can the modern american left genuinely claim to be anti-racist?

(Welfare reform was not a race-based policy, either -- there's lots of white people on welfare. And it also wasn't a bad idea. The existing welfare system was nothing for anyone to be proud of -- underfunded, ineffective and wrongheaded on many counts. Whether what's come in its place is demonstrably better is still an open question, of course, and as social services at all levels continue to get cut, the "welfare to work" programs, with their promises of job training and child care, are going to be increasingly pinched.)

i mean if you quote a statistic that the number of Afro-American people on welfare in the US is significantly greater than Hispanic or other ethnicities then i'll concede - perhaps it is, i'm a bit ignorant on this though definitely. either way i think placing the focus on 'social class/level of privilege' is surely better than just barking on about race in such topics. i mean surely 'can the modern american left genuinely claim to be more supportive to the underprivileged masses than the modern American right' is just as valid and perhaps more appropriate, if more waffley, a question?

http://poverty.smartlibrary.org/NewInterface/segment.cfm?segment=1823&table_of_contents=1425

Anyway, like I said, I think the modern American left is generally, and mostly sincerely, anti-racist. It defends affirmative action. It promotes social spending for the most disadvantaged. It also sometimes signs onto things like the stupid bankruptcy bill, so it's hardly full of idealists or altruists. But on the whole, I'm not sure that pondering the failings of the American left on racial issues is useful as anything more than an academic exercise right now, because those aren't the failings that are keeping it out of office, and as long as it's out of office, much much worse and actively racist policies will be pursued the the modern American right.

what are some examples of actively racist policies pursued by the right and not the left? besides ending affirmative action, which a large number of black people agree with

Apart from building a national governing coalition based partly on Southern white resentment of the civil rights movement?

Well, to use your welfare reform argument, cutting social services generally has disproportionately negative effects for nonwhite populations, which are proportionately poorer and more likely to receive the benefits of those services. Bush in his press conference today (in response to a question about his massive expansion of the federal government) was bragging about how he has actually cut "discretionary non-defense spending", and also said those things will need to be cut more to pay for hurricane relief.

And yeah, affirmative action is complicated too, I know.

sweeping generalizations blah blah blah

But I think, whatever taking-for-granted might go on, Democrats in the last few generations have been more sincerely interested in courting black votes and encouraging black participation in the democratic process than Republicans. Democrats try to encourage black voter turnout, Republicans try to suppress it. That's been a matter of political pragmatism, but that's always true of political alliances. Given that black Democratic legislators still outnumber black Republican legislators by some ridiculous ratio, I don't see how anyone can say that Democrats aren't doing a better job representing black voters. Democrats are more likely to support better funding for public education, childhood intervention programs like Head Start, public health programs, and any number of other things that -- while income- rather than race-based -- have significant racial effects because of the racial income gap.

(xpost Hahaha!)

Uh no it isn't! They are still using the southern strategy!

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to thread! That is one of the most offensive books I've ever read.

Of course they're still using the Southern strategy! They've broadened it from just race-based to include gay-bashing and general Bible thumping, but it's very much in effect.

xpost haha gimme a second dude its hard coming up w/ this shit

Well, they often have a shared constituency (black gay-bashers and Bible thumpers notwithstanding). But you're right in that one longterm Rovian strategy is to build a multiracial coalition of gay-bashers and Bible thumpers.

Anyway, I think this discussion is silly. It's liberal-baiting or something. "Prove you're anti-racist and not just being a condescending paternalistic elitist!" Yeah yeah yeah. "Liberal elitism" is such a boring slur.

Meanwhile, the Democrats include such condescenders as John Lewis, Al Sharpton, John Conyers, Charlie Rangel, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Maxine Waters, Robert Scott, Shirley Franklin, Major Owens, Cynthia McKinney, John Street, Alcee Hastings, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Ray Nagin, Corinne Brown, Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and Bobby Rush.

while we're asking questions, is Trife really Ken Mehlman? has he read what Byrd has written about his past, or does he not care?

(xposts)

Or to put it another way, whether the "modern American left" is or isn't "genuinely" "anti-racist" ranks very low among my sociopolitical concerns right now.

xpost gabbneb don't be like this, I mean anyone can produce a list of anything and be like "See these people are OK" or "These people are bad" but whatever you want to say a list of 15 people does not an entire political party/movement make.

Which is the point, I think, in his own special way, that ethan makes here.

This is a much more defensible idea considering the campaigns Rove's run and his close connections to people (Atwater, et all) who've run national Republican campaigns for the last twenty years.

There are so many ways to be Othered right now, no one group needs to feel left out!

which is to say that "racist" = "a set or attitudes or actions that conform to what i believe to be racist"

for many, many people being a democrat = anti-racist or being a republican = racist. which is the premise that this thread is attacking.

the scary thing is that you are never free from SOMEONE'S idea of what being racist is.

is it wrong to be amused that they inadvertantly (??) chose eggplant purple to represent african americans? its the moolatte of census maps

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right! I was totally giggling at the burple states.

Also just looking at Minnesota there are not that many Germans and no Swedes or Finns shown at all, so of course BOLLOCKS MAP.

Why is the tip of Florida marked as "Other"? Actually...guys more alarming than anything else on that chart is the fact that "Hispanic" doesn't seem to, like, mean anything on there. Like hispanics are New Mexico, and then there's a couple Mexicans down in AZ and Cali. WHY is South Florida thoroughly marked as Germanic territory? Y'all been to South Florida, right?

It's circular logic.

"You're racist"
"How?"
"You've taken a racist stance on an issue!"
"!"

That doesn't mean that there's no such thing as bigotry but that it's harder to pin down than everyone thinks and accusations are almost always based on circular reasoning. Sometimes that reasoning is pretty uniform and accepted by people ("calling a black person 'nigger' in anger is racist") but it's not always or arguably usually.

can we go back to that? what the hell are you talking about? Barbara Lee is condescending to black people? HUH?

"Excuse me, nigger, do you have the time?"

I wonder if it's the Cuban population, which the Feds don't really want to recognize.

xpost PR is a totally different hispanic! Do we all look alike to you or something?

Am I confused about this map??? Is this map describing the largest concentrations of these races, in the nation, or the majority population per county? Cos they're wrong about at least one of those "Others" and I have a hard time believing the rest is accurate.

Anyway props up to the Pennsylvania Polocks.

Yeah what is the deal with "American" on that map? That actually really bugs me. Besides Native Americans, who has somehow won the distinction of having "American" ancestry, over the others?

x-posts

still, no polish/arabic people around detroit? wtf?

Majority population per county. Which is why this map does nothing to address the urban/rural divide. Just because the southern states are the only states that are majority African American, that doesn't prove that the largest number of African American voters come from rural areas.

it sounds to me like you're making a point about the national democratic leadership in this country and i have to say i agree with you. take education, puhleeze. poor and underprivileged kids -- disproportionately black -- have just been left to rot. no one even talks seriously about how to solve the crisis in education. year after year we hear that schools are less funded than ever before, and year after year it's true. the only diff btwn republicans and democrats -- at the national leadership level -- is that republicans simply don't give a shit, and talk fantastical talk no one will ever hold them to about school vouchers and church learnin, whereas "liberals" seem to believe, to borrow a quote from the daily howler, that success is there for the taking, all you have to do is buckle down, rejigger your course requirements, tweak the tests a little, and suddenly everyone's reading at grade level. the real work that is needed to be done -- in my opinion: 1) figuring out how to implement a desgregation plan that actually works and that people want and 2) setting aside the massive amts of money that the schools needs -- is just imagined away. no one even talks about it.

Becuz Southern white people are all English/Scotch/Irish! OK, not all, there's been lots of others over the years (my wife's family, e.g., German-Swiss) but seriously, when I moved to Tennessee from upstate New York the first thing I noticed was the near-total absence of all the Italian/Polish/Slavic names I grew up around. No cz's or ski's or izzi's anywhere!

this is the opening line of the imaginary most offensive Broadway musical of all time

I like this discussion, it's always nice to hear somebody all fired-up about PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION (although the old-school lefty in me keeps thinkin': "Is Ethan taking the long way around announcing that he's gonna start voting Republican?" which would be bogus because while no, the Dems aren't less racist than the Republicans, they are marginally less classist, which ends up having real bearing on race, so if you're goin' two-party-system-'til-we-die! then the Dems are still slightly preferable if you care about race/class issues [nb the two aren't separable in my mind, which isn't to say that they're identical, but to try to isolate race without talking about class seems hopelessly collegiate to me]).

All of which is totally unimportant because the Democratic party doesn't count as "the modern American left" - they're hardly even left at all! They only lean left when they're trying to coax money out of lefties or scare them into voting two-party ticket. The Democratic party = center right, with the courage of exactly no convictions. Dig 'em if you must! but calling them "left" plays into a pretty foul game.

c.f. phil ochs once again:

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
And I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I go to the civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
And I'm glad that the commies were thrown out
From the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
And I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
As long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Ah, the people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
Now I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Yes, I read New Republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I attend all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
And I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Sure, once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
Ah, but I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Anybody who wants to put something down on a form is whatever they want to be. It's not as if the census actually walks around with an Ethnographmatic sextant to measure your lips, nose, hue and texture of your integumentary tissues. That map is kind of full of shit.

My hometown is in the one county in northern Alabama that's eggplant colored. Here's the 2000 census data from there:

Population: 276,700
White: 72.1%
Black: 22.8%
Asian: 2.0%
Other: 3.1%

I wonder how many of the Patels and Mehtas I knew were "White" and how many were "Asian."

