This thread was split 04/06/07 from a larger topic where it grew as an offshoot.
-- Red Square

BYU campus protests Dick Cheney speech... "Cheney just doesn't measure up."

In other words, and in plain English... BYU campus is protesting Cheney's speaking at their commencement because he LIED about the reasons the Bushies invaded Iraq. The LIES are coming back to haunt Bush and Cheney.

Wouldn't it be astounding and refreshing to hear some truth from the Bush administration? Such as... “Well, uh… hehehe < snicker… sneer… > "What we really did was invade Iraq to steal their OIL and get a toe hold in the Middle East!! That's our Right of Freedom !! We executed their leader, slaughtered their people, and destroyed their country and the infrastructure of their society!! We are the Imperialists… not HUMANISTS!! You Dumb Butts !! We take what we want when we want it, and leave the rest for the buzzards!!”… Randism

“You say WE created TERRORISM ?? Who, us? Uh, well… You got me there... < chuckle… sneer… > We can handle that… Can't we Georgie Boy…?? Can't we ? Just Nuke ‘Em !! Just Nuke 'Em dammit.”

Blue Bell

BYU campus protests Dick Cheney speech

By DEBBIE HUMMEL, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 2, 2:49 PM ET

PROVO, Utah - Some students and faculty on one of the nation's most
conservative campuses want Brigham Young University to withdraw an
invitation for Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at commencement
later this month.

Critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for
graduates, citing his promotion of faulty intelligence before the
Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal.

The private university, which is owned by the Mormon church, has "a
heavy emphasis on personal honesty and integrity in all we do," said
Warner Woodworth, a professor at BYU's business school.

"Cheney just doesn't measure up," he said.

Woodworth is helping organize an online petition asking that the
school rescind its invitation to the vice president. In its first
week, the petition collected more than 2,300 signatures, mostly from
people describing themselves as students, alumni or members of the
church.

The display of dissent is rare for a university that has been voted
the nation's most "stone-cold sober" school nine years in a row in
the annual Princeton Review of party schools.

Students at BYU adhere to a strict honor code that forbids everything
from drinking coffee to wearing shorts or short skirts. The school's
30,000 students seldom even stray from campus sidewalks, leaving its
lawns pristine.

"Cougars don't cut corners," is how one saying describes students,
most of whom belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints.

But student Diane Bailey, who is leading a protest Wednesday against
Cheney's visit, said students are not "robotic conservatives."

Bailey and others are upset by Cheney's role in promoting faulty
intelligence that led the U.S. into the Iraq war. They also cite his
proximity to the CIA leak scandal in which his chief of staff, I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of
justice.

Cheney's BYU speech is the first of two commencement addresses he is
scheduled to give this spring. The other will be May 26 at the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point.

Both are institutions where Cheney could have expected to receive a
warm reception, Woodworth said.

Utah has consistently supported the administration, delivering
President Bush his largest margin of victory in any state in 2000 and
2004. In Utah County, home to BYU, about 85 percent of voters chose
the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004.

Richard Davis, a political-science professor and adviser for the
college Democrats, said the uproar over Cheney's visit is evidence of
a rift within the school and church that belies the faith's larger
claim of being politically neutral.

"He should be invited to come. He should speak. But let's not send
the signal that we're abandoning our political neutrality," Davis
said. "There is no political gospel in the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints."

The church has a policy of political neutrality and issues an annual
statement declaring that both major political parties include ideals
that Mormons could embrace.

"It's one thing to invite some milquetoast Republican. But Dick
Cheney?" Davis said. The protest reflects lack of support for Cheney,
as well as "the larger issue of diversity and more liberal people
within the BYU community and within the LDS church."

Historically dissent has not been well received at the school. Last
year, a BYU professor wrote a newspaper opinion piece opposing the
church's call for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. In response,
the school announced it would not renew Jeffrey Nielsen's contract.

Cheney's office said his commencement speech would not have a
political theme.

The school approved a permit for the college Democrats' Wednesday
protest and is working on finding a protest site for the day of
Cheney's speech.

"We recognize that members of our campus community are entitled to
their opinions," said university spokeswoman Carri
Jenkins. "Political neutrality does not mean there cannot be any
political discussion."

Calling all cars! Calling all cars! The is the politburo of Nitwit Planet! One of our inmates has escaped and has been sighted in Brenham, Texas, and is believed to be traveling to Roswell, N.M.

He was found at bed check with a pile of medicines that we believed he palmed instead of taking.

Correction: Blue Bell is not a he but a she. An understandable error with Trolls who tend to go for the unisex look. The Cube policy is not to scare trolls away, but gently to poke them with sticks, encouraging them to the Gulagotroll where they will be able to build a nest and breed.

Blue Bell wrote:We executed their leader, slaughtered their people, and destroyed their country and the infrastructure of their society!! We are the Imperialists… not HUMANISTS!! You Dumb Butts !! We take what we want when we want it, and leave the rest for the buzzards!!

THAT'S RIGHT!!! Slaughtering people, destroying a society's infrastructure, imperialism, and humanism, is OUR TURF!!!! We Socialist's have been working toward perfecting all that since the glorious revolution of 1917! And WE DO NOT APPRECIATE GEORGE "W"EASEL BUSH MUSCLING IN ON OUR TURF!!!!!!

KEEP THE SOCIALIST NIGHTMARE ... ER ... DREAM ALIVE!!!

ALL HAIL OUR DEAR LEADER, HRC!!!

--
Peace through Socialist Domination,
Zampolit B. S. Blokhayev

Blue Bell

Time out!

I'm blowing the whistle!

<Pffffffttttt>

Troll?

No, I don't think so.
Troll status here in TPC is hallowed.
We just can't be handing out "TROLL STATUS" to any quarter-wit LIB NUT JOB that makes three posts.

Theocritus: It's "Blue Bell" not "Blue Balls"!
Red: 3 Posts? Mikael Rudolph of Minneapolis, Minnesota damn near did 3 X 30 in ONE NIGHT!

BESIDES, BOTH OF YOU KNOW THAT "BLUE BELL" IS A COW'S NAME!
YOU BOTH KNOW HOW VALUABLE TROLL MILK IS!

No, it's too early to make a call on this one.
This is going upstairs to Lenin's Tomb for further review. May Stalin help both of you!

Laika, did someone put LSD in your Puppy Chow? And quit puttiing words, or blue balls in my mouth. And anyway blue balls are a temporary state and can be remedied...and before you put anything <i>else</i> in my mouth, you know that as well as I do. But being canine, you can do it by licking your own.

If I could do that, I'd never leave home. Ka-boom.

Blue Bell Ice Cream comes from Brenham, Texas, which is also home to Germania Insurance, which I know from personal experience requires a citation--Texan for complaint in a law suit--to get them to pay up and then they fly in real honest-to-god trolls, dug out of the limestone caves, where they lick coprolites and hide them among the stalagmites and blink in the sun. Gollum.

Granted.

But three posts doth thee a troll not maketh.
Doth thou protest?

Mikael the Mime, FOREVER MAY HIS BLATHERING BRAIN DEAD RANTS BE IN OUR HEARTS, was indeed the Troll King and the gold standard for all Trolldom. And so help me Beria, no one, you hear me, no one has yet matched his degree of moonbattery. I will never forget the time when he told me to remove my head from my stagnant ass or how he threatened to kick Laika's ass. Oh yes, Mikael the Mime: the arch moonbat, the mime protector, the contemptible and the hilarious will always have a special place in the TPC's Pantheon of Raving Idiots.

Bluebell - <gasp!> College kids are signing a petition!? AGAINST THE HUMANIST!?!? OMG! This just proves how popular this Administration is and a good showing of just how easy it was for them to take advantage of young minds! Damn, I knew Cheney was hitting the campussies in efforts to undermine humanism! I KNEW IT! OK, Bluebell, what should we do!? Give us orders... we mustn't allow our suicidal idealistic slaves to get into cahoots with the Bushler crime family... quickly, we can't think for ourselves! SHOW US THE WAY! SHOW US THE WAY! OMG... I just shat my pants again! OH MAH GORE! I am totally not making any sense right now and have everything upside down and backwards... so send what I just said to at least 100 people to stir the toliet basin of revolutionary zeal! <collapses in a zealot seizure>

April 3, 2007. Midland Repeater Telegram wrote:Local Democratic Commissar Jacques Hostenbugger and his life-partner Cyndi Klakko today filed suit in District Court of the 132rd judicial district of the State of Texas against Publishers' Clearing House. The petitioners state in their petition, through their lawyers Douie, Cheatham, and Howe,

"We got a circular in the mail from Publishers' Clearing House and it said that we might have won five million dollars. In two weeks the doorbell rang and Ed McMcMahon was there with a check but it was for only $4,999,999.99.

"Publishers' Clearing House Lied. Therefore every single word that was ever written in any language on any book, paper, rock, or in the sand is a lie. Ed McMahon lied. People died. And we're suing for one penny with punitive damages of one trillion dollars, which we will use to support the Banded Cockroach and Stephens Kangaroo Rat Foundation, and buy Blue Bell Ice Cream for one-eyed, autistic tree-huggers with differently abled senses of personal sanitation who look at their tiny pee-pees through cubic zirconium, which is what we do, and Cyndi Klakko wants to have one sewn on.

"People have a right to know that their clearing houses don't lie."

The case goes to trial with the Honorable Lucius D. Bunton, III, deceased, presiding.

Dearest Comrade Blue Bell,

Though I still find the Democratic Party to be rather Right Wing, I think the student BYU Democrats Sit-In protest against lying, sneering Dick Cheney is on the right course. This can only be good for our cause. Socialism needs more like you.

Thank you for posting at this little web-site.

If I may, I'd like to suggest that you put up an avatar picture. I think one of you in a nice blue dress, standing on an antebellum veranda of a cute little plantation house, would be nice and would certainly be very southern and Democratic.

Again, thank you for posting. I find your insights to be most rewarding.

Comrade Otis, I must protest in the strongest terms that Blue Bell is not a southerner. Texans are sometimes mistakenly called Southerners, but we have our own strong tradition of progressive thought:

Recall LBJ who gave us the great society: the first step to World Socialism. The election returns in 1946 from Duvall County were delayed until enough votes could be found to ensure that Landslide Lyndon, the People's Hero, could be elected. Oddly enough, the grandfather of Bill Buckley, who died in 1906, then the sheriff of the county, voted for LBJ, so strong was the desire to elect this champion of the Peepul.

Jim Wright, whose corruption was a model for all other speakers of the house.

Lloyd Bentsen, the Senator who ran for Vice President, whose father scammed thousands in South Texas land deals and was the source of the Bentsen fortune. "I knew JFK. You're not JFK. You go home to your wife and didn't fire the White House doctor for refusing to give you enough happy juice."

Pa Ferguson, the governor who was so corrupt that he was chased from office, to be succeeded by his wife Ma, who was the first woman governor in AmeriKKKa. They advanced the art of rapine and raping the public purse for their own good, er, advancing Progressive causes out of selfless devotion so much that we reconfigured our constitution to make the governor's powers the weakest of any state's.

Ralph Yarborough, the senator whose name was the first that I can remember as a young red-diaper baby, the idol of progressives everywhere. Always ready to lend a helping hand as long as he was grossly insulted for doing so.

So I must protest in Texas being lumped into the mere Southern tradition. We have our own fine tradition of Progressives who will steal anything, lie, and cheat, er, work tirelessly for the common weal.

And they are all 100% Democrats.

Scratch a Texan and you get a Texan. A very vocal Texan. You're quite rightly proud of the Texas tradition, Commissar.

