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Regarding MMT, attached is a link to a terrific conference held by MMT economists back in 2010, which serves as a great primer on MMT principles. It consists of separate talks by Warren Mosler, Bill Mitchell and Randy Wray (who are generally viewed as the three founders of the MMT school of economics), as well as talks by Stephanie Kelton and Marshall Auerbach. The link has audio, video and transcripts of each talk. As I recall, there are question and answer sessions following each talk. I highly recommend it to Thom and anyone interested in MMT.
http://www.netrootsmass.net/fiscal-sustainability-teach-in-and-counter-conference/
Also, a website that is a great resourse on MMT is heteconomist.com (http://heteconomist.com/posts-to-read-first/)
You ain't kidden...Rubeo is child who wants sooooo bad in the club. I say "someone" needs to hack into the drone program and start targeting these self righteous assholes...Game on!
But on a less hostle and nonviolent action...About 2/3rds of the country is sick of both the Left and Right parties - and fuck the Tea Baggers...nothen but a bunch of white elitist asshole who do the dirty bidding for Corporate America, just so Those on Wall street and continue to rob the working poor....What would it take to have a "real" movement (not like the trendy unorganized OWS) more like that of the Arab Spring? Several million people taking to the streets, taking over government offices, protesting, boycotting, commiting civil disobedience round the clock...Sure it's alot to ask of people, but what have we got to loose???I mean this is the United States of America...A democratic government; Of the People, For the People, and By the People. Does anyone recall the Boston Tea Party...Boycotting, Protesting, and Sabotage is how this Country was first established...Then the Rothchilds snuck in!
Thomas Jefferson warned us of allowing a centralized banking system in...He even twarted their first attempt.
The pot 'o water is a bubblen
Obama still did the annoying thing of saying we need to have a "balance" of spending cuts and revenue increases. Grr.
It's certainly nice that Obama is saying a few things that we all want to hear and ticking off the Republicans. And the Republicans certainly need to be ticked off..the more the better...and rub it in their faces. But it's all show and no substance. What Democrats need to do is give the Republicans what they are whining about...reduce spending...but do it ONLY to Pentagon spending and don't touch Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs. When our government sees fit to build another multi-billion dollar domestic computer spy center in Utah then we know that someone in power wants to keep watch on the victims they are exploiting.
When the Republicans talk about reducing spending..they are not referring to Pentagon spending..they want to do it through social spending. They want to murder grandma and grandpa..and even the younger unemployed family members....the poor ones that is. The wealthy elders in their families are wealthy enough that they don't have to worry about dying of inadequate healthcare, housing, and food. It's the poor riff-raff, the great unwashed, other less fortunate families that they hope to cause untimely deaths. The poor must suffer so the wealthy can win the race as to who has the most toys. "He who has the most toys...wins!"
We need to stop idolizing the rich and famous. The truth is that the rest of us will never be rich and famous. Treat the rich and famous like the scumbags that they are. Make them all feel like the greedy and selfish and hateful parasites who have all just been lucky in life and business and not special or hard working. The unskilled people laboring in the fields and the skilled laborers are hard working..not the people and money manipulators in other executive positions who are merely opportunist con men.
And one of the highlights in today's news, aside from the Dorner story, is the Youtube video of the naked belt beating of a young man, by fellow gang members (perhaps), that has beaten out the news that another US drone murder of 3 Taliban members (along with 10 bystanders) has taken place yet again. How many civilians has our drones murdered? Yet do they cover that in the news as well as they cover something like a Youtube belt whipping? Or the rescue of a poor cat that fell down a well? Maybe if they showed a video of body parts flying off into the area, and flesh being ripped from the bodies of the civilians and put it on Youtube...like they did during that helicopter gunship murder of civilians in Iraq a few years ago? Maybe that would shock more people into more useful and informative news reporting instead of the insipid and mindless pablum we get for news now?