(tombot this is only the 2nd time)

1) That ethnography map is full of crap (it's not even accurate on census data, FYI, which is why I asked the question about top concentrations versus county majorities)
2) Americans be white
3) Liberals hate it when you point out that sometimes other people who identify as liberals are, like, not very good people
4) I need to go to some more events that feature 'I Really Miss My Homies'

But also that the criteria for being "good people" is pretty fuzzy, and also somewhat beside the point. I mean, all else aside, if you put me in a voting booth and give me racist KKK man Robert Byrd vs. some conservative Christian Republican, I'm voting for Byrd.

People all across the political spectrum still use "liberal" as a perjorative term.

How nice for you, white man. I am writing in my dad. (NOTE: I actually did write-in my dad for the '92 election because I didn't like either Clinton or Bush I.)

I don't get this at all. Black millionaires, sure. But unless by non-bush republican you mean some form of republican that doesn't currently exist in Washington, the middle-class and non-millionaire business owners are not the big beneficiaries of GOP policies.

http://www.npr.org/news/images/2004/jul/27/reuters/obama_140.jpg
"A question from the young gentleman from Georgia?"

not sure if that's apropos of anything or not

also, yeah, if yr. in a region where the democrats aren't just the historic party of dixiecrats but the current one, then that changes the dynamic too. but this all has much less to do with race in general than the peculiarities of local city politics (which has zilch all to do with anything *except* for small business owners anyway)

xxpost

Can modern american convservatives genuinely claim to be good for business? Absolutely not! All evidence points to the contrary, Bush or otherwise (i.e. Reagan).

xpost:
All I said was who I'd vote for. If someone wants to make the case for the black Christian conservative vs. Robert Byrd -- or fan Dan's dad, for that matter -- have at it.

And I could understand not voting for someone who had ever belonged to the KKK, regardless of their current beliefs or behavior. That's a legitimate position. Just not one I would personally take if the choice was between Byrd and current Republican conservative.

another xpost

It looks like somebody just heard of him for the first time today and decided that the "modern american left" is "the party of robert byrd."

Four years later, Byrd's Klan past became an issue again when he joined with other southern Democrats to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Byrd filibustered the bill for more than 14 hours as he argued that it abrogated principles of federalism. He criticized most anti-poverty programs except for food stamps. And in 1967, he voted against the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, the first black appointed to the Supreme Court.

...

James Tolbert, president of the West Virginia chapter of the NAACP and an occasional critic of the senator, said Byrd transcended his past by gradually embracing more enlightened social views and by simply owning up to his past mistakes. "He doesn't try to lie his way out of things," Tolbert said. "If he's wrong, he'll say he's wrong."

...

Last week, Byrd said: "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times . . . and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

But anyway, he's hardly representative of the "modern American left".

x-post, yeah, it would be hard to vote for him if I lived in West Virginia.

But yes, hardly representative of the modern American left or right, really.

malcolm x to thread!

kidding............but i think it's interesting which turnaround stories people believe and which ones they don't.

i'm curious, would people be more quick to forgive byrd if he were a convicted murderer?

i mean fuck the kkk but people on this thread are sure patting themselves on the back for How Much They Hate Racism

whatever

See, that sounds like a cop out to me. If he was just upfront and said, "yeah I was a racist idiot, but I'm not anymore," it wouldn't leave such a bad taste in people's mouths.

You would have to go find some white people like that and ask them.

not that you were gonna of course

Of course, a whole separate question can be posed about how the actual American left presently fetishizes race while ignoring or back-burnering gender and class, which are inextricably tied up with race, and how this strategy will result/demonstrably does result in a left as nutless as an imaginary one which focused on gender to the exclusion of race and class, or (hardest yet to imagine) one that zeroed in on class to the exclusion of race and gender. But this question is a pretty uncomfortable one for most leftists, who like to worry a single issue to death while the power structure cackles at the incompetent little lefty machine running around in circles over there in the corner.

yeah, but it's fucking LUZERNE COUNTY, pennsylvania.

anyway, shouldn't the jews have NYC and not the italians?

Wait a minute, so the Democratic party is racist because of Byrd and welfare reform but you're prepared to criticize people on the left who vote third party? So how exactly are you anything but a republican apologist?

-- _ (...), October 4th, 2005.

they tend to hold their noses and vote Dem because crazed Dem dickriders browbeat them about how "the time will come for a third party but that time isn't now, because this election is so important" blah blah fucking blah - every four years third-party ppl hear this bullshit from their doubtless well-meaning drank-the-koolaid Dem friends.

But "all those leftists" - I'm not arguing that there're really that many of them! The American left has been successfully marginalized almost completely out of existence; people like your good self want to imagine that Democratic Party = left but it's just not so. People either 1) become jaded and disenfranchised; Marx thinks this is a good thing since it's a necessary condition for revolution, I'm not nearly so confident about all that; 2) vote for Democrats in the vain, sad hope that Democrats will set a leftist agenda once in power; 3) ally themselves with very small splinters of the existing left (CPUSA, environmental groups, whatever) and focus in on their niche issue - which is rather masturbatory, for sure, but masturbating beats gettin' none at all surely

so to answer your question: they engage ineffectually with politics! I guess for you "engaging with politics" means "voting for politicians who share none of your values (as your own thread began by noting!) but who once upon a time paid lip service to them"

also fuck right off with that lofi stuf pls thx

xpost more strawman crap, nobody repulses me nor did I say so - I love everybody! do you actually know anything about this "far left fringe" that you think can be characterized in a single broad dismissive stroke btw? got some incendiary links or something?

He obviously is Republican because there are only two parties and only two ideologies in life. The far-right is the most diverse group of people on earth as they include everything from a centralized and totalitarian/fascist government to a libertarian paradise where there is almost no central government to freakin' monarchists. How you get all those people in one tent is beyond me.

I'll never vote for another Texas Democrat after the 2002 debacle, barring Jim Hightower running again (and hell, he backed the Greens in 2000) or Ralph Yarborough coming back from the dead.

As I've said in previous threads, 'voting' is a terrible stick with which to beat 'third-party' advocates. Voting is nothing. Voting is the absolute least-involved you can possibly be with politics without complete apathy.

If you don't mind my asking, where or on what do you and he agree specifically?

White radicals drive like this...

xpost Ethan and Bush agree that south GA hiphop gets slept on by the Source

Ah right.

Well then Chris Stamey owes me $15.99.

(also, I fuckin' voted for his sorry ass anyway, so get off the "ineffectual!" tip: I voted for the "effectual" "left" solution like a good drone)

and this means precisely WHAT?!?

xpost, dude i called kerry a racist on this thread already get off the dick

Noted. Whenever I read Bush speak about something I might theoretically agree with I always am amazed at how uselessly protean the language is.

:)

and what exactly makes john kerry a racist in your opinion?

Eisbar it means John Kerry doesn't give two shits about the pressing racial issues in American society!

again, what does this mean -- other than "what john and/or ethan think are the pressing racial issues in American society"?

Well, what exactly is he advocating? I can't tell. Dems are racist and non-voters or third-party leftists are doing nothing, so the alternative is... what exactly?

The far-right is the most diverse group of people on earth as they include everything from a centralized and totalitarian/fascist government to a libertarian paradise where there is almost no central government to freakin' monarchists. How you get all those people in one tent is beyond me.

It's simple: economics. The totalitarian fascists, the libertarians and the monarchists are all opposed to any regulation of business and value the interests of capital over the interests of human life. Whether the resulting regimes would allow us to smoke pot or not is pretty much irrelevant to me.

hi, you're a moron!

Which is why Mussolini said, "Laissez faire is out of date" and why Hitler's economic policy resembles a staunch libertarian.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Points.html

11 That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12 Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13 We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14 We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15 We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
16 We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalisation of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small trades people, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

You phailed. And if consumerists care so little about people compared to socialists then how come the U.S. government didn't kill .01% of the number of people killed in their countries?

I know little about monarchism so I can't really argue their economic policy.

the nazis didn't like capital cos it meant lots of people besides germans got rich. like jews.

Yup. Fuck the 40-hour week and minimum wage, but keep your hands off our Mickey Mouse.

You would be wise to check out how low unemployment was for black teenagers (hint: lower than white kids) before the 1948 minimum wage change (the law was useless in WWII due to inflation) and how it grew immediately after and continues to remain large to this day. I guess this ties into the original discussion of liberal policies that are meant to help minorities but hurt them and how they should be viewed.

do you have any figures for that?

blacks voting for kerry does not absolve him of racism any more than poor rural whites voting for bush makes republicans good for the poor.

but what EXAMPLES do you have of kerry being a racist in the first place?

does the right really have more of a disdain than the left? does john kerry like black folks more than george w bush??

-- _ (...), October 4th, 2005.

which i simplified into calling kerry a racist to make a point to bn, for real tho as cracker ass silver spoon boston bred ivy league yankee asshole i dont think kerry has any connection to the lives of black americans beyond political gain, and even there he hardly did shit

kerry-haters love to call him out on his upbringing but how was bush's much different? bush is a cracker ass ivy league child of privilege (just like most wealthy politicians are).

and yeah i was a kerry supporter but he definitely could have done more to earn the black vote. that said, he wasn't COMPLETELY dismissive of the class issue, and even though it's wrong to talk about poor whites if you're not gonna talk about poor blacks too, poverty is a MAJOR issue in america any way you look at it. if he has to use poor whites as a stick to beat the republicans with cuz that's what they understand, it's better than nothing i guess.

dude i know everybody wants to get all smug about 'americans' down south but in my experience theres not as many white ethnic posers here ('im not white, im SCOTCH' etc)

there's a wider diaspora among immigrant groups down south -- fewer communities where one distinct ethnicity is heavily represented. maybe if you're estonian-american and you live in alabama and you're the only estonian person you know, you have to supress your ethnic pride a little bit to fit in.

i'm sure there are a lot of people in the south who are of, say, german extraction, but i associate "oktoberfest" type stuff with the german enclaves of the northern states (like pennsylvania, which has a massive german-american population).

p.s. ethan you know as well as i do that if europeans were forcibly ripped from their homelands, enslaved, and denied their language and history.

right, cuz that's never happened to ANYONE in europe (especially not eastern or central europe, nope).

obvious exceptions being cubans in florida and mexicans in the southwest, but cubans and mexicans in america aren't really shy when it comes to addressing their cultural background.

it wasn't, that's exactly the point! you're right that foam-at-the-mouth righties love to play up the "moneyed Massachusetts dem" angle but that's just a gimmick. I'm not a fucking Bush voter, if I felt like all my friends were arguing that Bush had been an excellent candidate I'd be quick to point out that no, he's an asshole. However, e'eybody I know got behind Kerry as if he 1) were anything but a totally sorry candidate and 2) really represented the left, which was and is sad.

anyhow, Eisbar, I don't see how "more blacks voted for Kerry than for Bush" says anything about Kerry himself except that he's a Democrat - neither Ethan or myself are arguing that Kerry wasn't the lesser of two evils, only that he (here as stand-in for the Democratic party) hasn't got any interest in racial politics except insofar as it can win him votes

i mean, is that really evidence enough? even for a hahahaha joke? you know?

relevance to this discussion of this is near zilch.