Still, I like that idea for Comrade Blue Bell's avatar. Comrade Blue Bell, in an antebellum like Gone With the Wind scene, standing on the veranda of a beautiful plantation house like some modern-day Scarlett O'Hara at Tara before Lincoln and the Republican's war laid waste to everything she held dear, dressed in a nice blue antebellum dress, perhaps a little parasol in hand. And, to bring it into modernity, a red beret on her wind blown hair, like one that Hugo Chavez wears, for that touch of social justice activist. I think that would make a great avatar.

Comrade Otis, perhaps another avatar for Blue Bell. On one side, the old side, is a Texas Ranger standing on the top of the First Natl Bank of El Paso building during the Pancho Villa raids, and shooting anyone in Juarez. And for the new side, filing a petition in district court on behalf of Texas Rural Legal Aid, which files suits to declare deeds to property invalid because they invalidate the freebie status. I am not making this up.

I am, however, waiting on Adobe CS3 to be released for my Intel Mac so that I may confect my own avatar. The possibilities swirl in my mind.

Oh, but I forgot in my prior comment. How could I possibly have forgotten Henry Ross Perot, the hand grenade with the bad haircut? The one who gave us Our Many Titted Empress via Slick Willie? The one with so much money that no one has recently said to him, "Ross, you're fucking nuts!" Who made that money, by the way, from government contracts. And who gave us the memorable line, "We'll get the best brains together and do something."

Being a proud leftist, I adore process for it relieves me of having to produce results. That is what so endears the UN to me. And if the process does not in fact work, all the better, for if it got results, <i>I'd have to get a real job</i>. That's why children will never be better educated. Health care will never get fixed. Then I'd have to work instead of talk and stay in the Four Seasons.

The essential Progressive characteristic is the love of process for its own sake for remember--come the glorious revolution, there will be nothing BUT process and those of us skilled in process will sit high at the table. The table will be balanced on the backs of impoverished and frightened people, which will lend lustre to the glories of our process.

Process is all to the Progressive. A bas avec les autres. To the wall with results!

Sieg Process!

Very well put, Commissar. Here in Washington State we're making good progress in destroying property rights as well. In the last elections the Kulaks here had tried to shove some reactionary legislation down the throat of the State. They wanted to tie the hands of the legislature to the State Constitution's interpretation of property rights. Scraps of paper, we said! It was soundly defeated by our campaign of Truth. The Kulaks didn't have a chance and now the antiquated notions of property here are a thing of the past. We've found that all we have to do is put every issue in the context of Environmentalism and the majority of people go along. It's been a long haul over the decades but we've finally found an "ism" that works in America.

Sieg Process!

Dear Members of TPC,

Thanks for your several responses to my recent post, whether or not your comments were positive, negative, comic, or written out of curiosity and inquisitiveness… or if you were merely bored and didn't have anything else to do. Being impulsive by nature and often prone to big mouth voicing and/or writing of my individual beliefs and opinions, I gave little thought (or did I ?) that my post… what I thought was a well-deserved tirade against the unscrupulous VP Cheney, that destroyer of humanity… … would stir up such a hornet's nest and offend others with my lack of sensitivity. Afterwards, from the group reactions, I belatedly thought…. Oh my, what have I done?? Why did I do it?? I will endeavor to honestly give answer.

First, I am NOT a Troll… whatever that is. About a year ago(?), I began receiving unsolicited issues of The Peoples Cube in my mailbox. I don't recall having subscribed to the magazine. In fact, I had never heard of the website. Was this a promotional venture for TPC? Though not always in agreement with the written word in TPC, I enjoyed reading it, and began to look forward to the issues, finding them entertaining and often hysterically funny and, in general, up-to-date and good reading re: the usual status of the American Arena… SNAFU.

Later on, I must have officially subscribed to the magazine, and a few months ago, came up with a user name (Blue Bell) and was brave enough to submit a few posts, the last one causing a hue and holler amongst the members of this apparently tightly-knit group. Are contrary opinions (Freedom of Speech) not allowed in The Peoples Cube ?? I would guess NOT. The words “We the People” should be stricken at once from the Constitution of the United States, and that document be declared as null and void !!

Be that as it may, I do offer my humble apologies to Red Square and members for my tirade and tacky, unacceptable behavior re: my questionable post. I do understand that Red Square desires to keep the premise of TPC pure and intact. I don't blame him, for otherwise the group would fall apart at the seams if progressives and complaining, socialist leaning “little people” were allowed in here to mess things up. Common laborers must stay in their place and should not be allowed to have computers in their possessions !!

TPC appears to be a Party Place of the worshippers of the $$ Sign and the Movers, the Shakers, and the Achievers. Achievement IS morality. It doesn't matter how you do it… Just do it !! Make $$, enjoy the wealth, and spend it !! Ideally, the $$ will trickle down like green rain drops on the heads and backs of the little people, and they will become fertile and produce more $$ for the achievers. Is this the concept of trickle down economics? I was never much good at mathematics or as a student of economics in college. “Who is John Galt?”

But what if something goes wrong with the economic system? What if all the little people went on STRIKE ?? Who would be left to run the motors and do the manual work? The Corporate Leaders? I don't think so !! It appears to me that each level of society is equally important to make the Main Motor run smoothly and properly. Without the little people, Corporate America would be up a creek without the paddlers.

A few questions:

What about U.S. out-sourcing of jobs and marketable goods? Our once busy and productive factories and industries are now ghostly, empty shells. And so are the people… from middle to lower class citizens that once kept them running. Where are they? What are they doing now? Where are the labels “Made in the U.S.A.?” Result: A serious surplus of unemployed laborers that must compete with illegal Mexican immigrants for the most menial jobs.

What about the North American Trade Union between the U.S., Mexico and Canada that Bush is quietly pushing?

And what about the hush-hush Trans-American Trade Corridor that will run from Canada to Mexico at Laredo, Texas? The TTC-1-35 portion will run smack dab in the middle of the small north Texas town in which I live.

Combined with the above, there is also the question of our War President who is not content with one war. Despite the loss and failure in Iraq, he wants to continue his plan for a war with Iran.

This is not a tirade… I'm merely thinking and questioning in writing. We are still allowed to think and question, aren't we? I read a recent report that the U.S. (equal with Mexico) is ranked only 7th in world education. That is frightening !! I'm concerned for America. Have we become a nation of too many uneducated little people and fewer Achievers?? What happened? I'm asking…

Red Square and members of The Peoples Cube… please try to forgive me for my concern and seriousness. I am well aware that this is a satirical site, but it's difficult to keep a smile on my face when I think of the lack of leadership in our once blessed United States. I have a great idea !! I think you should run for President. I would vote for you!! I can just see the red banners waving in the breeze… Red Square for President !! The Man of the People !!

With sincerity and humor,
Blue Bell

I really have no idea of the economic circumstances of any other members of the Cube, nor really their jobs. I'm relatively new too, since only about December. My take is that it is mostly libertarian--people who utterly loathe coercion, and that's why I'm here. I've been as rude as possible to the Democrats but have given many sharp elbows to the Republicans too.

What I've noticed is a visceral aversion to compulsion, which comes at you from every angle. I have no love for it in any form--Christian, Socialist, environmentalist. I have no problem with anyone whose ideas are held privately, or expressed publicly, but, this is important, without the baggage of coercion. I received a flier from The Heritage Foundation, which I once supported as one of the reputable think tanks in America, giving moral reasons instead of pragmatic ones for conservative stances, such as low marginal tax rates. In the latest one they led off with fag-bashing to drum up hysteria. I replied rather tartly to Ed Fuelner, its poo-bah, and blogged on jessicaswell.com about it. It went from ideas to fear put in service to coercion.

Just so with Algore and his environmental wackos. The science fails utterly, but TPC have antennae very sensitive to coercion. Environmentalism fails even the test that Christians pass (except Catholic priests)--that faith is recognized as being wishful thinking. Apocolyptic global warming is utterly debunked (see the BBC 75-minute documentary on YouTube) but that means nothing to true believers. Whether they're Democrats using it as a grab for power; tranzis (transnational progressives) doing the same goddamned thing.

I think that you're conflating this with a true political site, which advances Republican, or whatever, causes. I do not recall anything about a war in Iran and the bit about equal-opportunity e. coli was brilliant satire.

I can say much about Iran, and have elsewhere, and will laugh (see Irwin Stelzer's article in <i>The Spectator</i> and which I stole and put on JW) when Europe is left to fend for itself after Uncle Sam, tired of being kicked in the ankle by the spoiled trust-fund brats of Europe, comes home and lets them fend for themselves. But that's another subject for another site.

The crass materialism that you see is really nothing more than a well-done spoof. I cannot do it; I can only aspire to being an arch faux-commie. But all of it--ALL of it--can be encapsulated in a quotation from someone who escaped the commies honest enough to label themselves that:

Red Square wrote:At first I was a believer in the Big Lie, then a doubter, then a skeptic, and now am an enemy

I have found a place here because compulsion is my pet hate for I realize that it enforces living second-hand on both the aggressor and the victim. Masters and slaves are in a symbiotic relationship. And I reject it utterly.

I have gone on some conservative websites and have raised a few eyebrows--not that many loud-mouthed, openly gay conservatives with an armentarium of obloquy, abuse, objurgation sometimes masking pleonasm, tarted up with anecdote and sententious quotation. But this one is the most fun for it exists solely to stick pins in the balloons of our wannbe masters.

And for now the Democrats are worst on the list. Others may lap them--who knows? But for now, the coercive left is in asendency in America.

Pardon me. AmeriKKKa. Got to get back into drag.

We got us a real Elsworth Toohey here...welcome, comrade!

I have a question for the Cube-At-Large (feel free to chime in, BB)...

Why does the Left fear school vouchers (i.e. competition in the arena of education)? I don't think it's because public education (and educators) would "lose money". Perhaps it fears the many minds (young, fertile, malleable minds) it would lose...just a thought..

And we're back to coercion. And we're back to the Heritage Foundation which made the argument, once upon a time before it got sidetracked by fag-bashing, that there is a moral argument to made for low marginal tax rates. That it's simply not <i>right</i> to steal from others. Ignore the pragmatic one that people fall back onto proven by the fact that lower marginal tax rates have always increased the money paid by the rich.

The evil Rush Limbaugh defined liberalism as spreading misery. There is a nice piece in Michael Creighton's book I'm listening to now, <i>Next</i> I think it's called and in the disclaimer in the frontispiece he says it's fictional--except the parts that aren't. There is a (fictional?) report from a gene lab in France saying it found the Master gene. People who are bossy. But how to account for the slavish devotion of the left to people who are bigger? The at-your-feet-or-at-your-throat attitude that Germans, home of many brave totalitarians, have and that Churchill noted?

The attack--and then servility to a bigger dog. David Corn exhibits it, as do all of the (now) writers of that Stalinist rag <i>The Nation</i>. Creighton says that these people have a gene of wanting everyone to be just alike--spreading the misery. The Ellsworth Toohey gene. The desire to rule over all--and it doesn't matter that they're all miserable. It's the power after all.

It is not economics; lower tax rates have increased the taxes taken in by the treasury in the 20s under Coolidge; in the 60s under Kennedy, in the 80s under Reagan and under Bush. Every single time. But the left howls at it being "unjust" for it knows that the dollar is a fungible unit of power and that people who are rich can say "fuck you" to the commissars (sorry).

Which gives rise to an interesting phenomenon. Why do the super rich, like Soros, Kennedy et al--and the Democrats in Congress are richer than the Republicans--all go for leftist causes? Answer: if you have the latest Gulfstream, or even a 757 (Nansky, are you listening?), and if you have enough houses (John Effing Kerry, does this ring a bell?) what can you spend your money on? Power, that's what. And what better crowbar than greenhouse gasses?