But most likely, it'll take a complete trashing of both parties in favor of a competing third party who are way more eager to please the majority of Americans than either the Republican or the Democrat parties are. The current two party system knows how to use meaningless rhetoric to keep the majority of Americans under the thumbs of the wealthy..their puppet masters. The smoke and mirrors two party system will keep playing us all for their useful idiots..keeping us ever hopeful that change will come. But the only way real change will come is for Americans to deviate from the current broken record. If we want to avoid the messy alternative then we had all better break the corrupt two party hold that the wealthy has over us.
Technically, the Constitution was ratified in 1788, Jun 21st to be exact, but it went into effect in 1789 when the first congress convened. So close enough.
The idea of doing your own State of the Union speech instead of just telling us what you wanted the President to talk about was fun, Thom.
Don't worry, they are doing this to make way for our continued and escalated involvement in Africa where there is lots of oil and mineral wealth to be had. And since the civilians are all poor black people, not many Americans will object too loudly when our military and drones murder many of the civilians there. Not much difference between poor Arabic civilians and poor African civilians....they're all expendable aren't they? Moving a few thousand troops out of the Middle East is just a rearranging of the chess board..a propaganda ploy...a political smoke and mirrors ploy....and moving on to greener pastures for the US to pillage and plunder.
If you're young and thinking of joining the military because things are quieting down....don't! You'll be used as expendable canon fodder after you commit yourself. You'll be doing multiple tours of duty and thinking of suicide as a way out just like many in the Middle Eastern theater have done. The capitalist war mongers are not through sacrificing the young for their greedy and selfish aims. It is a trick..a political ploy! The dripping, bloody proboscises of these disgusting capitalist parasites won't even have a chance to dry before they stick them into some other host.
Jingle Jindal and Curio Rubio,
From my view Rubio is somewhat inverted, hard to figure out, like a really jumbled Rubix Cube. What really alarms me is the failed quality of both politicians. From my view it did take some courage for Bobby Jindal to outright say the Republican Party should stop being the Party of the stupid.
Every time I think of that it just makes me laugh.
However, Rubio would be much more impressive in building a political bridge of new friendship that would be a smooth transition for Cuban American relations. Simply put show me what Rubio can do with that island of Cuba to defuse our long over stressed relation because of Castrol and our own stubborn politics. At least Rubio does not have a canary island tax haven account next door to the Wahhabi. That kind of work would speak volumes in terms of his abilities for all America with this span diversity.
What is very disappointing and many might say just totally unpatriotic is to sell a book to find out what the solution is to our economic problems. Just shout it out, like Thom says tag your it. That’s very likely why our first amendment, to bring grievances to the government does not work. More over if many assemble to air grievances the crowd just gets bombarded with pula gal sticks or pepper sprayed. Or worse hand cuffed hauled off to jail. Now drones are controversy but have been in the economic college research system since nineteen seventy two. America now argues about drone stuff that is decades old. Now some young engineering boost about selling iPod applications to give the best time to cross the boarders at Mexico or Canada. You Who, did you get that mainstream media.
So the recourse is to listen to Paul Kurgman sell his book on MSNBC, or others like INNOCENT FRAUDS, great oxymoron, by Warren Mosler’s, or Stephanie Kelton Explains Modern Monetary Theory.
For me to suspect, some of which don’t have any idea how to express this in the traditional Gaussian approach. This is what the world uses. Yes that mysterious derivative that many professors of economics have never studied, that finite calculus that is the reasoning behind the greed in profiteering banking, actually used by Gauss himself to predict when stars will explode. Very laughable but not when many are like me who have to retire into poverty, it is not funny anymore. Then many wonder why our monetary flux crashes because bunker bankers tweak that derivative to uncharted areas that super nova like an atomic bomb, then run to the tax payer to get reimbursed via the Federal Reserve. We are too big to fail, though America is at that forty seven percent point where almost half the country is in poverty begging for jobs, yet the Republican Party bull horns shout through cable Fox and ABC Wahhabi hate radio Mark Levin too big too big is the government.
