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Forum Post: Latest Polls

Posted 7 years ago on Oct. 29, 2016, 9:31 p.m. EST by turbocharger (1756)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

And right on que the population was controlled masterfully during this election and is preparing to stampeded over the few minor party candidates who appear to not be lizard brained shape shifting shitbags.

Great job as usual Murca. #Shootme

62 Comments

62 Comments


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[-] 1 points by ImNotMe (1488) 7 years ago

Consider: ''American Irrationalism'' by Chris Hedges:

From which ... ''We are captive to images and forms of propaganda that make us the most self-deluded population on the planet. We are driven by manipulated emotions, not fact or reason. And this is why, even now, Donald Trump could become president."

Hope all good with you and yours and good to see you back. Ergo NO to "#Shootme''! + Also consider:

e tenebris, lux - spero!

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

I've been thinking today that we need monumental/watershed change in our society.

We are still living under the legacy of the Protestant Reformation and the Industrial Revolution that burgeoned from that. The economic and political structures that came into place as a result no longer work for our society.

We have yet to deal with the globalization and technological revolution of the past 50 or so years. Our economic system and our political system are antiquated ill-fitting wrecks at this point. We need something new and we need someone to figure out what it should be.

We've been failed completely by economists and politicians and so-called "intellectuals." As a people we have become sheep that follow the profit model of exploitation without questioning it because we are so mind-managed. Someone, somehow, please get us out of this mess!

[-] 1 points by Shule (2638) 7 years ago

It is interesting to check out the voter map. The rural areas are mostly red (Republican), and the populated city areas are mostly blue (Democrat.) This election was unusual in that the main media of our country was almost exclusively promoting the Hag, (and too blatantly I must say.) Interesting is that the rural areas did not buy it. They still voted Republican (as they usually do.) Thing about country folk; they like their ways, and they are not into all that progressive stuff that is shovelled out of Hollywood and onto our TV sets. If one is a city dweller, it is great for the mind to take a trip out into the country every so often, and see what country America is all about. It can change one's views.

[-] 1 points by ImNotMe (1488) 7 years ago

As America Elects a Bigot and avowed Islamophobe - maybe it is high time to remind tRUMP & USA about Thomas Jefferson and his Quran:

Thanx for your strong, heartfelt reply, made before the future Pres. tRUMP became an objective reality. You should Tweet some of that. I'm still too numb to reply properly and at length to you but this Tweet will have to suffice for now ...

multum in parvo ...

[-] 0 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

The hard working people of this country backed you 8 years ago and voted for Obama. He sold us out and is trying to do it again with TPP. Clinton would have done the same thing. At least Trump cares about us. All you heady academics have never worked a hard day in your lives.

[-] 1 points by ImNotMe (1488) 7 years ago

Yes - Obomber "sold us out & is trying to do it again with TPP"! And Yes - "Clinton would have done the same thing" as Obummer!! BUT tRUMP ONLY cares that he says Wtf it'll takes for people to vote him in & he'll be towing Oligarchy's line like Oblah-blah did, soon enough!!!

I am NOT a"heady academic" & don't even have a degree & have worked (these days for myself) since I was 16 but I never stopped reading & connecting the dots. Humbly suggest the same. Solidarity and fyi:

fiat lux ...

[-] 1 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

I am not educated enough to know what neoliberalism is but I do know the difference between right and wrong and bad and good. I don't want control over my life sent to people in Washington who think they are smarter than me and think they know better. I do know that letting foreigners take our jobs is bad. I do know that all of this focus on minorities and groups is bad. I don't care if somebody is straight or gay so why do I have to constantly hear about where people got he bathroom while my job has been sent to some foreign country and I am supposed to learn how to code software and sit in a coffee shop.

[-] 1 points by ImNotMe (1488) 7 years ago

"Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed."

You are "not educated enough to know what neoliberalism is ...''?!!! Well then read the Two Articles in my previous reply and STOP fkn wallowing in ignorance!! DolT!!! You claim to be uneducated yet don't want smarter people to ''know better''?! Right!! What could possibly go wrong?!!! No Doubt you: "Don'T wanT To geT inTo an argumenT"?!!! BuT isn'T ThaT ALL you ever wanTed?!! Read~Digest~Assimilate!

your b-s: ''Illegal aliens broke the law and still are breaking the law. If it is okay for them to break the law, then why not me? Where is the fairness? I pay my taxes, while I don't want to.'' - So on the same principle, R U as animated by tRUMP/Apple's Corp's Huge Tax avoidance, evasion and bad behavior? Kiss Up; Kick Down lickspittles for Psychopathic Neoliberal Crapitalism, don't last long on this forum!

multum in parvo ....

[-] 1 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

Did Trump ad Apple break the law? As far as I know they didn't.

In my opinion, smarter people don't know better. You and your academic theories have screwed us. I read your article, and it sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me.