Control of greenhouse gasses, and environmentally friendly workshops in third-world countries, will have the benefit of shutting down the best-paying jobs in third-world countries and turn them from developing into wallowing in desperate poverty while well-intentioned (on the surface; spre\ad that honey for the flies) bureaucrats swan in on jets they cannot design or maintain and pull their chins, well satisfied with a good day's work putting poor people out of work, because the poor can't get richer and will have to keep their place.

Which is tending the greens of the greenies and entering the country club of the bien pensant through the back door. The only darkies permitted are pet ones like Kofi Anan, and his corruption is winked at. The only gays permitted will be those in on the con, like Bonnie Fwank. Margaret Thatcher? Quelle horreur! Hillary Rodham Clinton, mistress of the whip? Wanne be despot over the world? Makes them all moist and they stick to the chair. The the danger with leather seats, you know; when a really good bit of coercion comes along and say another hundred million can be slaughtered for ideological purity, then the party faithful cannot rise to applaud. The women are stuck to the chairs and the men would be be packing wood.

You think I'm exaggerating? Anthony Burgess's <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> seems to me to be merely a very bad joke building on Rand's <i>The Fountainhead</i>.

All coercion. All channels. All the time. And the reason that this site tends to be economically coonservative, which is most definitely NOT Republican, is that Hayek and Smith showed that liberty and property are indissolubly linked.

There is a Cube magazine!? How come I never got a TPC Magazine?!? Ugh... who do I have to talk to in order to get this periodical of progress shipped to my decadent solid gold mailbox? WHO I ASK??

I too have questions, Blue Bell (and other members)...

Why does the Left want us to withdraw from Iraq and why must we have a set date and time if and when we do so? Do they hate George Bush that much to let an entire country fall into the hands of radical extremist and possibly become a puppet-state under the control of Iran? And how does the Left define "losing" and "failure"? They obviously ask us to define winning, so in the interest of fairness I will ask you to define losing.

Also...

How is Dick Cheney the "destroyer of humanity", is it because he was involved in the initial war planning for Iraq? I guess one could say the same about the Democrats who purposely flood the inner-cities with welfare money to turn votes and keep minorities dependent on their leadership and the money the government doles out... indefinitely of course. Keeping people poor and uneducated destroys humanity too, I guess? Maybe it does worse, maybe keeping people poor and uneducated also destroys their spirit and their will to succeed and live a fruitful and prosperous life? I mean, I would really like to see progress in the cities, you know, people having jobs, good education and opportunities. But alas, all I see is the same (D) after the Mayors name and the same folks turning to crime, drugs and other awful means of survival. I really would love them to be educated, but I fear the Democrats would not like that. No, they need people weak and blind to the truth in order to get re-elected, another indicator of why our cities public education is particularly in such shambles.

Please, Blue Bell, all satire aside... all joking and smiles put away. I would really love to know your answer to my questions since you seem to be a reasonable and articulate individual. I just don't understand the other aisle and would like to learn more about what you believe in and what the other team has to offer. I am an open minded person, Blue Bell, and willing to listen - after all, I am a student with a young mind and would love your input.

In conclusion, all I really want is to understand why humanism is so grand and why you (and others) think personal responsibility, hard work, self-motivation and individuality is so bad. Nothing would make me happier right now then understanding and finding common ground with you on this. And hopefully, hopefully I will better understand your point of view and maybe open my eyes to the ideas, questions and concerns you might have.

Thanks, and I look forward to your response.

Blue Bell -

if you received TPC emails, some secret admirer must have put your email on our mailing list. We don't send out unsolicited email.

And thanks for bringing up the subject of the suffering Little People. As a rich and greedy selfish giant I enjoy looking down on them from high above as they engage in their little "my class envy is bigger than your class envy" measuring contests. Occasionally I also trickle on them with my wealth.

And Chairman Punchenko even has solid golden doors encrusted with pictures of suffering Little People. Sometimes we allow one of them to be graced by our presence. We like it because it highlights our own gigantic proportions, exuberant wealth, and importance. After a few expensive drinks at $$ Haliburton's bunker we like to go out and trickle - as Little People beneath us run around in chaotic crowds, fighing for each golden drop we bestow upon them.

-- Red Giant

Well maybe that is why so many illegal immigrants are flooding our borders and why so many jobs are being out-sourced because the Little People might STRIKE? Oh well, Virginia is #1 in the country for business and I guess that means we rank #50 with the Little People.

Hmmm... I guess since Algore is "Earth Friendly" he instantly gets the title of Green Giant (although he looks rather angry instead of the "jolly" which is associated with the title).

Yes, Comrade Red Giant - I do indeed enjoy vacationing at the John Edwards Palatial Estate to drink expensive wine while throwing table scraps to the idealistic activist. Ahh yes, they can find no flaw in us. No, not even a herring of hypocrisy due to their inability to see such things. Why we have the (D) before our rank and titles which makes us immune to such criticism. And oh that John Edwards, I do love it when he preaches to the Little People about greed and excess... especially when he made his living shaking down the Corporate fat cats for his own Common Good. Such a wonderful man that John Edwards is - and rich enough to buy himself the Presidency, mind you! Remember the time when John preached to the Little People about Wal-mart and then later called the store to pay whatever they wanted for the much coveted Playstation 3? Remember that, comrades? What a shining example of socialist virtues that was! He is sooo rich that he can pay whatever the corporate fat cats want for their little trinkets... why, he doesn't even have to wait for such things because he is willing to pay whatever it takes to get what he WANTS.

<Red Army hat off>
But seriously, do you not see the difference between those earning money through honest work and talent (Group A), and those playing tricks with politics to obtain unearned wealth through government pull and coercion (Group B)? Sarcastically you label them both as "successful" - but they are equally immoral in your eyes because the both groups have money.

In reality, however, it's either Group A or Group B that can be successful. If Group A runs the parade, everybody has a chance. But if it drops the ball, then Group B takes over and doesn't let anyone to be successful except its own members. They usually get to power by claiming that they care about the Little People. They are also very good at pointing fingers. This is not a partisan divide. Unfortunately some Republicans are also in Group B. But the Dems are definitely are the helm. Namely, every single presidential candidate in the last few elections.

Who built those factories that are now empty? Did they become shaped like factories by force of erosion, from solid rock, and then got unfairly captured by greedy capitalists? Or did the capitalists come up with the concept and the budget, design them and put their money at risk to build them, incidentally giving job opportunities to thousands of people? And if those factories stand empty today, is it because the capitalists deliberately wanted to hurt themselves by closing them and losing their investment?

Those strikes that you mentioned, are they also a force of nature like the hurricanes? "What if all the little people went on STRIKE ??" Well, that's when the little people let themselves get fooled by the unions and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Soon they'll be without jobs staring at an empty factory - because the unions had priced it out of business.

"What if something goes wrong with the economic system?" you ask. Again, a natural disaster you think? But unlike Global Warming, all bad things that happened to the economic system so far in this country were man-made. They happened when Group B tried to control the economy through political means - in the name of the Little People, of course. And when they failed, they pointed at Group A as the culprit.

Are you a union member? Than you're probably better off than I am. You have a pension fund, you have health insurance, and almost guaranteed employment. I have none of that. I'm also paying higher prices at the cash register and higher taxes to compensate for the union exuberance. Trickle down economics? Try vacuum cleaning economics. And the same greedy bastards who clean my pockets have the gull to call me greedy.

Depending on your definition of "little" I may be "littler" than you are. But the thing is, I don't accept your definitions. That's why your use of "little people" cracked me up. Little as in serfs? Peons? Lilliputians? I left the old country to escape this sort of categorization. I never expected to find the same mentality in America. Little did I know indeed!

It's a character flaw. It's resentment, bred in the bone. Pew did some research with party identification and they found that people who were optimistic about their chances tended to be Republican and people who were pessimistic tended to be Democratic.

In other words, whiney finger-pointing people tend to be Democrats and there are always people willing to say and do anything for power. It's the new plantation. Simon Legree may have enslaved peoples' bodies. The left enslaves their souls and minds.

Slaves can run away if they're lucky. They don't carry their prison with them.

LOL... Lilliputians is good.

Oh yes, my father can't even display a sign on HIS PROPERTY at HIS PLACE OF BUSINESS without paying a tax for it, thanks to the Democrats who run the city council, of course. Yes, it truly is a shame, Red. You came here in search of freedom, economic opportunity, ect. ect. ect. only to find the very thing you were running from. And who is it all for? IT'S FOR THE LITTEL PEOPLE! It's for folks like Jim Bob who holds a clip board for a living and gets paid better than anyone else here because HE IS UNIONIZED. And the Dems have the gull to blame the Repubs for out-sourcing and hiring illegals!

Kudos to Commissar T for using "tranzi" in his post! THOSE DAMN WORLD SOCIALIST BASTARDS! Oh well, their open arms tolerance in Europe will doom them all... can you say EURABIA??? I can! I have relatives in Germany that are freaking out saying that Munich Airport looks like a Syrian Bazaar now thanks to current immigration policy over there. Yes, it won't be long till they have no other choice but to close up shop and move here.

No worries, Chairman. I did find the very thing I was running from - but mostly ideologically. Luckily for us it hasn't been put to practice yet here. You dad's sign tax is only a tiny sample of what's in store. After the Revolution he won't need a sign - because he won't have a business, and also because when everything is owned by the government, there's no need in advertisement. People will find what they need wthout any signs, and will stand in line for hours to get it. Planned distribution replaces supply and demand. You can't demand anything. You can only feel mandatory gratitude towards the government for supplying you with basic essentials.

Indeed! All we need is the basic essentials like a ditch to sleep in, a rotten potato to eat and of course the finest in vinyl shoes to wear! Ahhh! What a glorious world it will be... all for the Little People! It's all for them!!! ALL FOR THEM!!!

Blue Bell wrote:Dear Members of TPC,
Thanks for your several responses to my recent post, whether or not your comments were positive, negative, comic, or written out of curiosity and inquisitiveness… or if you were merely bored and didn't have anything else to do. Being impulsive by nature and often prone to big mouth voicing and/or writing of my individual beliefs and opinions, I gave little thought (or did I ?) that my post… what I thought was a well-deserved tirade against the unscrupulous VP Cheney, that destroyer of humanity… … would stir up such a hornet's nest and offend others with my lack of sensitivity. Afterwards, from the group reactions, I belatedly thought…. Oh my, what have I done?? Why did I do it?? I will endeavor to honestly give answer.

First, I am NOT a Troll… whatever that is. About a year ago(?), I began receiving unsolicited issues of The Peoples Cube in my mailbox. I don't recall having subscribed to the magazine. In fact, I had never heard of the website. Was this a promotional venture for TPC? Though not always in agreement with the written word in TPC, I enjoyed reading it, and began to look forward to the issues, finding them entertaining and often hysterically funny and, in general, up-to-date and good reading re: the usual status of the American Arena… SNAFU.

Comrade BB,
Please be at ease. Also, please know that from my own experiences, the Cube is a welcoming place where opinions can be freely and respectfully debated. I, myself, am a heterodox, Kanadistanjian ex-navy trained dolphin who escaped her enclosure during Hurricane Katrina and has relocated to the wilds of Toronto. Red and the entire Party welcomed me with open fins, despite my often fractitious nature... I am prone to arguing with them about Ayn's 'authenticity'... in fact, I took a large flaming chunk of some sociopath's ass in my littel dolphiny zipper teeth last year because he took himself a bit too seriously, and yet Red saw fit to split off the thread because he felt the argument had merit and was worthy of promoting open and respectful discussion... hardly the position of a fanatic who cannot respect the need for the occasional tirade in others. What is necessary for an ongoing dialogue after that introductory dip into the well of talking out of one's ass is real honest debate and discussion... opinions are important things when supported by logical debate and fact (she clicked, ducking at the invitation for Chomskyesque nit-picking... can we please avoid it... I don't feel well right now?)...

