Quiplinks III

Max gives a stirring eulogy for Steve Jobs:

"Steve Jobs sold ice to eskimos."

Professor Hale reminds us about the Basic Rules of Economics:

"If you want something for free, what you are really saying is that you want someone else to pay for it."

In response to the Occupussies, Default User offers us a Populist Manifesto:

"If corporations were truly persons they would probably be classed as “asshole.”"

Flyfreshandyoung defines the experiences of being Male in our present generation:

"We Millennial men have nothing to live for."

Richard Nikoley revises his "Free the Animal" manifesto:

"You must craft your own diet, health and fitness paradigm from your own trial and error experience. Modern society only wants to sell you stuff."

Dalrock offers some advice for employers who hire employees afflicted with BWV:

BWV is a genetic condition and those who have it must deal with it their entire lives.

Ferdinand gives credit where it is due:

In a world built on pretty lies, every public teller of ugly truths is hero for a day.

Gmac writes a letter to his future ex-lovers:

"Unfortunately, if you are reading this it means that I no longer have any use for you."

The Angry Dad reveals an excellent tactic when you have to return an expensive purchase after having buyers remorse:

"Whenever I am returning something, and Customer Service is giving me a hard time, I blame it on the wife."

Rollo Tomassi asks answers a very important question:

"How important does the role of attraction play in a relationship?"

Vox poses a hypothetical to women who think intelligence is one of the most important traits she needs in attracting a man:

"The first thing a smart young girl should contemplate is how sexually attractive she finds Stephen Hawking."

Simon Grey makes an observation about Americans:

"Americans are, by and large, a rather soft people, at least these days."

Roosh is starting to have second thoughts about his hedonistic lifestyle:

"I’m convinced that the solution is to grow up and do what society expects of me, to be a man as defined by my middle-class peers."

Divided & Conquered: Tea Baggers vs. Occupussies

Never forget that any and every political movement, protest, action or manifesto that gains any sort of attention, will ALWAYS be channeled into the two-party dialectic. It is the primary way of keeping We the Sheeple perpetually at each other's throats and distracted from our overlords who continue to use and exploit us for their own benefit.

The template is simple.

"Right" - Against Big Government, For Big Business
"Left" - Against Big Business, For Big Government

Every single iteration comes down to a "right" or "left" person attacking the other side's "For" or "Against" argument or defending his or her own side's "For" or "Against" argument.

Trapped in this template, none of them ever realize that in fact the real problem can be essentially summed up like this: Big Government and Big Business are inseparable. They are in an incestuous, symbiotic relationship in which both entities serve each other at the masses expense...and the masses never wake up, because they are too focused on opposing one side or the other, that they never notice that these two "sides" are nothing but charade.

Take, for instance, a recent Taki mag article, 99% Wrong.

Note the author, Jim Goad, essentially derides the Occupy Wall Street protestors as communist/marxist libtards, who are "99% wrong."

So what in the name of Friedrich Engels is all this about, anyway?

As with the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street is a big circus tent hosting a hodgepodge of disparate recurring themes—many that appear sensible, many that sound wacky, and not all of them reconcilable. But whereas the Tea Party agitated largely against Big Government, the bogeyman here is Big Money—specifically corporations and “the rich.”

Thus, the OWS protests are channeled into the "Left-Right" dialectic and immediately marginalized. The anti-Left People's Cube website labeled them Occupussies.

The Tea Party agitated against "Big Government" while supposedly stood for defending "capitalism" and opposing "socialism" that supports Big Government. Except defending "capitalism" in our current status quo essentially means defending corporations, who buy cartel monopoly powers from the Government under the guise of "Regulations.

Now the Occupussies agitate against "Big Business" while supposedly defending "liberalism" and "progressive politics."

This shit never ends. In this way, 99% of the people who pay even marginal attention to the media coverage of either event, immediately adopt a set of attitudes, ideas and beliefs regarding the movement - no need to waste anymore thoughts on who, what, when, where or why these protests may be happening.

The Tea Baggers are just greedy, upper class rich folks that don't care if the poor die starving en mass, while the Wall St. Occupiers are dirty hippy socialist commies who don't want to work and just want the Government to tax the wealthy to pay for everyone's basic living expenses.

But more and more people are waking up to the scam.

Here's one commenter, 1RW, over at the Taki mag, who gets it, and points out the truth. He or she avoids contributing to the continuation of channeling the debate into the two-party dialectic:

Yes it does have to do with big government, because big government creates big regulations, which favor big business. They favor big business because a multi-billion dollar corporation can have a standing army of accountants and attorneys, and other compliance officers to make sure regulations are followed and taken advantage of. A hundred thousand dollar business can't.

Also big government creates treaties like NAFTA and WTO which favor big business because they can offshore labor, rendering american labor too expensive, because americans have to live like americans.

Finally, when big business drops the ball, big government apparently bails them out lets them continue with their financial shenanigans. Or have you not been paying attention?

1Rw missed one nuance here: Big Government favors Big Business, because Big Business finances the politicians campaigns.