If you take the following theses as givens:

A) Racial issues will always exist in this country within your lifetime regardless of what you do.

B) Economic advantages help remove race and class issues that stand in your way.

C) You have the ability and opportunity to capitalize on any economic advantages that come your way.

If these form the basis of your personal philosphy, voting Republican is the closest you can get in this country to voting for a meritocracy.

My father didn't come from a wealthy family. He went to college on academic and athletic scholarships, got a job that would partially pay for grad school, got his PhD, then accepted a position as a senior scientist with a company in another state where he worked his way up to the technical director level and helped develop and coordinate an international research lab for a Fortune 100 company. For most of his adult life, he and his family did well when the business was doing well, so he tended to vote for candidates whose economic policies benefitted big businesses (ie, Republicans). It wasn't until after Bush I's disasterous first term that he starting voting Democrat and he was REALLY voting Clinton (the Ivy League + Rhodes Scholar + ability to think and speak stuff impressed him just a tiny bit); he kind of wanted to throw John Kerry into the ocean but he would have voted for Mussolini over Bush II.

god knows that affirmative action quotas are a strange response to this problem but at least (maybe) the intent is there not to keep on favouring the haves over the have-nots.

In general, Republicans want to reward the people who've gotten ahead.

Which one (at a high level) looks more like a meritocracy?

isn't the point that the economic advantages/chances that republicans are alleged to bring to the country tend not at all to promote meritocracy?

They tend to promote nepotism. The big problem is that all solutions tend to promote nepotism; the ones with the higher rewards reflect the worst nepotism.

That totally depends on how much you think "getting ahead" is a function of "merit."

I understand what you're saying, Dan, but I mean, I work for a corporation too, and I'm worried about taking care of my family, and I'm not quite seeing how the promotion of a regulation-free winner-take-all society is in my interest or my family's. I'm never going to be able to afford $20,000-a-year private schooling, so I'm interested in trying to maintain decent public schools. My son's going to have to breathe air all his life, so I'm worried about clean air. I'm lucky to have good health insurance right now, but I know I could theoretically be laid off at some point in the future and I'm not confident that if that happened I'd be able to provide health insurance for my child. Etc. I mean, the Republican Party has managed to turn the Estate Tax -- literally paid only by millionaires -- into a national priority. So unless someone's a millionaire, or is motivated by conservative social concerns, I just don't buy that Republican policies are more productive. Not that Democratic policies are great, but they take more account of the working and middle class by investing in basic public infrastructure and advocating progressive taxes and so forth.

Well but now you're talking about actual Marxists, right? Your definition of "the left" is covering a lot of territory, as it suits your argument. The people you're talking about don't have much in common with Robert Byrd or Bill Clinton, which is where you started. This thread is still dogged by a failure to define its terms: "modern American left," "genuinely," "anti-racist."

It's totally in your interest if you think you can win.

This might be a fundamental philosophical distinction between Democrats and Republicans and is probably why they both irritate me so much (Republicans are cocky bastards who, with a few exceptions, have absolutely no right to their over-inflated self-esteem, while Democrats have already resigned themselves to second place and are trying to turn disappointment and vague self-laothing into a nest egg).

dan your father was partly inspired by rand and objectivism right?

Absolutely. Reading Atlas Shrugged turned him into the white-collar, highly successful (he's turned down both professorships and CEO jobs for quality-of-life reasons) man he is today. Whenever I mention this on ILE, I get the condescending liberal brushoff. COINCIDENCE?

What the fuck is this? You're here arguing about racism and then turn around and call someone those things because of who they are and where they're from? Hypocrite.

Democrats would win more elections if they rallied behind people who are leaders rather than rallying behind people who are nice.

as is the democrat who tells anyone to his left that he's a numbnuts who handed over the predidency in 2000, apparently.

but you're now arguing an extra-political position, as if something can be revolutionary even when it isn't.

Not at all! It's more about rejecting the narrow definition of "winning" that gauges success only by gross income. The most accomplished geography professors and child care workers and environmental engineers and a whole host of other things are never going to be "successful" on the scale of the most accomplished real estate speculators. The idea that people are or should be motivated primarily by how much money they can make -- that material wealth is the best or only aim -- is one of the more objectionable features of modern conservatism. Unless you think that someone who teaches in public schools for 40 years should be consumed by "disappointment and self-loathing" at their failure to be rich, your argument doesn't make sense.

e i kiss you full on the mouth for this

This is OTM

Someone who teaches in public schools for 40 years should make more money than they do currently.

I want to be able to make enough money so that I can support my family in a manner that is comfortable and affords them with opportunities. I refuse to feel guilty for feeling this way and I reject your definition of success; it does not work for me.

I don't think McCain can win a primary. Also, he's a crony and very conservative, good at propping up this carefully crafted maverick image. I would have gladly voted for Lieberman. Don't agree with him on a lot of foreign policy but there is a vast difference between a conservative Republican and a centrist Democrat!

one hell of a catholic you are there, bub

I agree, though McCain hasn't been terribly vocal about a lot of the questionable economic policies his party as pursued (which I'm sure is because he is personally more interested in national-security issues). If he was to run on a ticket with someone preaching fiscal sanity -- which by my definition would include acknowledging that some of the more privileged sectors of society might have to pay higher taxes to dig us out of this horrible budgetary hole Bush has plunged us into -- I'd certainly give them some real consideration. But short of a full-on Republican crack-up, I can't imagine that McCain will run again. Not only would he have to work very, very hard to raise money, but he seems increasingly frail physically.

More bullshit. Where is this happening? I mean, I'm sure it's been said (presumably by these "radical lefties" you know, who sure sound like dicks but sure make convenient "examples", but most of the criticism of Rice I see has to do with her actual words and actions. Now, you can read hidden racism into that, but that's also convenient in being totally un-disprovable. If I tell you that I think it's worth something symbolically to have a black female secretary of state, but that I still don't trust Rice or think much of her performance, you can accuse me of being both a condescending liberal (for token symbolism) and a secret racist (for not liking Condi). Which are easy to say and hard to disprove.

xpost:
Dan, it doesn't have to do with "feeling guilty." And public school teachers cannot make more money unless people pay more taxes.

Nobody thinks that. But, I am liberal and would therefore prefer to vote for a liberal.

and all the left can do is call her an aunt jemima
More bullshit

OTM
"the left" = some dude with a blog

Dan, it doesn't have to do with "feeling guilty." And public school teachers cannot make more money unless people pay more taxes.

WOW, REALLY???? I didn't know that because I'm an idiot!

xpost:
Argh, I didn't say you were an idiot! But I guess that's easier than explaining how you want your public school teachers to be paid more while deriding Democratic policies that embrace "second place" "self-loathing" etc.

if you read this as though there were no sarcasm whatsoever in it, it's really, really funny

I am a person and would therefore prefer to vote for someone who's going to create a system where I can best succeed. This is why I've vote Democrat in the past; the question I'm asking myself now is "How long can I continue to support an ineffectual, fangless and aimless political party?"

Argh, I didn't say you were an idiot! But I guess that's easier than explaining how you want your public school teachers to be paid more while deriding Democratic policies that embrace "second place" "self-loathing" etc.

I didn't know that "self-image" and "policies" were identical.

Also, you can pigeonhole my attitudes all you want but they're actually relatively complex and contradictory.

Which stated principles of conservatism do you find admirable?

The general concept of fiscal responsibility was completely co-opted by the old-skool Republican party, to the point where the nu-skoolers can burn through money like it was kindling and people STILL think fiscal responsibility is a conservative value.

condi rice cussing out rich white men

does anybody really think the aunt jemima/uncle tom/house negro shit about black republicans is some kinda fringe position on the left?

Many of the collegiate black Democrats I knew called Colin Powell a token back in 1995.

lemme know when you wanna stop pretending I'm a dem apologist: I fucking hate the democratic party

can we just pretend on every post where i praise an element of conservatism theres a big disclaimer that says STATED PRINCIPLES OF and im not praising republicans who contradict that?

Ethan, you said "old-school right" - this doesn't seem to me a ref to "stated principles"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

i think this is condescending, because you're basically saying 'go condi' simply on the basis of who she is, not what she does. unless 'teaching the president everything he knows' (aka fuck-all) is some kind of achievement

All I can think of is Chris Rock.

"One...rib?"

bn i just mean the libertarian cultural non-interventionist shit

"How long can I continue to support an ineffectual, fangless and aimless political party?"

