Monthly Archives: June 2012

by | June 28, 2012 · 8:32 PM

Social Spending and Welfare State Programs Are Popular the World Over

I always get a chuckle out of listening to wealthy people and wealthy to me is anybody making over 100K a year telling me that rich people are elitist and bad for our country.

You know to each his own. You earn it or inherit then it’s yours and all the power to you. I make under 70K a year and support two children on my own (widower).

I don’t expect the government to take care of me or help me make my life easier. I enjoy earning my own way and having self respect. I guess I am a dying breed.

Are people in Socialist country really happier. I rarely see or hear of regular citizens telling everybody how happy they are living in a socialist or Communist country. Why is that? Everybody should be flocking to those countries if it is such a great political system to live under.

It’s a rare rich person who has the balls to go against his own class and become what they called FDR, a traitor to his class. It takes a lot of nerve to do that because really you are operating against your own self-interest. The Teddy Kennedys are not laughing stocks; they are saints and angels. It’s not an easy thing to do. Most folks just follow their own class interests.

The rich are an elite in all nations, and in all nations on Earth, the agenda of the rich is always bad for all other classes. Generally it’s the top 20% versus the bottom 80%, but in the US these days, it’s the 1% versus the 99%.

Most people in European style socialist countries or in countries that have those kinds of programs anywhere on Earth do not want to get rid of the system and they do not want to get rid of those programs. The US is really the only country on the face of the Earth where majorities regularly agitate for and actually vote out social spending or welfare state style programs.

In the rest of the world, people can’t get enough of them. Once you put in welfare state or social spending programs, people almost never vote to get rid of them, and they could vote that stuff out anytime they want. Politicians often try to or actually do get rid of these programs, but there is always a huge fight from the majority that opposes them when they do this.

In the rest of the world, the only people who oppose social spending and welfare state programs are the rich and upper middle classes and the capitalist interests of those states. With the vast majority, these programs are wildly popular.

The US is fairly unique on Earth in that majorities regularly oppose social spending and welfare state programs. I can’t think of another country on Earth where this is true.

Of course people are happier to have these programs. The people voted them in, they love the programs, and they fight like wildcats when people try to take them away.

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Filed under Capitalism, Economics, Government, Politics, Regional, Socialism, US Politics, USA

by | June 28, 2012 · 4:42 PM

Forward With Obama or Backwards with Romney?

Your choice to make.

As progressives, we believe that history moves in a forward direction, not backwards. Clocks, time and history move forward, to the future, not backwards, to the stale, reactionary, barbaric and ultimately dead past.

Obamacare, whatever its faults, is a move forwards. It is history in action. We on the Left do not believe in the End of History, as written by Fukuyama, who said History ended in 1989. But that’s a pipe dream of the elite. As if the collapse of a wall could render the class war  neutered forever.

Class war never ends, humans being humans. There was class war before Marx was born, and there is class war after 1989. Some things will never change. Class war and ultimately history is part of the human condition.

Trying to stop history is like trying to stop clocks. Reactionaries want to stop all the clocks on Earth or make them run backwards. But no matter how hard they try, people will always come around and fix them so they run right again, and then history marches on as usual.

Forwards, the only way history can go.

To the future. To progress.

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Filed under Conservatism, Democrats, History, Left, Obama, Political Science, Politics, US Politics

by | June 28, 2012 · 7:38 AM

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare

This breaking news is just in. The Supreme Court by and large upheld Obamacare! Yay! Justice John Roberts, a far rightwinger, incredibly enough sided with the four more progressive members of the court.

They upheld in particular the individual mandate, a very problematic aspect of Obamacare which nevertheless is necessary for the whole thing to work. Take out the individual mandate and the whole thing falls apart as there’s no way to fund it. So the individual mandate is a necessary evil. They did throw out some parts of it, so it’s confusing. I didn’t expect this result at all; I expected the court to throw out the whole thing or at least the individual mandate.

Now all those turd Republican governments who passed legislation saying they were opting out of Obamacare will have to eat crow. Hah!

Unfortunately, polls of Ameritards show that a slight majority of Moronicans oppose Obamacare, probably almost all for reactionary reasons. The death of reactionary America will be a long, slow and painful process.

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Filed under Democrats, Government, Health, Law, Obama, Politics, Republicans, US Politics

by | June 28, 2012 · 7:26 AM

What’s Up With National Bolshevism?

Repost from the old site.

National Bolshevism?

