Wowsers
Here’s an amazing graph:
Funny thing: Back when I was a commie college student in the late ’90s, I used to marvel at the ridiculous amount of stuff that people bought and how a lot of people went into deep debt in order to acquire it. At the time I said, “Something here has got to give; we can’t keep acquiring stuff at this rate without the means to pay for it.” And I was predictably called a commie-assed Eurosissy who didn’t believe in the American dream of borrowing a shitload of money to pay for stuff I couldn’t afford.
I’m kinda sad to see that I was eventually proved right about all this, since it’s going to lead to a long and painful recession. But if we emerge from this mess and start oh, I don’t know, saving money and not buying the newest and bestest LCD television set every month, then maybe we’ll be better off.
Jillian adds: I read this article years ago in Foreign Affairs, and it stuck with me all this time, because I remember laughing harder at it than I’ve ever laughed at anything other than The Parrot Sketch. The money shot (to my mind) from the article:
A trade-oriented approach to current account deficits views them as a byproduct of robust economic growth, reinforced by a still overvalued currency and the U.S. economy’s powerful structural import bias. In this view, the U.S. has a stubborn current account deficit because it grows faster than its trading partners and spends a disproportionate share of its growing income on imported goods and services.
An alternative perspective takes as its point of departure the accounting identity that equates the current account deficit with the difference between total investment in the United States and U.S. domestic saving. Low domestic saving, according to this view, is to blame for deficits. The fear is that a sudden reluctance by foreigners to continue exporting their excess savings to the United States would choke off the investment needed to sustain economic growth, sending the U.S. economy into crisis.
This explanation becomes less alarming, however, when you consider that both savings and investment are seriously undervalued in U.S. economic accounts. Capital gains on equities, 401(k) plans, and home values are excluded from measurements of personal saving; when they are added, total U.S. domestic saving is around 20 percent of GDP–about the same rate as in other developed economies.
How’s that 401(K)/investment property working out for ya?
Hey, how come our model for estimating savings percentages doesn’t include things that aren’t money, like stock investments and houses we haven’t sold? And on that note, I’ve always wondered why we don’t factor the possibility of the repeal of the Thirteenth Amendment into our GDP. If every black person in the country became a slave again, we could all be zillionaires tomorrow!
Our problem is not that our economy is in the toilet. Our problem is that the majority of the people we count on to tell us how our economy is doing are all completely fucking insane.
Yeah, consumer spending in America is dumb. I mean, I have shit I don’t need. I have a 28″ computer monitor. Necessary? No. But I didn’t go into debt to pay for it. I bought it up front.
I really don’t think Americans will spend more sanely when this crisis is over. I don’t have that much faith in my country, sadly.
Hell Brad, I’ve never understood it either. I know I am a commie university student, but yeesh, I thought that the wingnut adage of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps would apply in this case, but apparently it was good capitalism to umm, buy waffle irons that didn’t work for only $1 a day.
I think you need to recheck that graph and burrow down a bit. So much of that spending went to basics like home ownership, education, and health care. It’s rather insulting to claim that people – en mass – were just buying big screen TVs and new cars in bulk. I mean, for Christ’s sake, the price of gasoline tripled over the course of – what? – three years? You think maybe that factored in somewhat?
At a certain point, we could use a little less corporate pillaging and a little more shit we can afford to buy.
This was present in every sector of society. I know a transplant surgeon, must have been making 400,000 per year, who bought a 1.4 million dollar house, and for years he has been struggling, really struggling to pay an insane mortgage payment. Had to have that house, though – he was a successful young surgeon, rising in his field. He deserved it.
10 years ago that same house was worth 600,000. Probably will be the same price, adjusted for inflation, within a few years. No wonder the bankers were pulling in such money, with such damn fools to make it easy for them.
Maps are fun: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114016/State-States-Political-Party-Affiliation.aspx
Yeah, if we all refused to spend on anything but food and shelter, our economy would boom!
CNN has a headline that the Illinois legislature just voted thumbs down on Blogo.
Blago removed form office!
He’s going to squeal like a piggy about the Obama/Rezko in the criminal trial!
The thing that really burns about the debt society is the way people use your debt to judge you. You can’t really rent an apartment or get a job these days without someone checking your credit report to see if you’re “responsible”.
As someone who has never borrowed a dime this creates lots of problems for me. Apparently paying your way with money you actually have nets you a bad score, and you can’t be trusted to pay your rent on time.
The way I see it, guys like him are largely responsible for this mess, along with bankers ready to prey on the untempered greed of the nouveau riche, but the rest of us have to live with the consequences.
Sorry, but my sympathy for people like this is greatly moderated by their unrepentant classist snobbery.
…not buying the newest and bestest LCD television set every month, then maybe we’ll be better off.
There’s a temptation to look for positives, even if our newfound moral forbearance is enforced by the economy.
But in a depression/recession there aren’t any positives. We’re all just poorer; the things we need become less affordable, along with the things we don’t. For one family, it’s no expensive TV, for the next, it’s no expensive operation for their child.
While the price of gas has gone up, other items have gone down over that time period. Food for instance, though it’s heading up now as well.
For example, this chart shows that gas prices (adjusted for inflation) throughout the 90s were actually well below gas prices in the 70s and yet the chart Brad posts shows increasing spending during the 90s. Food was cheaper in the 90s as well.
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm
I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I agree with the overall sentiment. Our economy was/is becoming more and more dependent on consumerism.
As a math junkie, I must say that your graph annoys me. Giving only a 12% sampling along the Y axis creates the illusion of a staggering increase in spending, as opposed to a increase from ~63% to 70%.
But that’s just me.
Now, for a REAL good time, google yourself up some stats on % of income people having been putting into savings over the past 50 years. It dips into and past 0% in some years.
http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2007/02/our-savings-rate-is-negative-should-we-worry.html
Buying stuff can help a country’s economy — but only if your country is manufacturing the stuff being bought. But thanks to corporatist trade agreements and tax policies (written and endorsed by both “liberal” and “conservative” politicians,) the money we spend to consume (real or borrowed) does not create or sustain employment & the tax base at home. We race to the bottom of the barrel, while the economic elite races to their off-shore factories and tax havens to enjoy the good life.
Revolution Now!
Amazingly, that chart since 1996 or so looks about like my personal spending. I lived well within my means until I got married. To be fair, a big chunk of our debt comes from our changing careers and getting new degrees to start the new ones out, but my wife is a piss-poor money manager, alas.
…now watch this drive!
Food prices have become unreal. I wanted noodles for dinner and had to buy three packages becasue they’ve gone from 16 oz to 8 oz, so the price won’t change. Bordon milk is 6.50, bread 2.50, eggs 2.00.
Fail troll is failing.
I think the bigger problem isn’t spending but maldistribution of wealth. We’ve talked about that here at length before, about how when a handful of guys own everything, there isn’t an economy any more. But I’ll agree with whoever it was upthread who pointed out that the rise in spending can largely be attributed to higher prices. Even with gas down, my home energy bills are still double what they were 10 years ago – something on the order of 15% of my total monthly budget. So yeah, I’m spending more (and still not keeping all that warm), but it’s not because I have a bunch of new toys. My car is going on 12 years old, I still have the big box style tv I bought 5 years ago, etc etc.
Yeah, Al Gore is the ENTIRE FUCKIN PROBLEM!!
Sheesh.
Actually, consumer spending can be a good part of the economy… but where the entire economy is predicated on consumer spending, you’re screwed.
I know it’s like yelling at a wall, because I’ve been doing it for years, but the frickin Dow Jones is a lousy indicator of the health of the economy. All it indicates is the lemming like behavior of the mid-grade MBA graduates juggling other people’s money based on what they saw in their neighbor’s jockey shorts in the toilet this morning…
If you could actually spend some money on real things, like construction, it feeds into manufacturing and employment and service industries like NOBODY’S business.
Hey, a few dryywall contractors buying big screen tvs doesn’t bother me at all…
If President Gore had co-operated with Emperor Gingrich the dragon problem would now be solved.
I’m doing okay, but I am supplementing my two incomes by scrumping.
Maybe more appropriate for the “cheap wine” thread, but watch this
drivevideo… it’s free!To Hell with Poverty
but the frickin Dow Jones is a lousy indicator of the health of the economy.