Yeah, I sympathize, it's frustrating. Lack of vision, right now. I come from a family that's hardcore Democrat (grandfathers were union guys working in the mines, parents work in public education) and I couldn't see myself ever switching parties. I still think the Dems, though not great at winning elections lately, are likely to be competent when in power and able to do a better job of governing. GOP seems not so capable in that department, too full of ideologues distant from reality and seemingly no one concerned with the consequences of their policies.

in a word, yeah.

really the rice thing is just interesting to see liberals completely abandon their beloved 'first xxxx politician' jones cuz they disagree with the politics of the minority who is blazing the trail
-- _ (...)

well, you're right re. thatcher in this connection. but 'they' [liberals, feminists] shd never have had that jones in the first place, ie 'they' shouldn't have been a 'they', it shouldn't have been an issue. (of course that's ridiculous idealism.)

Well, they have a Santorum, who thinks women should stay in the home and gays are a threat to society. That sort of sexism and bigotry OK with you?

. Dude, I don't agree with you. If that's condescending, that's condescending. What the fuck.

But ethan, so now you're saying that to be true to their principles liberals should support people who don't support those principles, just because they happen to be black or female or whatever? But if liberals did support Condi just because she was black and female even though they didn't agree with her, surely that would be condescending and patronizing? And of course, no matter what they do or say, you can always find a scent of hidden racism or whatever. Boy, making fun of liberals sure is a hoot, ain't it?

I come from a family that's hardcore Democrat (grandfathers were union guys working in the mines, parents work in public education) and I couldn't see myself ever switching parties.

The vast majority of my extended family works in the public sector (primarily teaching), so I know what you mean. Moving to a state that tends to goes Democrat for national and local elections and Republican for state elections kind of made me confront a lot of my prejudices about the Republican party (fueled by Reagan and Bush I); Romney can go fuck his hat but I was kind of shocked when I realized that I agreed with Weld way more often than I disagreed with him. His entire affiliation to the Republican party was due to fiscal concerns; socially he could out-liberal a good 75% of the Democrats on the scene today.

This is a beautiful phrase.

haha daria I love ethan a lot & often think he's right on, but as far as I know both gays & women can hang in the breeze for all he cares, he's a one-issue candidate

right, because the only people who have this reaction are white people. meanwhile, black people commonly take great pride in condi's position. as for her boots, name me a single precedent of a young, unmarried Cabinet Secretary with anything remotely approximating conventional sex appeal.

also, "aunt jemima," really? you have actually heard one person use this term? ever?

I have heard black people use it quite often. I would not be surprised if, in a much more outspoken-on-race area of the country (ie, the South), white people said it just as often.

I am starting to suspect that a lot of the liberal ILXors hang out with robots.

xpost to gabbneb's question. Do one search on the term "aunt jemima" on ILX for cryin' out loud.

the traditionally white male base of ALL party politics

i guess you've never been to any meeting of volunteers/grassroots/organizers of either major political party. and are unconcerned that women outvoted men in 2004 54-46.

-- foxy boxer (stevieisdrinkingdosequi...), October 5th, 2005. (stevie) (later) (link)

this is, in places, the most retarded ILX thread i have ever read.

xpost

(dudes, chill, just devil's advocate and shit)

Oh really? That's why there's been so much piling on by others about "condsecending liberals" and a lot of other weak Hannity-lite stereotyping and lazy nonsense about how Republican policies help the working man and so forth? All part of the same straw man? Golly.

It's not J/K hyperbole and strawmen used to make a point are not necessarily the greatest ways of doing things but they aren't exactly "haha j/k" either.

i'm not arguing, i'm just asking ethan to defend part of what he proffers as evidence to support the 'strawman' he is creating. saying Kerry is a racist to support the suggestion that the left are not 'genuinely' anti-racist and not being able to back it up except with a weak haha joke is not 'playing devil's advocate', its just weak.

Also I like how you guys don't seem to understand English.

-- The Ghost of Black Elegance (djperr...)

'you guys'. does this mean everyone outside of your back-slappy circle jerk, Dan? please, again, define 'playing devil's advocate' in a way that encompasses the 'Kerry is a racist' thing again.

(and this is making the rather large allowance for some largely conjectural "non-bush republicans" -- william weld is not the face of the modern American right)

re: black business owners, do a search on Urban Empowerment Zones (a program created by Clinton) and the controversies surrounding them. I am not saying that I necessarily believe that anyone would be better under New Strawman Here, but the modern American left as represented by the Democratic party sure kind of didn't help that much for black (and other minority) small businesses owners, they used plans keyed exactly to that purpose to give money to Old Navy et al. Which of course hasn't changed since Clinton but we did specify "non-Bush Republicans" so who knows.

Which is a tangent. But I don't think the idea or urban development/empowerment zones is necessarily bad, it's all in the details. And subsidizing Old Navy sounds like a bad idea unless you consider that all Old Navys are basically subsidized one way or another (suburban highways and infrastructure, etc.), so maybe subsidizing them in urban or low-income areas is progress of a sort.

Right but those are all liberal values. How and when have those ideas ever been advanced by conservatives or Republicans in the US?

xpost

And it's kind of horribly insulting, that Old Navy argument. In what way does shutting out long-term, viable small businesses in an urban area (traditionally fairly resistant to enormo-chain-suburbia-stores, Starbuck's and its fast food ilk non-withstanding) equal a sign of progress? I mean this is the same argument used when Bush claims he's creating jobs...I mean, yeah, at McDonald's, sure. If that was some ethan style devil's advocating, I apologize.

to the best of my knowledge, i've never called condoleeza rice an "aunt jemima," here or IRL. which doesn't mean that i am particularly fond of HER, mind you.

"I think discrimination is wrong" is a value.
"You shouldn't discriminate against people" is not.

Fiscal responsibility could just as easily describe progressive taxation of wealth, reduced military spending, and protection of economic resources through better environmental regulations.

1000% OTM.

but the action is driven by values -- that is what rasheed is getting at! those who favor progressive taxation have a set of values that have them to advocate that form of taxation as the most optimal one to accomplishing their values.

I'm a little unclear on what you're arguing here. Do you believe that we should never turn our values into legislation? That "I think discrimination is wrong" shouldn't turn into civil rights laws? The belief that those who receive the greatest benefit from society should give back the most is a liberal value. Do you agree with that philosophy but don't think it should be legislated?

i'm not totally playing dumb, i can think of half a dozen things right off the top of my head (housing, THE DRUG WAR, education spending, policing, affirmative action & academic measurement, "cultural noninterventionism" [no one is particularly strong on this, you're right] [fuck a soccer mom], katrina, etc etc)

but i DO hear this stuff being discussed on the left/within the dems. so, how much does criticism that the dems are not anti-racist coincide with criticism that they consistently fail their left end? or, "WHAT ARE WE DO DO ETHAN HUH HUH??"

anyway, as long as you're here i've always wanted to ask you what you thought of rap's libertarianism.

i think they should pursue a more aggressive stance on racial issues, engaging with public concerns and furthering black, hispanic and asian representation in the party, and that closing the poverty gap between whites and minorities should be considered one of the 2 or 3 most important issues in america

i'm not totally playing dumb, i can think of half a dozen things right off the top of my head (housing, THE DRUG WAR, education spending, policing, affirmative action & academic measurement, "cultural noninterventionism" [no one is particularly strong on this, you're right] [fuck a soccer mom], katrina, etc etc)

military, religion, social influence, reparations...

but i DO hear this stuff being discussed on the left/within the dems. so, how much does criticism that the dems are not anti-racist coincide with criticism that they consistently fail their left end? or, "WHAT ARE WE DO DO ETHAN HUH HUH??"

i dont know! i started this thread to ask and the ppl who havent gotten all bitchy or defensive or smarmy or racially dumb have given me good answers so far

anyway, as long as you're here i've always wanted to ask you what you thought of rap's libertarianism.

well yeah im down for it of course!! alot of rappers are somewhat conservative on socio-cultural values like abortion or homosexuality but generally dont wanna fuck anybody elses game up (ive heard 'more females for me' as a defense of gayness alot) and the rappers most obsessed with hating on gay marriage or what the fuck ever are usually non-radio friendly "conscious" (mos def, common) or sci fi nerds (canibus, killah priest), and of course other libertarian values like drug legalization and gun rights is some shit rappers will go to war for. one of the things that slid me further moderate on economic issues is working with so many strong black business owners here in georgia who dont wanna pay huge taxes or get fucked in the ass by restrictions and regulations, but 90% of these business owners still vote democratic on a national level

hint: the GOP doesn't really care about small businesses, either.

xpost - But then what's the point? If you agree that conservatives/Republicans generally don't actually live up to their STATED PRINCIPLES, why not write those principles off as the fairy tales they are?

xpost

milo's xpost remark, btw, is right fucking on: who gives a shit what lip service dems or repulicans pay to values they don't actually put into play?

I feel bad for bashing libs/Dems because the people on the ground often have their hearts in the right place.

xpost again - I voted for Nader (hoping for 5%, would have voted for the Libertarian if he had a chance at 5%) in 2000, and ended up voting for Kerry last November because the only three on my ballot were Bush/Kerry and Cobb. A write-in would have been a waste and I didn't think to just leave it blank.

That's not a good criterion, actually, and it's a pet source of blackmail material for closeted racists who would like to project their sins onto everyone else. Everybody and their brother infiltrated the Klan at some point.

more importantly, how does a dude get on welfare?? cuz i'm all over that if that's possible.

We have? Here are a few reasons why Democratic policies are good for small businesses:

- Raising taxes on the very wealthy (not small business owners) and giving the middle class tax relief means more money in the pockets of consumers which means more money for local businesses which means they can hire more employees, etc.

- Universal health care would take a huge burden off of small business owners who have to pay for their employees' health care.

- Greater regulation of big business can lead to more opportunity for small local businesses. For example, if media ownership rules were tightened there would be room for hundreds of locally owned media outlets rather than one giant conglomerate like Clear Channel.

- When Republicans cut the amount of federal money that is given to state and local programs, a much bigger burden is placed on state budgets. This is made up by increased property taxes and sales taxes which shift the burden onto local businesses.