[-] 1 points by ImNotMe (1488) 7 years ago

That's a specious canard, if ever there was one!!! I suspect that you are, "educated enough to know what neoliberalism is" .. given that you say that you've read Chris Hedges great polemical piece!! However my advice was ... that you first read George Monbiot's superb article; followed by Naomi Klein's more recent post tRUMP article,as per my response to your initial reply to me above! So here they are again for you:

Furthermore & back to your little tRUMP/Apple canard .. USA's 0.01% Oligarchy & Corporations, lobby, infiltrate & write the Laws AND THEN - still push those laws to limits & break them with impunity! In US Corporations and the Oligarchy have now co-opted & corrupted; usurped & abused Democracy!! I could say much more but to make my point without much further ado ... this recent Tweet will suffice for now:

Finally & on a more conciliatory note .. I agree with your opinion that ''smarter people don't know better" necessarily. Take this Steve Bannon character - who was tRUMP's de facto campaign manager & now his ''Head Strategist": He's a Virginia Tech graduate; Georgetown Masters & Harvard M.B.A.who some ''believe'' also went to the L.S.E. - clever & ''smart'' but a serious ''Alt.Right'' Crypto-Fascist RWNJ! See:

ad iudicium ...

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

i call bullshit - neoliberalism is just what you are complaining about - you lose your job to someone working in china for $2 a day. very simple to educate yourself on these issues instead of buying some bullshit line about illegals taking your job. if you need help finding good reading material imnotme will help for sure

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Do you go by another name that starts with T? Just wondering.

You voted in the wrong guy for the revolution you are looking for. You voted in a corporatist authoritarian neo-fascist who will erode your rights at every turn. He will decrease taxes on the wealthy, never raise the minimum wage, block unions, and increase control over women's bodies and the ability to migrate. You voted in the crony capitalist extraordinaire. Well done. We'll see how it goes for you. But we'll be fighting his racism, xenophobia, sexism, economic tyranny and all around bigotry every step of the way.

[-] 1 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

Your guy Obama sold out all of us hard working people. We are just quite and do our work. We don't protest in the streets and ask for special treatments. You guys just want to fight some ideological war and we just want jobs. So Trump will do that for us and he will also say what is right and what is wrong while you won't.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

The crony capitalist extraordinaire was all that was allowed by the political machine. Even Bernie sold out. Elizabeth Warren would not endorse Bernie, preferring her XX affinity to nowhere with Mx. Cheese. TeraERex is all we've got left so let us see what fruits grow out of this tree. I think you're right that he's way over the top with some of what he had said but fortunately, as I hope, our system will checkmate(we've done that before, still remember?) him wherever he strays.

This is America after all with its molasses-lubricated eighteenth-century political machine. It's doing nothing most of the time but that surely beats falling off of a cliff. It's actually a bit more hopeful now that it will do more than nothing because there is a one-(wild?)-party across-the-board dominance. We all know whom to hold accountable. Finger-pointing at the comatose party no longer works.

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Yanis Varoufakis on Bernie Sanders. Spot on. From:

https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/11/15/new-statesman-interview-the-lefts-duty-after-trumps-awful-victory/#more-15998

"Do you think a more left-wing candidate such as Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump?

I am convinced that Bernie Sanders would have walked this election. Clinton needs to think about the way in which she and the Democratic party bigwigs conspired to deny Sanders the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. If he had been allowed to do so, he would have the won primaries and walked the presidency. If you think that Trump won because there are lots of racist white Republicans out there, you are mistaken. What clinched it for him were the independents, Democrats —many of whom could not be bothered to get out of bed and vote for Hillary — and others who are not natural Republicans."

"What is your view that Bernie would won so easily based on — is his rise the product of the same anti-establishment mood that has propelled Trump to power?

No. That’s like saying the International Brigades who fought in Spain in 1936-38 against the Catholic establishment were cut from the same cloth as the Nazi supporters of Hitler. The financial collapses of both 1929 and 2008 were caused by capitalism crumbling due to its own excesses. This collapse is then typically followed by a great recession, or a great deflation as we have now, and the result is that the political centre follows the economic equilibrium into crisis. When the political centre crumbles you have an almighty clash between progressives and xenophobic nationalists — to say these two sides have the same genesis is an error of historical judgement."

"I was more suggesting that Sanders would be able to reach out to the same disillusioned white working class voters who came out in droves for Trump.

That’s true, but it’s not because Trump and Sanders come from the same source — in elections everyone competes for the same voters. You are right in that when people are tired of the status quo they demand change. Democracy can offer them change which will in the end bite them like Brexit or Trump, or it can offer progressive change."

AMEN.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Our people have been hemmed in by the political machine and decided to stampede.

The few, the proud, the Greeks and their Spartans stood the ground to defend Western civilization. Independent Greek city states came together for the common cause of Freedom and eventually allowing the birth of Democracy. It's been done before. It can be done again.

"Dad! Are we there yet?". . . .

"Are we Lost?!"

"No, Dad is Never lost. He just loves the scenic route."

In dippy serenity, Dad says, "Yes, serendipity! Smell the quiet slaughterhouse."

Dipsomaniac is killing me softly with his song.

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

This feels like a coup d'etat that began with the assassination of JFK. An orderly progression toward oligarchy culminating in a Presidential cabinet of billionaires.