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have all manner of disagreements with 'the boys' and we often agree to disagree, and yet they still respect me in the morning, and I don't make fun of their blue balls... as for the Cube just showing up in your inbox, it sounds like someone likes you, but Cube members don't subscribe others - it can't be done becaues of the way subscriptions must be confirmed, and the Cube as a programme doesn't just send out newletters... I started receiving them in my inbox in summer of 2006 and my first reaction was that I'd gotten on some mailing list, only to realize that a friend had added me to a list of people he forwarded the Cube newletters to but with an apparently blank address... if you don't want 'em, just unsubscribe... or Red can do it for you...

Oh... and a 'troll' is a person who subscribed to BB's and listservs and the such, simply to cause dissent... there were a couple real doozies a while back and rather than simply kick them off as many BB's would do, Red gave them their own forum to run and frolic in... not many would offer such a forum to 'the enemy'... that it also gave us free rein to make fun of them mercilessly is neither here nor there.... you put yourself out there, you're fair game, and they hardly shirked their new found forum... in fact, they revelled in it... everyone needs a hobby, I guess...

Blue Bell wrote: Later on, I must have officially subscribed to the magazine, and a few months ago, came up with a user name (Blue Bell) and was brave enough to submit a few posts, the last one causing a hue and holler amongst the members of this apparently tightly-knit group. Are contrary opinions (Freedom of Speech) not allowed in The Peoples Cube ?? I would guess NOT. The words “We the People” should be stricken at once from the Constitution of the United States, and that document be declared as null and void !!

Again... I point out that I'm Kanadistanjian and your august declaration is not my declaration... There are some things related to freedom of speech that I don't quite understand as they are often screamed of in the US... and since we have a common ancestor when it comes to soap-boxing, maybe this is a good time for me to ask for clarification... as I understand it, free speech is the ability to speak freely... to say whatever one likes without being censored.... and censoring would require that your (or anyone elses comments) would be stricken from the 'record'... expunged, as it were, rather than simply argued against or criticized, whether by a group or by an individual who disagrees with you... and then you would not be allowed to reply, having been sent to the gulag or whereever, or thrown in prison... but you've posted a number of times and while a number of members have clearly offered dissent regarding your opinions, none of them have stricken anything you've written from the record... it is all here, no?... and no one has asked you to leave... they've simply disagreed with you... sometimes politely, sometimes impolitely, and sometimes with some sting, but with no less of each than could be found in your own original comments... so, how is this not free speech... it appears to this heterodox dolphin to be not only free but rather equal, given that this platform is being offered to you by 'the enemy'... or at least, someone who disagrees intellectually with you... So, I guess I'm once again confused at the accusation of the quashing of free speech when what I see is simply response... perhaps neither very bright commentary to begin with and equally emotional response to that commentary, but when one makes statements that are inflammatory such as, "you dumb butts!!" - which is just name calling and not a very mature exercising of one's Freedom of Speech, though valid nonethe less... and ""What we really did was invade Iraq to steal their OIL and get a toe hold in the Middle East!!", which is bound to piss someone off - either someone who disagrees with your position on the US stealing Iraqi oil, or someone who believes that the US has had a toe-hold in the region in the form of bases in Turkey, relations with Israel and Jordan and until more recently Egypt, anyway (a little from both sides of the spectrum)... those are inflammatory statements delivered not only in a certain tone but with certain formatting accents, so you can hardly get upset if someone responds in a similar fashion... and in fact, for you to demand that they not and accuse them of curtailing your freedom of speech or expression or whatever, is simply illogical... why shouldn't they have their say too, simply b/c they disagree with you?... isn't that removing Freedom of Speech? What's good for the Blue Bell is good for the Blue Balls... the dolphin just watches and listens... you humans seems so funny when you get all worked up... really... if you just had sex a bit more often, I think you'd all get along much better... and as Meow points out, it would be FOR THE CHILDREN...

Blue Bell wrote: Be that as it may, I do offer my humble apologies to Red Square and members for my tirade and tacky, unacceptable behavior re: my questionable post. I do understand that Red Square desires to keep the premise of TPC pure and intact. I don't blame him, for otherwise the group would fall apart at the seams if progressives and complaining, socialist leaning “little people” were allowed in here to mess things up. Common laborers must stay in their place and should not be allowed to have computers in their possessions !!

Huh?... again... this is hardly a pure place... or a place we are expected to keep pure... it's meant to provoke, and so it would seem to have done its job... it's also a place of satire... of fun... of joking around... There are no little people in the internet... everyone has a voice, and again - this goes to the Freedom of Speech thing...no one is beign suppressed... and no one is being censored... and that, despite the fact that this isn't Hyde Park and Speakers Corner or whatever stands in for it in an US city... it's a private BB where Freedom of Speech and expression holds no sway, legally or even morally... and yet, you have a voice... and no one has taken it away... you have the right to exercise that voice despite the fact that really, legally, you have no right to exercise that voice on this forum and do so at the whim of the BB's owner, and yet here are your posts... what you will never have a right to in terms of Freedom of Speech is to expect that no one will respond, or that no one will disagree, and perhaps disagree in as strong a terms as your original post... but it would be unfair for you to assume no one should... don't other members have the same rights to the Freedoms you claim as you do? The are not bigger or smaller than you... right now I'm leaning to the right because the arthritis in my right hip is much worse than my left, but usually I lean more to the left... often, I just fall down on my ass..... I am not at all small, nor are my opinions... but I am a 'little guy'... I'm poor, pretty much... I'm disabled... and I'm disabled because I have a lot of environmental illnesses - autoimmune problems... it hardly makes me a friend of BIG BUSINESS or people who want to f**k up the environment more... and I am, again, Kanadistanjian... and we hate Americans and everything you imperialist swine stand for cause you're all bullies and you're poisoning our pristine wild... so f**k you all!... no... I'm kidding... just Cheney... he should be embarrassed at being such a bad shot... if you're going to hunt, you should eat what you kill, and if you're not willing to eat your best friend, then what kind of friend are you... really...

Geeze... after that last little slip, I better stop here, even though as most Cubers know, I could go on and on and on and on and on... and on... but I really am not feeling well... so I don't know that anything more I write will be of any value (assumign anything I've already written is of any value)... Scanning down, I notice some mention of NAFTA... I think you're meaning NAFTA when you mention, "the North American Trade Union between the U.S., Mexico and Canada that Bush is quietly pushing?" I'm not aware of any generalized North American Wide trade unions... please clarify as it will facilitate meaningful discussion... I did study econ... film, business/econ/accounting and oddly, ethics... heheheh... only in Kanadistan... heheheh... I would shoot Michael Moore if he just walked through my unlocked front door uninivited... but then, we could live off of him all freaking winter... and the dog team is always in need of high quality blubber... mind you, I'd shoot him, not club him to death... we only club fur and fat bearing animals to death on the east coast... So... yeah... I'm leaving the rest of your post below... just a little clarification please, as sometimes we assume that others automatically understand our positions on certain political issues, but unless language is quite clear, there's so much wiggle room for misunderstanding that Hedgehogs can get both insulted and reedukated completely by accident... and on the basis of a misspelling or misplaced word... and as the boys may notice, this particular post is full of typos and mistakes that wouldn't usually be here... take it as another sign of how I'm feeling at the mo, please...

Okay... now I'm really not feeling good so I'm heading back down to my tank - my right hip and knee have finally given out completely... more later guys... I'll try and be back on the weekend... J left for BA this evening and I have a couple days to myself and am just goign to try to catch up on my sleep... so I should be feeling better soon... I'm sorry to crap out again... just that the arthritis has returned with a vengeance as the meds wear off, just as winter has returned because you imperialist swine are screwing up the environment and we've skipped straight to global winter - global warming is supposed to return on Tuesday... Gore is back some time next week (apparently, like the artist formerly known as Prince, and Tori Spelling, he is moving here... can you not now see why we hate you all so thoroughly?... you even sent that Ignatieff f*ker back and we thought we'd safely dumped him at Harvard for the last thirty years...)... ... mostly I'm just really sore and about to try for sleep for the third time... wish me luck.

Toast is Burning!
S.M.O.

Blue Bell wrote: TPC appears to be a Party Place of the worshippers of the $$ Sign and the Movers, the Shakers, and the Achievers. Achievement IS morality. It doesn't matter how you do it… Just do it !! Make $$, enjoy the wealth, and spend it !! Ideally, the $$ will trickle down like green rain drops on the heads and backs of the little people, and they will become fertile and produce more $$ for the achievers. Is this the concept of trickle down economics? I was never much good at mathematics or as a student of economics in college. “Who is John Galt?”

But what if something goes wrong with the economic system? What if all the little people went on STRIKE ?? Who would be left to run the motors and do the manual work? The Corporate Leaders? I don't think so !! It appears to me that each level of society is equally important to make the Main Motor run smoothly and properly. Without the little people, Corporate America would be up a creek without the paddlers.

A few questions:

What about U.S. out-sourcing of jobs and marketable goods? Our once busy and productive factories and industries are now ghostly, empty shells. And so are the people… from middle to lower class citizens that once kept them running. Where are they? What are they doing now? Where are the labels “Made in the U.S.A.?” Result: A serious surplus of unemployed laborers that must compete with illegal Mexican immigrants for the most menial jobs.

What about the North American Trade Union between the U.S., Mexico and Canada that Bush is quietly pushing?

And what about the hush-hush Trans-American Trade Corridor that will run from Canada to Mexico at Laredo, Texas? The TTC-1-35 portion will run smack dab in the middle of the small north Texas town in which I live.

Combined with the above, there is also the question of our War President who is not content with one war. Despite the loss and failure in Iraq, he wants to continue his plan for a war with Iran.

This is not a tirade… I'm merely thinking and questioning in writing. We are still allowed to think and question, aren't we? I read a recent report that the U.S. (equal with Mexico) is ranked only 7th in world education. That is frightening !! I'm concerned for America. Have we become a nation of too many uneducated little people and fewer Achievers?? What happened? I'm asking…

Red Square and members of The Peoples Cube… please try to forgive me for my concern and seriousness. I am well aware that this is a satirical site, but it's difficult to keep a smile on my face when I think of the lack of leadership in our once blessed United States. I have a great idea !! I think you should run for President. I would vote for you!! I can just see the red banners waving in the breeze… Red Square for President !! The Man of the People !!

With sincerity and humor,
Blue Bell

What if all the little people went on STRIKE ??

Like underpaid union teachers here (avg annual salary $72K here in the 'Burgh)?
Or the underpaid transit workers (bus drivers) like the ones here in Pittsburgh, some of whom make over $100K/annum?
My favorite:
https://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsid ... 351179.htm
Explain that Blue Bell!

First, I am NOT a Troll… whatever that is.

Yes, I agree. Troll status denied. You are though hereby granted Union Leprechuan status, where at the end of every rainbow the little people (re:Union Leprechuan) STRIKE a pot o' gold!
I've seen my city built by union labor (and most of the country) and then destroyed economically by union labor by cutting off it's own nose to spite itself.
I also blame management for not re-investing in updated technology and running the mills into the ground.
I've been in 2 unions and all they did was take my money so the fat cat union bosses could ride around in limosines, fund Democrat pie-in-the-sky candidates, and fight for ....yes, you guessed it.... "THE LITTLE PEOPLE" of whom I was one and was made poorer by it.

Please go to "Propaganda 1948" here in the blog and review until it sinks in.
Nothing has changed since then.
Don't drink the ISM, it's Democrat Kool-Aid.

