused trouble.
Pissants like you couldn’t last a week doing real work, wouldn’t know where to start fixing anything, couldn’t put a meal on the table by your own hands if your life depended on it. I know your perfessers told you how special and smart you are, but basically, you’re parasites. Only a really rich country can afford useless mouths like lefties and the parasitic Democrat constituencies. You’ve gone far towards making the US no longer a rich country, and our willingness and ability to afford useless mouths is waning.
God love you, Art. Just God love you.
Art, love it when you talk like that.
We hate them more and we’re better armed. And I’m not talkin’ toned biceps but we probably have those too. From real work. Not from holding an iphone to our ears.
The only thing you’d have a “toned bicep” from, Sparky, is from spending time in this reich-wing circle jerk with the other wankers.
Punk, there is one whole helluva lot of difference between the tone you homosexuals and metrosexuals get at the gym and the tone that we who actually do something get. One day we’ll find out which is the most effective.
Wow, Artie, you must be freaking worn out from all that, um, doing stuff you do . . . of something.
Yet, here you are finding time to hang out in the asylum with all the loonies where you get to play the chief loony when no one is looking.
OK, Art, knock it off…
If I come home from work ONE MORE TIME to my wife saying
“Oh, Daddy, you GOTTA read what Art Chance laid on this troll!”
we may have to have a “talk”, mmm kay?
You ever notice how silent these Leftists go when it comes to their own serial pedophiles like Bulbous Bobby Menendez, serial rapists like Slick Billy Clinton, love child Jesse and John? That’s Obi’s leadership. And as far as “all of these pedophiles” in the Catholic Priesthood?
Isn’t the Obi types always normalizing homosexuality?
So, Art, thanks for doing a great job of proving my point. You really could be the poster boy for the kind of twisted hypocrit that actually is delusional enough to think that the ends justify the means, thus torture, war crimes, even pedefillia are ignored or reasoned away and the ones actually trying to do the right thing are attacked.
Oh, you missed the point? Why am I not surprised, you knuckle-dragging retard?
This little rant of yours is mindless drool served up for your imagined demons from the fever-swamp of your shriveled little soul. The same kind of rotten cretin that looked the other way when American soldiers rape and pillage and then lie about it. The same kind of low-life mofo that actually thinks his rotten little life is worth something.
BTW, I’m not anti-military, just anti the military that disgrace the flag and the low-lifes like you that allow it. I was a fighter pilot at one time.
So, Art, thanks for doing a great job of proving my point. You really could be the poster boy of the deluded, twisted hypocrites that think the ends justify the means. Thus torture, war crimes, even pedefillia are ignored or reasoned away and the ones actually trying to do the right thing are attacked. That’s the story of what happened to the soldiers that came forward after Viet Nam and more recently in the Afghanistan and Irag wars.
Oh, you missed the point? Why am I not surprised, you knuckle-dragging retard? You just can’t help yourself, can you?
This little rant of yours is mindless drool served up for your imagined demons from the fever-swamp of your shriveled little soul. You’re the same kind of rotten cretin that looked the other way when American soldiers raped and pillaged and then lied about it. The same kind of low-life mofo that actually thinks he has “values” as you attack those that you perceive to be different or lacking your so-called morality.
BTW, I’m not anti-military, just anti the military that disgrace the flag and the low-lifes like you that allowed it. I was a fighter pilot at one time.
No, vile creature, you are the one who has believed every bit of propaganda. And, yes, good propaganda always has an element of truth. The Left has taken every stupid violent thing that someone has ever done to one of their useful idiot client groups and propagandized it into the norm, the standard, the reality of American life. Some slaveowners raped their female slaves, not all of them, not even many of them. Some slaveowners senselessly beat their slaves; not all of them, not even many of them. When was the last time you saw a farmer beating his very expensive tractor? Some American soldiers behaved very badly in Vietnam, but not all of them, not even many of them. A lot more US soldiers gave candy to children and food to families in Vietnam than participated in gratuitous violence against Vietnamese civilians.
People like you are a pestilence on our society; you think you know everything and almost everything you know is wrong. Your Lefty 101 “argumentative” techniques won’t work with me; I’m used to assholes whose only skill is namecalling and insults. They’re called union reps and organizers; they make good roadkill. C’mon, chip your idiotic teeth on me; I’m something you’ve never seen before, someone who’d just love for you to up the ante.
Art, you’re a legend in your own, poor, confused, laughably-fevered mind. I hope you don’t scare yourself at night, you certainly don’t scare me. Pity is more like it.
To quote one of your heroes, Donald Rumsfeld, “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
And, guess where you fall on this spectrum, Sparky, yeah, that’s right, you’re the one that’s got a lock on the unknown unknowns. That’s you, baby, because you don’t have a clue what you don’t know.
So “fighter pilot”, go ahead and tell us what you flew, and when, and under what circumstances.
F-100 in the ANG.
Funny, you only answered half the question. Perhaps you need time to email your Uncle who did the real flying?
How about a little detail on your service to the nation. Let’s hear the when, where, what, why and how.
You clearly have plenty of time on your hands, trolling through responses here. You claim superiority on many issues of which you know little, yet mysteriously have not much to offer on a topic that relatively few could challenge you on.
So, if I was making this all up – or using my supposed uncle’s experience – why would you trust ANYTHING I post? So why should I waste my time?
If you knew anything about jet fighters or the ANG, you’d know when these planes were flown. Out unit used them in Viet Nam and they were retired a in the mid-70′s. I was in training during Viet Nam so never flew in combat.
I _do_ know something about jet fighters, punk. That’s the point.
I also know something about fighter pilots, pathetic poser.
You have nothing to be proud of, nothing that you accomplished.
If you did, you wouldn’t feel the need to claim someone else’s skill, courage, or integrity.
Instead, you attempt to fill the emptiness within with false superiority and smug pretense. It doesn’t work, which is why you will never be at rest, never find peace, never quench the fury that burns within.
Complete nonsense, dickwad, please cite where I said anything about my service other than that I was a fighter pilot – cited by me as means of showing that I have some military background and to underscore the fact that I’m not anti-military per se.
What you want to suggest is pure projection and made-up idiocy. Nothing to do with me, Sparky.
Oh, BTW, what the f&ck did YOU do that gives you ANY kind of credibility???
Hahahahaha!
You are no fighter pilot.
