The Blob

[Stagger Lee]

The Bush, Romney and Kerry's of American politic's cannot relate to the common working man struggling to keep his head above water.
As far as this Affordable Health Care act- prob would have BEEN better to follow Canada's model.
A new bill of rights for those willing to work and hold a job- which would include job security, family health plan, pension, affordable modest homes. Those couples willing to limit the amount of "baby making" qualify.
Of course, I'm no politician.. but it anger's me to no end to think of these big banks getting bailed out then at the same time, turning around and forcing forclosure on those families with "modest" homes.

 

[flipper]

Those of us who make our living off drug users (including alcohol) include taverns, bars, doctors, drug pushers, (including advertisers) liquor stores, drug manufactures (including breweries), judges, police, jail guards, drug distributors, substance abuse counselors, farmers (including tobacco growers), government bureaucrats, and pharmacists.
From the article: Social Work – An Institution of the Western Capitalist Empire
Capital employs social workers to provide mental health, addiction counseling, and case management services. These services address the social ills of capitalism without challenging the profit motive or the entrenched principle of private property that creates inequality in the first place. Social workers work toward the “stabilization” of client populations rather then the “liberation” of masses of people from the exploitation of man by man.
Read more:
Social Work – An Institution of the Western Capitalist Empire | Global Research
The best essay on this subject was written by the author of Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill, Kelly Patricia O’Meara, one of my favorite investigative journalists who frequently writes about the ethics and dark underbellies of Big Medicine, Big Psychiatry and Big Pharma. I offer it below in its entirety.
The Sandy Hook Massacre: The Official Cover-up Continues. Who and/or What Messed up Adam Lanza’s Brain? | Global Research

 

[flipper]

Flipper - you got me going ('The Stranger Within' sent me into that area of YouTube with all these tv movies) - I've just watched the 1974 made-for-tv movie 'Where Have All The People Gone'. So low key but hits all the key points. Precursor to all the films that were to come in the 80's. Those darn solar flares!

LINK:

Thanks for this. Great movie! I really enjoyed watching it.

 

[flipper]

Ah, flipper, I 'recall' this film well. It introduced a a very powerful meme into the general consciousness. I just re-watched it. Love the part at just past 59:00 when the character Barbara Eden plays launches into pure Ray-Bradbury-like poetry - something like: 'Oh fathers, take me back from this hot and heavy land.' Great stuff. They say 'from little acorns mighty oaks do grow'. People are not aware how fertile the science fiction genre was with these kinds of stories.

How many of us have those 'memories', though - of other seas, other skies, other suns - and what poetry and art might come of it. Wouldn't it be a hoot - and there's fodder there for a story - if the so-called 'New Agers' (I have an inkling why that term came about) - are actually real-life aliens come to time-shift the earth? Come to that, who are you, flipper?

The film is also a hoot to watch - those cars! Reminded me of the vintage 1967 Chevy Impala I once owned - a veritable tank on the road. Also, made me laugh - the guy who wrote the story, Mr Matheson, must have had one nightmarish experience with his pregnant wife. Ha!

Now let me share one of my all-time favorite television miniseries: Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles' that starred Rock Hudson. It was great then and is adorable now - so dated yet its very datedness makes it just that little-bit alien to make it enticing.

Here is one of my favorite parts - who'd'a'thunk'it - Martian Zen!
LINK:

Thank you for suggesting this. It is so much better than what is new. I have watched your favorite part and part one. I will watch the rest later. THANK YOU AGAIN.
Flipper
I enjoyed Elysium
Action | FFilms.org - Part 2

 

[Burnt State]

The fundamental problem I believe we now face is that all of our political systems are flawed to begin with and have become corrupt beyond belief for the benefit of a very select few.

So where to now?

...

So serious question what do we average people do?

As your post identified there are cycles to governmental ideologies and expressions of power. As we look back across the histories of the rise and fall of powerful civilizations their approaches to rule move in waves, sometimes tsunamis of revolution, other times the quiet and ebb and flow of a two party rule democracy. If Europe is any indicator of the futre of democracy it's about proportional representation with a socialist foundation.

As for concentrations of wealth and what the kings and queens of the real empires get up to, that's always outside our frame of reference. All that talk of Zeitgeist stuff, like the intentionality of communism, is just dancing on the stage of god. Real power is untouchable except by each other.

 

[Tyger]

There's been a couple of 'likes' recently to the post with the Bradbury link. Man'o'man was that man gifted. Here he is reading his poem - "If Only We Had Taller Been". Brilliant man.

LINK:

 

[Tyger]

Apropos some of the posts on the thread, this video came to mind -

9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact
LINK: 9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact

 

[stonehart]

Apropos some of the posts on the thread, this video came to mind -

9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact
LINK: 9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact

Yes saw that a while back.. gets you thinking now don't it?