Laika

Laika, here we have a conundrum. Texas is one of the least-unionized states, which is one explanation for the fact that we have such a huge economy--1/3 the people of Britain, and 1/2 the economy. The ahl don't hurt either. Nor the high tech, which is hard to unionize because it's so unforgiving. Silicon just doesn't work if it's screwed up. If the transit works don't run your bus, you can take another. If they don't teach your kid then all the better for them--for if they did their job then they wouldn't be able to call for more power, er, money.

The reason that we are not so infected with unions is one past governor, Alan Shivers. And Blue Bell's c.v. reads psychiatric assistant--hardly a unionized field. So Blue Bell could be a <i>closeted union member</i>! And I thought that I was brave.

But then I'm still sticking with my Brenham theory. Besides being the home of Blue Bell Ice Cream and Germania Insurance ("We will not pay you until we're sued and we'll depose you into the ground and we'll play folks songs like Pappy Lee O'Daniel, the governor who would answer any question with an exhortation to the Light Crust Dough Boys (really) to play another number")

And Brenham is close to the Peoples' Republic of Austin. A lovely town, and I lived there for a short while in 1980. Home to many high-tech firms, U.T. (The clock tower where the nut job shot people has, from Bonner Hill, the face of an owl. People noted that and then it was found that the architect was from Rice, which has Minerva's bird as the mascot. Nice little joke on the tea-sippers...Why the Hegel did I say that?)

But there are more whack jobs in Austin than any other place in Texas. Drag worms. Earth people. Santa Fe on the Colorado, but the lefties are not <i>quite</i> so self-righteous because they have more power. Neither your property nor your liberty are safe when the legislature is in power--told to me by the then-dean of the Texas House. Nut-job screaming lib UT professors. (Lina Graglia at UT Law is an exception. And every truth is met with howls of outrage. Hum. Must be catching from Austin.)

Cubers, wish me luck. In two hours I depart for Austin, for the first time in 20 years. If I could in 1979 see seven people in London that I knew from Houston, and if London is at least five times as big as Austin, what are the odds that I would find a certain whack job I remember all too well? Strength, Theocritus, and remember that Texas has passed a concealed-carry weapon, and when in 1992 Our Many Titted Empress said that gun control was part of Hillary Care, I knew that she intended to make sure we couldn't defend ourselves and bought a S&W 1006. The one the Feds used before it was found that women couldn't pull the triggers.

Oh. But I have no worries. I'll be at the Four Seasons, my foot on the neck of the proles, grinding my socialist heel in the faces of anyone I can, for that's the Socialist way. And that green-skinned monster would never part with that sort of money. Might walk into the lobby to see what was free though.

OMG! The green-skinned monster suckles on the tit of the State of Texas! The GSM then has the ability, through its confreres, to commandeer the Four Seasons for its purposes of raping, rapine, and plundering others' purses and curtailing their liberties, and in good socialist style, doing it in good capitalist style. Think that's oxymoronic? It is but there's a reason for a five-year plan. It takes a while to break a robust system; consequences are delayed; we can get as much as we want while the getting's good. Ellsworth! Where the hell are you? Lupe, quit rubbing Ellsworth's feet, I need him here. Pronto!

23 years ago the GSM monster paused in what it took to be a reflective pose and as though I would be impresssed by its moral seriousness, put its finger to its chin, a particularly unattractive pose, and made an incipient moue--yes, it did--and pronounced, "I've decided that I'm a progressive."

Shortly after that I had rented a flat. And when it came home from a business trip my friends and I were moving out the fridge. Which was mine. But that was before I was a socialist--I had bought it with my own money.

So now I'm really out of the closet, Cubers. Even when I was a--gasp--Kapitalist Pigge, I didn't give a Progressive what it thought it had a right to. And now that I'm Herr Doktor Commissar Theocritus, watch my smoke. Meow, I've fired a few shots across the bow and you didn't take me seriously. Laika, my accusing you of watching <i>American Idol</i> was merely chumming the waters. SMO, you are exempt because for obvious reasons, I don't eat fish.

So I'm off to Austin, where I intend to nap in the governor's bed. Republican Rick Perry is a clothes horse with a room-temperature IQ, and if he washes the gel out of his hair, his skull will collapse.

And I'll watch the proles gamboling on Town Lake beneath my suite window and think of how well they'll do on my landscaping. For the dirly little secret of socialists is that they are in fine cannibals. And I'm the biggest one on the block, with the biggest cast-iron stewpot.

Laika the Space Dog wrote:

What if all the little people went on STRIKE ??

Like underpaid union teachers here (avg annual salary $72K here in the 'Burgh)?
Or the underpaid transit workers (bus drivers) like the ones here in Pittsburgh, some of whom make over $100K/annum?
My favorite:
https://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsid ... 351179.htm
Explain that Blue Bell!

First, I am NOT a Troll… whatever that is.

Yes, I agree. Troll status denied. You are though hereby granted Union Leprechuan Laika

Oooooh!... Oh Dear! I'm so embarrrassed... I've done it again! This is like the time Meow asked me if we got "Rush" up here on the radio and I told him about babysitting Geddy Lee's (the lead singer of the band Rush) children when I was in high school... Really... we have such different kultural references in Kanadistan...

Oh my... I understand now... She's Irish!... well... that changes everything... I'm such in idiot...

Toast is Burning!
SMO

She's Irish!...

I don't know if she's Irish or not, but she's for THE LITTLE PEOPLE.
I guess she could be a Union Gnome if she's German, or an Union Elf if she's Swedish.
But since "The Little People" have been associated with the Irish....or "The Wee Folk" if you like.....and "Striking O' Pot of Gold....

Yes, your toast is burning SMO

Well, if we're all taking off our masks in this thread and speaking out on politics I'll say this about that:

I hate politics. The only reason I take part in politics intellectually and in action is because I want to defend myself from people that want to use the force of government to force what they believe down my throat. As a life-long committed revolutionary Socialist I thoroughly despise the rule of Capital over the country and the world. Dear Comrade Blue Bell writes of trickle-down economics. Since we're taking off our masks here in this thread Dearest Comrade, I will be truthful, trickle-down economics is a concept created by we of the Left to denegrate the Capitalist system. With that one term we can destroy in the minds of our useful idiots just what Capitalism is and does. Since we're being truthful on this thread I will explain: Capitalism isn't a system - Capitalism is an outcome; Capitalism is what happens when people are free to live their lives, enjoy property rights and the right of contracts guaranteed by the government, and the whole of government is based on the Rule of Law. Capitalism is simply what happens when people live in a society based on these bourgeois notions. Look around you and you'll see the results, the "trickle-down economics," of Capitalism. Electricity, roads, stores, food in abundance, clean hot and cold running water, light bulbs, refrigeration, your computer, modern houses and sanitation that have wiped out TB and other diseases that were once the common fate, SMO could tell you about the medical advances better than I, the fact that you don't spend sun up to sun down working like some beast of burden... I could go on and on. All you have to do is look around you to see the so called "trickle-down economics" of Capitalism. Civilization is built on it. And that's the thing, see. I'm a revolutionary Socialist because I want to take all that wealth and use it for better things than the greedy, self-serving bourgeois Capitalists want to use it for. That's why we have to destroy the bourgious notions of freedom and property rights and wipe out the Rule of Law. Those things are in our way. Now, since we're taking off our masks here and being truthful, I'll point out that it's actually we revolutionary Socialists that create a society of "trickle-down economics," and what's more we know it and we consider it to be the only moral means of creating and maintaining true equality. In any real Socialist country every worker gets the trickle-down from what is produced by the State. That is the only moral way of doing things, Dear Comrade Blue Bell. So you see what we've done, we've completely inverted the concept "trickle-down economics" and made what we Socialists do an epithet of what is the outcome of bourgeois freedoms. Pretty neat when you think of it.

Comrade Otis wrote:Capitalism isn't a system - Capitalism is an outcome.

Dearest Comrade Otis,
I love you. Do you think you could marry a dolphin, if marriage weren't such a bourgoise concept?

Comrade Otis wrote:So you see what we've done, we've completely inverted the concept "trickle-down economics" and made what we Socialists do an epithet of what is the outcome of bourgeois freedoms. Pretty neat when you think of it.

Yes! Indeed!... it is called Emergence Theory! And not to tangle threads, but in the Church of Climatology, it is, perhaps, the equivalent of the Holy Spirit... it is the "Shekinah" of Global Warming... Tipper, to the Great Algore... the 1/x of 'trickle-down'... it is the basic concept of self organizination in complex systems... Because in any true Socialist state, the State IS the people and so things are really trickling up... Pretty neat indeed!

Now... if I could only convince Malcolm Gladwell to trim his 'fro'...
SMO...

Sister Massively Opiated wrote:Because in any true Socialist state, the State IS the people and so things are really trickling up... Pretty neat indeed!

Yes, in any true Socialist state "things are really trickling up." This is true. But, I didn't want to be that truthful.

As for your proposition, Comrade Sister Massively Opiated, though many may think me humorless, stern, and emotionally without color I have been known to fall for women of proper revolutionary fervor. Some might scoff but I've let myself enjoy sunsets, fine dinning, joking around, watching movies, and cuddling up and smooching and stuff. Do you sometimes enjoy these things too, Comrade Sister Massively Opiated?

Blue Bell wrote:We are still allowed to think and question, aren't we? I read a recent report that the U.S. (equal with Mexico) is ranked only 7th in world education. That is frightening !! I'm concerned for America. Have we become a nation of too many uneducated little people and fewer Achievers?? What happened? I'm asking…

A logical question here is, "And who I wonder has been in charge of the education system here for the last 30-40 years? Liberal ideologues and Teachers Union, no? And every time bad education is mentioned, they throw a fit and demand more money.

It comes to a point that one New York public school already has a bigger budget than the entire nation of Barbados spends on its school system, with more cops watching students in the lunch room than the entire police force of the nation of Barbados. Yet students in Barbados somehow leave school better educated than New York kids.

My school had a rather strict discipline, yet I never saw a cop anywhere near the school in all 10 years I was there. The budget was probably 5% of a New York public school, where kids are taught probably 5% of what I was taught. So yes, obviously not enough money is being spent!

Obviously, if we double the school budget the teachers could get twice the money to feed twice the ideological garbage to the kids instead of real education, and have twice the police presence in school, because the stuff that's being put in the kids' heads is not conducive to self-control and responsibility. Then perhaps we could also double the world rank and come out #14 instead of a meager #7.

Blue Bell - you see a problem but somehow you're either unwilling or incapable to analyze it properly. Could this be a public school's fault? When did you graduate?

Red Square wrote:

A logical question here is, "And who I wonder has been in charge of the education system here for the last 30-40 years? Liberal ideologues and Teachers Union, no? And every time bad education is mentioned, they throw a fit and demand more money.

Blue Bell - you see a problem but somehow you're either unwilling or incapable to analyze it properly. Could this be a public school's fault? When did you graduate?

ah yes...this is where I was going...

Comrade Otis wrote:

Sister Massively Opiated wrote:Because in any true Socialist state, the State IS the people and so things are really trickling up... Pretty neat indeed!

Yes, in any true Socialist state "things are really trickling up." This is true. But, I didn't want to be that truthful.

As for your proposition, Comrade Sister Massively Opiated, though many may think me humorless, stern, and emotionally without color I have been known to fall for women of proper revolutionary fervor. Some might scoff but I've let myself enjoy sunsets, fine dinning, joking around, watching movies, and cuddling up and smooching and stuff. Do you sometimes enjoy these things too, Comrade Sister Massively Opiated?

Das Comrade Otis. I do, but only when deemed appropriate by the Party.