And you have nothing to hang your hat on.
You are so pathetic, that YOU HAVE TO LIE because YOU HAVE NOTHING THAT MAKES YOU A MAN. You aimed just a tad high there, cupcake.
As for me, I’m not a fighter pilot either, you jerk. But I did fly in the cockpit next to them on CVW-9 on Nimitz for two cruises, and a composite airwing on USS Constellation, and CVW-17 on Eisenhower for one cruise, while amassing 585 traps. Oh yeah, and there was Red Flag where I got to fly alongside USAF and USMC fighter pilots and the international forces that flew in that particular exercise, including F-16 pilots from Singapore, F-4′s and Jaguars from U.K., and Tornados from Germany and Italy. Some of my favorite stories are of telling how the Brit pilots drank heavy in the club at Nellis, singing WWII songs mocking Hitler, while German pilots stood stoicly nearby. My squadronmates introduced them all to “carrier landings” by stretching tablecloths across the tables and making running leaps onto the tables and then catching them with the toes of their boots to stop.
Pretty pathetic, you laughable buffoon, pretty pathetic.
You actually KNEW some fighter pilots and heard them tell some war stories and watched them get drunk. You DA MAN!!
So, Obi-Idiot, if you’re telling the truth, big IF, sometime between ’72 and ’79, the years the “Hun” was in ANG service, the US trusted you with one of its aging but still expensive military aircraft. I suppose you, too, were one of the lefties screaming that GWB’s ANG service in another Century Series aircraft, a far more capable on than the one you claim to have flown, was just a rich boy’s way of avoiding real military service.
IF, REALLY BIG IF, you’re telling the truth, you’re far too old to be as damned dumb as you are unless you’re a tenured teacher, a government employee, or work for some interest group non-profit or a union.
Yes, I was one of the people that was highly critical of Bush’s “service” in the ANG both because he was supposedly pro-Viet Nam war and enrolled in a unit – with his dad’s help – that flew the F-102, an air-defense plane, that would never have been deployed to Viet Nam. He was a rich kid using political connections to avoid fighting in a war he said he supported. I think the appropriate label for that would be hypocrite. I was AGAINST the war in Viet Nam and so wasn’t dodging a war I believed in while others fought and died. I protested the war and marched on the Pentagon in ’67 and am convinced now more than ever knowing what I know now that war was a disastrous mistake – not to mention the systematic violations and war crimes.
I personally knew the situation well and was extremely lucky to get in a unit and only because they had lost pilots in Viet Nam as well as had a number of pilots basically quit the unit when it was called up and I was standing there at the right time. So, yes, I was a fighter pilot and, no, I’m not anti-military per se. I’ve seen the military up close and personal all of my life as the son of a WW ll fighter pilot and ace and saw many great people as well as many that weren’t so great. The military isn’t sacred to me and it’s certainly not above criticism – far from it.
Bush also lied about completing his service and the record were purged from the files – all standard operating procedure for the politically-influenced Texas ANG, or “Champagne Air force” as it was known because of all the rich kids who got in on connections. In fact, Bush could be a poster boy for the kind of hypocrisy and moral failings that I was pointing out in my original post on this thread – though you’ve yet to even address my basic premise.
As for my age and the influence that has on knowledge – or lack thereof – you’re a shinning example that stupidity can strike at any age so your premise is simplistic and false. “Simplistic and false” seems like a pretty good summation for you in general, Sparky.
Nothing wrong with him that a sound thrashing couldn’t cure. Art gave him a verbal one. Look at Obama and his managerial elite. They live all in their heads, can fix nothing mechanical. Does Obama look like he ever changed the oil on his car? All these elite managers feeding at the Federal trough will over regulate us to justify their bloated 100,000+ paychecks. Many/most are useless affirmative action hires. Now gays get affirmative action or they will hire their own to staff the Federal bureaucracy in the Imperial City DC. Woman are affirmative action qualified. So are the browner skinned immigrants who can snag that Federal job over someone whose family has roots here going back generations, that has fought in our wars and built our great nation.
So your not catholic nor have you ever worked on a farm? Ah.
Convictions of molestations by public school teachers outnumber the priests over 30:1. The silence is deafening, but you be sure to “not just stand there and be silent.” The NEA will be all ears to hear your righteous indignation.
“People like John Kerry who famously testified about what happened…”
He was vilified because of his made up testimony and was exposed as a liar.
“Evil is manifest by our inability to conceive of causing it.”
Such are the ways of the progresive mind. To suppress the truth of his results and project his failures, along with his evil, on to those who do not bow before his alter.
You don’t have a mirror in your house do you?
I will add to your defense of priests that very few were actually cases of pedophilia. In truth, they were predominately homosexual encounters between homosexual priests and teen boys. Unfortunately, there were a few years where the Church was naive enough to allow homosexuals to be priests. They’ve fixed that now, and that will end the problem. Hopefully the Boy Scouts have learned from this and have the wherewithal to resist the push to allow homosexual scout leaders.
If Obi is so concerned about pedophilia, why does he not rail against the North American Man Boy Love Association?
I have no intention of reading “Kill Anything That Moves”. However, if someone publishes a book titled “Kill Any Liberal That Moves”, I’ll buy enough copies to fill the back of a Dodge Ram!
Kill Anything That Moves” – Thats his source? Nick Turse who also made:
“The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso, 2010)”
“The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2008)”
A 37 year old leftist with an agenda and probably celebrated in all the left publications, natch, isn’t someone I would hold as a source.
Yet, no matter what Turse’s politics, he took his book directly from government records and confirmed those records with personal interviews. So, shoot the messenger if you want, but try and refute his message. You can’t.
So, as I said before, you can believe the truth – no matter the source – or you can just keep your head up your ass.
He is a propagandist. Enough said. A “proclaimed expert”, who read archives, did interviews, etc.. and arrived at his conclusions that were mostly constructed way in advance. No suprises.
You remind me of the “chumps,” but the Noam Chompsky supporters were at least better read and mannered than you, but I digress. Feel free to wave Turse’s book around like the unsufferable bore that you are. Eventually some one will throw you a peanut.
Turse’s book is just ONE source and only for ONE war, Viet Nam. There are other sources and other wars with the same pattern of abuse. And in ALL of those instances, CONservatives where the ones leading the attack . . . against the accusers.