I sort of don’t like the looks of it automatically, but what is it really all about? Anyone? Is it racist? I’m looking at it and getting worried. A Commie friend of mine from Germany said they were ok, but I am not sure yet. Not sure if I like the flag either. Their supporters are on fascist fora looking for looking for more support.

I can’t really figure this out. I’m not sure if it’s ok or not. Anyone wants to look into it, be my guest.

7 Comments

Filed under Nationalism, Political Science, Reposts From The Old Site

by | June 28, 2012 · 7:23 AM

Andy Kaufman Died For the Lulz

Repost from the old site.

On May 16, 1984, one of the finest comedians and performance artists of our time, Andy Kaufman, reportedly died at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

Or did he? A blog, Andy Kaufman Returns, appeared right around the time of the 20th anniversary of his death. The blog was reportedly written by Kaufman himself. He describes how he faked his death, faked his supposedly having cancer, and arranged for another dying man to placed in his hospital bed in his place.

He then described what he has been doing since he faked his own death and has been living in hiding. The blog is actually pretty hilarious, and after the most recent post, there have been over 900 comments.

Soon afterward, a new blog, The Real Andy Kaufman, appeared accusing the previous one of being a lying, cheating fake. The new blog claimed to be from the real Andy Kaufman. Tony Clifton, the abusive Vegas lounge singer who was one of Andy’s comedic personas, also has two new blogs up. It appears that he did not die either.

There is an entire elaborate website up called Andy Kaufman Lives. It has quotes from many of Andy’s friends saying that Andy told them how he planning to fake his death and how exactly he would go about doing it if he did.

Some of them then describe how he did indeed fake his own illness and death as they watched. He shaved his head and went on a starvation diet to look like a cancer patient. Then he got some dying guy to fill in for him at the last moment to take his place on the deathbed.

There are reports from witnesses who spotted Kaufman soon after the faked death in Jamaica, a report from someone in Taos, New Mexico, who says that Andy is actually living there quietly incognito, a report from someone else saying that Andy was pretending to be a Venice Beach bum in the late 1980’s, quotes from his nurse, who confesses that Andy was not really ill at all, quotes from friends who were at his bedside admitting that his death was a fake, on and on it goes.

The site claims that searches of Kaufman’s death certificate online reveal a blank record and that Kaufman’s Social Security number has continued to be used in the 20 years since his death in a variety of places in the US. The site is also looking for witnesses to testify that Kaufman is still alive for reasons of some insane lawsuit that I could not figure out.

Apparently, all of this is just a gigantic put-on by some of Andy’s old friends on the 20th anniversary of his death. It’s apparently true that Andy did discuss faking his own death with some of his friends as the ultimate prank. He realized that if he did it, he could not tell anyone, as faking your death is apparently a crime.

The Snopes site reveals that Andy Kaufman actually did die on 5-16-84 in Los Angeles and offers persuasive evidence that this is in fact what really happened.

Andy Kaufman would have been quite at home in the Internet Age. He was a great troll, and he just about invented trolling IRL. In fact, that was his signature style. And everything he did, he did it for the lulz.

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Filed under Celebrities, Humor, Reposts From The Old Site

by | June 28, 2012 · 6:50 AM

Nancy Pelosi, Leader of the 1%

Weeks ago, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi openly expressed her support for a plan similar to that produced by the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission — a plan that would ultimately cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits while protecting the wealthy from taxes.

It’s gotten worse.

Pelosi now says she also favors keeping the Bush-Obama tax cuts in place for those with incomes up to $1 million. (President Obama has said he supports keeping the tax cuts only for those below $250,000.) The Pelosi proposal would lose billions in revenue and would likely mean additional massive cuts to human needs.

Big budgetary decisions are likely to be pushed off until the lame-duck session after November’s election, or the following Congress. But it’s now — as we move into election season — that Democratic leaders need to hear that millions of voters oppose this appeasing of the 1% and the GOP.

The federal budget is in a hole because of bloated military spending, wars, tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, Wall Street speculation and the consequent economic downturn. None of these problems will be fixed by savaging our retirement and healthcare safety net or other important programs.

Nancy Pelosi, leader of the 1%.
The Democratic Party, the party of the 1%.
The Republican Party, the party of the 1%.
Two parties of the 1%
No parties of the 99%.