Dystopia.

How do we free ourselves?

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Phase out the lies-lies-lies gradually. Introduce real sovereign currency. Stop the perennial running of the fools before inflation. We need not outclass Spain's running of the bulls.

Reagan years realized inflation-indexing of tax brackets and earned-income tax credits. However, the lies-lies-lies has not been phased out so decades later, all of that inflating out of debt obligations strangulated the working stiffs in favor of the wealthy people who owe a lot but own real assets unlike the fools who own paper assets like stocks and bonds, pension funds, insurance policies, etc. Stock market favors the fast and connected rich people because they have better information and services. The rest in the stock market are obviously blindfolded adult fools playing the childish game of musical chairs.

The real problem is not wages and salaries not going up fast enough. It is that everything costs so much more. The U.S. has actually emerged before as a global superpower and achieved world dominance Without degrading its currency.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

http://occupywallst.org/forum/latest-polls/#comment-1072335

I see cowpie(s) in the sky for all. Do you see what I see?

Do you hear what I hear? Texass farts!

People everywhere, better practice saying, "Oh, my goodness!" as foretold by the king.

Eros uses (silver and lead but) no gold in his arrows although the New White Geez Louise does.

Dammit. Janet! Beaver-time? Cesspool Spring.

[-] 2 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Any changes to Social Security should be put to a plebiscite. The people should decide something as important as that.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

ok beauty, you know i think you are great but lets look at the possibilities here. the american people have been asleep for much too long. no real change has ever occurred in this country without serious disruption. i am thinking (hoping?) that we will see that type of disruption and more. i know too many people who have never talked about politics before and now they are paying attention. now they are thinking of going to washington in january.

as i said before the indians will not back down this time - the vets are standing with them. if the rest of us fall in line - send money - our bodies or just letters trump will have a country that is ungovernable. doesn't matter who is in his cabinet if we fight back. ok well you get my point - i think we have an opportunity here that we would not have had if hillary was elected. as howard zinn said -"it doesn't matter who is sitting in the white house - it matters who is sitting in outside the white house."

lastly i think you got it wrong about jfk but that is for another day - he was a hard line type and was not going to change the country like some think. read chomsky on that subject

[-] 2 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Once Trump is sworn in and the raping and pillaging begins (or continues, depends how you look at it, maybe worsens is a better word), the American people will need to show their mettle more than ever. I think protesters will face repression by a Trump gov't like we have never seen before. This is why I think a free press is so important right now. If protest faces repression and there is no free press to report it we are screwed.

[-] 1 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 7 years ago

the american people have been asleep for much too long. no real change has ever occurred in this country without serious disruption. i am thinking (hoping?) that we will see that type of disruption and more.

You may get your wish!

Things were bad - and people finally started to protest.

Now we have Drumpf in office and he seems dead set on making things horrific. Look at his appointments and you can plainly see where every important public protection is gonna be destroyed - if he can get away with it.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

you are most likely right - if we allow him to get away with it!

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Send the oligarchs pictures of their family members accompanied by a rose( because the rose had been dedicated to Eros ) or a Valentine card with this. The bloody rose at 3:08 has silver thorn for a reason, from a type of arrows of Eros. The 82nd Airborne drinking a beer en route to Beethoven's 5th Symposium on Fate can deliver the message as recorded on the globalized helpline. 82nd and 5th is where the exquisite bronze statue of the sleeping Eros lies in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, New York. Downstream through the synchronized(rendered so-so by security jam) traffic lights is the New White Geez Louise. Godspeed. Taxi!

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

not so sure he voted for the wrong man. it is unclear how clinton would have proceeded - what do you think. also unclear how trump will proceed. he ran against the gop establishment. yes i know the racism and treatment of women - that is unacceptable for sure. but still remains to be seen where we are going. with clinton it is reasonable to think we would have more of the same. no?

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

I think Trump is full on establishment, far far right wing establishment. Watch who he puts in his cabinet. Stock market has been up because, well, he's their guy. He wasn't their first choice, of course. Hillary was. And, the establishment never wanted Bernie, so they are satisfied to have Trump.

He will not raise the minimum wage, he will crush any union activity, he will increase military spending. He will not do much on healthcare, in fact, likely, he will make it worse. He will privatize medicare and social security. He has spoken of women going to jail for getting abortions, repealing gay marriage, etc. He's a catastrophe!

He used populist ideas such as the wall and anti-immigration speech in order to make white working class folk think he is on their side. He fed their innate racism and xenophobia and has allowed it to brew. In my mind, he is all wrong.

And, really? Did the working class vote him in? Don't Latinos and Muslims and African Americans work too? There is a lot of white privilege in calling his followers "working class." Everyone works.

Also, check out Pence. Scary as hell. As the kids say, "makes no sense."