My point is these same clueless troglodytes actually think they’re being “patriotic”. And, fools like you who have the audacity to even use the word propaganda when you wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked you in the face.
@Obi
“Turse’s book is just ONE source and only for ONE war, Viet Nam. There are other sources and other wars with the same pattern of abuse. And in ALL of those instances, CONservatives where the ones leading the attack . . . against the accusers.”
You’re absurd. Your posts are soundig more like Chris Dorners screed.
“My point is these same clueless troglodytes actually think they’re being “patriotic”. And, fools like you who have the audacity to even use the word propaganda when you wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked you in the face.”
Your point was lost somewhere between: “reich-wing circle jerk
…knuckle-dragging retard…low-life mofo …dickwad…head up your ass…clueless troglodytes, etc…” along with your other rantings and accusations.
“I was a fighter pilot at one time.”
I missed that tidbit. Airforce Not(ational) Going(uard)? LMAO. Why were your chaptered/rifted (aka. thrown-out-on-your-ass)? Not that it matters.
Good luck Obi. I hope you find your way to G-d before it’s too late.
*Apologies to Dr. Hanson and readers for wrecking the thread. // End
Find my way to God? You have the freaking audacity to think that somehow I need your advice/encouragement in that endeavor? Did you somehow miss the ENTIRE POINT of my post – that CONservatives actually think they have a moral high ground? Are you going out of your way to be an actual example of that? Wow, what a clueless dolt!!
Using two of many possible example, I pointed out CONservative reaction to examples of war crimes in Viet Nam and, more recently, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the reaction to the tsunami of sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church as EXAMPLES OF WHAT I MEAN. But, you like ever other poster on this thread, have completely missed the point of what I was saying. And, yes, I have thrown around abusive terms but only to the idiotic responses that have used the same kind of ad hominem attacks. Give me a coherent response and you’ll see the same, dickwad.
Please post a link to the information about the 30-1 ratio of molestations. I’d love to see that.
The book I cited about Viet Nam provides evidence FROM MILITARY RECORDS, substantiated with personal interviews of both American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians and is backed with scores of pages of references to actual records. John Kerry was only wrong in that he had no idea how pervasive what happened was. He only saw a small piece of the big picture.
Or, you can just keep your head up your ass.
“I’d love to see that.”
Look it up yourself.
“The book I cited..”
Title and author?
“John Kerry was only wrong in that he had no idea…”
You mean he lied. Still waiting for him to release those last 93 pages of his military records– which he promised to do after he lost the election in 2004. He is the richest man in the senate, due to marriage, spent 4 months in Vietnam (did you know he served in Vietnam?) and is a giant lying sack of shit. Like all democrats.
Please keep your vile, asinine comments coming as the screeches of a pigressive are always amusing. Like watching a worm in petri dish.
Just as I though, dickwad, no source, just your fevered imagination, huh?
To quote that famous politician/philosopher, Dan Quayle, “A mind is a terrible thing to lose”.
You’ve clearly lost yours, but it was much to begin with.
Still waiting for that source for the 30-1.
What’s wrong, doesn’t exist? That’s what I thought.
Whatever it was that led you to your ridiculous belief was enough for your simple mind . . . what’s left of it.
Still waiting for your “fighter pilot” cred obi-wannalife.
What’s wrong, doesn’t exist? That’s what I thought.
Whatever it was that led you to the ridiculous belief that you could pass for someone with skill, courage and integrity…. well even a cursory reading of your keyboard skills reveals the lack of manhood. What you lack, screams from you out of every pore even over the anonymous internet.
I posted above to your questions AND got exactly the kind of response I SAID I would get, didn’t I?
You not only want to pose as some kind of authority on military pilots but now you’re an expert psychologist?? Too freaking funny but, then, I’m sure you’re as dense as a brick and will miss the fact that you’re a joke. Your idiocy shines through – even in the anonymous internet.
Keep it up, this is fun!!
Woohoo! It all makes sense now.
Daddy was a real fighter pilot.
You weren’t, which is fine.
But you are a failure as a man. Deep inside it resonates.
When pressed for proof any of particular accomplishment in life by Art’s response (which hit home), you looked in vain for something that isn’t there.
In a moment of foolishness, you tossed in the “I was a fighter pilot” b.s. when any number of lesser but truthful responses would have been more than sufficient. Except that you don’t even have any minor accomplishments to point to.
The fighter pilot reference had nothing to do with making a statement about my accomplishments in life, that’s YOUR interpretation. I stated clearly several times already that I mention my military background – and the fact that I grew up in a military family – to underscore that I’m not against the military out of hand. That’s all. And it’s true. And I was a good pilot even if somehow I don’t seem to have made the grade according to you. I guess being in combat is the measure? So, I SHOULD have said, I was a fighter pilot (but only in the ANG and never in combat)?
You miss the point ENTIRELY of both the fighter pilot reference AND the entire point of my original post which, once again for the very slow learners like you, was about the hypocrisy I so often see from conservatives in this country who seem to think they have a moral high ground.
If having presenting a resume’ of your life’s accomplishments is required for posting here, where the hell is YOURS and what gives you any credibility to either post here or criticize me??? So, let’s see your credentials or STFU.
One need to look no further than public education to see what godless leftism wrought. Incorrigible and unloved kids, disrespecting authority, lefty useful idiots in administration, and useless teacher’s unions. Abject failure directly from the Leftists Obi.
Wax nostalgic? I would even tolerate something besides that thin veneer of civilization you bring to the table, copulating with your boy toy in the park. Something besides your streets smelling like urine…
Get a grip, Tex old boy, for God’s sake, get a grip!!
Evidently you had a very unpleasant experience in a park and it’s still haunting you. I hope you get some help. And, don’t forget to take those meds they gave you.
You’re in the wrong place, bub. I was a little girl during Vietnam, with a monsignior asking me if I wanted to see two people doing something weird in the woods. So I grew up and then helped shut down a pervert-worshipping cult that’s been masquerading as a Catholic order for 70 years. I have to use my real name when I post so their lawyers don’t come after me, again. I’ve been raped, dead, evicted, molested; I’ve detasseled corn, sold plasma for grocery money, walked on a broken hip, raised eight kids. You got us so wrong you probably think raising the minimum wage will lower unemployment. As my dear, departed dad used to say, you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.
Who in the hell are you talking to and about what???