Right about that. It’s just an index that consists of 30 companies.
Aaand that’s thread.
RB FTW
The whole thing is a pathetic joke. A system based on “faith & confidence,” run by scam artists. And now, a globalized world where billions of humanoids are willing to under-cut millions of others for a shitty (but better than whatever they have now) low-paying job, where resources are diminishing (& possibly the actual amount of land above water is shrinking).
And the whole save/don’t save, either way we are screwed thing isn’t much help.
Looks like Bin Laden got Bush to do just what Bin Laden wanted him to do.
?????
Bouffe, absolutely right IMHO. Saving is a sop to the battered class. We are screwed several ways until we die, and in the end the Masters of the Universe take our remains, either way…
Click the link, RB, if you’re not afraid. Honest, it’s not a Rick Roll… how could wiktionary be a Rick Roll?
Actually, the Dow Jones has nothing to do w/ the economy. The stock market is a way for the already wealthy to become wealthier, & for executives to run up their stock options by lying to stock analysts.
It is not in any way, shape or form a way for ordinary Americans to get some money for their retirement, spawn’s educaion, or anything else except fucked.
Put that in your mutual fund & suck it, losers!!.
I might be wrong, but isn’t it just a OTB for rich people?
These little pop-up titles are not really so helpful are they?
You’re not the only one. I remember thinking (and reading from those lone voices in the wilderness) the same thing. I don’t really think it’s a Republican/Democratic thing though; nobody (except those lone voices) on either side in the Clinton ear seemed all that concerned that are economic gains were based largely on mounds of debt. Truly it’s only sad that anybody is surprised by this, or that it came so quickly; it’s always been untenable.
I’m enjoying the hell out of them, RB.
P.S. Here’s the BEA’s methodology for determining PCE. It’s a pdf, consider yourselves forewarned!
Looky here, Ms. Susan of Tejas, don’t you go shorterizing me!! I have a fragile ego, & am short enough as is.
$6.50 for Elsie’s fucking effluvia? $2.00 for eggs? (Hope that’s a dozen, & they haven’t tricked up the packaging, as has been done w/other stuff.) I’m glad I can’t cook in my motel room. Are those supermarket prices or convenience store prices?
These little pop-up titles are not really so helpful are they?
It’s the HREF madness… it’s like, got into me suddenly!
At least it keeps me from “tagging” the 4 Train!
Even if you were right(and since you’re kind of dim, let me just make clear that you’re not) that Obama/Rezko/Blagojevich were a giant crime syndicate and now the Hairdo’s gonna flip for the Feds, it wouldn’t matter.
Blagojevich is totally insane. No one will believe a word he says. He could take the stand and claim the World Series would take place in October this year, and he’d get indicted for perjury.
In these trying economic times, the American people need answers to questions like “Why is Michael Moore so goddamn fat?”
Xanthippas – IIRC, the mountains of debt are a relic of the Bush years. I don’t think all that many people got in over their heads in the Clinton years.
But I agree with your and Brad’s overall assessment.
Something I’ve been thinking about recently is how weird it is with all this “Greatest Generation” hagiography is the one thing they don’t dwell too much upon which is perhaps the most important thing we should try to emulate – people in that “Greatest Generation” were a bunch of cheap bastards. Damn, any of you here who were raised by parents who came up in the Depression/WWII era will know what I’m talking about. My parents were completely into thrift and not being wasteful. They didn’t go out and get the newest gadgets. I think my mom got her first microwave sometime around 1990. They didn’t loosen up on the thrift at all until all of us kids were grown and done with whatever college we were going to do, and my dad remained parsimonious to the bitter end. Mom has loosened up quite a bit on the purse strings over the past 15 years, but that’s because Dad made sure he was adequately insured etc to take care of her and she’s almost 70, so I guess she figures she won’t be taking it with her so she can spend a little of it.
Anyway, of course when we were kids it was a pain in the ass because we wanted everything, but it’s something they taught me that has served me well – don’t be wasteful. Take care of things so they’ll last longer. Don’t throw away a useful working item just because there are newer ones out there. Turn out the lights if you aren’t using them. And so on and so forth. I pretty much try to do all of those things and have been since, well, forever. And I’m consistently amazed by the things I actually have been able to afford/accumulate/etc. while earning less than a whole lot of people who have nothing much to show for it. And find pretty much that I’m not dissatisfied and yearning for “stuff”. When I hear people talk about what they would do if they had millions of dollars, about all I can come up with is, pay off the house, maybe buy a new car, not a luxury anything, and do some travelling. I just can’t think of other things that I really want or need.
All I’ll say is I was certain something VERY BAD was going to happen when I realized a) Every new house being built in the area was a McMansion, b) They were all going for a minimum of 500K, c) They were all selling like hotcakes.
Did not compute. And neither did those 400K
flatscondos.Well, I’ll add you have to include consumer options in the mix. If the price of everything is artificially inflated, saying you just need to buy less will only get you so far.
Excellent post, Jennifer!
Now, it’s up to the children of those cheapskates to clean up the baby boomers’ mess. Damn solipsistic, narcissistic boomers.
Free 29″ TV just the other day. At my building we share and somebody didn’t want it anymore. Communism is good. Christianity is stupid. GIVE UP.
Jennifer said,
January 30, 2009 at 2:25
Something I’ve been thinking about recently is how weird it is with all this “Greatest Generation” hagiography is the one thing they don’t dwell too much upon which is perhaps the most important thing we should try to emulate – people in that “Greatest Generation” were a bunch of cheap bastards. Damn, any of you here who were raised by parents who came up in the Depression/WWII era will know what I’m talking about. My parents were completely into thrift and not being wasteful.
The kids in my family had no T.V. from when I was in kindergarten through 7th grade, or thereabouts. Also, we had fish sticks on Fridays, to keep the Pope happy.
Also, when I say kids, I mean the brother and sister I had at the time when I was in kindergarten (did I mention the Catholic thing?).
Later siblings, TV and LUXURY!
Damn, any of you here who were raised by parents who came up in the Depression/WWII era will know what I’m talking about.
Yup. Dad is 80, so a pinch young to be considered a Depression kid but he and ma did live through enough of it for it to have made quite an impression. Their raising me is why I feel like crawling out of my skin when I’m in debt.
What’s weird is that my wingnut mother-in-law is the same age, came from a poorer family, and remembers WWII as a golden age when everyone in the country pulled together, and everything they did, including the rationing, was perfect and noble and cool. She’s still thrifty enough, but just try to get her to separate her trash for recycling now. It’s become, in her mind, a “liberal” thing and therefore evil.
Don’t you stupid liberals get it? We are capitalist. The market must not be tampered with. Demand for products creates wealth. If you stop buying everything, the first job to be lost will be yours. I’ll bet you think Communism was excellent.
Hey, I like the latest gadgetry as much as the next geek.
But business is next to non-existent, and I’m working on a three year old computer, and my weekly budget is peanuts… one adapts, and the consumerist, gotta beat teh neighbors culture is not mine…
Free 29? TV just the other day.
Now didn’t they “not want it anymore” because they bought a new one in time for the big conversion, or just ’cause they wanted a high-def set?
See, capitalist consumption is your friend.
(Any apt.’s available in that wonderful bldg., by the way?)
little pop-up titles
A new toy! Although I seem to remember seeing this kind of pop-up goofing in the Unfogged blog roll.
Not currently and I figger I live too far away. Co-op housing mean something good in LA? Because where I’m at you fill out apps for tons of co-op places, wind up on bunches of waiting lists and eventually something pans out.
Rats. That didn’t work, but it wasn’t funny anyway.
It’s not just the consumer spending. Lenders knew that people couldn’t afford stuff. Look at all that “no credit checks” financing. The unfortunate thing is that “buy now, pay later” will really bite you in the ass, and maybe you can afford it now, but later you may not be so lucky.
It’s the whole system that was propped up by consumer spending, but the foundation of it was predatory lending. Add into that the hemorrhaging of our nation’s jobs, and no one can afford anything, so WalMart slashes prices and wages, mortgage companies scrape the bottom of the barrel for customers and repackage the debt as a shiny new security to sell to someone else, someone opens a HELOC to pay for COBRA and a new car after they’re laid off, and manufacturing jobs get sent to Canada because they have national health insurance and therefore cheaper to operate there.