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

not sure i disagree but just not sure. pence is sick that is true. and yes white people voted him in - well white women went for him and that i never would have guessed. agreed the cabinet will tell us much. to be very clear i am not a trump fan but..... he has been for legal abortion most of his life so not sure what he will do there. he said many things to get through the clown car of the gop debates and now we will see which ones he follows through on. the only issue he raised in his acceptance speech was infrastructure - if he spends money and gets the economy going that would be good. he has also said he would not provoke war with russia and china lie you know who would! anyway my real point was that i am not sure he voted for the wrong man - as a laid off worker the dems did not offer much and haven't for 25 years or more

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Valid points. The Democratic party has been failing it's constituents for decades. Supposedly the party of the working man, NOT! I recently saw someone, I think on Thom Hartman's "The Big Picture." He said, the Republicans are the party of the 1% and the Democrats have been the party of the 10%. Truth. The 90% have been left out in the cold.

Donald Trump found that opening and tapped into the unhappy struggling working class convincing them that he will work for them. We'll see. I doubt it very much. Even the infrastructure he intends to build will be largely privatized. We'll be paying more tolls to drive on roads, for instance, as he gives rights to private corporations over what were once public properties.

So, we'll see. I think, personally, it's going to get ugly. Just yesterday, I was watching some baboon congressman, Sean Duffy, saying flippantly, like, how well, ya know, we're gonna make changes to Obamacare, maybe kids can stay on their parents plans until they're 22 or 23 instead of 26! Oh, yeah! Great idea. So many 23 year olds have jobs with benefits these days, NOT!

These people are using libertarian, extreme libertarian, Ayn Randian, ideas and putting them into place in our daily lives. I think it's gonna hurt.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

it looks more and more that you are right. now it is up to us to create the push back. I m thinking that 2018 will make 1968 look like 1958. now wouldn't that be something

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

The push back has to be big. And, we need journalists, real journalists who have some semblance of a reputation left, to speak out. They need to put this country in front of their corporate jobs and not be feared into silence.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

if you are right and we need the journalists then i think we are in real trouble. maybe the indians and the vets will start the whole thing off like standing rock. that was awesome no? probably not done yet but still the best thing i have seen since occupy

[-] 2 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

The great John Pilger agrees with me that a free press is important.It is the only profession protected in the Constitution for that reason.

Watch this great episode of The Big Picture from last night where he says that very thing:

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/coming-war-china

Also, tonight at 9:00pm on RT.com RT America, is that new documentary by Pilger "The Coming War on China"

:) The vets at Standing Rock were awesome, I agree. Will they be there at the inauguration and will they help the folks in the Department of Energy that are getting singled out now for believing in climate change? There is a lot to fight back about, people need to be informed and have courage, not be cowed into silence by bullies.

[-] 2 points by windyacres (1197) 7 years ago

I agree it's not ideal to depend on journalists, but we not only need journalists, we need lawyers! Push back needed immediately without violence.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Yes, well said, the only person who should care about what my genitalia is like should be my spouse and for a very good and valid reason. Others, such as a physician, must provide "need-to-know" reasons.

The people in Washington D.C. can mess things up greatly so it helps us to communicate ourselves clearly to and make ourselves understood by these servants.

Don't even listen to or fall for the "code software" siren to better jobs. The servants have long allowed several Silicon Valleys' worth of foreigners to be imported year after year to increase corporate profits. Yes, the Indians and Chinese H1B's have been eating the lunch there since the Clintons' administration. Do you still remember when the "All-American" company of Walmart started selling more and more "Made in China" goods? Haven't we learnt the chicken-feather-plugging skills from the ArsKansas-based Tyson Foods yet? Isn't Walmart also based there? Is it really just a coincidence that the carpetbaggers were in charge there? Kansas went to the other end and became ArsKansas. "Toto. We are not in Kansas anymore."

The whole education thing is probably yet another attention-deflecting scam. It's no different than the "go-to-college-to-get-a-good-livelihood" scam. That scam broke down when foreigners were shipped in or jobs were outsourced to boost corporate profits. Now we have a whole generation of college graduates weighed down by college debts with no good jobs to service them with and earn a good living.

Our economy stagnates with subpar growth due to the collapse of aggregate demand as well as the debt overhang, and there had been much bailout for the banksters and little for the working-stiffs. Federal as well as college graduates misinvested their capital, human or otherwise, into a dead-end and nearly-useless-for-earning-income "investment." This is absolutely deplorable. Yes, indeed, most of the really depraved and deplorables are in Washington D.C. and corporate boardrooms.

[-] 1 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 7 years ago

Trump cares about us?

You silly silly person.

Drumpf is the posterchid for afluenza!

He does not care for anyone but himself!

[-] 1 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

We backed Obama and his Wall Street and media cronies. Look what it got us? More bad trade deals and more low cost labor taking our jobs. Yes, Trump will give us our jobs back. Call me names all you want, but we are going back to work.

[-] 1 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 7 years ago

Going back to work? Are you an illegal Polish worker looking to be hired for less than minimum wage to deface a building that Drumpf wants to hang his name on?

[-] 1 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

Proud member of United Steel Workers Local 7. We are going to get protection and no more Chinese dumping. And no more low cost labor.

[-] 1 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 7 years ago

Dream on - as - you aren't gonna get it from Drumpf!

Drumpf is not gonna fight TPP - he is gonna support it!