God, whatever you’ve been through seems to have blown what’s left of your mind.
I’m not so much concerned with godless liberalism as liberalism disconnected from reason and rationality.
Orwell wrote: “…any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer.”
In this case I think of politically correct orthodoxy as the substitute for Orwell’s “totalitarian.”
Liberals find more imaginary battles and windmills to tilt at than at any time in American history. Case in point: Trayvon Martin – an excuse for persecution and a falsification of reality. Hurricane Katrina too. There are many other liberal “causes.” Imaginary ones.
Go into any YWCA or community college – look at the bulletin board. You’d think you were in a refugee camp in a war zone.
“People like John Kerry who famously testified about what happened in Viet Nam were vilified and accused of treason and, in Kerry’s case, Swiftboated with false accusations in revenge.”
Cough.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/10/19/203211.shtml
“In January of 1971, I rode in a van with John Kerry, a national leader of the VVAW, and others from Washington D.C. to Detroit to attend the Winter Soldier Investigation, a conference intended to publicize alleged American war crimes in Vietnam. Having no knowledge of such war crimes, I did not intend to speak at the event.
“During the Winter Soldier Investigation, John Kerry and other leaders of that event pressured me to testify about American war crimes, despite my repeated statements that I could not honestly do so. One event leader strongly implied that I would not be provided transportation back to my home in Baltimore, Maryland, if I failed to comply. Kerry and other leaders of the event instructed me to publicly state that I had witnessed incidents of rape, brutality, atrocities and racism, knowing that such statements would necessarily be untrue.”
Is this Obi guy for real? Truly, this must be a hoax post, replete with adult-nerd Star Wars handle and monomaniacal obsessions with diddling priests, Viet Nam, Bush-did-it, and government lies, all supported by name-calling follow-up posts. If anything, it reminds me of my years moderating 10th grade social studies debates.
Poor Obi, he has many great and powerful enemies.
And what is this Emile Zola-like “You who…You who…You who…” Good grief, such histrionics in a blog post. Like I said, civics class debate technique…
“You… who are actually stupid enough to be taken in by your own government’s propaganda.”
Well, no. Few conservatives I have ever met are stupid enough to do that. Global warming, er cooling, er freezing, er climate change, er whatever it is now, comes to mind . . . I recall clearly during the1978 California drought, some Berkeley professor standing in front of a redwood log pointing out the tree rings dating back to the “time of Christ,” (apologies Obi for mentioning religion, I wouldn’t want to get your pecker in an uproar…) that clearly pinpointed hundreds of earlier drought phases.
So no, belief in government propaganda is normally not a conservative trait. Unlike you liberals…
Who bulldozed the slums in the name of social progress and who have spent subsequent decades wringing your hands about “the loss of neighborhoods and the need for historic preservation.”
Who along with the ACLU deemed the institutionalization of the insane a violation of their civil rights and who have spent the last thirty years fretting about street people.
Who blamed conservatives for ignoring AIDS while liberal politicians (Feinstein as SF mayor comes to mind) kept open the gay bath houses in the name of free speech (backdoor sex as free speech; at least we know where their brains are).
Who decry the failed tests scores of California schools and then revel in the fact that twenty languages are spoken in every classroom.
Who save up your urine and feces for days before a riot and then throw it at San Francisco cops as a protest against “endless war,” while the bodies, wrecked lives, empty public coffers, drug addiction, illegitimacy, all the result of the endless liberal “war on poverty,” continue to this day.
Who whine that Arizona has taken federal immigration law into its own hands, while ignoring that San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and all your other liberal s–t holes have done the same for thirty years, except they call them ‘sanctuary cities.” Isn’t that an example of the “hypocrisy” that you (excuse me “You…”) accuse others of?
Who along with Clinton cried crocodile tears for those who could not afford a home and stood by silent when he and his Secty of Housing Cisneros created a strategic housing initiative that did away with almost every existing mortgage qualifier in the name of battling racism, and then blame others when it all crashed.
I would say your post is fascinating Obi, because linking a commercial during a sporting even with pedophile priests would make for an intriguing study of the inner workings of the liberal mind, but in the end you bore me, because it’s the same old story, men’s behinds, and I am tired of it.
Is that all you have?
LOL.
Pull your pants back on and go home.
How can any business that buys raw materials at retail to produce a product that is sold at wholesale survive?
I’ve worked on a few farms and I’ve meet a fair few farmers who were quick to tell me how poor they were.
Oddly, despite this, I’ve never actually met a poor farmer.
Having been lectured by a farmer, sitting in a brand new 4×4, on how ‘times are hard’ who then drove back to his huge house with the brand new swimming pool, I no longer give any credence to the perennial whinging of farmers about how hard it all is.
He probably inherited the house + the farm, the truck is owned by the bank until he made all the payments, which he probably depreciates for tax purposes, and it isn’t that expensive to dig out your own pool. In fact I know quite a lot of non-farmers with pools in the rural parts of the county. The traditionally low grain prices and taxes will kill you, but if you know how to keep the books and which tax credits to claim, you can survive. Barely.
Give it a shot and let us know how you fair.
Pretty much all (I can only think of one exception) of the farmers I have met have inheritied their farms.
That means they have a big chunk of valuable property from the get go. A big house, several cars, the latest 4×4 and a pool. And a constant moan about how hard times are.
I wish I was as ‘poor’ as a farmer.
And yes, as I mentioned, I’ve done my share of farmwork, I just don’t have the ‘misfortune’ to have inherited a farm, farmhouse, machinery and all the rest. I guess I should think myself lucky and smile while I pay the taxes to give even more subsidies for those ‘poor’ farmers.
The subsidies are usually sucked up by the corporate farms. They have more than a few polticians in the back pocket via lobby groups. Family farms do not have that kind of pull.
“..inheritied their farms.”
And the debt behind it. Pending on the state, there may be a sizealbe tax on the transfer of the title.
“That means they have a big chunk of valuable property from the get go. A big house, several cars, the latest 4×4 and a pool. And a constant moan about how hard times are.”
It’s suffice to say you know nothing about farming despite spending time on one. The value of the property varies on the surrounding district and if you were around in the 80′s alot of family farms were siezed by banks as they could not repay their debts. Heard of a couple of shoot outs in Georgia in those days as the county sheriff department was trying to evict the farmer and his family.
“I wish I was as ‘poor’ as a farmer.”