Red Square,

You put a title above my post... "Blue Bell, Leader of the Little People." I would never have used such a title, especially since it is a false statement and characterizes me as something I am NOT. I feel the title was clearly intended as an affrontry to me.

If I am considered a "qualified member" of TPC, then I am requesting that you change the title to "The Question of the Little People." If it must have a title, that will do okay. I didn't plan it that way, but it was blown out of purportion by others, and that's what it ultimately became. Regardless of how some of you used my comments, I am not the Mother of the "Little People." Raising themsleves to a higher level is up to them and their courage and endeavors to do it. I know... because I was once one of them (Herein lies part of the reasoning behind my sympathy). Higher education and the drive to learn and to reach a higher goal is the key.

"Red Square"<Red Army hat off>
But seriously, do you not see the difference between those earning money through honest work and talent (Group A), and those playing tricks with politics to obtain unearned wealth through government pull and coercion (Group B)? Sarcastically you label them both as "successful" - but they are equally immoral in your eyes because the both groups have money.

I don't believe I ever said I was a Democrat, Republican, or of other political affiliation. So please don't assume or automatically place me in a neat, predetermined slot.

Who built those factories that are now empty? Did they become shaped like factories by force of erosion, from solid rock, and then got unfairly captured by greedy capitalists? Or did the capitalists come up with the concept and the budget, design them and put their money at risk to build them, incidentally giving job opportunities to thousands of people? And if those factories stand empty today, is it because the capitalists deliberately wanted to hurt themselves by closing them and losing their investment?

The capitalists built the factories, of course. The lower class workers
don't have that kind of money; and if they had it, they wouldn't have been working in the factories... They would have been building them. They would be out golfing, and spending their surplus money in other ways... like the capitalists.

The factories that stand empty today. I assumed it was due mostly to out sourcing, which ultimately hurt both factory owners and workers. That is a question I need to look into.

Those strikes that you mentioned, are they also a force of nature like the hurricanes? "What if all the little people went on STRIKE ??"

I was being facetious, using the striking "Achievers" in Atlas Shrugged as a humorous example. That was comic. Hiding beneath a HUGE magical green net in the mountainous wilderness of Colorado was a real stretch of the imagination. I don't think the masses of the lower class workers would fit under such a net.

"

Are you a union member?

No, I have never been a union member, but I have a good pension fund and excellent health insurance... compliments of working for the Texas Youth Commission.

Depending on your definition of "little" I may be "littler" than you are. But the thing is, I don't accept your definitions. That's why your use of "little people" cracked me up. Little as in serfs? Peons? Lilliputians? I left the old country to escape this sort of categorization. I never expected to find the same mentality in America. Little did I know indeed!

The term "Little People" (I guess, versus the "greats") has been used in America for years. Perhaps it was a term of affection coined by some crooked Texas politicians to make the lower classes feel loved and more content with their status. Welcome to America !! Have you been to Texas yet?

Comrade Blue Bell wrote:I feel the title was clearly intended as an affrontry to me.

Oh... OK... well, hmmm... we did have a complaint department, that was until we shot the Commissar who ran the joint (he was asking to many questions about slush-funds and stolen frozen freezer ca$h in Louisianna, we simply cannot have that here - we are Democrats, mind you). OH GOD NO, NOT AN EFFRONTERY! What have we done to offend you!?! WHAT HAVE WE DONE!!?!? Please tell me haven't supressed your freedom of speech! Oh please, please, please tell me we haven't done that! Oh, you just don't seem to understand, Comrade Blue Bell! We have lefties running into these forums to pronounce to the entire world that we have, in some fashion or another, whether for real or imaginary, have... indeed... violated their rights to free speech (this takes place while they are posting profanities and denoucing us all as "fascist", there also appears to be foam around their mouths when such claims are made). Yes, I know... we still haven't gotten the proof of such an occurence, but I assure you the complaints have been made. Usually as a last ditch effort to prove a point whilst losing the argument (it is common here for a leftist to declare victory after failing to make their point or change our opinion on the issue at hand). Ohhh... you're are talking about the title! Oh, OK... well, more on that later.

Comrade Blue Bell wrote:I don't believe I ever said I was a Democrat, Republican, or of other political affiliation. So please don't assume or automatically place me in a neat, predetermined slot.

You didn't have to. We kind of figured it out after the gloating post you made about the V.P being protested at BYU. Only someone a little left in the loafers would come here and post something so trivial and... dare I say... unimportant?

Comrade Blue Bell wrote:The capitalists built the factories, of course. The lower class workers
don't have that kind of money; and if they had it, they wouldn't have been working in the factories... They would have been building them. They would be out golfing, and spending their surplus money in other ways... like the capitalists.

The factories that stand empty today. I assumed it was due mostly to out sourcing, which ultimately hurt both factory owners and workers. That is a question I need to look into.

The lower class workers don't have that kind of money because they CHOOSE not to. This whole BS of wealth being concentrated is total crap and makes me want to puke everytime I see a limo liberal preach it. If you want to blame someone you can blame the education system which intentionally tries to keep everyone down and ignorant to commonsense and reasoning. You can blame the teacher unions and the nanny-state for usurping the power of the family in educational decision making. Oh, and while we're at it, you can blame the media for glorifying sex which leads to a lot of kids getting knocked up before they can recieve their HS diploma. Economic freedom is based on the individual's decisions... and if you so choose to 1.) get a HS Diploma 2.) Not get knocked up or anyone else knocked up 3.) do not get arrested 4.) pursue Higher Education (preferably a school that educates instead of indoctrinates) then yes, you will achieve the first four IMPORTANT steps of economic freedom - but it will take hard work and discipline, something the nanny-state, media and Dems try to usurp and replace with instant-gratification and "live for the moment" policies. If you want a shining example of Dem policies in action all you have to do is travel to WV to see how everyone is unionized, poor, hopeless and reliant on their wealthy Party masters for handouts. That my dear is where progressive idealism can get you... right into the gutter and without a thought to call your own. And that is why the left, the Dems and other scum love the "Little People", simply because the "Little People" don't ask questions.

Comrade Blue Bell wrote:No, I have never been a union member, but I have a good pension fund and excellent health insurance... compliments of working for the Texas Youth Commission.

A rehabilitation program methinks? I guess you've seen first hand troubled youths commiting crimes and such and you have come to the conclusion that it is because of their socio-economic background? Am I getting warmer yet? Is this why you want to redistribute the wealth to the "Little People" because they don't know how to raise their kids? Well, even the "wealthiest 1%" (har har!) has problems with their kids, so clearly money is not the problem. Once again, let us blame the media, thug culture, educational system, and of course the demonization of achievement... true, honest, hard working achievement. Making good grades in school these days can earn you disdain from your peers, yes, they seem to evoke "grade-envy" of their more acheivement oriented peers. Hmm, grade-envy... kind of sounds like class-envy, hmmm... I see a link! Yes, maybe if we rewarded the productive and achievers and patted them on the back more we might have more kids in school who are respected by their peers instead of demonized for working harder. But no, we have to pity and congratulate the "Little Students" who can't make the grade and make them more diserable then the kid who does work hard. Yes, that makes perfect sense... we must boost their self-esteem by throwing rocks at the kid who works harder so we can stoke the flames of "grade-envy". We need to reward the deliquent, tell them it's not their fault and cater tax-dollars to special self-esteem boosting social programs in order for them to feel better... all the while throwing our rocks at the kid who has a good set of parents, a few more dollars for lunch, and the drive and desire to achieve greater things then drinking 40's, screwing the village slut and rolling joints.

Comrade Blue Bell wrote:The term "Little People" (I guess, versus the "greats") has been used in America for years. Perhaps it was a term of affection coined by some crooked Texas politicians to make the lower classes feel loved and more content with their status. Welcome to America !! Have you been to Texas yet?

Huey Long instantly comes to mind when I read "Little People" and "has been used in America for years" in the same sentence. Ahh yes, good'ole Huey Long. Yes, his spirit continues to dwell under my bed and he occasionally pops out to shout " Every man a king!". Indeed, the King Fish will be missed and will always be the guiding light for Meowsevich S. Punchenko.

P.S - Maybe we should change the title of this forum to Blue Bell: Social(list) Worker for The Little People™. Is that more appropriate for you, Comrade Blue Bell?

The Texas Youth Commission? From Blue Bell's statement that she enjoys, rather than enjoyed, good benefits, it implies that she's one of the few not cleaned out by the scandal roiling the state, starting at Pyote. Guards were evidently molesting the boys--to give the press credit, they called it pederasty, which it is, and didn't try any Fred Phelps garbage--and the guards' behavior was being covered up. The DA of the 143rd judicial district has privately told people that the corruption goes to the top, and top officials have resigned.

Meow, I'm about to go into my suspenders-pulling mode. I don't quite believe that the factories were not built by little people because they chose not to. Rather choice does sometimes enter into it but in a different way.

Back some years ago while I was trawling seedy venues I came across people of very limited ability and I was young enough, and randy enough, to project an intelligence beneath the stunning facade that nature had given them. Which I made use of con brio. (And they used me too; I believe in free trade.) But I found that in trying to give order to their lives--for they were always in utter disarray, unable to make plans, hold courses, even finish beauty college (!)--I did nothing but anger them. Catherine the Great said that it is no use for a strong mind to advise a weak mind for the weak mind cannot appreciate it.

I've known men who had free-lance jobs paying twice what they got in a 8-to-5 job--and their wives insisted on them taking a job with a budgetable income.

I've been offered partnerships in several things, which I chose not to take. I could do it--that was why I was offered it--but on reflection thought that the time involved would cost me more than the money I might make. (But it doesn't hurt that I'm comfortable and don't desire a a Gulfstream or pied a terre in Gstaad.)

But I realize that this is from my vantage point. I turn 52 shortly and nearly didn't make it to 51. Or 41. The near-death experience last year took, and since I'm 2/3 dead I realize that I can buy anything but more time on earth. Also I recently did something jarring--I gave away books that I've had for decades, thinking I would read them. And now I know that I won't. That's a salute toward death.

But all these are perfectly valid reasons that people may choose not to make the factory, or cannot do it owing to their limitations. This does not <i>in any way</i> excuse leftist rants of unfairness because some people don't want to or can't. Leftism is really a character flaw. It's resentment claiming a high moral ground--do you hear the cheek in it? And it makes sense that the media will be leftist for who has sharper elbows?

Inequality of results is a leftist war-chant. It is also a cover for doing well by doing good, and there are times that I nearly miss the medieval mentality of everyone having his place, although I suspect mine would be in the peasantry. Lords flogging peasants who get in the way of the shoot is somehow less irritating than having a leftist sneer at anything that he doesn't like. Leftism is a temper tantrum against the world.

"I don't like THA-yuht. It's not FAIR!" And for every such whine against reality there is proposed a coercive "solution," and guess who's going to propose and dispose? Not a nickel's worth of difference from Jerry Falwell. Except he failed in getting his hooks into government.

Note the left's constant proposal of policy--the major confusion of the left is that policy makes culture when it certainly does not. This is the formulation of Senator Moynihan, who, before he grew old and tired, was the most original, and intelligent, man in the Senate. But if a leftist doesn't like something, then something must be done about it. Rivers of blood often ensue--100,000,000 last century.

The constant attempt to remake nature. To change laws of nature. There is even the leftist law that a #400 man who cannot fit down a manhole cannot be fired when that's his job.

It is not stretching things too much to suggest that if Michael Moore gets tired of being to grotesquely fat, he would campaign to have the law of gravity repealed. You think that's absurd? No more than the constant leftist ranting against the law of supply and demand.

I'm pissy. I'm getting over staphylococcus aureus and in a very expensive hotel room, because it has a Hillary I need. Damn.