[-] 1 points by BrentWeirick81 (-85) 7 years ago

TPP is done and NAFTA will get renegotiated. We finally have somebody who will protect the working people.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Can Mondragon movement help with the transformation of the livelihoods of the peoples? There were a bunch of posts on this forum touting its good points by the Occupywallst intelligentsia. You have also pointed out the need for internationalizing this struggle for us all to get anywhere. You are so correct on that.

For example, I ranted against China's mercantilistic trading practices often bordering on or simply being downright depraved and immoral but I really don't have much against those poor Chinese peasant workers who were forbidden to talk during long hours of work and so many hurled themselves to death that Foxconn installed steel meshes surrounding their company-owned-and-operated dormitories to catch the suicidal body thunks from hurting other people. A union to protect the poor peasant workers is needed. It's time to internationalize the union movement in large scale and give China a peasant revolution to live up to the so-called "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." It's time to give Obama, the community organizer, a new real community organizing job overseas, to spearhead the U.S. Special Forces and Marines to liberate the Peoples' Liberation Army.

In the U.S., Obamacare is fast unwinding. The new administration must either take it all down or shore it up. As its cracks widen, our people should push for expanded Medicare for all residents of the U.S., single-payer Medicare for all funded by the General Fund.

What flip was referring to of having to work harder for less was achieved by the inflation created by the 3-Lied Hogwarts [Non-]U.S. [Non-]Federal [No-]Reserve through fiat currency. Its existence was due to our ancestors' lunacy (akin to being under the spell of Islamic mosques' Moon and Star icon to ban alcohol and create home-bathtub breweries in the Islamic Holy Land) to enforce alcohol prohibition in exchange for having a source of near-infinite money. We ended Prohibition so the Fed had lost its reason to exist. We must bring back gold-and-silver real money for long-term stabilization of our economy.

I remember that we got out of the terrible economic malaise following the 1970's oil shocks after Paul Volcker had reinstituted sound money policy in earnest at the Fed. I could again believe that corporations' inflated earnings and balance-sheet assets were actually REAL. Reagan, idiotic as he was in many areas, did pump huge amounts of military spending into the U.S. economy. When board members saw that there was REAL profit being made that did not need to be discounted by a who-knows-what-it-is-by-now deflator to adjust for inflation, the "animal spirits" returned and a long period of economic growth came by. Reagan got the continued appointment of Volcker Correct although Volcker was a holdover originally appointed by Jimmy Carter. The U.S. economy never got to the Rhodesia-to-Zimbabwe or the oil-wealth-socialist-paradise-to-Venezuela hyperinflationary stages.

Before jumpstarting the U.S. economy, we should build walls before jolting it with domestic spending. Reagan years' fiscal spending was not particularly effective stimulating the domestic economy because much of the stimulation squirted overseas through trade links. If you want to stimulate the U.S. steel manufacturing with a massive domestic infrastructure rebuild, don't let the contractors buy the cheap steel being dumped by China! You'll only build up the juggernaut demanding tributes and kowtows.

1981-8-16 (August 16th, 1981) was a great inflection juncture for the U.S. economy for the better economic times ahead because there was bipartisan resolve shown to rescue the U.S. economy. Unity in purpose can ignite the capitalistic engine's multi-cylinders. Baby Boomers got rich on that eventually and became the wealthiest generation in the world's history. Millennials are lucky to be the children of the wealthy.

My child once complained to me, "Dad! All you do is work, work, and work!" I could feel very raw the hurt in the voice about our not spending time together and I truly regret missing out on the child's wonder years (Never to return but I still harbor some hope that a child 2.0 - a grandchild - will give me a second chance at experiencing the Joy of Spring which I had missed) but I like the economic foundation that I had built for my descendants to blast off from. I can only do so much by myself. The rest requires righting this society and our world. Rearranging deck chairs and listening to the soothing music of the very dedicated "Loreley" ensemble on this Titanic just don't cut it anymore. Even Chelsea, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron, Eric, and Donald Jr. will need the society and the world to work right despite having their vaunted economic foundations. The Titanic (of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich) will drag many down to the icy-needlingly-cold cemetery of the North Atlantic.

My heart was truly broken when a Central American human-trafficked prostitute (I presume) said pleadingly in despair in the very hot sunshine to me, "I want to go home..." from a transit-station bench of a nationally ranked affluent suburb. All I could offer her was a bottle of water (she smiled and showed me her bottle still holding some water - it was hot that day and I was waiting in my car to pick up a young female child - I had encountered social disapproval before on a Friday evening while trying to help a woman [who might be a prostitute] find a hotel so I really didn't want to be "caught" with a prostitute and a young girl in tow) when the Caucasian pimp (I presume) swooned by in his van to ask her if she needed a jacket because the sun was starting to set (a breeze blew by, too) and he was implicitly telling her to keep on working or go back with him. He might be afraid that his "livelihood" was about to hop into my car and disappear.