Become one. You have deemed it easy, so it must be.
“And yes, as I mentioned, I’ve done my share of farmwork, I just don’t have the ‘misfortune’ to have inherited a farm, farmhouse, machinery and all the rest. I guess I should think myself lucky and smile while I pay the taxes to give even more subsidies for those ‘poor’ farmers.”
I dealt with clods like you all the time. Did you pay for the seed, the insurance, the petrol, the parts and repairs/ replacement machinery, the accessed taxes, the fees, the vacinations for livestock, the feed, the pesticides, etc… let alone the whiny hired help. G-d help you if a flood/hail/tornado/fire occurs and your crop is wiped out because now you won’t gross dollar one for about 18 months and you the family got to make it strech.
You see what you want to see, but cannot fathom what props it all up. I don’t blame you– just your (falsely placed) envy and ignorance.
If you want to strike ths subsidies from the government, I’m all for it. You can thank the Carter administration for starting all that. However the feds need to stop sticking their fingers in the farming business. You’re up to speed on the regs, yes? Cheap foreign grain imports don’t do much for them either.
As for the commericial posted by Mr. Hanson, it resonates with those who lived/living the farming life. It struck home. Unfortunately for the marketeers at Chrysler, the might as well being trying to sell ferraris in todays climate.
Oh dear, hit a sore spot did I?
Like I said, I’ve worked on farms and known a fair few farmers.
They all whine about how hard things are but they are making plenty of money. The idea of the ‘poor farmer’ is pretty much a myth. The idea that the ‘poor farmer’ is at the mercy of the elements is just a bad joke. Hedging, crop insurance, subsidies and all the rest mean a solid, steady guaranteed income.
Save the whining for the ignorant townies who might actually believe your sob stories.
“Oh dear, hit a sore spot did I?”
Not at all. I was trying to illuminate your understanding of farming.
“Like I said, I’ve worked on farms and known a fair few farmers”
So what. You probably worked some menial job in a company. Care to pass on your observations and understanding of running a business or corporation?
“They all whine about how hard things are but they are making plenty of money.”
You know this how? And they ALL whine? Maybe because you fail to grasp their dilemma or simply don’t care. Or both.
“The idea of the ‘poor farmer’ is pretty much a myth. The idea that the ‘poor farmer’ is at the mercy of the elements is just a bad joke. Hedging, crop insurance, subsidies and all the rest mean a solid, steady guaranteed income.”
Ludicrous.
Land Rich, Cash Poor.
CH if you are so smart, why don’t you try it. Get ten acres and raise something.
You’ll be broke – you just won’t know it yet.
I’ve lived with a few progressives (meaning they lived with me and I paid their bills), and I’ve met a few more who were quick to tell me how wonderful and compassionate they were.
Oddly, despite this, I’ve never actually met a wonderfully compassionate progressive.
Having been lectured by progressives, preaching about tolerance and charity while being completely intolerant and only interested in the “charity” forcibly taken from others to be given to them, I no longer give any credence to their perennial spew of self-righteous pretension, hateful superiority and intentional, willful deceit which is destroying this country and sickens every decent person who is unfortunate enough to be in their presence.
You’re missing what’s going on here. This is the beginning of the Singularity. The Bruin’s Red Sanders reportedly said “Men, I’ll be honest. Winning isn’t everything…Men, it’s the only thing.” Now we’re entering Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity. It’s beginning. So these guys have become cyborgs, the very earliest manifestation of the type. To win, you have to be a cyborg. So the system eliminates anyone who doesn’t conform. There are plenty of moral athletes around, they just don’t win. Therefore, they’re flushed out of the system. No endorsements, no girls, no nothing. The only way out of this is to either not care anymore: Get rid of professional and Olympic sports, or embrace them and rename them the cyborg games.
You’re reacting to Lance Armstrong in the old context, where it doesn’t make any sense. Your right to be appalled, but the answer is to dump professional sports. Armstrong is a weak kiss-a**. But he was selected by the system against the prevailing rules. Dump professional sports, or else long live the cyborgs.
Professional sports is just another “media event” best avoided for pretty much the same reasons…Its all bullshit.
Except for rooting the Steelers when they make the playoffs, I gave up on sports after High School…
Thug-Millionairs, chasing a ball.
Taxpayes footing the bill for stadiums.
Baseball isnt even a sport, its a fricking GAME.
I only watch Motorcycle racing, follow a couple British Superbike Riders, watch all the Isle of Man TT coverage I can find and dream of running my vintage Guzzi and Ducatis over there someday.
Personally, I love watching my daughter play rugby, but it’s not for everyone.
I would have thought that PJM would have been heavily represented by ‘conservative’ labor ethic, God fearin farmers. Seems that is not the case.
Fortunately, where I was born and raised, the same number of acres in the county are still in farm production. The only thing thats changed was the large numbers of families that in the ’40s through the early ’70s raised their familes and sent their kids off to college having done so, farming a quarter section or less, are gone. The generational farms have absorded that land as well as expanding into diversified operations and land holdings in multi-states.
About 60% of the generational farms handed down to the babyboomer children who stayed on the farms, were eventually lost to financial irresponsibility and bankruptcy.
Rather sad how today, about 95% of the population takes their food and so many other products that originate on farms, for granted. Without agri farming as a core national economic component, few people of our population would be enjoying the lifestyles they do and they haven’t a clue.
Is there any way to vote for the most idiotic comment ever posted, I mean, I have heard about “trolls’ and everything, but this “ObijonKenobi” comment is literally the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m sixty years old. It fills me with a sense of shame and horror that there are people out there in our country like this. It does not bode well for America, my friends, not well.
Yet here YOU are apparently hanging out with these loonies and sucking up their swill.
And you’re worried about me? I’m the one that’s pointing out that the fallacies in the delusional belief of so many conservatives that they are morally superior, that they are the “patriots”, that they make America work.
Yet, thanks in large part to these same conservatives, America – the country these same people want to constantly claim is “under God” – led by these very conservatives, was capable of justifying a preemptive attack on Iraq that cost tens of thousands of lives, left millions of refugees, and laid waste to it’s infrastructure. That’s just one example of conservative “morality”.
Kind of makes you wonder who Jesus would bomb, huh?
Lemme guess…
You went to a PUBLIC school, in a Blue Costal State, followed by a Community College, where you DIDNT study any “advanced” math, science, or engineering…right?