No, I have never been a union member, but I have a good pension fund and excellent health insurance... compliments of working for the Texas Youth Commission.

Say no more, say no more.....a wink is as good as a nudge.
<wink><wink>
https://www.dallasnews.com/investigativereports/tyc//
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/polit ... c43f7.html

Comrade! We have been looking for somebody like you!
We can use your experience in running the Gulagosphere Archipelago
The TYC is a role model!

We have discipline. Here is one of our products:

We need more products like that, not this:

Of course this is all Bush and Perry's fault....maybe...In recent years, both Perry and Gov. Ann Richards asked the Legislature for more direct control over the bureaucracy, through an executive-type Cabinet of agency heads, but lawmakers gave the governor little additional authority.

Of course Reynolds is innocent, he's a Democrat!

There is a problem though. Once we achieve Socialist Utopia, there will be no more use for The TYC because everybody will have everything they need, including a big communist extended family which will teach these youngsters the proper behavior in our perfect society. Apparenty the beatings, rape, etc...hasn't been harsh enough. Maybe some Sharia Law would help the TYC? You know, like what they do in Iran with gay teenagers!



And try this on for size: compliments of the Texas taxpayers via the Texas Youth Commission.

I have personal experience here, having known Reynolds since, quite literally, the date of his birth. I do not know why the indictments were not sought, and have wondered that. Being rather well connected in this scene, even I can find no information that is concrete. At the very worst I suspect that things were not prosecuted when they ought to have been.

But complicity in this? It is simply not in his character.

And--here I really will come out of the closet--I'm a registered Democrat too. Since there is no Republican primary here, there is no other choice, and all local decisions are made in the Democratic primary. Every single one. But I have <i>never, ever</i> voted for a Democrat above county level, save once, an old friend, dean of the Texas house, who is I know conservative. Now I vote Libertarian if the election is decided. Republican otherwise.

Rick Perry? Governor Rick Perry? If the gel stays out of his hair for more than 10 minutes his skull will collapse. A clothes horse with an ego. I'll be quite shocking: I'd rather work with New Mexico's governor, the dangerous Bill Richardson. He actually has a brain.

The problem with Blue Bells' Weltanschaaung is working for the State, with the mother ship in the People's Republic of Austin. Not only does the state reward itself with as many perks as the taxpayer will bear short of armed revolt, but it is hugely overstaffed. Ma Richards increased the state payroll 40%, and that's why she was ousted for the Bushilter. Once here in the PRA, I was cohabiting with a state official and several times came to the Stephen F. Austin State Office Building for lunch and learned that it is signing your death warrant to be in the stairwell at 12. The bureaucrats pelt down the stairs to Thundercloud Subs like stampeding buffalo; even the elevator is not fast enough. These are people who, if you see them during titular work hours, seem ossified, rising out of their torpor only to flame into resentment at an imagined slight.

In one department there is vicious gossip about who is lunching with whom. On occasion work may get done between the backbiting and infighting. The Texas Deparment of Community Affairs and Manufactured Housing? Yes, such a critter exists and ought to be nuked.

And even I am beggared for words...

Wow! Blue Bell is a leader of the little people. Mr. Red Square, you are so amazing! How did you do that?

Here, I changed the title to "Wee The Little People"

On the one hand, we must respect Blue Bel's request to change the title - but on the other hand, she has hardly posted here, with the majority of posts made by the Cube's Groupthink Community. So in the spirit of fairnass and equality of outcome, we the Little People have the right to propose and vote for the best title. Here are some other options:

Wee The People
We The Little People
Blue Bell: Little People's Helper
Blue Bell: People's Little Helper

The last two titles makes me wonder about how the Little People's Cube would be different from the regular People's Cube. Something like the Polish People's Cube?


https://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=840

Ummm, you know... actually... Blue Bell is a..., um..., how do say?...


Blue Bell and friends.

Blue Bell is milk cow. Is there a Freudian slip here somewhere?

Margaret wrote:Ummm, you know... actually... Blue Bell is a..., um..., how do say?...


Blue Bell and friends.

Blue Bell is milk cow. Is there a Freudian slip here somewhere?

Jeezus H. Cryst. Doesn't anybody read my posts?
Yes, Troll milk is expensive, but I'm still sticking with Union Leprechuan

Theocritus wrote:Meow, I'm about to go into my suspenders-pulling mode. I don't quite believe that the factories were not built by little people because they chose not to. Rather choice does sometimes enter into it but in a different way...

Forgive me, Theocritus. On occasion (on Friday after copious amounts of wine) I sometimes go into a rant. I agree with you though, some folks are naturally inclined to be failures and will resist all hopes of changing their irresponsible ways. With that said I did enjoy the Catherine the Great quote, although saying such a dastardly truth will earn me the title of "Social-Darwinist" on campus and would subject me to grueling self-criticism sessions and a possible stoning after class. So I guess it will be in my best interest to just forget anyone ever mentioned such a thing and stick to the Party approved history of the Russian monarchy.

I always enjoyed that Catherine the Great quote, too; she's a fascinating woman. Born of German stock, who became more Russian than the Russians, and was quite ruthless in acquiring power. Which in an autocracy you have to be. Well, in anything you have to be to get to the top spot.

If you're after power, and that alone, then nice guys do finish last. Perhaps that is the reason that the left is goddamned mean.

Evidence: when ex-Klansman David Duke decided to run in Louisiana on the Republican ticket, there was a race by the Republicans to denounce him.

Dinesh d'Souza's new book <i>The Enemy at Home</i> baldly states that the left is responsible for 9/11. In my dark moments I quite agree. But some of the right-wing papers quickly distanced themselves from one or two of his points and the way he made them. Stephen Colbert was utterly nasty, with a flash of wit shedding no light, and then a rabbit punch and commercial. d'Souza's book is rather strong. (If you, as a student, want a really good book on <a href=" education</a> he has one for you. I read it 25 years after my parole from Rice, which, being principally a science and engineering school, where things work or they don't work, was not so infected. But that was the 70s. No doubt today there are people who assert that how you feel about the solution is more important than getting it right. Saves teacher training too.

(In the 30s, Tennessee decreed that pi=3. What famous tree-hugger comes from Tennessee?)

During the House check-kiting scandal, 19 congressmen were exposed. The first 18 were Democrats.

In Abscam all who took money were Democrats, except John McCain, who hadn't spent it, had it in a wall safe, and made a convincing argument that he was going to see a prosecutor.

I see I've wandered a bit into double standards.

David Bonnior, a failed divine, a hard-left man with the trademark hate-filled eyes, lodged, I believe 73, ethics complaints against Newt Gingrich. All but one were dismissed out of hand. To resolve one of them, taking money from a committee, he borrowed, and paid back $300K from a wealthy senator. Years later the IRS vindicated him.

Teddy Kennedy is a murderer. Jack Kennedy had the SS pimp for him, landing Air Force One for nookie. He fired the White House doctor who wouldn't give him the steroids he wanted to control pain. Had he not been shot, it is possible that the Democratic Senate would have impeached him owing to the huge drugs he took and his out-of-control behavior. getting worse all the time.

For the piece de resistance. The left howls when someone on the right looks at a dog funny. Michael Moore complained that Osama bin Laden killed people in blue states, not red ones. In a month he was sitting on the dias at national Democratic dos.

By its standard of justice, if George Bush made a mistake and said the Internets (and there really are two), it would prove that he's evil, stupid and a malicious moron and all Republicans are too. But Teddy Kennedy is a serial adulterer, drunk and a murderer, and he's the lion of the Senate.

Double standard?

Not quite done with something else. In the last year, having had no choice but to brutally examine my life, which I had thought a failure, I came to realize that judging individual success by one yardstick is not fair to anyone but the top dog, who had to have sharp elbows to get there. My housekeeper, Consuelo, not Lupe, is a very kind, humble and gentle woman with little English. She and Santiago, her husband, seem genuinely happy when good things happen to me. And I'm happy for them. Their needs are small and satisfied. Three good children, an uneventful life, and the knowledge that they've worked all their lives and have something to show for it. Very little by some standards, but it's theirs, it's honest, and it suits them.

I now tend to look at success as being true to yourself--something which only in the last year I learned how to do, hence my interminable yammer about being gay. But think of all that bottled up inside for 50 years. Now I am utterly true to myself; my judgment is better than ever, for there is no program running in the background stealing CPU cycles. Had I been straight, with some of the advantages I've had, I would probably be well situated in a large city. But I made an accommodation with my life and by chance it turned out very well. Nothing in the slightest like that predicted for me, by others and me, but satisfying. Now.

I tend to choose artisans who define success in their artistry. The same for my physician, Michele, who saved my life. My dentist. My mechanic. None of them is in the slightest interested in building a factory, or going into more business than they have--nor am I.

And I'm not even sure that the utterly irresponsible people that I talked about are failures. By my standards, yes. Trying? Yes. Burdensome? Yes. But they're doing what they can with what they have. And never underestimate the fact that people of very limited ability are often very scared of a world they have no hope of comprehending. That is why, so often, that they lash out when you and I would think it stupid. They feel helpess, and therefore angry.

I do apologize for my crackerbarrel attitude; it is a new one for me, but I was stuck in early macho late 20s and early 30s for decades, and as Gail Sheehy, I think, points out, we all have to go through all the changes and if one is delayed, going through it will be spectacular.

Never apologize for a rant. Especially a good one.

By the way, the rumor is that Catherine the Great had a special harness made for a horse to mount her. It broke and she died. I think that's probably apocryphal, but if Zampolit reads this, he'll put his mind to it and Nansky.

Is this the Union Leprechaun you're talking about, Laika?

Look at those grog blossoms. Looks like he's eaten anything slower than he is. Which, come to think of it, pretty much limits it to inanimate objects.

Oh. I forget. Nothing so encourages movement in the resentful as the idea that someone has something. If he cuts himself, and bleeds, will we find out the color of resentment?

That's one for sure. Fighting for the "Wee Folk" and Striking for a Pot O' Gold!

Maybe Theocritus can answer this one?

Why isn't there a huge liberal whine in the Lone Star to close the TYC and free the children? After all, they're only children and it's all about "FOR THE CHILDREN"?
After researching the articles about the TYC, I've come to the conclusion that the TYC is a thousand times worse than Gitmo and on a much larger scale.

I'm demanding that the TYC be closed IN THE NAME OF THE CHILDREN!
Shut it down.
Fire Blue Bell, the torturer.
Everybody who works for the TYC is guilty by association!
Baby Rapers!

Let's get Dick Durbin-Laden down to the Lone Star and accuse Blue Bell and the rest of the TYC of being Nazis.

Where's Cindy Sheehan on this issue? Maybe she could get out of her ditch in Crawford and go dig one in Austin?

Awww forget it....it's not about Bush or Iraq.

Laika said:

Let's get Dick Durbin-Laden down to the Lone Star and accuse Blue Bell and the rest of the TYC of being Nazis.

Don't forget to accuse them of being fascists!! All Libs call the kulaks fascists right before they flip the chessboard and declare victory (i.e. the mime).

See Blue Bell!

As I said before, "the Cube is a welcoming place where opinions can be freely and respectfully debated."

BTW... loved your work in The Wizard of Oz!

SMO

Actually, we did clean house at the top of the TYC. And that's a major victory. I can prove, <i>prove</i> <b>goddam prove</b> that TexDOT thinks that water runs uphill. I swear by Hillary's Left Hind Tit. And under Bush 41's ADA, they jackhammered up all the street corners one day, employing a tomcat, which looks like a 4000-pound mesquito, which some grinning idiot sat on for two days 10' from my desk, to put in a ramp for an intersection that never has any people on it. People in West Texas do not walk. They drive.