I have a soft spot for the people on the streets because I had been there myself. There was that young woman on East Houston Street approaching my car at a stoplight. Was she being enslaved by New York University's exorbitant tuition costs to peddle herself or find a sugar-daddy? I'll never know and I really don't want to find out due to the pain of social stigma(solicitation optics!) but I still think to myself, "Hello, Houston, we have a problem!"

If we go on like this, we may well end up pimping or counting on prostitutes to run the wealth redistribution scheme to preserve domestic tranquillity. The pimp had apparently come from a blue-collar-worker neighborhood hit very badly by the outsourcing of U.S. jobs. I cry for the inhumanity of Unter-humanity! So many victims... blutig(vf)!

I don't like flip's implying me taking drugs because they were the downfalls of the Baby Boomers instigated by the Powers-That-Be's discrediting campaign. I remember that we all got back to work and worked very hard after our brethren had been murdered in the Kent State Massacre. It seemed analogous to China's 1989-6-4 (June 4th, 1989) TianAmMen Square Massacre. Flower children against the Vietnam War and Watergate/Corruption (both the Vice President and President had been forced to resign in disgrace) got back to WORK. Work may not make Freedom but it made riches alright. Arbeit macht 》frei.《 There was no need for "werk"-ing at that time, I hope.

Mentioning "werk"-ing, I opened up a Halloween closet holding an assembly-required skeleton when I commented on elf3's post about females having to "twerk" at work. She thought that things might improve if patriarchy were replaced by matriarchy. I'm rebellious against many xxxarchies but can tolerate anarchy, probably due to (my new insight here from processing my dark recess, yes!) my having been molested by the "Loreley" babysitter who later on gained a reputation of being a slut in the boys' locker-room talks. "That's where you can get some," so they said to my much older elder sibling. My mom, impressed, even praised her in my face, "She could play with you for hour after hour!" Yeah, right, she's even "free," so ironic, and multi-entendre. Mom's comment hurt! It was a Great Matriarchy I was living in when I was circumcised (Peter was clearly given a Christianity's foundational vision of feasting on both clean and unclean animals to indicate that circumcision was Not required for Abram to become Abraham, contrary to the Jews' belief), done perhaps in my mom's ignorance to stop my bedwettings (or was it really the overly sticky chewing gum leaving the scar on her face? Or was I kissing her so hotly that she wanted to send me a strong unmistakable message that I'd never forget?).

That's why I told DK to ask Ivanka herself if she had been molested by her father. It's a very dark and private place where most often, only the participants tend to know, really.

Women in Islam stand little chance accusing a man successfully of rape, incest, or molestation. Germany imported that male mindset(Indians have it too) to Cologne(Köln). I'm pretty sure that the German women did not ask, 》Grabbelst Du mich?《 The U.K. could have warned Germany because the Brits had these problems with Greater Middle-Eastern Islamic men and they might have contributed to the Brexit voting result.

I prefer Western World's boundaries for women far better than Islamic or Indian ones as long as we can keep our males under control (and also some unruly aggressive females [I praise, salute, and sing of the grace, beauty, love, and mercy of the other females, those who saved me from being stranded in an airport by the worst near-Antarctic-range weather I had ever experienced, from my own naïveté due to my big-city upbringing bias allowing a limousine driver to drop me off unprepared in a so-called "city," and toiled on the "bottom"-line of every baby]). Single-occupancy, unisex bathrooms, equipped with a diaper changing table, will enable men to do more for babies' bottomlines (men's rooms' toilette stalls were too small and crammed to be able to accommodate wiping clean a young child's behind after defecation).

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Human beings are the same the world over. No matter the education level, the skin color, the amount of money they have, no matter what. All the same. All have the same basic needs. See https://www.google.com/#q=maslow%27s+hierarchy.

Capitalism makes the equal distribution of the opportunity to meet these needs around the world and even among ourselves in our own nation, impossible. The job of governments around the world is to ensure that human beings can meet as many of these needs as possible. While we don't need to have actual equality, we do all need to have enough of these needs met so that we don't suffer.

Wouldn't be that difficult to do if we had leaders in place that actually wanted that to happen. In fact, I think it would be easy. But capitalism is rooted in exploitation and exploitation only happens with inequality. You'd think by the 21st century we'd be a little farther along. Much work to do.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Here's my H.E.L.P. plan for bettering the lives of all people. Libya's revolutionary experience showed that the plan should preferably be pursued in reverse order which is very logical indeed, akin to how we extract from a pipeline, "the last shall be first and the first shall be last."

Post offices can serve as community banking centers for the non-banked citizens already abandoned by the banking industry. Libraries can increasingly provide convenient innovation space by compressing its book collections to make them electronically accessible and safeguarding the collections in controlled environments. We may even be able to get Starbucks to provide near- or in-library conversion or service. Cafe scene can incubate ideas and its proximity to experimental/startup space can jumpstart the economy eventually. Foods, drinks, people, ideas, laboratories, workshops, and libraries clustering together can greatly accelerate innovation through collaboration and experimentation. Laboratories may need to be located farther apart from other facilities if they may be dangerous.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

I used to push for Health, Education, Livelihood, and Passion, preferably achieved in reverse order. They still apply now. H.E.L.P.