Other than that, protesting Big Business is no different from protesting Big Government.

They are essentially two sides to the same Fascist coin.

The Only FOXNews Pundit Worth a Damn

From about 1998 til approximately 2006, I was a religious FOXNews viewer. I watched it every single day. If I was doing something else around the house, I'd turn on FOXNews just to listen to it while I was busy doing something else.

The reason why I really became a fan of the channel, was because when it first came on cable programming, it felt like I was sticking the middle finger at the liberal/Democrat-hack mainstream media news channels. I used to enjoy reading and watching TV shows in which liberals lost their collective minds at the very idea that a FOXNews channel even existed.

At some point, I don't even really remember when, I realized that this 24/7 exposure to GOP propaganda was influencing my thoughts and beliefs, and got me to blithely accept things that I used to think were against my core principles.

I have always been a fiscal conservative minded person, opposed to the welfare state, income taxation and a strong, centralized Federal Government. But as I subjected my mind to FOXNews on a steady basis, I began to experience cognitive dissonance as I began to notice the number of pundits and reporterettes that would defend George Bush Jr's. and the GOP congress' profligate borrow-and-spend-like-drunken-sailors platform, as well as a continual justification for the advancement of the PATRIOT 1 and 2 Acts scope and power, continually encroaching on We the Sheeple's civil liberties.

At some point, I simply turned it off. But it wasn't just FOX News, I also quit listening to talk radio, cold turkey. If I wasn't at home watching FOXNews, I had talk radio on my car stereo or at my desk on tiny speakers in my office. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Dennis Prager, Tom Leykis (LOL not right wing...I'd call him the Roissy of Talk Radio). I stopped listening to talk radio period, and only listened to music on my iPod.

I also quit reading the daily newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, Townhall.com, The National Review, and even the Drudgereport.

In short, I unplugged from mainstream, so-called "conservative," right-wing media on all platforms. I couldn't take the lies or continual subversion of conservative principles any longer.

But today, I came across a link from Lew Rockwell.com, that transcribed Judge Andrew Napolitano's closing argument from his FOXNews show, Freedom Watch. Somehow, the good judge is speaking truth to power on the GOP's primary propaganda organ. He asks the questions that all Republican voting viewers should be asking of their own party that they often blindly support.

Here's some excerpts of a few of the questions he posed that I think are the most relevant in dealing with our current problems in this country and throughout the world.

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?

Of course, we work for the government. More precisely, we work for the Banker's who our Government has indebted us all to on our behalf.


Is freedom in America a myth or a reality?

Neither. It's a deliberate illusion promoted ad nausea by the mainstream media (both right wing and left wing outlets) to keep We the Sheeple from noticing that our freedom is being taken away at an exponential rate, regardless of which party controls the executive and/or legislative branches of the Federal Government.

What if the merchants and bankers who financed the American Revolution bought their way into the new government and got it to enact laws that stifled their competition?

From mercantilism at the nation's founding to full fledged corporatism of the present, this has always been one nation, under god. But it was not the God of Abraham and Isaac. This god's name is the bottom line - otherwise known as Mammon.

What if our political elites spent the 20th century importing the socialist ideas of big government Statism from Europe?

Why, we'd have a Federal Government and State Government's all across the country going broke as the entitlement spending grows larger than the money they "raise" through taxation. What if, indeed.

What if you had to produce your papers to get out of or into our once-free country? What if you couldn't board a plane, a train, or a long-distance bus without providing documentation telling the government who you are and where you're going, without paying the government, and without risking sexual assault?

From sea to shining sea, we now live under a Brave New World Order. Do you have YOUR papers, to move throughout the country, Komrade?

What if government agents could write their own search warrants, declare their own enemies, and seize whatever property they want?

As long as this is what it takes to win the War on Drugs....well, I guess this must be alright, right?!?!?

What if the feds could detain you indefinitely, with no visitors, no lawyer, no judge, and no jury?

What if, indeed. But why should they bother, when they can now simply have a military drone blow any US citizen to smithareens without due process, as long as they are identified as a potential "terrorist."

What if you were required to purchase a product that you didn't need, didn't want, and couldn't afford, from a company you never heard of, just as a condition of living in the United States?

Like car insurance? Or was that health insurance?

What if the government tried to cajole and coax and compel you into behaviors and attitudes it considered socially acceptable?

I think I'll step outside and smoke some tobacco right now. For some reason, I feel it's wrong to smoke indoors, even in my own home...

What if the government decided how much of your earnings it will keep and how much it will permit you to have?

I'd thank God every day that I live in the FREEEEEE-IST nation on the face of the Earth!

What if the government took money from you and gave it away to its rich banking and corporate friends whose businesses were failing?

Such a thing could never happen in a DEMOCRACY! Surely we are simply getting the government that we deserve! Besides, if you didn't vote, you can't complain!


What if you worked for the government and the government didn't work for you? What if freedom were a myth? What if we don't live in a free country? What do we do about it?

Pray for revolution.