Grow up you pathetic little nerd.
Your “outrage” at basic American Beliefs was passé before you were born.
Low-information cliché from Tenured Parasites passed off as “wisdom”, and you were dumb enough to fall for it. They’ve been churning that crap out for 40 years or more….you are not “special” you were nothing but “fodder” for them pay their retirement bennies…
The result is millions of un-productive and perpetually un-EMPLOYABLE (outside of Government) little Lefties just like you, with Worthless Degrees you all were duped into paying through the nose for, and no way (outside of a government job) to afford the superfluous Metrosexual Lifestyle you thought you were entitled to, by regurgitating their worn-out ‘70’s nonsense.
Hence all the “outrage” at REAL working people, with REAL American values.
Take a trip to Cambodia, Rwanda, or Auschwitz, or Mother Russia, and count your blessings that American Conservatives are mostly “Good Christians” who don’t do ANYTHING CLOSE to whats accepted as “the political norm” everywhere else in the world.
Better yet, wear your “Gay Marriage NOW!” or “Coexist” T-shirt to Mecca for the Hajj, and tell me how “tolerant” they are of those “progessive” ideas.
Ignorant child, I actually feel sorry for you
You’re really just talking to yourself because none of what you say . . none . . applies to me.
And, you seem to miss the moral question here completely, who would Jesus bomb? That’s what we’re talking about here, the misguided sense by many conservatives that they are “Christians”.
No, I’m not worried about you..Obviously, you must have a “stipend” of some sort to exist. I am worried about an educational system that has not provided you with a “basic anchor” for an ability to reason , and I am worried that there may be many more like you out there with this scary “fractured” way of “thinking”, and that you may represent a kind of implosive “tipping point” for humanity in general and America in particular.
You’re so worried about MY reasoning yet you’ve yet to address my simple premiss – that there is a serious disconnect between what many conservatives view as their moral grounding and what I view as a serious failure. Why don’t you impress us all by actually addressing that point instead of showing off YOUR shortcomings?
But we have the British actors to do American voices. When you see a Lincoln or an Andrew Lincoln, just hop on over to check the imdb. You’ll find that the strong All American roles are filled by British actors who for years trained to sound like how Americans no longer do.
I once heard that British actors are so good because they actually had to learn how to act. On a stage, doing Shakespeare’s plays. If they couldn’t do Hamlet well, they would never have a career. Most of my favorite actors are British, but we have had some greats, like Gregory Peck, who also learned to act on a stage.
Does anyone else remember one year on the 4th of July Paul and his son did a radio newscast “reporting on” the “live” events taking place at Lexington & Concord?
I think it was Paul Jr who portrayed the reporter “live on the scene”.
It was great stuff, I have always wanted to find a copy of it to play for my government and history students.
I remember….
When I was a kid, maybe ’73-76 some production company (PBS, before they were completely hijacked by the Commies?) used to do a “you are there” type of faux News Program of historic events…Used to see them in school, but I think they were TV broadcast as well (“channel 13″ in the New York Market)
Ben Franklin, Washington etc being “interviewed live” as they went to and fro from Valley Forge, Crossing The Delaware, this or that historic ‘Crisis” sometimes complete with terse “no comment” as the events played out “live” on the “evening news”
Also, my mom worked in an audio tape reproduction plant, where they made cassette copies of “famous recordings “ for schools….she used to “swipe” a few of the more interesting ones for me.
The Hindenburg (“Oh, the humanity!”) is actually a 45 minute recording before, during, and after the explosion where the “reporter” talks to (and helps!) survivors and witnesses…amazing stuff.
The RFK Assassination was recorded too live too, another fascinating 45 minutes (flip the tape!) that puts so much context and reality into what happened (“Rosie (Grier, the football player?), get the gun! Break his hand…break his hand if you have to! Break it!”) that any conspiracy theory of a “second shooter” is just absurd to anyone who’s sat and LISTENED to the whole thing.
They don’t teach “real history” like that anymore, with actual SOURCE material, they teach “grievance against the west” with selective nonsense designed to reach a forgone conclusion.
Liberals and Commies cant ALLOW the raw data to be seen (climate change anyone?) because it just might undermine their positions if you did.
Indoctrination, and insults and name calling against all who ask to “see”, are their only tools.
“People have to eat.”
My father was a meatcutter, and I can still remember seeing ads for schools teaching how to become a butcher, and they led with those four words. Back in the 50’s.
When we think about farmers, especially in the meat eating country of America, circa 2013, we probably still picture them on their huge machines driving forth and back down straight rows, disking, fertilizing, planting, harvesting, etc. Also, pace “Field of Dreams”, views of vast stretches of corn as far as the eye can see, ready to be harvested—so All American!
In short, we imagine most farmers growing plants. What about cattlemen?
The truth is, a large percentage of corn and soy goes to feed animals. This, of course, predates the corn for ethanol fiasco.
Then there’s the high fructose corn syrup or HFCS “conspiracy”, which is directly responsible for most of the growth of obesity—a true growth industry! Google Dr. Lustig, and watch his proof of this—his youtube lecture has over a million hits.
“How ya gonna keep them down on the farm, after they seen Paree”—now THERE’S a salient oldie, mucho applicable to the entire “farm story” for decades.
I like to think of most mega farms like spread out factory floors. Think of the Ford assembly line, only instead of the metal moving on a fixed course, the worker gets to stretch out, moving himself driving the machine on down the “line”—aka row.
No doubt there do exist the more vital “real” farmers, with smaller acreage, and God bless them!
In any case, the truth is that “People have to eat” has morphed into suicidal stupidity. That is, the lawful, natural use of bodily hunger, and the “it tastes good, so eat it” tongue-jerk subconscious nature of each person, has been taken to such an extreme, that most humans in America, nowadays, are consuming “foods” bereft of most of the nutrition that’s needed.
Ergo, expanding numbers of obese and self-diseased bodies, reaping the harvest of heavily processed, denatured “foods”.
You are, bodily, what you eat.
Eat crap, be crap.
Yes—there it is.
America is becoming, more and more, a walking—and wheelchair bound—nation of crap, deeply buried inside the epidermis of stupid people.
Want proof?
Last week, at the local mall, I almost died of shock, when I saw a morbidly overweight female—my guess is she weighed 350-400 pounds—on the job, at a kiosk!