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Filed under Democrats, Economics, Government, Politics, US Politics

by | June 27, 2012 · 10:23 PM

The Reality of Dialects in Italy

It’s often said that the dialects of Italy will be dead in 30 years. There is no way on Earth that that is true. On the other hand, the hard or pure dialects are dying, as they are all over Europe, in Sweden, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

The hard dialects are often spoken only by the old now, and many old words have fallen out of use. The hard dialects often had a limited vocabulary restricted to whatever economic activity was typical of the area. A lot of the old dialects are now being written down in local dictionaries to preserve their heritage.

The dialects were of course killed by universal education, and this was a positive thing. All Italians should learn to speak some form of Standard Italian. In the old days when everyone spoke dialect, people had a hard time communicating with each other unless there was some form of regional koine that they could speak and all understand. It doesn’t make sense if you can only talk to people in a 20 mile or less radius.

A diglossia where hard dialects would exist alongside Standard Italian was never going to work. People are pretty much going to speak one or the other. As people learn Standard Italian, their local dialect will tend to become more Italianized. In other cases, the hard local dialect will tend to resemble more the local regional dialect.

For instance, in southern Campania, the region of Naples, in a part called Southern Cilento, there are still some Sicilianized dialects spoken, remnants from Sicilian immigrants who came in the 1500’s. These dialects are now dying, and the speech of the young tends to resemble more the Neapolitan Cilento speech of the surrounding area more.

In other cases, koines have developed.

There is a regional koine in Piedmont that everyone understands. There is a similar koine in West and East Lombard, the Western one based on the speech of Ticino. There is a Standard Sicilian, spoken by everyone and understood by all, and then there are regional dialects, which, if spoken in hard form, may not be intelligible with surrounding regions. A koine has also developed in Abruzze around Pesaro. There is “TV Venetian,” the Venetian used in regional TV, a homogenized form that has speakers of local dialects worried it is going to take them out.

Even where hard dialects still exist, the younger people continue to speak the local dialect, except that it is now a lot more Italianized and regionalized. A lot of the old words are gone, but quite a few are still left. So the dialects are not necessarily dead or dying, instead they are just changing.

In the places where the dialects are the farthest gone such as Lazio and Tuscany, the regional dialects are turning into “accents” which can be understood by any Standard Italian speaker.

The situation in Tuscany is complicated. Although the hard dialects are definitely going out, even the hard dialects may be intelligible to Standard Italian speakers since Standard Italian itself was based on the dialect of Florence, a city in Tuscany.

Florence was chosen as the national dialect around 1800 when Italian leaders decided on a language for all of Italy. But the truth is that the language of Dante had always been an Italian koine extending far beyond its borders, just as the language of Paris had long been the de facto Standard French (and it still is as Parisien).

This is not to say that there are not dialects in Tuscany. Neapolitan speakers say they hear old men from the Florence region on TV and the dialect is so hard that they want subtitles. And there is the issue of which Florentine was chosen as Standard Italian. A commenter said that the language that was chosen was the language of Dante, sort of a dialect frozen in time in the 1400’s. In that case, regional Tuscan could well have moved far beyond that.

Even in areas where dialects are said to be badly gone such as Liguria, local accents still exist. It is said that everyone in Genoa speaks with a pretty hard Ligurian accent. That is, it is Standard Italian spoken with a Genoese accent.

Many younger Italians are capable of speaking in what is called “close,” “strict” or “tight” dialect. This means the hard form of the dialect. Speaking in this hard dialect, they often say that outsiders have a hard time understanding them. They can also speak in a looser form that is more readily intelligible. People adjust their speech to interlocutors.

We seem to be seeing a resurgence of interest in dialects among young people. Even if they can’t  speak them, many understand them. Most young people grew up with mothers, fathers or certainly grandparents who spoke in this or that dialect, and they learned at least to understand it from them. In addition, in many parts of Italy, dialects are still going strong, and many young people at least understand the local dialect even if they do not speak it.

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Filed under Dialectology, Europe, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Italian, Italic, Italo-Celtic, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Italy, Language Families, Linguistics, Regional, Romance, Sociolinguistics

by | June 27, 2012 · 9:31 PM

Source for Stalin’s Death Toll

Here.

For a more academic source that Sousa’s essay is based on, see Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years:A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence by J. Arch Getty, Gabor T. Ritterspoon and Viktor N. Zemskov.

I am really getting tired of endlessly answering these questions to people who are not familiar with the literature. Note: I am not insulting those of you who have not heard of the revisionist studies, as the revisionist tolls on Stalin have never been disseminated by the “free press” (LOL!) in the West, so of course no one has heard of any of this stuff.