We had eight years of Clinton and got, uh, welfare 'reform' and the tech bubble while real wages continued to decline.

I don't know where you live but 75% of the middle-class people I know shop at Costco/Sam's Club/BJ's. Only the hardcore foodies do the mom-and-pop thing.

Universal health care would take a huge burden off of small business owners who have to pay for their employees' health care.

Where is the money for this coming from? What level of health care are you talking about providing here?

Greater regulation of big business can lead to more opportunity for small local businesses. For example, if media ownership rules were tightened there would be room for hundreds of locally owned media outlets rather than one giant conglomerate like Clear Channel.

Is there demand for hundreds of locally-owned media outlets? Have people stopped listening to the radio and watching television because of Clear Channel's land grab?

When Republicans cut the amount of federal money that is given to state and local programs, a much bigger burden is placed on state budgets. This is made up by increased property taxes and sales taxes which shift the burden onto local businesses.

... And local homeowners. Assuming, of course, that the property tax is being paid to the state and not the city.

basically, sliding moderate = not being a big smelly horses ass when fiscal conservatism comes up, i would never argue this myself but alot of black conservatives stand on that argument that promoting self-reliant black businesses instead of welfare handouts will do alot more to fight black poverty instead of the perpetual band-aid that liberals want in order to keep the black vote

We can argue all day about which politician represents the left or the right and whether Dems are really liberal or Reps are really conservative. The bottom line is that we basically have two parties and over the past 40 years or more, Democrats have overwhelmingly been the party that supports progressive taxation, regulation of business and spending for social programs while the Republican party has overwhelmingly been on the side of regressive taxation, loosening business regulations and cutting social spending. Of course we can point to examples to the contrary on either side but do you really doubt that the ideologies of the two parties fall loosely along these lines? If we ever get universal health care do you think it will really come from the republicans?

Yeah, you upper-middle-class college kids, whose parents have been slandering everybody and your brother keep telling yourselves that - but you know the truth.

You flat-out don't deserve to be in college if you don't realize that the Klan had lots and lots of infiltrators.

Please stop the slanderous lies.

And -once again- I've been to enough of your boards to know that 'KKK' is one of your codes for my family.

My parents put K's on all of their kids names 'cos you were already slandering them as racists.

Fact is - you can't get information out of people WITHOUT infiltrating.

Stop the slanderous, isolating, talking-all-the-time-about-me-and-pretending-you're-not BULLSHIT.

It's called 'blackballing', and it's your nasty little Ivy League organized crime habit, and it ends HERE.

Go ahead and ignore this, you slanderer.

Outrageous that you would deny that anyone anti-racist would EVER go 'into' or associate with 'the Klan'. Someone ought to revoke your diploma, like you wish mine would be.

'Oh help - I'm a sheltered little WASP and I need to know how not to be racist'.

Bitch - if you even have to ASK.

And stop talking in code about me.

Ignore this, Ivy League bitch. This ain't your board. Get the fuck lost.

'Cos you don't have an eloquent argument to counter me, and you know it.

Oh go ahead - dial up another one of your 'car crashes'.

haha simian if you knew this guy like I do you'd feel really, really stupid accusing him of being "Ivy League"

http://www.bjs.com/

Just down the road in Medford!

xpost to kerry, dan you are batshit insane in the good way

Well, this gets into the death of the mom and pop store but there are still all sorts of locally owned businesses that are affected by consumer spending from car dealerships to gun shops.

Where is the money for this coming from? What level of health care are you talking about providing here?

Regardless of the level of care, the money is coming from progressive taxation. In other words, the wealthiest corporations and the top 1% of rich billionaires would be paying a greater amount, and profit would be taken out of the health insurance system which would lead to lower costs. Like any type of federal spending based on progressive taxation, you have money getting redistributed from the richest areas to the poorest so in effect California would be subsidizing the health care of Arkansas. So Disney and Microsoft make a little smaller profit while the small business owner in Arkansas would save a bit of money.

Is there demand for hundreds of locally-owned media outlets? Have people stopped listening to the radio and watching television because of Clear Channel's land grab?

Well, before Clear Channel, there were hundreds of locally owned media outlets including minority-owned radio stations. The deregulation of media ownership changed that situation drastically. Of course the Democrats aren't blameless in that particular example but I think it shows that in general, the principles of regulation don't always hurt small businesses.

i always used to like A&P

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

it's not like "taxing the rich" is an endless source of free money that can cure all economic or social ills.

Agreed, but this is in the context of "which party is good for business" and why black business owners would vote Republican. If you're saying the Democrats actual policies are indistinguishable from the Republicans than that doesn't really answer the question. In fact I think it's largely because of this myth that New Deal style liberalism is bad for business that the Democratic party was forced to move to this economically conservative, Clinton/DNC approach.

There's an old book by Richard Lindberg - the White Sox historian. It's called "Chicago by Gaslight". I hope you know what gaslighting is. And wasn't there an Ivy club called 'the gas'? Why, yes there was! If you look closely enough at history, you'll see that your evidence of your covert stalking bullshit is ALL OVER THE PLACE.

I have evidence of attempted murder. Stop feigning indifference, or consider yourselves accessories.

Oh, and one of my ISPs was 'coincidentally' shut down today.

Go on then - sue me for libel. But you won't, 'cos you know there will be a counter-suit that you can't win.

But the 'ignoring' game isn't working for me, either.

Fact is - you datamined all of the ilxors, like you did to me - like you've been doing to my family for decades. And you take that datamining and create a superficial 'clone' of an ilxor...'cos 'keeping up appearances' is what it's all about with you Ivy Gang-bangers.

But your writing styles and personality styles don't match.

But hell - you know damn well that your parents won't notice. And that's what this is really all about. You don't want to get in trouble with mommy and daddy.

And you called me 'batshit insane'. Why? 'Cos slander and libel are your bags. And then you expect me to take it 'lying down'? Why, that's a frat mentality, isn't it?

xpost holy fucking shit

I don't know where you live but people here aren't buying guns every other week. I did have a friend who was buying a car once every other week but he was going directly to owners, not going through dealerships.

Regardless of the level of care, the money is coming from progressive taxation. In other words, the wealthiest corporations and the top 1% of rich billionaires would be paying a greater amount, and profit would be taken out of the health insurance system which would lead to lower costs.

I would think that the level of health care provided would be a nontrivial issue seeing as it directly impacts the amount of money you're expecting these corporations to pay but clearly that was just crazy thinking on my part. It also seems that you don't have a clear understanding of the role profit plays in both business growth and innovation; no profit = no R&D = no new technologies = no new products. (Simplified and overstated, I know.)

Well, before Clear Channel, there were hundreds of locally owned media outlets including minority-owned radio stations.

Yes, there were. Are people (besides the minorty that ILM represents) clamoring for that back? How does your regulation model allow for the fiscal growth necessary for all of these mom & pop radio stations to retain and grow their market share and continue to generate revenue, activities they will need to do in order to remain open and continue broadcasting?

thats the batshit part

"Everybody and their brother infiltrated the Klan at some point"

thats the insane part

dan what part of the south is your wife from?

Raised in Memphis!

Absolutely not! That's a funny idea though. So if you needed to get around environmental restrictions or you just need some good old fashioned cheap child labor you would have to hire the African-American-owned company to do your dirty work?

if you tax supa rich people or big corporations they will take measures to make sure that their profits stay consistent. just sayin'

There are limits to what "measures" they can take though. If you're saying that they would cut employee's salaries or raise prices that might be true but a competitor could decide to take the cut in profits, keep their prices the same and steal the other company's business along with their now disgruntled employees. So in other words, there are limits to how much a company can attempt to maximize its profits if it faces competition.

If you're talking about hiding their money overseas and other tax cheats then I think that's a good argument for greater legislation prohibiting that kind of thing.

it's not like "taxing the rich" is an endless source of free money that can cure all economic or social ills.

Wow, thanks for clearing that up for me.

xpost, rasheed stated it much more elegantly than I could ever manage:

Taxing the idle profits of wealthy corporations gives those corporations an incentive to invest their windfalls in the expansion of productive capacity, thus creating jobs and generally contributing to improved overall economic well-being. Untaxed profits are generally placed into savings or used to buy back shares, neither of which contributes -- at least not as immediately -- to economic growth.

How does your regulation model allow for the fiscal growth necessary for all of these mom & pop radio stations to retain and grow their market share and continue to generate revenue, activities they will need to do in order to remain open and continue broadcasting?

Well, there's a certain level of health care being provided now and it's generally being paid for by the individual or by his employer with a bit of profit added to the top by the insurance company. Now take that same level of care, remove the insurance industry profits, and distrubute the burden nationally across all taxpayers. The end result should be that a local, small business is going to be paying less and WalMart is going to be paying more. Obviously the actual logistic and economic specifics of this sort of plan are complicated but however you work it out, the small business owner with 10 employees is going to be saving thousands of dollars a month.

It also seems that you don't have a clear understanding of the role profit plays in both business growth and innovation; no profit = no R&D = no new technologies = no new products. (Simplified and overstated, I know.)

I could be wrong but the way I understand it, money that is invested back into the business via R&D is not taxed. So in fact greater taxes on profits would promote greater reinvestment into companies via higher salaries, investments in new infrastructure, etc. if the owners want to avoid taxation.

Yes, there were. Are people (besides the minorty that ILM represents) clamoring for that back?

Maybe the small business owners who were forced out of business?

How does your regulation model allow for the fiscal growth necessary for all of these mom & pop radio stations to retain and grow their market share and continue to generate revenue, activities they will need to do in order to remain open and continue broadcasting?

I'm not sure as I'm not actually proposing a specific regulation model so all I can really say is ... however things used to work pre-Clear Channel.