I admire my Mom for her policy regarding me and my much older elder sibling: "I'm not dead yet. The punishment of your little brother belongs to me, alone, so keep your hands off of him. You are free to do all kinds of things, on the condition that you tote him along, and take care of him, wherever you go."

As a result, our fights were few (by the time we got home to report to Mom, "what were we thinking about fighting each other for?" "I forgot.") and relationship was close. Although our "walkabout" was a bit daring, (after getting sunstroke @23:36; On Armistice Day, "I'll carry you through this" @25:05) dangerous, and overaged for me at times, it was fun.

That was how vast disparities (and inequalities - I could easily be beaten up very badly by my sibling but that did not happen) had been handled. We're all the same(time-translationally homomorphic) and also different (not isomorphic at the same instant of time), being in different stages at the same time, and partnership and getting a "freedom" card help.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

hey beauty - you are right on as usual but i have a minor disagreement. i do no think the people are quite as fooled as you portray. 60 to 70% of the population would like to see single payer, a bail out of main street instead of wall street, an end to the empire and out sourcing. even though all the mainstream economists etc push the elite line many people see through the propaganda. your thoughts?

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Hmmm... I'm thinking.... You make a valid point about the population wanting things that are good for them, but somehow it seems to me that they've been convinced they can't have them, so they hardly ask for them, let alone demand them. And therein lies the problem.

What do you think? Why aren't we all out in the street demanding, goddamnit, our healthcare, a living wage, an education, affordable housing, retirement, etc?

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Between bullets(like those of the Kent State Massacre of students[FEMA now has billions stocked]) or receiving money, it was hardly a difficult choice for me. Despair not yet, it's exactly the scenario being played out of an extremely close election wherein a third party candidate, Jill Stein, can truly shine, without being irresponsible to our people. Either major party candidate's winning would still allow the smooth transition of power to occur.

Here comes the "states' rights'" cavalry reinforcement to the rescue. Yes, vino, vino for Virginia!

This looks like Austerlitz. "Able was I ere I saw Elba." Virginia will Pee in her newly bought 3€/¡¥ TrumPants - due to excessive underaged drinking; TeraERex attacks and eats Mx. Cheese @3:56 who abandoned the children throughout 1993's (Juraissic Park breached) NAFTA while saying, "you've got to go when you Have to go!"

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

well that is the question no? after the sixties the ruling elites tried to figure out how to reestablish control - read the trilateral commissions "crisis of democracy." in their opinion we had too much democracy and that was a crisis. they blamed the "institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young." the schools and churches etc.

well anyway cutting wages over the last 40 years makes us all work harder so no time to do much of anything. forcing student loans down college kids throats makes it harder for them to get involved in activism. remember the freedom riders of the 60's? anyway putting black "trouble makers" in prison and ending the draft all has an effect. then there is the media - telling us how much better we have it than sweden and canada so why would anyone protest?

as usual i have a lot more to say but i do know that much of the population agrees with you and me on the big issues facing the country. what to do about it is the next question - i am hoping that the dems wake up and smell the coffee - it boiling over. not betting on it though - i am betting on my own personal exit plan into western ny. lots of land lots of water!

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

All so true, I could cry. It all just makes me so sick.

But if I have any hope at all it comes because I think it will hit the establishment when the millennials of today become the establishment. It's been proven that young people today like their corporations to be organized more horizontally, they care less about money and they care more about their fellow man. They are also far less religious and less racist than their parents' and grandparents' generations. So, hope springs eternal and hope must endure.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

i hope you are right. i am disappointed in my generation - the young people of 1968. we shook the world then went to work and got old.

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

"Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed." Chris Hedges, from:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/its_worse_than_you_think_20161111

"Trump, with no democratic institutions left to restrain him, will accelerate the corporate assault, from privatizing Social Security to exonerating militarized police forces for the indiscriminate murder of unarmed citizens, while he unleashes the fossil fuel industry and the war industry to degrade and most probably extinguish life on earth. His administration will be populated by the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, men and women characterized by profound intellectual and moral impoverishment, as well as a stunning ability to ignore reality. These ideologues speak exclusively in the language of intimidation and violence."

And, he wrote that before Steve Bannon was announced, lol. Hedges is a great fatalist, but he's also an extreme rationalist, calling the dark out where he sees it. We'll have to sit back and wait.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

let's change that slightly to "sit IN and wait!"

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

Right on, flip! What was I thinking? LOL.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Everybody grows old but we won the Cold War peacefully(everyone alive should be grateful that we didn't "shake" the world once again; otherwise, what would "Millennials" be?). Oh, the world may yet be "shaken" with vf. 2.0.

Having Vietnam War ended and forced Vice President(Agnew for corruption) and President(Nixon for Watergate breakin and coverup) to resign were admirable, too. I wish other countries could claim the same kind of peaceful resignations in disgrace for their "leaders."

We also witnessed the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK. In a very American fashion, these were the bullet shots heard around the world.

[-] 1 points by flip (7101) 7 years ago

is that the way you see it - we won the cold war? if so i wonder what losing would have looked like.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Post-World-War-II Germany might have been a guide for what life might become after a Cold War had turned thermonuclear and then relaxed into a long dark global cryonuclear season for all survivors.