When your business model is “people will buy our stuff” but then you lobby for policies that make it difficult for people to buy stuff, like easier to ship jobs overseas, and policies that stagnate wages, then you’ll fail, and take everyone with you.
“Food prices have become unreal. I wanted noodles for dinner and had to buy three packages becasue they’ve gone from 16 oz to 8 oz, so the price won’t change. Bordon milk is 6.50, bread 2.50, eggs 2.00.”
I hear ya. A gal. of milk isn’t that bad in LA (it’s, say, 3.80), but I did a double take when I saw the price of FUCKING EGG NOODLES. And–talk about “necessities”–Ralphs pickled herring in sour cream, which just last week was five bucks a pound (add more onions, sour cream, fresh dill), two days
ago was a mind-boggling $10.99. I said, There must be some mistake. The lady checked on the pricing scale and it was accurate. Ouch isn’t the word!
(Actually, WTF is the word. Herring?)
I’m sure you are too far away. I have a section 8 housing voucher, but only good in the City of L. A. “Co-op housing” in L. A. means the county jail, I think.
As far as I can tell, we are the only country in the world that has ever turned our OWN economy into a colonial economy. It’s an impressive amount of stupid.
Ralphs (Kroeger) is shameful. A freaking Chap-stick is $2.45. At 7-11, $1.99. I wouldn’t buy anything there that didn’t have their stupid card discount, which usually just returns the price to retail average.
And I think The People’s Republic of Calif. has some sort of dairy subsidy or price control on milk. Though not absolutely sure.
As far as I can tell, we are the only country in the world that has ever turned our OWN economy into a colonial economy.
All the better to serve our corporate masters!
Indeed, Jennifer.
And people wonder why I’m a socialist.
I just don’t enjoy being anybody’s slave.
Ok, so I roleplay as much as the next gal in the bedroom, but you know what I mean.
Hey Jillian! You so right. We let the pigs colonize us; it’s the only business model they understand.
How’s shit otherwise w/ you? Better, I hope.
Housing, real estate, medical spending isn’t shown in that graph. That’s durable goods, cars, tvs, furniture, food, services, restaurants, tourism.
It went up nearly a percent from where it was anchored for the last fifty years.
There’s a reason some things are in various ratios; and taxes didn’t go down a percent across the board to make that happen.
Hey, dearie!
Things are getting better….I’m still feeling incredibly, incredibly down on myself and the world – but less so than a month ago. I almost never come home from work crying anymore, and we’ve only had like two students at our school murdered so far this school year. Things are looking up.
The worst thing about the current turn of events is that the global left has been destroyed. The oinkers will meet with no resistance. At this rate, we’ll be back to something resembling a medieval production relationship in less than a hundred years. But I’ll be dead by then, so I don’t really care.
“In the long run …”
So what about us frugal types who buy new shit but get rid of our old shit on ebay/craigslist/amazon/freecycle?
Outside the housing sector, hoarding is just as much a problem as consumption. If stuff started moving at higher velocity, we’d all be much wealthier, with less spending and consumer debt. Also, we could get by with smaller houses.
Teh Internet has finally made it possible to sell crap at market prices. Clean out those storage units and garages, people.
While my father was born two weeks before the Depression started and my mother 3 years later and despite not making huge amounts of money, my parents (especially my father) were not particularly thrifty ie they spent most all their money on the family and saved very little.
My grandparents (especially my father mother, who had just turned 19 when my father was born) were embarrassingly thrifty. Going back to the table when she thought my dad had left too big a tip, taking a whole bunch of sugar packets and all the leftover rolls when we ate out, those were embarrassing, especially when my dad or mom were teachers of the server
So what the hell was the topic for this thread again?
Also, we had fish sticks on Fridays, to keep the Pope happy.
Also, when I say kids, I mean the brother and sister I had at the time when I was in kindergarten (did I mention the Catholic thing?).
I love fish on Fridays. As for kids, I’m the youngest of nine. When asked, I used to say my mother was Catholic; my father was an engineer.
Let me boost Freecycle:
Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle Freecycle.
Utterly wonderful, even though it clogs the email up something fierce.
Yeah, Freecycle is the shit. I’ve freecycled tons of electronics, scrap metal, alll sorts of stuff.
Things I have gotten from Freecycle:
Kitchen Aid dishwasher in perfect condition. Stainless steel inside and out.
Top compressor fridge/freezer (SubZero style, think it was a GE)
Jenn-Air cooktop
Talk about a low budget kitchen remodel!
I too have an old Pop who lived through the Great Depression. And was also raised to think of debt as the evilest thing ever. And, like a previous commenter, I always lived within my means, only to find out when I got older that never having debt doesn’t give you a good credit score, if give you a lack of a credit score, which is worse than having a bad one at all sometimes.
This has made everything from getting a cell phone to renting an apartment a big pain in the ass. I’ll show landlords a bank statement with sizeable balances and I’ll get, “yeah, but you don’t have a good credit score because you never paid off the debt you never had, so we can’t rent to you” (well, that is not what they say, but that is the reality). Once, I offered to pay a year upfront and a landlord still turned me down because of my lack of a score.
I love fish on Fridays.
Fish > fishsticks
I love fishing, and even got an aquarium after 1st grade (for good grades! LUXURY!). And also I love eating fish (best are ones you caught yourself).
BUT I HATES FISHSTICKS!
Brussels sprouts >>> fishsticks.
Excellent post, Jennifer! Now, it’s up to the children of those cheapskates to clean up the baby boomers’ mess. Damn solipsistic, narcissistic boomers.
I agree, excellent post, Jennifer. My parents were part of the “greatest generation” (of skinflints), and I am one of those cheapskates’ “solipsistic, narcissistic boomer” offspring who have allegedly left a mess that needs cleaning up. Excuse me for pointing out that the boomers were the ones who made war protest (unto ending the fucking thing), civil-rights marches, feminism (read: equal pay for otherly-genitaled humans), right to abortion and birth control, and basic questioning of govermental, religious, and other authority figures a fashionable, if not downright sensible, thing to do. I worked fulltime while carrying a full load as an undergraduate and have been in debt most of my adult life not for big-screen fucking TV sets but for things like a new set of tires so I can get to work; not for designer face creams or whatthefuckever but for second mortgages so my kids can go to college. In conclusion, fuck all this “boomers die already because you’ve fucked up my lifestyle” horseshit. Each generation deals with what the one before it left behind. Me and mine, we got the ’50s and ’60s to grow up in, the 70s and 80s to be an adult in, and now the 90s and on to grow old in. Grow the fuck up and deal already.
If stuff started moving at higher velocity
Then again this could be very dangerous in urban areas.
Especially high-velocity freecycling, which could potentially cause a singularity in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District.
$2.00 for eggs? (Hope that’s a dozen, & they haven’t tricked up the packaging, as has been done w/other stuff.)
Word to the wise: Stick with the papier-mache egg carton (it’s called “molded pulp” in the trade, if anyone cares) and stay away from any form of plastic.
As for kids, I’m the youngest of nine. When asked, I used to say my mother was Catholic; my father was an engineer.
I’m the oldest of seven lower-class WASP larvae. My mother was frequently asked upon meeting all of us, “Are you Catholic?” She would blush and mumble something about a botched operation.
Bordon milk is 6.50, bread 2.50, eggs 2.00.
3 Avocados: $1
3 Orange Bell Peppers: $1
2 Egglplants: $1
24 eggs: $2.80
2 loaves wheat bread: $2.50
Living in the Mission, SF – still more expensive than most places.
3 Avocados: $1
3 Orange Bell Peppers: $1
=========================
Meat is always on sale in OH, but we don’t see those veggie prices.
1! bell pepper is more than a dollar here. Even “on sale”.
Avogadros are some fancy expensive thing.