Now, now, now - you're backpedalling. Oh for christ's sakes - you puritans are so linguistically deprived that you don't recognize hyperbole. Obvious hyperbole doesn't merit another one of your swipes at my blog.

But it was done, and often. Ooopsie...another 'number one' got his facts wrong.

Ooooo, he's squirming, he's squirming.....

C'mon...why don't we just re-title this thread, "what criteria should we use to slander and libel people?" 'Cos I guess you fucked up, Ivy Boy, and maybe you're trying to re-assess the tactics?

I mean shit - by your peoples' lights, anyone who ever shook hands or had a polite conversation with an alleged 'Klan member', or even a REAL Klan member is therefore a 'Klan member'. It's not as if anyone ever tried to engage those people out of a sense of Christian ministry and duty....and that's something else about American history and culture you know nothing about, because you people don't believe in engaging. No, you just isolate and slander. That's a great way to flip the bird at democracy and even-handed discourse, and it's also a tactic of avoiding change.

I'd be wary of ANY politics of labeling. All politics of labeling are self-serving, done for show, and counter-productive. So if you think you can be anti-racist just by finding the right people to associate with....bzzzzt, try again!

Guilt is just another form of self-indulgence. And that's the real problem with some white people's politics of anti-racism - it's all about appearances and slander and labels, "what do I have to do to not 'look' racist?"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.....don't you people believe in such a thing as conscience?

P.S. - that's not Ethan and you know it. You -profiled- me. You knew my father hung out with blacks and that I lived -until recently- in a majority black suburb. So, let's get a black 'identity' to bash her. Oh yeah, and let's get a fake Irish identity to repudiate her 'blackballing' testimony. And oh yeah....let's drag out Ethan, you know, the little 'white trash' brother-in-arms? Oh yeah, 'cos we WASPs are *obsessed* with ethnicity, and we have to turn everyone into a caricature - they've all been profiled, they're all your little 'characters' now. Whose personal hell is this? It ain't mine - 'cos I've already survived all of your bullshit, and you have not.

It's so fucking transparent. And EVERY time I call you on your bullshit, I get results. Someone in the papers validates my suspicions, someone at work, or somebody has a shitfit and shuts down my ISP or blocks me in some other way.

This is a fucking show trial, and I'm game, 'cos I can write all fucking night. You ought to know that if you've been reading all my diaries and e-mails.

You want to shut me down? Prove to everyone who is watching this show trial that you are as articulate as I am.

And to be "clear" I'm not talking about K-RON, the all-Dianetics drive-time revival hour. Someday I need to figure out how to work those hyphen thingies properly.

We used to have much stricter limits on media consolidation. They have been scrapped by Republicans from Reagan onward. The most recent effort to further reduce them was passed by Republican FCC commissioners, with the two Democrats on the commission voting against. Of course the backlash against that did include some libertarianish Republicans (a rare instance of libertarians supporting regulation), but still, there's an example for you of the difference between Dem and GOP policies. The simplistic "there's no difference between them" formulation is a nice rhetorical point if you're Ralph Nader, but has the disadvantage of not actually being true.

Okay, I am now officially confused.

P.S. - that's not Ethan and you know it. You -profiled- me. You knew my father hung out with blacks and that I lived -until recently- in a majority black suburb. So, let's get a black 'identity' to bash her. Oh yeah, and let's get a fake Irish identity to repudiate her 'blackballing' testimony. And oh yeah....let's drag out Ethan, you know, the little 'white trash' brother-in-arms?

http://www.iap-tv.com/board/images/smiles/bs_quesexclaim.gifhttp://www.iap-tv.com/board/images/smiles/bs_quesexclaim.gifhttp://www.iap-tv.com/board/images/smiles/bs_quesexclaim.gif

I think you're drastically underplaying the amount of money the insurance company is paying into the system with your assumptions. You also aren't creating a universal health care system; you're creating a health care system for people who pay taxes.

I'm mostly wondering what would happen if the extra burden of supporting the health care system caused the major US corporations to either completely collapse or off-shore all of the positions to cut labor costs so that they could meet the health care bill; I haven't looked at the figures so I have no idea if this is likely to happen but, given that growing/large businesses are already doing this and they don't have to pay the extra health care costs you're talking about, it doesn't seem like it's outside of the realm of possibility.

Ned, our visitor is a person who believes he or she is the victim of a coordinated campaign of harassment, and that one of the tools used to confuse him/her is "identity spoofing" i.e. people posing as other people. This is a pretty common delusion especially among mind-control types. One of the first things you learn in mental health work is that arguing with a delusion is utterly pointless; Ethan could post all day, all year for that matter and our visitor would still believe that E is somebody from his/her life pretending to be a former ilx poster who's gone missing, is in on the con, etc etc. Unless I misread the various posts, simian believes that one person is here pretending to be several.

Again, arguging with these sorts of delusions is actually more insane than the delusions: nothing you say or do can dissuade a person of a genuine delusion, which is what we got here, let's face it Cholly

just sayin'

http://www.livejournal.com/users/raspberrywho

And I was accused of being 'psychotic' lonnnng before I ever posted any of this stuff. 'Cos you people had it planned.

You want my psychiatrist's phone number? He'll tell you that the truly psychotic don't write in lucid, rational sentences.

And I don't subscribe to that 'mind control' stuff - that's just another attempt to deflect from blackballing (and also your use of Scientology to go after me).

'Delusional' - please. I was called that, too, before I posted anything. Why? 'Cos you had it planned.

You gaslit the shit out of me in 2002. Someone repeatedly accessed my apartment, and that was documented and confirmed by my landlord. I had to go to the hospital : 1) 'cos I got a death threat, and 2) 'cos, fact was, I was suffering from exhaustion trying to assemble my case for stalking. I needed to go to the hospital for exhaustion. You know all this shit, because you privately stalk and data-mine me to death. I have too much evidence, and have become emboldened by too much corroboration to keep silent.

But my psychiatrist eventually came to the conclusion that I was exhausted and sleep-deprived. Why don't you fucking ask him, since you're so busy assembling the 'dirt' on me.

Isn't it clear that I no longer care that you're going to call me crazy? You had that planned. You had it planned ever since I busted some guy for impersonating my co-worker on Nerve. That was in 2001, and it escalated ever since. I have piles and piles and piles of documents...so what do you do? You shoot down Ripco, so I can't start posting the e-mails and other files.

Oh, and if you look through the archives, you'll see that I also posted about an attempted hit on my father.

Am I 'delusional' about the attempt on my life and the attempt on my father's life?

It's getting old, final-clubber. I have nothing to lose. And I'm feeling quite well, thanks.

I guess this is my 'trial'. But your opinion of me is worthless. You can't take away my diploma or my articulateness, and that's what this is all about. 'Cos you profile the kids who come from elite universities, and....ooopsie - someone got in who wasn't supposed to.

Cut the crap. I saw you people do this shit to my parents. They pay a bill, and then you lie and say they didn't pay it, and you slander and libel, and slander and libel, and over and over. But you're too arrogant to know that I'm well-versed in all of your pet libels and tactics.

Go ahead, bring 'em on.

This gets into the real rooty problems of "genuine anti-racist policy" though, is that it's tied to economic equality issues across the board, and the two really have to be taken together to get anything done, something MLK Jr. was onto just before he was assassinated.

xpost jesus christ, Kerry, no one has any idea what you're talking about!

No, it's paid for by those who pay taxes but it serves everyone.

I'm mostly wondering what would happen if the extra burden of supporting the health care system caused the major US corporations to either completely collapse or off-shore all of the positions to cut labor costs

The basic assumption behind a universal health care system is that it's actually cheaper overall than the for-profit system we currently have.

given that growing/large businesses are already doing this and they don't have to pay the extra health care costs you're talking about, it doesn't seem like it's outside of the realm of possibility.

The point is that they do already pay the extra health care costs. When uninsured people end up in the emergency room taxpayers end up footing the bill. If people didn't rely on emergency care and let problems go until their health becomes a major issue, then we would save a ton of money.

Unfortunately I think that most corporations would not only offshore more work, I think they would just stop hiring full-time workers entirely if they were asked to bear a greater share of the health-cost burden.

See to me that's a separate problem and one that's easy to address if you don't have an ideological attachment to the idea of a free market. The solution I would propose would be some type of tax incentives for companies who hire workers in the US and tax penalties or even fines for corporations who try to do business in the US while violating human rights overseas. But I guess that's another big can of worms to open.

Old-line manufacturers, particularly auto makers, have been screaming about their health-care expenses with increasing intensity lately.

This is a good reason to take the profit motive out of the insurance system. Right now those manufacturers are paying more for their employee's health care than the actual care costs. And they are already subsidizing the uninsured through these increased insurance premiums.

there have to be some sort of economic studies regarding this, some of which may be available online.

The background colour sent my eyes funny. ILE looks pale green now.

xpost

is evolution covered in school?

abortions for all!

Can we remove state government entirely? Is that feasible, even as a thought exercise?

(Now if you'll excuse me, I need to sign up for my federally-mandated abortion.)

That's a lot of Motrin!

you stole the joke i was gonna make. good work.

I don't think pot is covered :(

none that i'm aware of. most ob/gyns won't even do them.

I think this is why i still don't have a 401k of any sort.

Don't be such a snotty bitch.

I demand an evaluation of the entire thing, my entire life.

You give me a hearing and get back to me, you snotty little bitch.

I have proof. Tell me you don't believe me - I dare you.

I want you ball-less shitheads to tell me to my face that I am a paranoid schizophrenic who is lying about 'attempted murder'.

I give other people a fair shake, and that is documented.

You give me a fair shake and evaluate the whole damn thing, and all of my usenet posts going back to 1996 and everything I've written....and then tell me I have no credibility whatsoever.

Oh, and this is what got me a death sentence:

http://homepage.mac.com/dymaxia

Yeah, really looks like the rantings of a 'crazy person'.