 

[flipper]

Apropos some of the posts on the thread, this video came to mind -

9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact
LINK: 9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact

In fact it is worse than your chart explains. It is only about .6% who have most of the wealth. They do not earn it. They inherit it.
I was in an economics glass and the professor showed three shapes. Two were triangles and one was an hour glass. One triangle had the point up. The other had the point down. . As you went up the figures there was more wealth. Therefore the triangle with the point up looks most what we have today. The rich at the top with only a few of them. The hour glass looks like what most people in your video think society should look like. That is most people in the middle with a moderate amount of wealth. Fewer richer and fewer poorer. He asked us to vote what society should look like and we voted, including me, like in your video for the hour glass.
He then asked why not the up side down triangle with the point at the bottom, most of the people having most of the wealth. I thought we have really been trained to be against ourselves.
Here is another example. What is the interest on a billion dollars in a year? The billionaire does nothing to earn that interest. We on the other hand work hard so that (s)he can enjoy that interest. It is our labour that makes the wealth. SHOULD NOT BEING A BILLIONAIRE BE CONSIDERED A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY!

 

[flipper]

Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) (Bicycle Thieves) (1948)
This landmark Italian neorealist drama became one of the best-known and most widely acclaimed European movies, including a special Academy Award as "most outstanding foreign film" seven years before that Oscar category existed. The movie focuses on both the relationship between the father and the son and the larger framework of poverty and unemployment in postwar Italy. ~ Leo Charney, Rovi
You will need to put closed caption on to see the subtitles

 

[stonehart]

 

[Pygar2]

If you don't like the rich, ask a poor man for a job.

 

[stonehart]

 

[Tyger]

The first quote says it all: "The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor." - Voltaire

What is never grasped by those who are rich (or those that admire the rich - or have 'drunk the koolaide') is that - while they may have 'worked hard' - they 'worked hard' in a rigged system that requires that many be 'poor'.

 

[stonehart]

The first quote says it all: "The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor." - Voltaire

What is never grasped by those who are rich is that - while they may have 'worked hard' - they 'worked hard' in a rigged system that requires that many be 'poor'.

and you got what Pygar seems to have missed.

 

[stonehart]

 

[Pygar2]

In other words, they live in the real world, and deal with it in real-life terms. Hardly much of an indictment. What so many seem to misunderstand is simple- they think the economy is a zero-sum game, and that if a rich man has a lot of money, it means the poor have less. In fact, they keep making money, so there is never *not* enough for another person to get rich. Let a poor man invent an item, or create a business for himself, and they can become rich. Every fortune in existence started out that way, and there is still as much room at the top as there are people- so long as they increase the size of the pie they are slicing from.

 

[flipper]

If you don't like the rich, ask a poor man for a job.

I did, he said that the rich man had sent all the jobs to China.

 

[flipper]

The fundamental problem I believe we now face is that all of our political systems are flawed to begin with and have become corrupt beyond belief for the benefit of a very select few.

So where to now?

Communism simply wont work as it corrupts faster than Democratic systems and turns into totalitarian control sooner or later (sooner being the operative word here) so sorry Zeitgeist kiddy's the utopia you dream of will descend into a totalitarian nightmare faster than you can say Karl Marx.

Pure democracy is a frightening idea as it is simply a nice way of saying mob rule, and the democratic republic when mixed with deregulated capitalism ends up not much better than Communism as far as corruption is concerned.

Constitutional monarchy? well I live in a constitutional monarchy and frankly it is just a fancy way of saying I get to vote for a new set of dictators every few years.

Fascism? well believe it or not that is more or less what America of today has become or is becoming depending on your point of view... Fascism is by definition the state owned and run by corporations or at the very lest the ability to buy the votes needed to achieve their corporate agendas at the expense of the main public body (see deregulated capitalism).

Frankly my nation and many other western nations (not all yet) are becoming Plutocracy's which is more or less Feudalism 2.0, it is so painfully obvious when you look at America of today that you have to wounder how the hell others can not see it. Fascism and Plutocracy are not mutually exclusive incidentally.

Libertarianism? ... ah yeah the market will fix it? god I am not even going to go there.

So what about Socialism? well before you all think I am going to rant on about the great utopia that "pure" Socialism could bring us I will simply say... BOLLOCKS... its no better than the rest as it works fine until you run out of other peoples money (see communism).

Maybe I am just jaded as hell but from where I stand as a common Joe all I see is many different ways of me and my fellow average citizen getting shafted.. some ways faster than others but shafted none the less.

So serious question what do we average people do?

I hope you will not mind a less than serious answer but what about John Lennonism. Then we could all be in bed together rather than a select few.

 

[Muadib]

I did, he said that the rich man had sent all the jobs to China.

Great point. Pygar's perpetuating the myth of rich people as "job creators," the rich don't create jobs, demand creates jobs. No demand, no jobs, they don't hire people out of charity, they hire them to service customer demand and when demand plummets, so go the jobs. Also, let's not pretend that they don't try to keep their hiring practices as profitable for themselves as possible, which is fine, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't feel some overwhelming sense of reverence towards these folks. Most of them will cut an American job and figure out a way to bone their employees out of their pensions as fast as they can if it will make them and their shareholders a few extra bucks, all the while taking government handouts to stay afloat like the welfare cases they so despise. Hypocrisy is an ugly thing. Take a few minutes to watch this TED talk about the myth of the rich as benevolent job creators and keep in mind that this is coming from a billionaire.