There is a massive reckoning in our future.
She sounds like every Mall and/or campus “Security Guard” I’ve ever seen…
Except they are on Segue Scooters
We are doomed!
I am interested in mechanisms. How do ‘things’ work? How can the Federal Government maintain its spending vector? Let me present this to all the truly smart people out there for fleshing out.
If the Federal Government hires someone at $170,000, they get back in taxes perhaps 30% or about $51,000, making their actual cost only $119,000; they also get back money for the Social Security equivalent for Federal workers – perhaps another 15%, which goes into general revenue rather than a trust fund – that is another $25,000, for a total cost to the government of employment of only $93,000.
If a private employers wishes to hire someone for $170,000, he must immediately add an additional 15% for his share of Social Security taxes – for a total of $195,500.
I have not mentioned benefit packages, because both the private employer and the Federal employees have them.
I believe that this mechanism dooms private employers because of the advantage of taxation to the Federal government. There are other mechanisms that work in favor of high Federal Government employment rates, such as “other peoples’ money” mentality, but at the state and local level, all these lopsided mechanisms are less severe in their effects. I believe strongly that it is the favorable financial mechanisms that will lead to what looks like Communism in the United States. Higher tax rates – which Obama has managed to obtain by cancelling Only the people can stop it. But I don’t know how they will do it……. yet!
Everyone with a house can at least try growing tomatoes and vegetable. Even a fruit tree or two with the dwarf varieties we have today. In my suburban lot (house too) I have many Florida fruit trees going. Mango, avocado and more. I like thinking and strategizing about them. They are not care free although some people will have an avocado or mango tree they don’t help out and they get good fruit yield. Lots of large backyard trees like this where I live. It’s nice to drive around and do some spotting of blooms and fruits. I have to fertilize and spray but nothing toxic. We use wood chips to mulch and maintain and add to the soil’s humus level.
Victor is a real farmer and same for his parents and grandparents.
Victor has spoken about rural copper theft. Check out copper theft in Greece>>>>
http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/stolen-scrap-metal-the-new-greek-currency-1-2785857
As a Brit I love the American TV show justified, good actors and great accents, very different from the horrible whine I put up with when in CA.
Ah, but good professor VDH,
Your farm, your parents, your relatives, your friends, even your enemies, and your education have produced a beautiful crop: your mind, your thoughts, your books, your essays and your ponderings, which we all seem to relish and enjoy.
Your ruminations on military history and the advance of Western thinking is ameliorative to our collective moment.
Your friend Bruce Thornton similarly writes, produces and blesses as if he were a twin brother, different but the same.
You influence presidents and you influence paupers, and that is the real crop, no less concrete than a full railcar hopper.
Yes, we mourn for the almonds, plumbs, peaches and wheat that now only a very rare breed can harvest.
But we continually celebrate the right thoughts planted, matured and harvested by this new breed of thought-farmer, who has somehow resurrected the very minds of our Founding Fathers, our Greek philosophers, our French and English political tyrant-slayers, our fathers who fought bad-thought Overlords and won victories by giving countries back to themselves and liberty.
You are reaping one doozy of a crop, dear professor. Be thankful for the tears, now worry only about laugh-lines around the eyes, because what you sow is reaping miracles. Sure, bad years there are setbacks, but eventually the crop comes in!
thanks all for the entertainment !!!!!!! , obi, please grow up !
In my opinion, Obi makes as much sense as anyone else around here, but he does seem to have a blind spot about John Kerry’s spottiness in the Vietnam era. What we do, though, is establish yet again, that it is more fun to fight and insult “the enemy” than work at making things less worse, if not better.
In the interests of the country, I have expanded my 2-2-2 proposal to 2-2-2-2, the last 2% being the federal tariff on all imported goods. So, cut all spending 2% across the board with no discrimination, raises taxes 2% on everyone! tax-free state pensions, should now be taxed by the state at 2%. Hey, this will never happen and I don’t have the motivation to push it very hard, but tell me why something along these lines is not a reasonable step forward? Can a person in the center, pushing such a centrist position win against the partisans on both sides, or should he/she stay on the farm?
If you believe that idiot Obi makes any sense at all, then you really are the concern troll that half the people on here think you are.
Well, concernt troll (whatever that is) or not, I also happen to think that YOU make sense most of the time, despite your “lefty loser, idiot blah, blah” posture, but Obi knows a few things too. Dogs and cats both make sense, even if they don’t get along. You spent a career in confrontational stuff and it shows. I spent a career in teaching where my students could have many different points of view and it was fine with me that they did not necessarily see things my way, brilliant as it was. The whole American system works because opposing points of view clash and things get sorted out.
Anyway, what is your response to the 2-2-2-2? Supposedly there is a deal in the works with the Euro-states that is going to grease the skids for commerce with them, which probably would precluded a tariff on them. The question: does a small tariff level the playing field, or send us into Depression? Granted, that is a harder (and for the purposes of PJM, less interesting) question to answer than whether lefties are a-holes, morons, commies etc., but we need something to create some more jobs.
D-White adds yet another 2. Why not a 5th 2 as in too… much?
This creeping 2ism, where will it end? The desire to 2 to the limit will not be denied to those in teaching tutus too far along to notice that the chains involved are not for decoration.
Of course, there could be a new tune, something like Positively 2nd St. Who knows, maybe Oh Be Lame and D-White can team up and with Mr. President and become The New Supremes.
Then again 2-2-2-2 + infinity could become 4-4-4-4, using relative math.
4 D-White
4 Dependency
4 The Government
4 Nothing
Uncle Sam looks better every day?
Ooh baby love, my baby love
I need you, oh how I need you
I’m a supporter of VAT or other “consumption” taxes because I’d like to take the costs of our government out of the cost of our goods for export to the extent possible. Since taxes are just a cost point for businesses, the cost to support everyone of those fat people with a disability sticker on their car and an Obamaphone pressed to their ear as they waddle towards the scooters at WalMart is built into every Boeing aircraft or EMD locomotive we try to sell on the World market. That was OK for maybe the first twenty years after WWII when we didn’t have any real competition, at least not in the West, but it has proven disasterous to American industry since the rest of the World began to stand up competitive industry in the late ’60s.