Peacetime figures for political deaths in the USSR 1921-1953 are:

Executions:             900,000
Deaths in the gulag:    300,000
Dekulakization Ukraine: 390,000

Totals: 1.59 million

Granted this does not include their fake deliberate famine (5.4 million) or the deaths during WW2. It’s open to debate whether to include such things or not.

The source is J. Arch Getty and various Russian scholars. The KGB archives were opened up by Gorbachev in 1990 and the millions of pages were pored over by scholars from the world over. The killers wrote down everything. Google J. Arch Getty for more.

The debate has continued to be conducted in academic journals since then, and the Conquest liars have stuck to their guns. The debate gets complicated, and I am not privy to all the details. Bottom line is that Conquest is saying that Commies lie all the time, so why should we believe the KGB archives, since obviously the KGB lied in their own archives?

Feel free to dip into it if you wish. I gave up after a bit and am just siding with Getty and rest. It may be some time before this is all sorted out. There are clearly some overheated emotions, at least on one side anyway.

The figures do not include:

WW2 minority transfers:    300,000+
Executions during WW2:     ~100,000+
Gulag criminal deaths:     900,000

Totals: 1.3 million

Even if you include those deaths, the figure only goes to 2.9 million. That’s a far cry from 20-110 million.

So many people have been fed the Conquest fertilizer for so many years that they can’t help but believe it, and they refuse to believe that the US government and the World Press lied to them for so many decades. People don’t like to hear that they got lied to.

References

Getty, J. Arch, Ritterspoon, Gabor T. and Zemskov, Viktor N. 1993. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence American Historical Review 98:4, 1048-49.

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Filed under Death, History, Modern, USSR

by | June 27, 2012 · 9:15 PM

Can’t Make It Without Immigrant Scabs? Just Go!

Repost from the old site.

We hear over and over again about all these businesses that supposedly are going to go out business if they can’t hire immigrant scabs. And that’s what every single illegal alien is in this country – a scab. Let’s make that loud and clear here.

And H-1B “non-immigrant guest workers” that have totally destroyed the computer industry for US engineers and programmers are nothing but scabs too. Indian nationalists tell me that without H-1B’s, all US computer corporations will have to go out of business. Well, first of all, that is complete nonsense. It’s not going to happen.

This is all based on the premise that there is such horrible competition from those great computer corporations in INDIA that are, you know, going to put Microsoft and Intel out of business.

I’ve also heard it from a fish processing plant in New England that now hires all illegal aliens. Back in the 1980’s, this was a union shop paying high wages. Bottom line is they broke the union. Now they pay crap wages and the only people dumb or desperate enough to work there are illegals. I suppose they are treated just wonderfully too.

So they need to hire illegals. As always, Americans will do the horrible, smelly and dirty work, but you need to pay them a good wage. This is what happened to our meat packing plants too, exactly. This is also what happened to the US construction industry. One by one, they broke the constructions unions.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, my friends were working union construction. It paid good money, enough to buy a home and raise a family. That’s all pretty much gone now. The jobs that once paid the equivalent of $30-45/hour in today’s wages are mostly history. There are still union jobs around, but not that many, and they have to wage continuous war against illegals.

There’s also a serious problem with legal immigrants from Mesoamerica who we have insanely allowed to flood in here. The result has been a complete glut in unskilled labor, such that many legal Mesoamericans are happy to work construction for $10/hr.

These jobs used to pay $30-45/hr. One would think that with a 30-75% decline in the cost of labor, even including inflation, that the cost of a house would have gone down. Forget it. Instead, we have seen insane increases in inequality and lopsided returns for those at the top of the heap.

I blame the Left in part for all of this. For the destruction of the US middle class and working class, for the crime and gang wave among young Americans in our cities (all the unskilled work goes to illegals, so young men turn to crime, gangs and dope).

For the mad increases in inequality, for the decline in wages for US workers, for workers have to work two and three jobs to get by, for the entire rightwing and Republican revolution (created in part by the empowerment of a 20% upper to upper middle class that benefited tremendously by massive wealth redistribution), for the ruination of US unions.

There were many factors at play in the development of these sorry reactionary and backwards trends over 35 years, but the US Idiot Left cheering on mass legal and illegal immigration into the US, especially in the past 20 years, has played its own sorry and significant role.

The American worker doesn’t really have any friends anymore. Both parties are supporting his total and absolute replacement by a never-ending tidal wave of immigrant scabs.

There have been some posts lately about a particularly gratuitous, outrageous and in your face abuse of immigration law in a town called Postville, Iowa in a plant that was managed by Orthodox Jews.