Well said, rs allen! Yes, I know full well that those religious extremists would slit my flying spaghetti monster atheist throat if they had the chance. I suspect that there are also the same kind of religious extremists right here in America that think of themselves as good Christians. Many of the 'extremist' Christians are currently running our government...and would, or could, eventually make the Taliban look like the girl scouts. And that is really scary because one of the things that 'extremist' Christians believe in is the 'end of the world' prophecies. They have a deep seated yearning to prove their ancient prophecies will come true. A kind of mass suicidal mania. And they have control of most of the nukes in the world. If they can engineer 9/11...they can do any crazy thing.
I managed to go over to Saudi Arabia back in the early 80's to live and work there without getting my throat cut..but then I didn't go around preaching my convictions either. I pretty much kept my mouth shut. In fact, they won't even let you into the country in the first place if you put down on the forms...religion: atheist or none. So, you have to improvise. It was a good learning experience though..although a bit risky.
One thing I noticed today, as I watched the news on main stream commercial TV, now that most of the Dorner news is running out of steam (I give it another couple of months to maybe dissappear), is that now they are centering on a Youtube video of a young man ordered to strip and then beaten with a belt. At the bottom of the screen, where they show the moving text of other news, it says that the US has done another drone killing of 3 Taliban leaders...and then right after that flashes by that 10 others were also killed. Seems to me that killing 13 people (10 bystanders) is more important news than whipping a naked teenager by other teenagers. Nancy Grace will probably spend the next several months talking about that. That's why I don't watch Nancy Disgrace any more. What a sour shrew! And much of the other mainstream media is not much better.
Another thing they have been screeching about was the foiled attempt at the bombing of a BofA building by a would be bomber used as a patsy for more propaganda. The 'authorities' find these malcontents and egg them on by pretending to be of like mind and they will supply the bomb material. The sting operation suckers some unwitting dummy, probably retarded to begin with, to go through the motions that results in convicting the dummy as a terrorist. There may be many people who are really ticked off, who say a lot of things, who would never be able to carry out what they may fantasize without the help and support of someone else. And anyone who is dumb enough to not highly suspect that something is amiss by being approached by someone else willing to aid in making a fantasy come to life is just opening him/her self up to being a patsy in a sting operation. The 'authorities' use this as propaganda evidence to support their continued existence and 'proof' that they are making a difference in the 'war on terror'. Much of the 'war on terror' is contrived by these very same 'authorities'.
Naw, Nachos, we all knew what was coming. What I was waiting to see was the Tea Party rebuttal that didn't materialize, at least on the network I was watching (should I have been watching Fox?).
The highlight of the night for me was Marco Rubio's spastic lurch for his bottle of water, as though something he was spewing got stuck in his throat. I think Rubio's presentation was rivaled only by Bobby Jindal's rebuttal a few years ago. What an inarticulate rant. "Gawsh, my grandma's on Medicare and Social Security. And I couldn't have made it through school without my student loans. Hey, what say we GUT those programs?" Talk about bullshit!
Lets Wrap This Thread Up.
President Obamney (The Dronenator); "Blah, Blah, Blah; bullshit bullshit buuuuuuuuullSHIT!"
" Yes We Can!"
Unfortunaltly y'all are gonna wanna talk about the Blah blah bullshit.
When I hear him, I want to wash my brain with bleach!
Here are links to Stephanie's interviews with Sam Seder and Harry Shearer:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/11/stephanie-keltons-appearance-on-sam-seders-show.html
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/10/stephanie-kelton-appears-on-le-show-with-harry-shearer.html
No arguement from here on the United States mettling and generally bullying about in the world. Nor will you find me favoring the warrior nation mentally the USA has held for oh somewhere closing in on 300 hundred years now. However, Afghanistan was badly mishandled but not illegal, it was and is still an international effort (even if we are the only ones left willing to put any effort into it). And Pakistan, that country shares alot less with it's citizens than our government could ever hope to get away with; you don't really think that battle ground isn't without at least a tacit agreement do you? After all that portion of the world is a thorn in their side as well. Yemen is probably in the same boat on that score. That leaves Iraq......personally I'd like to see Bushit and company/s up before the bar for their crimes surrounding that enterprise.