I wasn't pissed off on ilx till about two days ago, and that is a documented fact.

It's not my fault the current Chicago ilx crop don't know me. I was stalked and harassed so bad, and I nearly died when someone sabotaged my bike that I went into hiding after that...and all of those people showed up later.

Got anymore cowardly sniping?

Or will you finally show some fucking class and quit libeling me until you've given me a fair hearing.

'Cos you're acting just like the 'socialites' in high school did.

I've been putting this together since 2002. You think it came out of nowhere? I have a track record for being lucid and rational, and you vain identity thieves keep embarrassing yourselves by not giving me a fair hearing.

That's right - 'cos the blackballers' tactic is to eye-roll and never engage the blackballed directly.

Crazy. Yeah, right. Crazy is what got me through Northwestern.

Oh go roll your eyes some more, you libeling whore.

You don't want me to post more of my 'paranoid schizophrenic' rants?

Then don't act like a pampered, eye-rolling immature bitch. And don't appropriate people's identities unless you can master their styles and personalities.

You think I'm acting irrationally? I saw this coming two years ago. Please, bitch.

Oh yeah - there was an entire board dedicated to it on LUSENET.

And there's a track record of it here, too.

And you know where it started....USENET.

I saw it there, it's documented there, so why shouldn't I believe you're doing the same thing here?

That's not implausible either, and you know it.

Write something articulate - prove you're worthy of your education, or shut the fuck up about me FOREVER.

I want to see articulate paragraphs about it tomorrow.

'Cos you all seem to be in agreement that former membership in or association with the Klan is grounds for permanently labeling someone a 'racist'...and that is verifiably FALSE - something for which you've offered no defense.

There we go - we're back on topic now, aren't we. Oh, but let's not talk about our own idiocies about racism....let's eye-roll some more to deflect from our own ignorance.

Oh yeah, it's just my paranoid schizophrenic crazy Irish imagination again.

But about the Ku Klux Klan.....and about how we should never take Robert Byrd's actual words and voting record into consideration.

:):):)

O God, put pressure on them and their supporters. O God, help the Muslims' leaders support Islam and liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque, strengthen them. O God, spare Muslims of the plots that are being hatched against them. O God, extend support to them, make them steadfast and strengthen their hearts. O God, disappoint the criminal Zionists, destroy the fanatic pagans. O God, support the mujahidin in Palestine and elsewhere. O God, avenge for your faithful subjects. O God, destroy the Zionist aggressors. O God, disperse their assemblies, prevent them from committing aggression against your servants, freeze the blood in their veins, deal with these criminals for they are within your power.

O God, strengthen Islam and Muslims. O God, destroy your enemies, the enemies of Islam. O God, destroy the tyrannical Crusaders, destroy the aggressor Americans. O God, destroy the tyrannical Crusaders. O God, unleash your might on them for the sake of the blood of the innocent children.

True, but it's interesting to note that the rich paid more under Reagan.

http://www.presidentreagan.info/share.cfm

I can't fully debunk that site's numbers after a casual look, but the first thing that pops out at me is that those look like figures for the income tax only. Since the income tax system is set up to be progressive, one way that Republicans make taxes more regressive is by cutting capital gains taxes or cutting (and now attempting to eliminate) estate taxes. Since the very wealthy make most of their money as capital gains rather than straight income, this blurs the picture a bit.

haha good thing you're not applying for medicare now with all the changes that are taking place to the plan(s)! i'm learning all about the new medicare drug benefit for a project i'm involved with; it's seriously complicated shit, and there are something like 46 different plans to choose from, each with its own set of rules, premiums, deductibles, penalties, formularies, cost tiers. and if the applicants don't make the right decision, they may be screwed out of money, time, services, or appropriate medicines.

I haven't read this whole thread yet, but I have to respond to this because it is such utter bullshit. Ethan, I spent the week after the 2004 election examining the Ohio election results ('cause I, you know, live here) and "black republican voters" had precisely NOTHING to do with the swing to Bush. Bush won in Ohio because of a huge rural county (read: white) turnout, which in itself was inspired largely by the presence of an anti-gay measure on the top of the ballot supported by ass-backwards rural preachers.

Oh, and if what you mean by 'black republican voters' is Ken Blackwell . . . well, there's only one of him, and I can flat-out guarantee you that he won't be elected governor in 2006 no matter what evangelical ass he kisses. There are a lot of real black-men-are-coming-to-rape-your-women racists in Ohio and they all vote Republican, but they sure as hell aren't going to vote for Ken Blackwell. I'm sympathetic to the thrust of your viewpoint on this thread, but you make it really hard to take anything seriously when you pull shit like this out of your ass.

i gathered that when i clicked "show all details." (omg datamining)

You have the right to remain silent....

Chicago Police Report, HL258584.

5200 N. Lake Shore Drive, Easter Sunday

Driver's license of the offender (expired, and probably not his):

555154079358, name of "M***** S******".

Quit playing dumb. My name is fucking Kerry [deleted].

And you fucking know what "data mining" is. I got documentation from BankOne and ChaseManhattan that people have been fucking with and shaving my accounts.

That's "data mining".

But you have the right to remain silent....I'm warning you.

You check my shit out, come to my fucking apartment at [deleted] and call me a paranoid delusional liar to my face.

And you have the right to remain silent.

The name is Kerry [deleted] bitches.

Read the blog:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/raspberrywho

And see the pictures.

http://homepage.mac.com/dymaxia

You lie and feign denial and obliquely imply I'm crazy again, and I'll flood this whole goddamn board with my evidence - .pdf's if I have to.

And you have the right to remain silent.

That goes for none of your cowardly eye-rolling and hissing, and using a picture to mock me instead of addressing me directly, 'cos you've been warned that's libel.

I'm backing you into the fucking corner.

You come to my fucking building and tell me to my face I'm crazy.

And you have the right to remain silent.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/raspberrywho

And you have the right to remain silent.

How many times do I have to say "attempted murder".

You have been warned enough times: start co-operating, or be considered an accomplice.

Don't know what I'm talking about?

Then you're either part of it, or you haven't done your homework about what Scientology really does.

Is there some friend you can go hang out with for a little while? I seriously thought you were joking around at first on ILB but I see you are not. I think it is best for your safety if you go to a friend's house.

You have that sing-songy Scientological tone.

Fact is, you are essentially arguing in favor of a permanent 'blackballing' of someone who was ever in 'the KKK'.

My sister's name is Kelly. My brother's name is Kevin. My name is Kerry.

And I've seen you bitches talking in code about 'the KKK', so you stop talking in code.

The less you ignore me, the more you play into my hands.

xpost

kerry, to my knowledge, no one here has anything against you at all. and, just speaking personally, you've been one of my favorite ilXORs!

You are intimating that I haven't. And I have.

I told my brother and sister about the stalking stuff, and they believed it. Oh and...I notice how you avoid anything regarding my father....why is that? And you forged e-mails from my mom too, and you know it. She used an easy password on purpose to see if you'd take the bait. You forged an e-mail telling me to "get my prescriptions filled". So I answered her and spanked the shit out of her, and told her to "fuck off", and you know what? The next time I saw my mother, she made no mention of it, she never told me I needed to "take medication", she never cried or asked for an apology for telling her to "fuck off".

You know why? 'Cos it was a fucking forgery, that's why. And I never got those fucking forgeries again.

You think I don't know my own mother's writing style? She was an English major at Northern Illinois before she dropped out, but who do you think taught me to write? I suppose you'll use that in my next response. I wonder what you'll have to say about my father, 'cos you hate him and you're scared shitless of him...that's why.

I have the e-mails from my brother and sister indicating that they believe me and that they'll help me any way they can. They have NEVER repudiated me. What's next? You want those e-mails? How dare you intimate that they would take your side over theirs. You're slandering and stalking my sister as well, and you ran her out of the building at 4950 N. Marine Drive based on lies.

Oh and...speaking of 4950 N. Marine Drive, how the fuck did that show up in databases on the 'net as my home address? 'Cos I never had a lease there, never had a phone number there, never had a phone bill there, never had a utility bill there....I only had ONE credit card bill sent there ('cos I started using all sorts of addresses in an effort to throw them off), and guess what? It was ChaseManhattan.

I'm not playing your games. And you flat-out say that I haven't talked to them, and I have. You've got a lot of nerve.

That's the game, people - I give them personal information, and they take that, adapt, and base their next volley on it. Let's see what you do with THIS.

Go ahead and call me disruptive, paranoid schizophrenic or whatever.

This is the private dirt that Scientology set up, and then used it against me when I had no choice but to cave. You harass the shit out of someone, and when they break and "see a doctor" or "seek help" or whatever, you seize the opportunity to use that against them.

This is exactly what they don't want....and that's why I have to do it.

When they make a factual error, when I call them out on libel, when they make an accusation they can't prove, and I post the facts....they go back, try again, revise, and come back with a more subdued, polite version of the same intimations...this time using whatever information I've given them.

I've done it in the past, and it's worked for me.

So, oh yeah - I have a brother and a sister. They knew that already, of course, but now I have given them permission to use that information (this is what they think). They're so dumb that they don't realize that there are all sorts of assumptions in the suggestion that I talk to them. At this point, they're just trying to convince themselves that they've "got something". When all else fails, get them to personally disclose.

You just watch this thread. There was some role-playing and gaslighting up above, and that's why I stepped in. 'Cos I found that covert 'KKK' shit on another board, and once, a long time ago, when I worked in Northwestern's Library, a black co-worker joked about my initials being "KKK". That's a "mark". That was bait for them, and now they're pretending they don't know what I'm talking about.

You know I hate to be the center of attention and "disruptive", but it feeds them, and every time I go offline for a while...it gets worse, and I usually end up having "an accident" or something.