Why don’t you libs get a real American meal down at the local Hardee’s?
no. no. no. NOOOOONONONONONONONO
the thing is, brad, you are half right. consumer spending won’t recover to its previous levels. you are wrong in that this might be a good thing in and of itself. if we consume less then we make less, and our society is entirely predicated on making more stuff (gotta do more coke so i can work harder so i can make more money so i can buy more drugs so i can do more coke so i can work harder).
this will have to end. how we reorganize will either be good (collectives, co-ops, energy sharing plans) or bad (mad max 4: america).
I remember when those lib wimps at the CSPI tried to ban the Hardee’s breakfast burrito. Damn nanny staters.
There’s nothing like a nice triple thickburger, some fries, and an ice cold Busch brew!
Why don’t you libs get a real American meal down at the local Hardee’s?
Your previous trolling was downright subtle compared to this.
Why don’t you libs get a real American meal down at the local Hardee’s?
Wrong side of the line, I’m afraid.
Sorry, I shouldn’t encourage it, I just love maps so much.
You’re probably all just a bunch of vegan poet-pussies and don’t know what a real man’s meal is like.
Damn. I had no idea there weren’t Hardeeses in Utah anymore. They’ve probably been gone for at least a decade – shows how much I like real American food, I guess.
Carls Jr. is the same thing. Go get a triple bacon thickburger and a domestic brew, not the faggoty green bottle bullshit.
Sounds like a megachurch to me.
Hey RedStoner, are you telling people to eat the same crap that clogged your brain arteries and left you stupid, or are you in danger of losing your burger-flipping job? Inquiring minds want to know.
(Well, not really. I think we already know.)
Capital gains on equities, 401(k) plans, and home values are excluded from measurements of personal saving
mostly because they aren’t *savings* but investments, which means there’s a elevated amount of risk for a higher return!
Sheesh. Idjits.
a nice triple thickburger
Oh, so THAT’S what you’re serving up here.
Ba-dum-bum.
Don’t give me any nanny stating bullshit, Nina, I’ll eat what I want, even though you’d like Papa Government to coerce me into eaten vegan rabbit food.
Actually, I’d like Big Gummint to shove your head in a toilet and give you a well-earned Swirlie.
But whatever…just be thankful that THAT Big Gummint is now out of office, ‘kay?
BTW, you still haven’t answered my question. I believe the correct answer is BOTH, eh?
sKrumping?
Why no post on your boy Blago, huh?
Wait until Blago is together with Rezko in prison and they decide to screw Obama over! haha!
HopeAndChangeImpeachment!
Thank you MzNicky, from all of the wretched oldster contingent. If I hear one more ignorant creep under 50ish whine about “Boomers” again … There is a reason we want these fucks off our lawns.
Seriously, if there hadn’t been so many of us, & if some of us hadn’t gotten up, stood up (not as easy these days) & not given up the fight, to coin a phrase, your demographically insignificant generations would still be living in a wasteland of prejudice, conformity & enforced stupidity.
OK, we still are, but it would be much, much worse. And you spoiled little ratbags would just be playing your video games & watching smut on the web. (Assuming that was allowed by the Permanent Nixon Admin.)
Nothing personal to any of you crazy yout’, of course. And let’s be happy we have some generational differences. The Right would love it if they had enough yout’ even to have a slight disagreement like this.
But please do get off the lawn. You don’t know what it took to sod it!!
Why don’t you libs get a real American meal down at the local Hardee’s?
We think it’s more fun to watch David Brooks starve to death while he searches for the salad bar at Applebee’s.
Wait until Blago is together with Rezko in prison and they decide to screw Obama over! haha!
Editor Korir could have shown the First Lady Obama “Whitey” tape, if only you had assisted him in releasing the proper funds. But you did not. Why do you hate America?
Funny, I heard a lot of crap about this Rezko guy, who allegedly sprang full-blown from Obama’s head, or vice versa, but there was little talk of Blago as a corrupt, Illnois style pol directly related to B. O.’s gargantuan Cook County Corruption Crew.
So I’d just bet a triple thickburger that there isn’t much singing to be done, if anyone paid the slightest attention to Blago anyway, as he seems to be about as connected to reality as the Red Stroke Trike Force is.
How’s the RINO purge going over there, Stalinists?
And then they’ll nail Barney Frank for homo nups and he’ll totally out Obama as a Muslim, which (as we all know) is a specific kind of fag.
On the actual subject, I’m really hoping that this time around when the echo chamber starts whining about inflation and interest rates and et fucking cetera, there’s someone to actually serve as an opposing force – when the majority of Americans are in large amounts of permanent-principal debt, whining about inflation should not be a winning political strategy.
We would have won the election had it not been for Obama buying his way into the White House and massive ACORN voter fraud in the swing states.
I’m sure Blago knows ALL ABOUT the fundraising fraud and ACORN, as does Tony Rezko. Wait until the feds make them squeal like the little looney liberal Democrat piggies they are!
”
Funny, I heard a lot of crap about this Rezko guy, who allegedly sprang full-blown from Obama’s head, or vice versa, but there was little talk of Blago as a corrupt, Illnois style pol directly related to B. O.’s gargantuan Cook County Corruption Crew. ”
Blago knows Obama through Rezko. They’re ALL connected, the sensless shitbag Chicagoans.
ReasonableLiberal: “Hey, eating trippleburgers and fries and soda for every meal has some pretty bad consequences. Maybe we shouldn’t do it and maybe public policy should help us make better choices about our national diet.”
RedStateMoron: “WHAT!?!? I dunt wan no big gubmint telling me to eat no soy nuggets.”
ReasonableLiberal: “Umm. I didn’t say that.”
RedStateMoron: “But you commie bastards want to undermine the free market by making me and my kin eat rabbit food.”
ReasonableLiberal: “Well, you know that the ‘free market’ of which you are so enamored is purposefully manipulated by special interest megafarmers to subsidize the crap food that they can make the most money off of, don’t you?”
RedStateMoron: “You just want meat to cost more because you hate Merkans and merkan values.”
ReasonableLiberal: “But meat actually costs twice as much as you pay for it now. You’re just making other people pay for it. That’s socialism, my dimwitted friend.”
RedStateMoron: “No, meat is capitalist and soy is socialist. ‘Soy’ and ‘socialism’ sound the same because they mean the same thing.”
ReasonableLiberal: “…”
RedStateMoron: “I win.”
ReasonableLiberal: “…”
__________________
This one act play has been brought to you by the Stupid Conversations With Stupid People players.
We think it’s more fun to watch David Brooks starve to death while he searches for the salad bar at Applebee’s.
Tensor FTW.
“Hey, eating trippleburgers and fries and soda for every meal has some pretty bad consequences. Maybe we shouldn’t do it and maybe public policy should help us make better choices about our national diet.””
There is no silly “national diet”. There are PERSONAL decisions about MY OWN BODY! Silly nanny statrer.
Do you want Papa Government to change your nappy and clean your room, too? You make me sick!
Are you some vegan pussy, Loneoak?
What a shame that the party of big business & greed didn’t have enough money to buy last yr.’s election.
How did that happen? It’s a mystery.
Almost four months after the election, we anxiously await the first (any?) serious investigations, complaints, or something about the incredible massive (yet unnoticed) voter fraud.
“M. Bouffant said,
January 30, 2009 at 5:45
What a shame that the party of big business & greed didn’t have enough money to buy last yr.’s election.
How did that happen? It’s a mystery. ”
Because BHO broke his pledge to take public financing. McCain kept his pledge because he was a man of honor unlike BHO and his corrupt Chicago far-left socialist associates.
This RedStater75 is pretty obviously a parody troll. I submit.
M. Bouffant said,
January 30, 2009 at 5:30
Thank you MzNicky, from all of the wretched oldster contingent. If I hear one more ignorant creep under 50ish whine about “Boomers” again … There is a reason we want these fucks off our lawns.
==========================================================
Iz 49!
Iz dancing on your lawns!
Why do you libs want to control my body and my life? You’d like to do to this whole country what that nanny stating Bloomberg did to New York!
Well, if you had listened to us and started killing Whitey already we wouldn’t have this problem, would we?
“Man of Honor.” Tell that to all the vets who hate him. McCain knew damn well he couldn’t get enough money if he tried to raise it himself. So he went to the gov’t.’s teat, while Obama, in true American style, pulled himself up by his bootstraps & raised that money himself.