Make no mistake though about the radical faction of Islam they are not the Christan Taliban, who just want to take away your rights, they just want you dead as well as anyone else who diviates from their narrow path. Witness their outrages against humanity on every continet of the world in almost any country you care to name. Whatever our (the USA) trespasses in modern history they pale in comparison to the war the IslamicTaliban has declared upon the world, I repeat we are not the worst actors on the stage. Ya don't believe me? Take a flight over and introduce yourself as a man of peace so you can enlighten them to the true way of the spaghetti monster. Let me know how it works out.
If not in motivation but in action, actually the Taliban movement rather reminds me of the Shining Path in days of yore. Any ways let me know how your trip works out.
Worried about being on a list somewhere? Do what everyone else has done. In the 50's and 60's you did/said absolutely nothing if you weren't on Hoovers FBI list. In fact it was considered a badge of honor, even if they could be a guinuwhine pain in the ass. In the 70's and the 80's the Nam vets were talking gobblely gook on phones long before it came out the NSA was ease dropping in on their conversations. It was just a goof, we all grew up knowing we were being watched and got off because some paranoid neurotic was chewing their finger nails over what we may do next. Today? Unless you're a toady that comes home every night to a gin and tonic to watch the NBC (etc) news followed by whatever mindless paplum comes after you're on some list somewhere. Get use to it. Thumb your nose at them, they're not as important as they think they are. They can do nothing or go anywhere without us. So just keep explaining that thought. "They" can not do anything or go anywhere without us (the people of the world). Don't succumb to fear because somebody might over hear you speak to truth and fairness. Ahem, wide spread conspiracy theories not with standing. Understand it has always been a conspiracy, the producers against the takers. Note how hard "they" have worked to hollow out the education system since the early 1900's and that Reagan accelerated starting in the late 60's in Cal. So get use to someone watching, it's old hat. And who cares after all? It's a war with a different face is all, and frankly it's the same war my grandfather fought walking a picket line while carrying for protection. It's a war that will long out last me and you, but we must continue and pass the torch when our time has past. "they" can do nothing, "they" can go nowhere without us.
Education and getting rid of mercenary armies would be a good start in this country.
Its surprising that he did not equate higher income with lower income worker leads to higher demand leads to more jobs leads to more tax receipts leads to debt reduction. Lower income by the worker class leads to lower expenditure leads to lower demand leads to reduced jobs leads to lower tax receipts leads to higher indebtedness.
Exactly. I feel the same way. Where is the Green prty response, the Libertarian reponse, the Progressive caucus?
Dear Thom: can the rants you gave today on the 2nd bill of rights and history of the tea party be transcribed? Or in some way put into an 8.5 x 11 sheet so I can afford copies to hand out?
rs allen: but now they are selling designer clothing that can evade being targets of the drones. I hope we never have to wear them...wouldn't want to put much faith in whether they would actually work.
And, I believe that we are all putting targets on our backs just by typing stuff on the internet...in blogs and on facebook, etc. Echelon has been spying on us for a long time now..phone calls..text messages...computer blogs..they monitor every form of communication. They have dictionary computers that detect certain words that the analysts instruct the computers to detect whenever those words are used. Then the whole message is read, or listened to, by an analyst. They are going much further now...which is why they need all those expensive NSA buildings like the big computer spy center in Utah. There are many others as well. They now have facial recognition that can even detect your expression to analyze what you are about to do next. A kind of "Future Crime" detection system.
Yes, you are right about the Germans and the Japanese. They didn't play very nice. But many other countries in the world don't see the US as playing very nice either. The cold war has been over for years yet the US continued to build up it's war capacity and actually, illegally, invaded other sovereign countries...Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen. We fly our death drones over and murder civilians. Pretty soon it will be us that are getting droned to death.
Honest and well paid scribes? Are you kidding? Have you never seen the movie "The Name of the Rose"? Now, I'm just kidding!
Anyway, I think you give these scribes way too much credit for being honest and precise. Besides there are known forgeries by church fathers and even if you go way back to Constantine and his first Council of Nicea where they packed all of these various early church bishops together to hash out what would be the new "sanctioned" religion. They even paganized much of what became the official religion.