They came into Postville, took over the plant, got rid of all the Americans, and hired all illegal aliens. They are now polluting the water supply. I doubt they have paid much taxes either. Apparently they were also allowing the plant to be used to manufacture methamphetamine! How low can you go?

This incident has been written up a lot, including a book by a Jewish author that was quite critical of these Orthodox Jews – Steven Bloom – Postville – A Clash of Cultures in the Heartland. They came into the town, would not talk to or be friendly with anyone not Jewish, filled the town with illegal Mesoamericans, and basically created a lot of havoc.

This particular Jewish family – the Rubashkins – have been crooks for a very long time. They’ve been not only ripping off the Gentiles in the traditional Orthodox manner, but they have also specialized in ripping off their own people. That’s actually a violation of Jewish dual morality, and it may explain why they got some fellow Jews after them.

The Jewish press, as usual, wrote glowing articles about this wonderful situation in this small Iowa town, and Jewish Hollywood made a stupid documentary narrated by Glen Close and sponsored by Hallmark that lied and said how wonderful everything was in Postville, Iowa.

Here is Steve Sailer’s excellent article on this situation. The comments are also enlightening. There is a Jewish commenter (apparently) on there defending the Lubavitchers running the slaughterhouse (the Lubavitchers are the very worst of all ultra-Orthodox Jews). His line is that if they shut down the plant, it will be an economic disaster for Postville.

I get to the point of my post.

So shut it down already! Seriously, just shut down the fucking plant. They aren’t hiring any Americans anyway. Just move it to Mexico and take the 800 Mexican scabs with you.

That’s basically my response to all these idiots who say we need to bring in Indian H-1B job thief scabs and illegals to do all this work that supposedly Americans just won’t do. Supposedly it’s going to harm US business too much to get rid of all the immigrant scabs, legal and illegal.

Look man, if you can’t make it paying American workers the wages that they want (not too high, actually) just take the fuck off. Go overseas. Offshore. Move your damn business to a foreign country. What good is a business in the US that isn’t even hiring Americans anyway?

Who’s making money off that, besides the criminal owner? A bunch of immigrant scabs, that’s who. And they are worthless. They add nothing to this country, they and their jobs can go in a NY minute without a tear to be shed. These businesses are nothing but parasites in our country. If all a business can do in our country is just be a parasite, then just move your damn operation offshore and get the Hell out of the country.

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Filed under Conservatism, Fake Guest Workers, Illegal, Immigration, Labor, Left, Legal, Political Science, Reposts From The Old Site

by | June 26, 2012 · 11:58 PM

Check Out Massese

This is a news broadcast in the dialect of Massa, part of the dual city of Carrara Massa in the far north of Tuscany. This is actually an Emilian dialect related to Modenese in the province of Modena in Emilia. Carrara Massa was part of a political and religious unit with Modena for a very long time, and it influenced their dialects.

All of the dialects in this part of the far north of Tuscany near the border of Liguria have undergone such influence. As such, the dialects of Carrara Massa have seen little influence from the Tuscan dialects in the region although Massa has undergone a lot more influence from Versiliese, spoken in the historical area of Versilia along the coast just to the south.The dialect of Carrara is much more pure and has almost zero Tuscan influence, but the dialects of Massa and Carrara are similar.

There are about four different dialects spoken in each Massa and Carrara. It is said in Carrara that the dialects change every 100 yards! This may be an exaggeration, but you get the picture. The old dialect of Carrara is now spoken only by the elderly and the new dialect spoken by younger people is heavily Italiainized.

There are beautiful beaches in both Massa and Carrara and the women are said to be very beautiful.

The region to the north of the border with Emilia and just into Liguria around Sarzana just across the border in Liguria are similar. The dialects to the north are referred to as Lunigiana and Gargafuna in the mountains. The Lunigiana dialect is probably understandable throughout this region and is spoken by about 300,000 people. Outside the region in the rest of Tuscany and Liguria and in Emilia, intelligibility is probably marginal, although intelligibility tests with Modenese have not yet been done.

This is a Gallo-Italic dialect spoken in Tuscany.

This broadcast in the pure dialect of Massese is probably hard to understand for speakers of Standard Italian who do not speak a Gallo-Italic language. To me, it’s sounds very strange and sounds nothing like Standard Italian. It almost sounds French to my ears.

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Filed under Dialectology, Europe, Italic, Italo-Celtic, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Italy, Language Families, Linguistics, Regional, Sociolinguistics