Income and property taxes were OK means to support governments when they provided infrastructure, schools, police protection, and national defense. I have no problem with social programs such as Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid if they were run as actuarily sound benefit programs instead of a an outright Ponzi scheme and an outright transfer program. But now, the income and the property of productive people is increasingly confiscated to buy the votes of the non-productive people; the Democrat Party is the party of useless mouths, and useless mouths are, well, useless. If the US is going to tax us to provide for these people a standard of living all out of any reasonable proportion to their efforts, I want to be able to tax that income when they buy a car or a flat screen. I’ve come to understand why my Southern forebearers were so enamored with sales taxes and user fees; those are the taxes that the unproductive have to pay.
Test.
I’ve heard VDH speak of the “nasal intonation” before and I’d like to understand it better. How is it propagated, and how would one unlearn it? I’m not doubting it, and a good bit has been written about feminization of our culture, but I just don’t understand how men could change their voices. If someone could explain or point out other sources of understanding I’d appreciate it.
That’s easy. Listen to Rush Limbaugh. When the callers come on, 90% of the time you can tell from the tone of their voice what their political positions are, before they can finish a sentence.
Poverty, government dependency and Democrat votes are Obama,s and the Democrats objective! Amnesty and chain immigration will increase the number of all three by many millions.
Normal people thinks no one would be diabolic and sick enough to purposely use policies to reduce the Nation and its population to a state of Poverty, Crime, Misery and Corruption, but you would be wrong!
If reducing Calif. and this Nation to a suburb of Mexico and this Nation to a bankrupt Third World Slum is necessary to accomplish their goal that is a price Obama & the Democrats are more than willing to pay.
The more Democrats can decrease Education achievement, Reasoning ability, Punish success, Reward failure and increase, Poverty, Welfare and the Entitlement mentality the more Democrat voters they make.
The last piece to achieving their goals of controlling this Nation is nearly in place.
Amnesty for the 12 to 30 million criminals and uneducated invading Illegal Aliens. That with chain Immigration for the ones still left in Mexico and Latin American and with a Prolific breeding rate will assure Red States are turned blue and a Democrat majority forever with a Third World Slum here of Crime, Corruption, Poverty and Misery modeled on Mexico and controlled by the Socialist/Democrat party of Northern Mexico!
We know Obama loves the poor, because he has made so many of them and they vote for Democrats. Poverty has soared under Obama, with the number of Americans in poverty increasing to the highest level in the more than 50 years that the Census Bureau has been tracking poverty. Over the last 5 years, the number in poverty has increased by nearly 31%, to 49.7 million, with the poverty rate climbing by over 30% to 16.1%. Obama has also been the food stamp President, with the number on food stamps increasing during his Administration to an all time record high of 47.7 million, up 80% over the past 5 years.
It is all about Power, Control and the Democrat party and how to use lies, false compassion, poverty and government dependency to enslave a free people and a great Nation!
I always read VDH’s articles but never comment on them, until now.
Obi is a fraud. I know dozens of fighter pilots. Real fighter pilots. Mostly AF and Navy. Some retired. Some currently serving in some real “garden spots” around the world. None of them think at all like Obi so I call BS on his claim as a fighter pilot. And if by some quirk of fate he actually did fly something in the military he dishonors his comrades in arms.
I did not see the Dodge commercial during the Super Bowl, but did see the video a couple of days later. It brought back sweeping memories from years gone by. Farming and ranching run deep in my family history. Centuries deep. From North Dakota, South Dakota, back to “New Russia” (now Ukraine), to the Baden area of SW Germany. I spent my youth (ages 12-19) working a 25,000 acre family farm/ranch. I spent countless hours on tractors with 8 tires, each tire being taller than I was. To this day whenever I see a large tractor the song “Band of Gold” by Freda Paine pops into my head. Seems it was played about once an hour on the only radio station the tractor radio could pick up (AM station out of Rapid City, some 150 miles to the South). It was a way of life in western SD during the 60s. Like every segment of American society there are wealthy farmers, poor farmers, and the corporate entities. So, enough with the generalizations.
Having traveled to many parts of the world I am often reminded to stop and give thanks to my Great Grandfather who entered the USA on May 18, 1911 at Port Huron, MI. He and his family were considered peasant farmers who fled tyranny and built a successful like on a farm in Western ND. Having spent a year researching my family history back to the end of The Thirty Years War, I gained an deeper appreciation for being born and raised in the greatest country the world has ever known, warts and all.
So, we Americans have much to be thankful for and it’s best not to take much for granted, including the farmers.
Beautiful essay, VDH.
So much of the population today is desperate, dependent, and indulged. “Most men live lives of quiet desperation”, Thoreau told us, but he never imagined desperation with an Obamaphone, 42-inch flat screen, and $300 sneakers.
Part of the problem is that we are all so rich, we can put up with all this nonsense, at least short term. I guess that’s the good news. Can we really hold onto it, with these social norms? Probably not. But, that may be the old world talking. Maybe this is the new normal and it works. I don’t know if that would be good news or bad news.
Most farmers are tougher than NFL players.
They play hurt, they get knocked out, they get crippled. They play grab-&&S with one ton beasts. They go toe to toe with nutso neighbors and lost city slickers.
But there is no time out when they have the flu and a blizzard is coming and there is 24 hours of work before sleep. There is no referee to throw the flag when the bull blindsides them. There is no booth review when the tractor runs over their leg or that 1 ton hay bale falls down. There are no endorsement deals, no nubile cheerleaders, no team doctors. Just the daily grind and the ever present dangers.
Crossfit is all the rage today – mainly because it speaks to the need in many to feel authentic pain and to struggle through something physically difficult.
Paul Harvey did that piece in 1978 while in Chicago (@WLS). I’m pleased it lasted the test of time. He was one of America’s greatest. We need his wisdom now more than ever. I wonder what he would say of Emperor Obama?
” … a principle wanted a new project …”?
Say what?
My cousin Paul was a dairy farmer and next to my dad maybe the hardest working person I ever saw work. He was up at 3:30-4:00am and was milking by 5. Afterwards, around 8 or 9am, he was doing normal farming work. In the afternoon around 3 the cows had made their turn and were coming back to be milked again. from 4 to 7 he was milking, and by 8pm he was back in bed getting ready for the next day.
After he passed away I found out he had been in Patton’s army in Germany and earned two medals for bravery. I never knew. Like all farmers, he was high-work, low-maintenance, and All-American.