Figuratively staring at ashes as Angela did, I was reminded of Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" novel fictionally describing his postwar experience of being a GI stationed in Bavaria, Germany. German women turned to trading sex (for cigarettes) to sustain their families (so did McCourt's Mom in Ireland in order to house and feed her children). McCourt's accounts were near-factual but could not be completely accurate in details in order to give grace to the bygone protagonists. It's a form of gonzo journalism.

For example, in order to avoid unnecessary legal battles, McCourt mentioned the depraved behaviors of the Catholic priesthood in his books without being specific, a long time before the sexual perversions of Catholic priests in Boston's Archdiocese came to media's attention and legal wranglings. Myths/fictions can warn people without being specific enough to scrape up the scabs on old wounds. They may even be truer than facts about the human condition because they can include the transcendent values from the human psyches of both the past and the present.

Post-Black-Death-pandemic and post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Chernobyl/Fukushima conditions offer other guides to post-Cold-War-turned-thermonuclear living conditions.

I experienced neither post-Black-Death-pandemic nor McCourt's postwar-Germany's living conditions but I can trace how the various very stupid ideological "-isms" had not only killed and maimed hundreds of millions of people but also left physical marks on and in my body(which is an electrochemical infinite-impulse-response system as are All cellular lifeforms from an amoeba to a blue whale, and from a euglena to a palo alto).

Why and how did a third of all Europeans die of the Black Death? It was imported in the pursuit of globalized profits and Europeans believed that house cats were evil. Beliefs are physical and real. Mind 》Kampf《 can lead to mind And physical peace.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Germany is whole again. Germany will save Europe with the Schuld. What-Losing-the-Cold-War world would have been is a moot question, never to be even possible to be asked, less answered. It might have looked like mushroom mulch, ashtray content, and Chernobyl/Fukushima soil all mixed together, perhaps, in a global cryo-nuclear season. There'd also be obsidian glass and views through the Looking-glass.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

Between bullets or receiving money, I found that it had been an easy choice (for sublimation). Of course, all of my talks to a firebrand about reforming the power structure from within went out of the window.

At one time starting out working professionally, I had transplanted myself to this godforsaken suburb with no means of transportation aside from private automobiles (the word "city" in the suburb's name had conjured up an image for me detached from reality due to my New York, New York big-city upbringing bias). It was getting cold and dark and I was getting hungry. I nearly faced sure starvation until I chanced upon this young college woman (maybe my having grown up in a Great Matriarchy made women feel less threatened by my presence) who gave me a ride in her van for miles in the dark (there were not even sidewalks) to a supermarket to buy some food. We talked about her interning in Washington D.C., the corporations' suffocating grips there, and the blatant bigotry right there in the midst of the very affluent, picturesque, quintessential, "All-American," small suburban "city." I said that the reforms would come from within. Yes, I was correct in a bad way because by definition, when anyone got within, that person Became the within! Not much could change or did change.

After decades of "getting within" with no results, I'm starting to think that maybe she had been right all along and I was dead wrong. It was true that I only had limited experience because I had never interned in the federal government in Washington, D.C. For systemic changes, external shocks may really be necessary.

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

BW, the very wise and intellectually gifted one(like the cerebral cortex tamping down on the wilder things such as "reductio ad absurdum" used when frontal progress is blocked), had always had the answer all along. Even after discounting everything else, she knows of "Love." The only way out of this mess is empathy, forgiveness, and helping the warmth of Love thaw the snowed-under human psyches. When Spring comes, there will be daffodils as well as new songs to sing. My epiphany was that my body talks and I must listen well (there's No need for any drugs contrary to your insistence that I had to be doing some). "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls." New growth requires the destruction of the old so we must take the mess with stride. It's just the birth-pangs of the New Order of better things to come.

Hedge funds provide countermeasures for eventualities and continuously adjust their positions. We can do the same. If we could fend off the really nasty parts, we would have succeeded. All unsustainable things will eventually collapse although the perspicacious ones amongst us can probably help give them a nudge to hasten them along. The content of the Book of All Knowledge is a mirror. Automorphisms, my friends. Know Thyselves. Bravely run the inner passage. So what if its entrance is the dark basement's door? Enough of us going down there will certainly catch the black cat lurking in the dark down there sooner or later. (Bayes' formula is the time machine.) That was how the West was won, a very American method indeed. The performance of the parallel search with communication can exceed the linear speed-up limit.

omnia vincit amor

[-] 1 points by beautifulworld (23767) 7 years ago

"The only way out of this mess is empathy, forgiveness, and helping the warmth of Love thaw the snowed-under human psyches."

Worth repeating. Nice, grapes

[-] 1 points by grapes (5232) 7 years ago

omnia vincit amor

was my personal inflection point, hour after hour as a child of the Flower Power generation - so I heard "Jenny" say at 24:27, "You've got to get on." and 24:56 "We've got to go. We can't waste time." The language barrier for "water" was overcome at 36:47.