Did Obama swear on a Qu’ran that he would only, absolutely, take public money? ‘Cause otherwise it’s no biggie if he let the people contribute to his campaign.
Good one. Now tell us again what you think about Roe.
“Good one. Now tell us again what you think about Roe.”
Abortion is murder, end of story.
Vets & former POWs, I might add.
Yeah Bouffant, that’s why he kicked BHO’s ass among the military vote. Because vets hate his guts.
There is no silly “national diet”. There are PERSONAL decisions about MY OWN BODY! Silly nanny statrer.
If there’s no national diet, then why aren’t you upset about farming subsidies for inefficient farming practices that are designed specifically to shape your eating choices? Man, you are one ignorant fuck, you ignorant fuck. I am anti-nanny state because I oppose the current national food policy that uses tax dollars to funnel our individual choices toward wasteful ‘food’. You and other greedy corn-state Republitards are pro-nanny state because you think you can take my money to pay for the externalities of your diets. But, of course, I cannot expect you to understand economics nor public policy, because you are after all a right-wing socialist ignorant fuck.
And, no I am not some pussy vegan. You, however, are a ignorant fuck, you ignorant fuckety fuck.
There are PERSONAL decisions about MY OWN BODY!
You’re a pro-choice feminist?
Murdering an innocent unborn baby is not a “choice”.
Lone Oak, I think the Dept. of Agriculture should be TOTALLY ABOLISHED! You?
Thunder, by next birthday you’ll be walkering on our lawns, & we’re turning the sprinklers on.
I expect you’ll be thrilled to learn that the Obama administration plans to replace all meat products with a tofu slush, then.
Only a liberal would confuse the killing of an animal (which is PROPERTY) with killing a baby (a human LIFE).
Its a really funny morality you libs have.
The right of a chicken to life is sacrosanct, but a little unborn baby in the womb can eat shit or die.
Oh, and also abolishing the Army. Sure, we need a national defense and all, but killing innocent civilians – even by accident – is murder and all, and some things are too important for silly things like “freedom” to matter.
Eat some peanut products, cracker!
Papers, please!
If your papers are not in order, please report to strip search.
“baby” is an interesting way of putting what every abortion legal under Roe actually makes terminable. By the same standards you’re using, organ transplants are murder.
We ACCIDENTALLY kill some people with bombs because we must do it for our national defense.
Women who kill their unborn babies do it cause they don’t want to be “burdened” with a child. I.e., they’re sluts.
Only an abolitionist would confuse the killing of a negro slave (which is PROPERTY) with killing a white baby (a human LIFE).
FIzed.
What the fuck have you guys been up to while I was sitting in a beachside Malibu bar, drinking cheap chardonnay and watching the sunset in the Pacific Ocean?
I see the troll is back. Or his imposter. They’re both full of shit.
By the way, Bina, nice rejoinder.
Did you just compare animals to black people, tensor?
Another example of liberal racism.
Only a liberal would confuse the killing of an animal (which is PROPERTY) with killing a baby (a human LIFE).
sorry, asshole. If you’re going to fetishize life, then you have to go all the way. Watch out for that ant behind you.
I’m talking about innocent human life that is willfully terminated intentionally.
Good to see we’re in agreement.
Did you just compare animals to black people, tensor?
You know, not only is he an asshole, he’s stupid, too.
I’m talking about innocent human life that is willfully terminated intentionally.
Like Iraqi civilians.
This troll’s work is inferior.
I support banning it, and all its comments.
It should be Gtimoed.
or Gitmowed.
Again, you are more than happy to back a war that has so far killed about 1.3 million human beings and yet the idea of removing a developing embryo without a spinal column or a heart is ostensibly horrifying to you. I say “ostenisbly” because your precious moral standards only become important when it’s some slut that got knocked up because she had sex like a whore.
Did you just compare animals to black people, tensor?
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the same political party as Jesse Helms.
“your precious moral standards only become important when it’s some slut that got knocked up because she had sex like a whore.”
I think if you are going to have sex you should take the consequences.
Little babies having their brains sucked out by a vaccuum cleaner and you’re concerned about the Miranda rights of terrorists, amazing.
The only thing libs are for “choice” in are 1)sodomy, 2)abortion.
For future reference.
I think I’ve humiliated the little weasel enough for one day, so I’m gonna be charitable and leave him alone from here on out.
I’m talking about innocent human life that is willfully terminated intentionally
You know, actually, you’re not. You don’t give a shit about innocent human life. You wouldn’t act like such an asshole if you liked humanity. You’re really just an authoritarian bully who uses clever pious talking points to justify your own impulse to condemn other human beings. Fuck off.
Whooops, sorry, got carried away. Disengage with the troll-idiot.
What’s for dinner tonight?
Iz 49!
Iz dancing on your lawns!
albeit slowly and arthritically….
How’s the pie, everyone?
“#
g said,
January 30, 2009 at 6:07
How’s the pie, everyone?
”
Is it organic and transfat free?
See, Mr. RS75 is just being a dilrod now. “Sluts.” This is the world Gen X would be living in w/o us, their parents & elder sibs.
Again, besides the utter emptiness of the lives here (Well, mine & RS75’s for sure…) I think the reason we have trolls is a recent shortage in new posts to dissect, & once we’ve wrung every pun, animal/human room-mate anecdote, & whatever else we’ve been accused of, out of the item, boredom makes us turn on each other (as I’ve been) & feed the trolls.
I understand that the current economic situation may require our hosts to, like, earn a living, but that’s how I see it.
Did I ever tell you about the time that this cat who lived w/ me …
Fail troll is failing.
On the plus side, Samson vs. the Vampire Women.
“g said,
January 30, 2009 at 6:06
“I don’t give a shit about global warming. I wouldn’t act like such an asshole if I cared about the planet. I’m really just an authoritarian bully who uses clever pious talking points to justify my own impulse to condemn other human beings.”
FTFY, lib.
Holy crap, PeeJ. All I can say is, your neighborhood has a better class of Freecycler than mine. (And yeah, I include myself in that.)
albeit slowly and arthritically….
You can haz my branes when you pry them from my cold dead skull!1!
The best thing about the genre has always been ‘Ercole’. Something about wop versions of Greek myth warm my evil little heart.
boysenberry, mm!
Little babies having their brains sucked out by a vaccuum cleaner and you’re concerned about the Miranda rights of terrorists, amazing.
Your mom never stopped referring to you as “Daddy’s broken condom”, did she?
thunder, that Best Buy video of me has never been authorized….
And I say that as I stare down the barrel of 48…
Grease monkey rules!
M. Bouffant, I can only eat so many branes in a day…
thunder, that Best Buy video of me has never been authorized….
How about this one?
I’m still amazed that NOBODY made any remarks about Jillian’s role-playing.
(shakes head)
Am I the only dirty-minded pervert here?
OK, “g,” you asked for it.
We’ll see who’s a “pussy vegan” now. (Cats not vegan at all, must have taurine. Dogs can live on a vegan diet, they’re the pussies.)
Dinner tonight:
1. King’s Command Homestyle Beef Meatloaf
2. 20 fl. oz. Dr Pepper®
3. Some Perrier® (un-flavored) in the (new to me) plastic bottle
4. Alouette® “Crème de BRIE® SPREADABLE CHEESE MADE WITH REAL BRIE Without the Rind Fine Herbs,” spread on some pre-sliced Goldminer® “California Sourdough” bread, which has little to do w/ much, as we find that it comes from Maple Leaf Bakery, Inc., Des Plaines, IL.
All purchased at an Albertson’s. I know, effing Mormies, but I’m not going any farther then need be.
(Preview indicates spacing may suck. This is disturbing to my persona.)
What, the scoops run Albertson’s too? I thought it was just Smith’s.
Shorter RedStater: The anal bleeding’s nearly stopped, and I licked all the santorum off the floor– I’m ready for more!
Oh, I was going to type something along the lines of: “Say, who’s that next gal you’re talking about?” but she’s got enough on her mind, it seems. On the other hand, she may have been setting us up to go crazy on it, & we’re all too old & wretched, or economic worries have turned us into young but limp-clitted or limp-dicked wretches.
Where Mikey at?
No, Sav-On/Albertson’s has been in their hands, or a wealthy Mormon family’s hands, for many yrs., if not forever. HQ’d in Boise, y’know.