So, I am bound by conscience and I have a duty to myself to do this, but I also have to do it to "clear" all of the slanders and make worthless all of the private info they have gathered on me.

Just watch how it works.

Oh, and J - no need for e-mails. I'm feeling fine. The more I play this role they want me to play, the better I feel actually. I guess I am supposed to do this.

That's a relief. Feel better than fine soon.

Some Background
Symptoms from Chemtrail sprayings

A One, Two Punch?

On February 20, 1999, strange "Contrails" were reported over Long Island, NY by 'concerned citizens' who also took photos. These photos reveal the characteristic "X" mark seen in almost all cases of chemtrails. Earlier this year, reports by Ken Welch have been posted on various sites on the Internet. His reports are titled Contrail Spraying of Cities is Real Part 1 , Part II, and Part III These articles chronicle Ken's apprehension and dismay at the discovery that the United States government was brazenly spraying the skies of southern Texas on April 9, 1999 with Chemtrails. Ken has also posted E-mails at his web site that were sent to him in May '99 of reports of sprayings over South Carolina and Indiana . In June, a report from Florida said that sprayings had been going on for weeks over the Ft Lauderdale and Jacksonville areas, including military bases.

It is being reported that people with average or below average immunity are experiencing pneumonia-like respiratory symptoms, while people with stronger immunity are only experiencing slight discomfort for a day or two or no symptoms at all. Some people have gotten very ill and the symptoms seem to keep returning after a short period of improvement. It's possible that some of these sprayings might contain special bioengineered pathogens designed to affect only certain racial groups.

Radio talk show host Jeff Rense has offered the idea that these sprayed pathogens might be part of a Binary weapon system. In other words, a second substance might be required (aerial spraying or substances added to the water supply for example) to bring out the virulent phase of the pathogen, but of course this is only speculation. Rick Malinowski's long and detailed article also suggest the notion of a 2 or 3 part piggy back element to the chemtrail sprayings. My own suspicions are that these sprayings are intended for multiple purposes including low level population reduction (see NWO Population Control), mind control and/or tracking, and to foster weakness and apathy among the general population in anticipation of the New World Order takeover agenda which will likely include the imposition of martial law (a sickly population is a lot more controllable and compliant than a healthy, vigorous one).

William Thomas
William Thomas was the first reporter to attract national attention to the chemtrails issue. He has been interviewed many times on the Art Bell Radio show to discuss the chemtrails story and has many excellent articles and Photos posted at his own web site as well as other locations including-Jeff Rense's Sightings on the Radio . Thomas has concluded that these sprayings are genocidal in nature and are intended to reduce or weaken the general population. In a November '99 interview with Art Bell, Thomas also voiced the idea that there might be a mind control element to the most recent spraying, since many people are reporting mental confusion and depression following recent sprayings. Thomas has reminded radio listeners that the government has had a long history of exposing the public to biological pathogens without their knowledge or consent.
Thomas has also reported that spraying samples have been analyzed and have revealed that many deadly and toxic pathogens have been found including Mycoplasma Fermetens Incognitus (the SAME bioengineered pathogen that Dr Garth Nicholson had discovered in about 45% of the veterans who came down with Gulf War Illness). Thomas found that Mycoplasma, however, was only ONE pathogen among a group of highly toxic biohazard substances analyzed from the chemtrail residues.

Why?
The evidence is obvious and plentiful that these sprayings have been taking place almost daily since the Fall of '98 and many people have gotten sick and undoubtedly some have died from the effects of these pathogen/toxin sprayings, but the $64 question is WHY ?

Some writers have wistfully speculated that the government is trying to vaccinate us against a coming plague of bio terrorist origin. Most people would like to believe that, but the evidence is too strong in the opposite direction. Of course, sprayings might have different intentions for different sectors of the population: Possible population reduction for the weak and immune compromised; possible vaccine protection intended for certain ethnic groups; and possible ID tracking. It's hard to say. Only insiders know the real story, or more probably know some parts of the Real Story.

What most Americans don't realize is that the upper echelons of the United States government is no longer a government "of , by, and for " the people (See the New World Order). The United States government-as with all other major governments of the world-is under the total domination and control of the Illuminati (architects of the so-called New World Order). The Illuminati's plan to reduce the global population by 4 billion people before the year 2050 was laid out in the Global 2000 report assembled by the Carter administration. in the late 70's.

It should be obvious-that in order to REDUCE the world's population from its present size of six billion down to 2 billion (even over a fifty year span) would require that the majority of people now living would have to be exterminated in some way. The amazing thing about the Illuminati is that they place all their ghastly plans right out in the open for everyone to see, if people would only look and read what they are saying.

Debunkers
A genocidal operation of this size and scope would require the Illuminati controllers to promote contravening propaganda in the opposite direction in order to limit or defuse political agitation, possible retaliatory action, and to quell the concerns of the average American who might stumble upon the chemtrail story. It's Standard Operating Procedure for the Illuminati. For example, when Senate committee hearings took place a few years ago (early '90's) on re-examining the Kennedy assassination, just coincidentally an author (and CIA asset) by the name of Gerald Posner, who had recently published a book titled "Case Closed", suddenly appears on the national scene. In his book, Posner claimed unequivocally that Oswald was the lone assassin, that there was no conspiracy involving others, and that the Warren Commission was correct in its original findings. Reviews of his opinions and that of his book received front page coverage throughout mainstream media. Frontline produced a 2 hour "documentary" on Posner's claims which failed to offer opposing views by other Kennedy assassination investigators/authors to refute or take issue with Posner's position.

In 1997, on the 50 year anniversary of the Roswell, New Mexico UFO Crash of 1947, the government offered up a high ranking Air Force officer to make an utter fool of himself on national TV (CNN) by stating that the so called "bodies" of aliens beings-which were recovered from the Roswell crash-were "in fact" really only test dummies that the Air Force had sent aloft to see how they would fare under crash conditions. This orchestrated and staged press conference had already stated that the dummies were deployed in 1954. When one reporter asked this Air Force officer what the connection was between a 1954 test of crash dummies and the 1947 Roswell UFO crash, the stunned officer could only mumble that apparently "time compression" had "taken place". It was a Golden Moment for those of us who rail against the unending stream of lies and unmitigated deception fostered upon the American public by the (corportate/Illuminati controlled) mainstream media and government spokesmen.

[Update January 2002]
The party line from chemtrail debunkers has changed over the past 3 years. Early on, debunkers wanted the public to think that chemtrails were really just ordinary contrails that were persisting longer than usual due to changing atmospheric conditions and similar tripe. Later, debukers needed to create some sort of logical excuse for chemtrails and were peddling the aerial immunization against 'terrorists' biologicals or solar wind protection gambit.

Lately, the current unofficial party line seems to be
1. protection of the ozone layer,
2. secret military radar blanketing technology,
3. aerosol 'vaccinations' of some sort and
4. some vague reference to 'protection from aliens' (??? you got me).

Debunkers will usually offer themselves as experts or authorities on chemtrails and will always give you a good mixture of real info layered in with their hidden propaganda message. Another trait I've noticed from debunkers is the the sheer volume of their presentation coupled with a lot of technical jargon, scientific looking graphs and pictures to bolster the image of scientific validity and depth of investigation. But if you read their 'reports' carefully enough, you can spot the party line. Lastly, debunkers will usually yell "fraud" the loudest for those articles or reporters that hit closest to home where truth is concerned. A good place to start honing your discernment skills is with the highly circulated and often referenced"Chemtrails Report".

Do not assume that you are helpless to do anything

I've photographed chemtrails in my area on many occasions and I've been breathing the fallout from these sprayings right along with everyone else, but I haven't come down with any symptoms or discomfort yet. If you build up (or possess) your immunity to a high enough level, you can resist most any pathogen. There are numerous ways in which people can improve their self defense by learning how to boost immunity.

What to do
Prepare by building up your immune system. A sufficiently strengthened immune system can withstand a far greater biological assault than the designers of these highly virulent "killer microbes" would have the world believe. It's important to remember that ANY lethal biological organism, whether it be a virus, bacteria, fungus, or parasite, has to replicate itself in your body in order to harm you. This includes those weapons grade 'super killer microbes' that Russia, the United States., Israel, Iraq, China, and other countries have developed. The conventional orthodox method to acquire protection against a deadly organism is to administer a vaccine that is specifically tailored with inactivated microbes of the killer bug or fragments of its protein shell. The body produces antibodies against this specific antigen and provides immunity in the event of exposure. Undoubtedly, the designers of these killer bugs and members of the elite who are "inside the loop" have already been vaccinated for their protection. BUT, there are other ways to acquire protection, that the rest of us can utilize.

As stated elsewhere on this site, a sufficiently strengthened immune system can withstand practically any biological assault. I've put together a page called Immunity Boosting which will outline a number of steps you can take to boost your immunity. At the very least, take colloidal silver on a regular basis. Even if you did nothing else to improve your immunity (and you should), colloidal silver will substantially increase your germ fighting capabilities since no bug, even a bioengineered one, can develop a resistance to its germicidal action.

Web sites with in-depth coverage of Chemtrails (posted November 1999)
One of the most articulate, succint and cogent report assembledto date on the chemtrails story comes from Rick Malinowski. Take the time to read his excellent reportage carefully and thoroughly. His story is avialable on the web at: (old url deleted)
http://home.earthlink.net/~wolfmind/ (*Rick's new web site as of 2/27/00)

Other informative and interesting web sites include:
1) http://strangehaze.freeservers.com/index.html
2) http://www.contrailconnection.com/
3) http://www.islandnet.com/~wilco
4) Cliff Carnicom (http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm)
Good site for chemtrail infomation, but overly cautious and worried about upsetting The Powers That Be to call a spade a spade. Informative all the same with many good photos.

My new internet mantra.

My hour of need:

Hypoglycemia

Fuck off, you don't know who I am.