Then the State transferred in P.H., as local manager of TexDOT, who boasted to me that they'd brought him to spend the money unspent by his predecessor, a young woman with the sense not to piss away money on useless things. P.H. made the single worst financing deal on a house that I've ever seen, barely beating (1) a hospital administrator and (2) the city manager. Do you wonder why your taxes are so high if a prerequisite for disbursing public monies is financial illiteracy?

Then P. dug up the goddamned ramps <i>again</i> and put some in with bricks. So rough that if there people in wheelchairs (there aren't) theyd have a hard time. And once I was having a very tough time walking and found it rough--not good for canes either. No ice to guard against.

But not done pissing away money, he dug up curbs--and replaced them with curbs. Of the same shape, size, color and position. Indistinguishable from the others. Oh. I get it. Concrete goes off in the desert heat. Like cheese.

But that's all right. That's just money taken from people with menaces, with a supercilious air that "it's really for your own good, dear; drink your milk (because we've taken the money you'd have used to buy a coke and given you milk--much better for you and there are dairies in the state and they have clout). And don't bother us. We're entirely too busy stabbing each other in the back, pissing away other people's money (commonly OPM in Texas) to worry about whether or not it actually works. It does work, you see; we get credit for doing a project. Whether or not is needed is quite beside the point. Whether or not it is the best use for money is quite beside the point. Whether or not it looks good on our resume--now THAT'S the point." So STFU, you beast of burden. Get back to your turnstile and thresh that grain. We have an appointment in the People's Republic of Austin."

And having driven around PRA yesterday for hours, I didn't recognize it. I lived here 26 years ago and thought that some rose-colored lenses would operate. Not. I have a 2006 DVD for the navigation system and it can't keep up with the highway construction. But here in PRA they will be sure to do themselves proud, of course.

Because they're taking care of us. They wuv us. They need us. As beasts of burden.

There. I feel better.

Laika, my canine friend, I owe you an apology. I did not realize until SMO mentioned it that being one of the blue balls was a promotion. I thought that it was a reflection on my sex life--or more accurately a zinger at my lack of one. That is if you don't count images of certain people being tossed into the caldera of Mauna Loa. I realize that is a Hannibal Lecter sort of image.

My eyes mist over; rheum runs down my cheeks. Lupe! Wipe my cheeks. And where is that G&T? Any widow's tears' yet? What? We're out? Well, flog some, goddamn it. And what about my grand reserve, the tears from Al Gore's children when he lost the 2000 election? The tears from John Kerry's children when he had the marriage to their mother annulled and made them bastards! Don't tell me that that swine Pat Leahy stole them?!

Oh shit. They weren't real anyway. Joe Biden gave them to me.

But I am flattered, Comrades. First my brevet promotion to Commissar Theocritus, then to Doctor Commissar Theocritus, and now Blue Balls. Soon I won't have enough room on my tunic--Mao of course--for all the decorations when when I walk people will hear me a mile away, which will give them time to get on their knees and bow! Bow!

Power! Power! Nothing feels like the snap of the neck of a wee person underfoot, and it's good for the gout too.

Ah. Lupe! Another G&T.

Theocratis points out:

Power! Power! Nothing feels like the snap of the neck of a wee person underfoot, and it's good for the gout too

Ah, yes! That IS a magnificent feeling! VERY liberating, no?

Laika the Space Dog wrote:That's one for sure. Fighting for the "Wee Folk" and Striking for a Pot O' Gold!

Maybe Theocritus can answer this one?

Why isn't there a huge liberal whine in the Lone Star to close the TYC and free the children? After all, they're only children and it's all about "FOR THE CHILDREN"?
After researching the articles about the TYC, I've come to the conclusion that the TYC is a thousand times worse than Gitmo and on a much larger scale.

I'm demanding that the TYC be closed IN THE NAME OF THE CHILDREN!
Shut it down.
Fire Blue Bell, the torturer.
Everybody who works for the TYC is guilty by association!
Baby Rapers!

Let's get Dick Durbin-Laden down to the Lone Star and accuse Blue Bell and the rest of the TYC of being Nazis.

Where's Cindy Sheehan on this issue? Maybe she could get out of her ditch in Crawford and go dig one in Austin?

Awww forget it....it's not about Bush or Iraq.

YES! We need to launch a campaign DEMANDING the shut down of the TYC and all of their rape room prison facilities! We need to send a delegation of fair minded hard communist Cubist down there at once to assess the living conditions of the detainees! So how many CHILDREN were tortured today!? HUH BLUE BELL? HUH! How many Texan villages were razed to fill your concentration camps full of CHILDREN!?

STOP THE FUNDING OF THE TYC, NOW! THE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!

For god's sake, don't turn them loose! In 1982 my car broke down just outside that Pyote home and the power lines were out, and the telephones. Before cell phones. I walked to the place with a radio to call for a tow, and it was security of that place. The guards tried, and down the hall there were rows of cells with holes in the doors, and the howls. The howls. Couldn't tell the sex of the person. And I spent some time in a nursing home and heard howls at night. Couldn't tell the sex of the person and it was the voice of my high-school English teacher whose mind had utterly gone.

Do not turn these people loose. Give them congressional passes and send them to Washington. They'd mix in perfectly well but wouldn't be able to concentrate well enough to spend the money and I'll bet the pages would be a lot safer. Save on dry-cleaning bills, too.

Oh. Put them in charge of TexDOT. I bet that even they know that water runs downhill. I promise I can prove that TexDOT thinks that water runs uphill.

Margaret wrote:Ummm, you know... actually... Blue Bell is a..., um..., how do say?...


Blue Bell and friends.

Blue Bell is milk cow. Is there a Freudian slip here somewhere?

'kay... Margaret... no more pictures of scary cow mascot type thingies... This is the second night in a row I've had nightmares about them...

For god's sake, don't turn them loose!

Are you an apostate atheist now?
Absolutely turn them loose! The Green Hats have legally observed the conditions and the children were captured on the Battlefield for The War on Poverty, thereby granting them the rights of The Geneva (Ohio) Convention and are being illegally detained without flushable Korans!
Meow, why don't you put on an orange jumpsuit and chain yourself to the fence at Pyote? Make a Statement! Do it "For The Children"!
Holy Lenin, they might be playing naked Twister with barking dogs in there!
Oh, the humanity!
Theocritus, you Monster! Who do you think you are? James Whale?

I was not quite rude enough to state the real reason not to turn them loose. When the world is conquired by Socialism, comrades, it will be saner there and we will need a place for a retreat. To refresh ourselves from the world that we have created. For after all, we are going to loose on the world directed madness--pure evil--to suit our purposes and it will be a picnic on a deserted Fijian beach, catered to by pool girls/boys of our choice, to be surrounded by random madness.

For after all, even the raving loony does not have the fixity of purpose of Algore of Our Many Titted Empress. Which is why we choose them. Imagine that scene in <i>The Fountainhead</i> when Stephen Mallory, the sculptor destroyed by the vulgarity and evil of the world, says that his nightmare is being locked in a room with a wild beast or a maniac <i>whose mind has been eaten out by disease</i> [read Socialism], and you can have all he best reasons that it should not kill you and it won't listen...still it comes...

In the loony bin the loonies will be random.

I can't do that, Laika. You well know that such 'street theater' is only reserved for our idiots (Ex: Mulva, The Mime ect.). Speaking of The Mime, maybe we could get him down there to mime himself on the inside so we can liberate these children from within. Yes, I'm thinking of a The Great Escape kind of situation involving sporks to dig the tunnels.

Theocritus, don't worry about TexDOT or any other kind of DOT - the Party has you covered. Starting in 2009 we will be hiring Kindergarteners to take on the task of mapping and improving our transportation system. Yes, small children wearing construction hats and carrying small plastic tools is just soooo cute and cost efficient so that the funds can be diverted to our entitlement monolith.


"I get fwee healfcare and am oonionized too, bitces!"

ROFL Mao!!!!

But if we take the kindergarteners and put them in DOT, who will teach the unionized teachers on in-service days?

That's when the once oppressed household pets go to get their daily dosage of peoples truth.

I will match the sense of my cats Calvin and Hobbes against anyone in State government. Anywhere, any time. They bury their shit.

Cool! You named your cats Calvin and Hobbes? I wish I had thought of that. I started reading those comix in 2nd grade. since then I got almost every single book they released. Then last year for X-mas I got the Complete Calvin and Hobbes boxed set. The thing weighs, like, 100 pounds. Then the next day, in the newspaper, Foxtrot had a strip that showed their house and half was sunk into the ground, and the other half was way up in the air and a speech bubble was coming out of it that said: "Peter, why don't you take those Calvin and Hobbes books to the other side of the house for a while?"

Speaking of comics, Johnny Hart (B.C.) died April 7th...funny stuffs, dat.

I too have the boxed set of Calvin and Hobbes, and of the Farside, too. My favorite comics of all times, and both Watterson and Larsen quit writing the same year. Perhaps my all-time favorite, though is the Freak Brothers. I too liked Johnny Hart, but Pravda, you're showing your age, like me. I never did like the Wizard of Id as much.

But for a small collection of macabre things, there's always Charles Addams. Or Gahan Wilson. Really strange. The sort of thing that makes you remember some trips you had when you did not in fact go anywhere.

Those were the days, my friend; we thought they'd never end... Balilaika music...

Freak Brothers? The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers? Those were funny, and kinda wierd, and innopropriate. I too have the Complete Far Side Collection. But I just hope that Jim Davis dosen't make a Garfield Complete Collection. It would kill more trees that the evil Bush administration not singing that Kyoto Agreement thingy.

Yes, and Garfield was funny--from 1978 when he appeared, looking like a pyramid, to perhaps 1983. And he's proof that you can get rich ringing the changes. Kent Treble Bob Major, pace Dorothy Sayers <i>The Nine Tailors</i>.

Theocritus:

I too liked Johnny Hart, but Pravda, you're showing your age, like me.

yes, I know...I'll be 50 in a couple months (or "fitty" as the whipersnappers might say).
For the cat people, there was always B. Kliban...

52 on the 24th. Ah. Back of hand to forehead, deep sigh.

Who cares? It's amazing how good it feels to be able to look at people and tell them exactly what you think. Oddly enough, even here in West Texas, where I keep NOTHING secret, times have so changed that I get respected for it. And it doesn't hurt that I'm generally the one with the sharpest tongue. Some of the things that I've said about our Empress have left people open-mouthed. And in Midland, the home of the Bushitler that goes down well.

Commissar Theocritus wrote:52 on the 24th. Ah. Back of hand to forehead, deep sigh.

Who cares? It's amazing how good it feels to be able to look at people and tell them exactly what you think. Oddly enough, even here in West Texas, where I keep NOTHING secret, times have so changed that I get respected for it. And it doesn't hurt that I'm generally the one with the sharpest tongue. Some of the things that I've said about our Empress have left people open-mouthed. And in Midland, the home of the Bushitler that goes down well.

lol you go booyyyeee!! heheh

BTW, I threw a rock through the mime's window last night (crude, yes...but so is he).

http://impeachforpeace.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=268

Maybe he'll grace the 'Cube with more insight and wit!!

I am working on something which may displease him. One can only hope. Not only snide but really psychologically nasty vicious and dirty--a real kick in the balls.

Alas. Must depart to the west, where the morons in serried ranks assemble, to wart me for the remaining three days. These days on the River Walk in San Antonio--much recommended; try the Hilton Palacio del Rio--have been out of time. But tomorrow there will be popcorn farts of stupidity, tugs of irrelevancy, whines of self-aggrandizement, and in other words the entire pipe organ of humanity.

Which pays for this.

Later.