What’s a scoop? I’d think that’s how Zombie Ron gets his dinner, but …
I assume, obviously, a scoop is a Mormon, but what’s the derivation? That 10% scoop they take from the faithful?
How about this one?
I barfed.
And let me tell ya, it takes a fair bit to make a zombee barf.
And I think Jillian’s comment took most of the regular posters off the board for awhile, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
everybody except RS75, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Dan Savage, bain of the Right.
Err, bane…
I didn’t know Albertson’s was run by Mormies. Oh well. My locals are Vons, Ralphs and Gelsons (only go there when I want to buy booze and it’s been too soon since my most recent purchase at the other two.)
My dinner tonight? Cheap chardonnay, shrimp cocktail, eggrolls all at the Malibu seaside joint (damn, there are a lot of gulls out there!) and some peanut butter crackers (salmonella-free!) at home.
Wait a while and there will probably be some Breyers vanilla ice cream, too.
What’s a scoop?
The vessel from which they drink their Postum®?
I assume, obviously, a scoop is a Mormon, but what’s the derivation? That 10% scoop they take from the faithful?
I’m curious too – I’ve lived in Utah for over 30 years and never heard the term. That guess at the derivation is about what I’d guess, too.
I adore Dan Savage – always have since I was hanging out on Capitol Hill 20 years ago.
He’s pretty damn funny.
And Capitol Hill is all skinny jeans as far as the eye can see these days.
Well, it’s gone downhill since back when Ernie Steeles was open. Now it’s, I dunno, some kinda trendy lesbian blue-collar bar.
I think the deathknell of Seattle was when the DogHouse closed.
The simplest website evAr: Saddlebacking.com
This one act play has been brought to you by the Stupid Conversations With Stupid People players.
I refer to it as “One Man Shithead Theater” (said with a British accent).
“One Man Shithead Theater” (said with a British accent).
Thyuh-tuh!
I stand corrected, Albertsons is now part of something called SuperValu, which is in Eden Prairie, MN. Maybe the sale by Albertsons to them explains why Sav-on became CVS a couple yrs. ago.
So they used to be Mormons from Boise. You may resume shopping there.
I think our troll’s mom told him it was time to turn out the lights.
Good. I have been going out of my way to avoid the Albertson’s that is 4 blocks from my house.
Hey! Who took over RedSpate? Dey’s definly sumwunz habben funzez wit dat nommen.
Funny how you wingnuts are all for nanny-stating when it comes to women’s bodies…and killing your fellow Americans by advising them to take up shitty–oh, sorry, “patriotic”–eating habits.
BTW, you still haven’t answered my question. Are you a cowardly fatburger-swilling wuss, or what, that you can’t answer a simple question as to why you’re intruding on your fellow Americans’ dietary preferences?
“One Man Shithead Theater” (said with a British accent).
Thyuh-tuh!
Gotta spell it theatre, then.
I’ve always hated Albertson’s but always wound up living right next door to them. It’s not exclusively because they’re Mormon, though. I liked Lucky’s a lot before they pulled out of Washington, and they were a Mormon store.
Not everybody at AB’s is a Marmot anymore though. I went in one a while back and my checker, who was obviously Jewish (not only because he looked like a young Jerry Seinfeld, but also because it wasn’t quite sundown but he had already put on a yarmulke) had a name tag that identified him, right hand to god, as : “Christopher.” Who needs drugs when you can have surreal experiences like that in real life?
Hey now, as an unwilling citizen of California’s most amoral vassal state, I have to object to demonizing Fatburger.
It’s second-hand so I don’t know, but it seems insulting enough, and manages to backhand Washington neocon maven Scoop Jackson in the process. Etymology be damned, I’m living with it.
G’nite, folks!
~
And second the vote on the Dog House. I don’t know where to go now for rib eye steak “tenderness not guaranteed.”
Ah, Gelson’s. Good meat, besides the wide booze selection. Tain’t cheap, but better than Ralphs, meat-wise. It does crack me up that they have all that high-$ imported gourmet stuff (crumpets, my fave) & stock that Springfield crap for their canned goods & so on. Were you there when the one in your area (Mmmmu) was still a Mayfair?
And when I was a-hangin’ on Capitol Hill, 43 to 40 yrs. ago, there were nothing but big ol’ stupid bellbottoms. Dick’s burgers were fiddy cent, & worth a quarter.
My posse’s on Broadway, y’all!!
Capitol Hill. I lived in a bungalow a block off Broadway and John, the bus-stop, and what the fuck was the name of that Irish bar? Kitty corner from the Broadway movie theatre.
Dicks was down the street from the theatre. And there was a 2ndhand bookstore, just past the bus stop.
Were you there when the one in your area (Mmmmu) was still a Mayfair?
The Gelson’s I go to is in Pali and looks pretty recent. Altho when I came here, the Ralphs in Pali was an Albertsons and I once saw Angelyne shopping there.
One of my few celebrity spottings. She bought lots of yogurt.
However, it’s not a lie to include investment properties, money market and retirement products into ‘savings’.
It’s not like banks put the money into a vault and leave it there – they are merely an abstraction which then holds investment properties. Which is why banks are failing now… They’re holding investment properties which are undervalued now or were overvalued when they purchased them.
So why not show direct holdings?
Those Hebrew folks are supposed to wear their beanies 24/7, not just post-sundown.on the Sabbath.
And this Supervalu that owns Albertsons also has Lucky under its wing. Maybe it’s a vast beehive conspiracy.
You ever go to the Blue Moon, M. Bouffant? In the U District?
And when I was a-hangin’ on Capitol Hill, 43 to 40 yrs. ago,
Funny the first thing I thought of when I read this was that the bus route to Capitol Hill was the 43.
Different one.
Sadly (or maybe not) the closest I got to boozing on the Hill in my day was occasionally asking people to buy us the most awful, sweet loganberry wine from the tavern that was at the very north end of the business strip on Broadway, on the west side of the street. Probably long gone, or gentrified, or whatever.
And when I was a-hangin’ on Capitol Hill, 43 to 40 yrs. ago,
Funny the first thing I thought of when I read this was that the bus route to Capitol Hill was the 43.
What’s the bus route to 40 years ago?
Scratch that, I’d be in diapers again.
How about a light rail line to 1977?
I ain’t that old, g!
Left Seattle when I was 15, in ’69. And always been too cheap/broke to hang in bars much. That, & wanting the music to be what I like, at the volume I like.
Was the bus to Madison Park (where I was a prisoner of my parental units) the 42? I remember a 12 or 15 that went along Broadway to the U. Dist.
All we did in the U. Dist. was buy records & smoke stuff on the campus in those days.
Also, at least the old Albertson’s used local suppliers. Krogers just ships everything to the west coast from the east coast… Yuck.
How about a light rail line to 1977?
The Reagan Rail Road?
M. Bouffant said,
January 30, 2009 at 7:46
HaH!!! @00th!11!!
Jesus Christ, you wacky old people. The only trip I’ve ever taken of my own volition was to Portland; I was 20, and that was less than two years ago.
Also, trains are outmoded and require enormous initial investments, so unless something really changes you’re going to have a lot better luck finding a good, stout horse to take you back in time to the second Ford administration.
I’ve been to the Blue Moon a few times.
Have you guys heard the Moondoggies?
And you returned to Vegas of your own volition?
The travel urge will go away. If I hadn’t been forced to go to Phoenix for wage-slavery purposes a few times in 1995, I’d have an in-state record from about 1987. Other than the work crap, I’ve only left L. A. County once in that time, to see a friend’s band play in S. D. That’s as good as your 20. Maybe the travel bug will hit you later, although way back in the past travel was more necessary to broaden oneself. Why bother now?
Damn, you are wise & clever beyond your yrs. But you’ll forget it all sooner or later.
…a slave again, we could all be zillionaires…
Dunno about that. There are some pretty detailed accounts of the economics of slavery shortly before the War of Northern Aggression that argue that slaves are _too expensive_. In short, if you want to become a zillionaire, the correct path is not owning your workers. Owning workers is too expensive and too risky. What you want is to make sure your workers don’t own anything and have work all the time, for you, of course, just to put a scrap of bread on the table. Share cropping is a step in the right direction, putting the burden of, um, survival on the worker, not the business man. What you really want is a situation like, say, the Marinas islands. Find a place with relatively few resources and no easy escape to set up, oh, sweatshops and then fill them with ununionized, unrepresented, workers and then you are on your way to being a zillionarie!