Even before the Council of Nicea, the various churches argued and fought over various beliefs...was Jesus a man, or a god. Did he really die on a cross and arise 3 days later...Was he married or not....and on and on. They were giving old pagan Constantine a constant headache. So he did what any smart guy would do to keep his empire from falling apart. He did the politically most expedient thing. He got all the head troublemakers together and forced them to agree upon the big lie that would be used to unify the multitudinous factions and cults. Besides what came out of the Council of Nicea was a largely paganized religion. They called it Christianity but it was paganized.
Even Pope Leo X said: "What profit has not this fable of Christ brought us?"
A Catholic church for over 1000 years kept everyone in the dark about what was in the bible. And if you really read the bible you are either left with trying to apologize for certain passages (perhaps saying "oh, that part was meant not to be literal, but those other parts were meant to be literal". Pick and choose!
"Flavius Josephus was a penname of Arrius Piso"
http://www.angelfire.com/wi/famtree/josari2.html
http://reuchlina.tripod.com/
Of course, that's what people do all the time...pick and choose...what is meant to be literal and what is not meant to be literal. That's part of the reason why there are so many different religions. They all have their own interpretation of what various things in the bible mean.
http://reuchlina.tripod.com/
Palindromeday ~ I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about the existence of Jesus. It's a matter of personal faith--just like everything else that can neither be proven or disproven. Other than that you raise good points. Especially about the Church practicing Ritualistic cannibalism. I have often thought the same thing myself. Very creepy!
The verse you quoted from John I believe was meant as metaphor and not literal. Sure the Church professes it literally. But I think if you look closer at the context of the works of Jesus you will see he is talking about his teachings.
(From John 6)
33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.
35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Besides, being in bad taste (pardon the pun) the suggestion that Josephus, the Piso family, and "Cannibal" Mary created the "myth" of Jesus as a joke completely misses my previous point about stories that stand the test of time. Jokes simply do not endure anymore than pornography does. The only things that endure's generations are based on truth and socio-political value. I'm sure you are aware of how the ancient Scribes dedicated their lives to recording and rerecording these stories--that you are brushing off as nonsense--by hand. They had no photocopiers, printing presses, or even carbon paper. They had conviction and dedication and the support of their familys and society. The preservation of these stories was an expensive group effort that spanned thousands of generations. Being a Scribe used to be a high status, well respected, and well paying career. I respectfully submit that you seriously underestimate the value of these stories.
Just coming off the media coverage of the SOU.... Ever notice how toatlly scripted the TV coverage is? Within a millisecond of a reference to Jennifer Whatsername, the mother of some heretofore unheard of victim of some form of violence, the camera is fixed on her contenance. Funny. She's in the audience and, miraculiously, the network has zeroed in. Anyone else here feel like they've been duped? Or are being played as a sap? Or generally just pissed upon....?
delster ~ That is a terrible and tragic story. With how you served society you and your family certainly deserve better. You should have retired by now and be taking it easy without any of the financial burdens you are facing. Your only medical worry should be keeping your appointments, taking your medicine, and following your Doctors advice. You shouldn't even have to worry about co-pays. Co-pays, what a stupid joke! Our 'social safety net' is so full of holes it should be called the 'social safety hologram.' It only looks like it's there until you find yourself falling right through it. Thanks for sharing that with us. I hope your situation turns around. Don't give up hope.
I don't know about that national sales tax idea. I like the proportional income tax idea, elimination of lobbying by declaring it illegal, and especially requiring all elected officials to live within their poorest district on minimum wage as long as they hold their office. It's too bad that that last suggestion will never happen. However, it might be possible to require them to spend all their vacations in those districts as long as they are in office. The government could foot the bill for the 'housing' placing them in a predetermined area of the poorest district, and provide a welfare check comparable to other residents in that area so they would have to mingle, shop, and live with their poorest constituents several weeks out of the year. That might open their eyes in a positive way
Good luck Buddy!