“Saint Peter don’t you call me, I can’t go.
I owe my soul to the company store.”
“Jesus Christ, you wacky old people.”
Get off my lawn, you damn old farts!
Yeah, we old people.
I moved to Seattle in 1979. Lived on Capitol Hill, in the aforementioned bungalow a block off Broadway & John.
43 bus line or the Number Seven. Can’t remember the name of the bar at the north end of Broadway, but I know I drank there. I drank at every bar on Broadway.
Also hung a lot on lower Queen Anne near the Center, and downtown.
I got respectable about 1984 when I bought a house in the CD; then I got married, had a kid, bought another, bigger house in the CD. Then we moved to LA.
toby, what the fuck is the bar out in Phinney Ridge where they do the square dancing on Mondays and cool rock bands play the rest of the week? or am I totally in the old days. I mean….Junior Cadillac….
The CD?
The only thing libs are for “choice” in are 1)sodomy, 2)abortion.
My only complaint is that I can’t do both at the same time.
Central District.
Seattle – between Jackson and John, Broadway and Madrona.
If you remember the way Seattle streets are numbered – its the streets that don’t have an E or W or NW or NE appended to them.
I lived on 26th Avenue. 26th and Union. No directional.
The CD is the historical African American district in Seattle. Garfield is the home high school.
I am not African American. I am one of those gentrifyin’ white artsy folks. But I totally loved living there.
Hey, all. Goodnight. I’m off to sleep.
Oh oh oh. That’s what I thought, but couldn’t quite recollect. We just called it the Central District, I think. I lived in Mad. Park, & would have attended Garfield, Jimi’s alma mater.
Looks as if g & I have aborted this thread.
[FDL spoofin]Good Night all.[/FDLspoofin]
Sorry. Put it to sleep, rather.
Well, bear in mind that, outside of true oddities like the helots, slavery more or less existed to provide a labor pool for economically necessary or desirable tasks that no sane freeman would engage in. The better slave societies are the ones where few of those tasks could be done without educated labor – thus the Greek and early Roman tendency to use slaves as a sort of sophisticated mixture of housekeeper and nanny. The Roman case especially is a veritably humane model, as it tended to encourage various forms of fairly simple manumission and allowed a society whose chief skill was cultural appropriation a wide range of ideas and culture to pirate and homogenize. Kind of like the pre-1920 immigrant treadmill, only with less whipping and horrific punishments for disobedience.
Mind you, that wasn’t true of Rome everywhere, and the more simplistic “the American system is a uniquely terrible one” or “slavery grew worse and more abusive over time” narratives fall flat – in areas with large deposits of non-alluvial gold, before the development of sophisticated mining equipment it was basically anticipated that the only way to get a lot of people to gouge out sharp rock right above their head with tiny shivs without losing most of that sharp rock to them was to keep them in chains, and it was rather like modern slavery in that the laborer wasn’t expected to last more than a few years.
America, Brazil, and Cuba are more or less unique in sharing massive agrarian sectors whose planting, harvest, and maintenance was still so horrific that even well into the industrial era no sane freeman would take any economically viable salary to engage in them. (In our case cotton, in theirs sugar – and it takes a lot of doing to make non-backbreaking sugar economies work, which explains the much later dates of formal emancipation in Cuba and Brazil.)
When Americans think about slavery, they generally think ‘sex slavery’ – largely because of the long, sordid Protestant obsession with ‘white slavery’, a phrase which by itself explains everything you need to know about the Progressive Era. (One of the anti-Darwinist heavyweights of the 20s, in fact generally thought to be the first televangelist, made an inept attempt to cover up an affair by forging a ransom note ostensibly by a band of Mexicans aiming to white-enslave her.) While sex slavery is in fact alive and well, most measures aimed at arresting it focus far too much on the prostitution narrative’s stock villains – the john and the pimp – without concerning themselves much about the economic realities that make widespread illicit prostitution possible.
The “wage slavery” theory continues to apply to modern workers, although much more purely so in the more proletarian labor markets overseas, wherein external actors can more or less stomp an economy out wholescale before setting themselves up as the only game in town and paying starvation wages.
The present guerilla warfare in the western Congo is an extension of a long series of slaving operations in the tantalum-rich, underdeveloped soil of central Africa. (The stock villain, Laurent Nkunda, is on the opposite side of the groups who conventionally ride into a village, put an AK to each able-bodied man’s head, and have them dig up coltan until dawn – but that doesn’t in fact make him a good guy here, either.) If you bought a cell phone at any point between 1998 and 2004, chances are excellent that its small, convenient frame was made possible by the increasing abundance of tantalum, an excellent but formerly prohibitively expensive semiconducting material.
And let it not be forgotten that the simplest, least controversial form of slavery these days is being somebody’s wife, although as noted economist and asshole Dick Armey concludes, you bitches make terrible, no-good lazy slaves.
Alright, alec put it out of its misery.
The Dick Armey things are worth a click. He is a toad of the first water.
I dunno, something’s always appealed to me about a man so perfectly described by his own name.
Bleahhh.
Tiresome troll is tiresome. I hope this is going to be like a 48 hour flu.
Oh, hey. Whoever is mixing up the next batch of zygotinis, make mine
a doubletwins.In these trying economic times, the American people need answers to questions like “Why is Michael Moore so goddamn fat?”
Because he’s storing valuable food energy in a form which neither rampant nanny-statism or mad-max libertarianism will find easy to repurpose.
Or at least that’s my explanation, and I’m sticking to it.
Regarding the earlier comment on cat food, unless you’re feeding your cat expensive raw stuff, that can of extruded beaks, guts and feathers only contains usable taurine because some Poindexter reacted ethylene oxide and sodium bisulfite and stuck some in there..
Really, though, cats should eat 200-lb deep-sea fish, just like they would in the wild.
I do have to say I like how completely incompetent he is. I dunno if it’s just a zeitgeist thing – the Republicans in the House are behaving the same way – but there’s a discernable wooga-booga-what’s-up-black ideology to some of our prior trolls. This one is just obsessively spewing half-remembered Limbaugh attack lines, and the disjoint is pretty obvious.
I think we need someone at work who does what Sadly does specialized on the big right-wing barking heads, because as the echo chamber becomes more and more divorced from reality the range of right-wing independence of opinion shrinks more and more, to the point that you have senior members of the House stridently insisting a bailout bill is pork on the authority of the fat, orally-fixated pill-popping bigot god of the national talk radio scam.
Our governor has been slashing & burning everything, not just stuff that is primarily Clark-centered – because now Reno isn’t Republican he doesn’t care about representing Reno any more. Similarly, these people who are being left behind by a public which is tired of their corrupt, impotent antics have taken solace in being doubleplusgood Party men. Limbaugh is gonna be the epicenter of the trolls from RS to Boehner, and they’re going to pretty reliably repeat his dross word-for-word. Get the jump on ’em and the results will be classic.
In summation: The paens to thrift get thread-jacked by a jerk who thinks liberals don’t eat enough burgers; the baby-boomer ad hominem insult get parried by old people who recall the 50 something’s (actually 60-something’s at this point) social-justice triumphs. Proposed title for a soon to be remaindered book: How the Hippies Saved Civilization.
I’d add that, when not used by preachers, the word “generation” is used exclusively by people trying to sell you something. And the wisest advise in all of this group commentary is: buy a whole lot less stuff. (And listen to more Gang of Four, like Big Bald Bastard was saying.)
We ACCIDENTALLY kill some people with bombs because we must do it for our national defense.
Ah, so I guess Hamas should just say that they were aiming their rockets at military targets and accidentally hit Israeli civilians. Oops! Our bad!
and start oh, I don’t know, saving money and not buying the newest and bestest LCD television set every month
The recession already ate half of my savings in my 401(k). I wish I had just spent it on a giant TV. Saving is for suckers, apparently.
Liberals — just like Hitler, but worse cause they think they are nice. Get off my back!
I think if you are going to have sex you should take the consequences.
This is all strictly theory for our Red State pal, of course. It’s really easy to come up with rules when you know it’s never going to be you that has to follow them.
One thing, I do agree with Barney Frank when he said “right-wingers believe life begins at conception and ends at birth.”
And there you have it. Sometimes I think the real mission of the eight-year conservative project was to destroy satire. They all got tired of people laughing in their faces at the idiotic things they say, so they had to create a world in which nobody can tell whether they’re joking or not, where they could wait to see the reaction and then adjust their ‘intent’ accordingly.
Wow! And people blamed ME for feeding the trolls! 😀
It seems, remarkably, to have shut up now. Perhaps it’s just realized with horror that it’s been going around proudly proclaiming that it believes that “life … ends at birth”, and in order to be seen to have the courage of its convictions, as a post-birth individual, has killed itself.
However, it’s not a lie to include investment properties, money market and retirement products into ’savings’.
Sure it is. Even the government makes the distinction.
If you have your money in the bank, the interest income is taxed as ordinary income. If you own stocks or real estate (as an investment) or money market investments, at least some of the income, if any, is generated as a capital gain and/or dividend and subject to the reduced capital gains rate of 15%.
Why?
Because your money is “at risk” of being lost, whereas your savings accounts are guaranteed by the FDIC to at least $100,000 per depositor per bank.
So it is a bald-faced lie to include investments as savings. Period.
kiki,
I was teasing the people who yelled at me for troll feeding yesterday, not you guys.
g said,
January 30, 2009 at 6:00
What the fuck have you guys been up to while I was sitting in a beachside Malibu bar, drinking cheap chardonnay and watching the sunset in the Pacific Ocean?
I see the troll is back. Or his imposter. They’re both full of shit.
By the way, Bina, nice rejoinder.
Way ta “jump ugly”, g. Could you have been any politer? 😉
Y’know, the more I think about it, this “savings rate” definition, the more ludicrous the argument that we should include investment vehicles and homes in the mix.
If you’re going to do that, then you have to include mortgage and debt ratios. The average American is in hock way beyond his underlying asset base and has a negative net worth, and that’s simply not true in countries like Japan and China. To claim the savings rate is understated because it doesn’t include capital assets is a moronic one that disregards the blind spot of indebtedness, which will sop up those assets should a default occur.
Jeez, actor, one little comment and now you’re jumping my shit. Can’t we be friends again? i thought I already groveled, yesterday.
All disputes will now be settled by krump battle.
cf. RB’s “????” link
I do love a good Krump-off.
And we can be 100% sure that CraptainRedState has no skillz, so victory is more or less assured.
Oklahoma school sued for accusing 15-year-old girl of witchcraft.
Now we’re even, g 😉
Conservatives–just like Hitler, period.
Oklahoma school sued for accusing 15-year-old girl of witchcraft.
I think it’s really odd that, in a region so devouted to intelligent design, that suddenly they’ve uncovered cause and effect, albeit in a really warped and twisted way.
While you and I realize there’s no causality here, that some yahoo put together “cast spell” and “teacher sick” and applied the scientific algorithm to determine that A must cause B gives me hope that one day they might understand evolution.
Bina, I’m thinking that RS75 was a spoof.
Click the link, RB, if you’re not afraid. Honest, it’s not a Rick Roll… how could wiktionary be a Rick Roll?
I see your bet and raise you twenty.
Oklahoma school sued for accusing 15-year-old girl of witchcraft.
I need to get in touch with that girl regarding Mitch McConnell’s potential new case of cooties.
Just for the record, I’m a whippersnapper born to Boomer parents, and I think they’re way awesomer than the Greatest Generation and Generation X combined. My grandparents are cheap, racist, and nostalgic for the days when women got married at 19 and spent the rest of their lives scrubbing floors and complaining/boasting about their self-sacrifice. So THERE.
And my family was not the poorest in the neighborhood as I grew up, but we lived paycheck to paycheck, drove 20 year old cars, and had to borrow money from relatives quite a few times to keep our heads above water. My dad worked two and three jobs until I went to kindergarten and my mom could go back to work. So don’t tell me the Boomers are the hippie-turned-yuppie hypocrites buying up choice land in the Hamptons, because it’s the spineless assholes who never marched against OR participated in Vietnam or Woodstock that spent their time honing their apathy and contempt for anyone with feelings about anything who ruined it for everyone else.
And right on schedule, CalculatedRisk comes along with a nice scary chart.
Stryx,
That graph covers only fixed asset investments, tho, not liquid like stocks or money market funds.
I’d add that, when not used by preachers, the word “generation” is used exclusively by people trying to sell you something.
Indeedy. Generational reputations are ridiculously over-broad.
My grandparents are cheap, racist, and nostalgic for the days when women got married at 19 and spent the rest of their lives scrubbing floors and complaining/boasting about their self-sacrifice. So THERE.
My dad, who’s likely the same age as your grandparents, has been a vocal supporter of civil / women’s rights my entire life. Goes to show how different people from a single generation can be, doesn’t it?
That’s correct. Which doesn’t negate its meaning.
All disputes will now be settled by krump battle.
I prefer a j-sette off.
In summation: The paens to thrift get thread-jacked by a jerk who thinks liberals don’t eat enough burgers; the baby-boomer ad hominem insult get parried by old people who recall the 50 something’s (actually 60-something’s at this point) social-justice triumphs. Proposed title for a soon to be remaindered book: How the Hippies Saved Civilization.
I’d add that, when not used by preachers, the word “generation” is used exclusively by people trying to sell you something. And the wisest advise in all of this group commentary is: buy a whole lot less stuff. (And listen to more Gang of Four, like Big Bald Bastard was saying.)
This. Rinse, lather, repeat.
This.
Rinse
Lather.
Repeat.
Consumerism In A Nutshell:
Missionaries & merchants going into the forests, jungles or deserts of various sundry hinterlands consistently remarked that the worst problem they had wasn’t malaria, hostile natives or heat … it was the difficulty of trying to get the poor ignorant savages they had as neighbors to believe that they were dissatisfied with their lives & thus needed the useless shite they were hawking to them, be it material or spiritual.
Those folks were doing just fine, & they generally considered the palefaces from far-off lands as being alternately hilarious, pathetic & loathsome.
Me, I’ve got the same. I got racist asshole grandparents and civil-rightsy grandparents. I’m a floor topping and a desert polish!
This. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Is it ok if I lather and then rinse? I find that doing it the other way around leaves my hair all, kinda, crispy.
Those folks were doing just fine, & they generally considered the palefaces from far-off lands as being alternately hilarious, pathetic & loathsome.
And if cartoons are to be believed, tasty.
Those folks were doing just fine, & they generally considered the palefaces from far-off lands as being alternately hilarious, pathetic & loathsome.
Then why did so many sign on?
I have no quibble with your sentiment, but the facts suggest otherwise from your conclusions, Jim.
Hey, apologies to all the Sadly No boomers, specifically MzNicky. Yeah, I know and acknowledge that the majority of your generation did not sell out.
I let my residual disgust at the media’s old characterization of “Gen X Slackers” cloud my realization that our achievements are built on the foundation you helped to shore up.
I hate the so-called Greatest Generation too…but I have good reasons to do so!
Hey BBB Bastard: Nah, it’s fine. Every now and then I get a little touchy about the youngsters who wish I and my cohorts would die off already, after all we’ve done for them, the snotty little ingrates.
Is it ok if I lather and then rinse? I find that doing it the other way around leaves my hair all, kinda, crispy.
Yes, it is. I get mixed up sometimes when I drink too much.
To make the crossing? Many didn’t because they were in servitude – also, to the Brits & Prussians that wore the hawt red coats, it was a punishment post for Mad King George, shortly before Canada took over that “Devil’s Island” role.
To consumerism? It’s sexy to have cool stuff & it always will be. The fact that it can also be an engine for that old social toxin, anomie, fails to de-sexyize it.
To the Mouseketeers?
Reply hazy … if it parsed simpler, I could make a half-arsed guess whether one, both or neither of us is right. Wowie zowie, that sounds like it sure would be a lot of zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz …