From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V15 #223 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Sunday, September 24 2006 Volume 15 : Number 223 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RH: vocal, guitar, harmonica and land bream [HwyCDRrev@aol.com] Re: RH: vocal, guitar, harmonica and land bream ["Spotted Eagle Ray" Subject: Re: RH: vocal, guitar, harmonica and land bream On 9/24/06, HwyCDRrev@aol.com wrote: > > Main Entry: 1bream > Function: noun > Pronunciation: 'brim, 'brem > > 2 a : a porgy or related fish (family Sparidae) b : any of various > freshwater sunfishes (Lepomis and related genera) ; especially : > _BLUEGILL_ > (javascript:lookWord('bluegill');) Aha. Previously unbeknownst to me, I've caught and subsequently eaten quite a great deal of bream in my time. Erm... not "breams", right? - -SER ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 16:04:57 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my peenis is always hard Stacked Crooked wrote: >>> but what amazes me is that he doesn't feel the need to hide behind a > mask...or even to refrain > from riding in airplanes. that may be the signal indicator of the bush > administration's impotence.<< > > apologies if i didn't state it clearly enough. but now i'm curious what > you had thought i meant. I thought the statement too obfuscated to bother with and moved on. > and also still curious what your line of thinking > was with your enigmatic response: > >>> It's because he's arguably *insane*.<< Because Hugo Chavez, it could be argued, is mentally unbalanced. That's pretty straight forward. > < to do in, for example ukraine); so you may as well blame bush.>> > > > > yes: the recall referendum. it was the carter center *and* the OAS, by the > way. ... > that's not what carter said. he said that he *didn't* see compelling > evidence of fraud. Jimmy Carter went to Venezuela to 'monitor' that country's effort to recall President Hugo Chavez. In 1992, a band of army officers led by Lt. Col. Hugo ChC!vez FrC-as attempted to overthrow President Carlos AndrC)s PC)rez. Although court-martialed and jailed, ChC!vez emerged a hero. In 1998, he was elected president on promises to clean out corruption and reduce poverty. Once in office, ChC!vez promoted a new consitution to consolidate his powers and began to constrain the business community, civil society, and rival politicians. As a presidential candidate, Hugo ChC!vez campaigned against the "savage capitalism" of the United States. On August 10, 2000, he became the first foreign leader to visit Saddam Hussein since the Gulf War, and he allegedly aided Afghanistan's Taliban government following the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States. At the same time, ChC!vez said that Cuba and Venezuela were "called upon to be a spearhead and summon other nations and governments" to fight free market capitalism. Venezuela is also one of the countries upon which the United States is dependent for oil, and has been since the US first began relying on imported oil supplies back in 1948. Besides supplying the United States with 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, Venezuela provides most of the petroleum consumed by U.S. allies in the Caribbean and Central America. Regional leaders know that opposing ChC!vez in any significant fashion could result in less favorable sales terms or cuts in deliveries. In September 2003, President ChC!vez accused the Dominican Republic of harboring Venezuelans--like former President Carlos AndrC)s PC)rez--who allegedly might conspire against his government. Chavez then stopped oil deliveries, prompting a temporary energy crisis while Dominican officials scrambled for new suppliers. From the perspective of American economic interests, not to mention homeland security issues, Hugo Chavez is a very bad man to have in the neighborhood. And, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Chavez isn't going away anytime soon. Venezuela's opposition party finally forced a recall election, with opinion polls showing that voters favored his recall by a margin of more than 2 to 1. When there were questions about possible vote tampering by the Chavez side, the opposition called for election monitors. Chavez agreed to let Jimmy Carter oversee the election, and the Carter Center headed for Caracas. Under Jimmy Carter's watchful eye, Hugo Chavez defeated the recall attempt by a wide margin -- reflecting almost a mirror-image of the opinion polls. While two out of three Venzuelans polled before the election wanted Chavez out, when the ballots were counted, Chavez was declared the winner by an almost exact opposite margin. "About 58 percent said 'no' to a recall, while 42 percent said 'yes,'" wrote the Washington Post. Carter ignored a press release from the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Assoc. that reported, "Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez." The release, dated 7:30 p.m. on election day, said, "With Venezuela's voting set to end at 8 p.m. EST according to election officials, final exit poll results from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, an independent New York-based polling firm, show a major victory for the 'Yes' movement, defeating Chavez in the Venezuela presidential recall referendum." (1) > another option: get organised, and run the fat-assed sonofabitch out of > town. Seize property from its rightful owners and co-op it. Even better: have the government do it for you. I like the cut of your jib, comrade. > when saddam began denominating oil-for-food > proceeds in euros? Wasn't that under the Clinton administration? Dang, that's right. Clinton was too preoccupied to pay that situation any mind. > ... this > doesn't even include the military budget (which comprises half of the > discretionary budget). it also doesn't include "legacy" giveaways, such as > the airwaves, or the forests, or the resources under the ground. Would you rather we have no military whatsoever? (Actually, I think I know the answer to that one.) > > > now *how* did i know you were going to say that? "personal responsibility" > begins with...somebody else. and until some highly unlikely condition is > met, you're content to continue leeching off the state for all you're > worth. > > > > > i'm not the one running my mouth off about "personal responsibility". even > so, i'll hazard a guess that i'm much less a ward of the state than > yourself. I'm up for that argument. > > > that's your m.o., dude (i should've added to the list your ignorance -- > willful or not -- of facts). if you can find even one counter-example from > the archives, i'll send you a prize. so, if you don't think it's a > charming description, perhaps you should change your methods. I just as easily add to your list of allures your utter and complete unwillingness to drop the Pollyanna mentality and take a rational look at global issues. An unwillingness to set aside partisanship when assessing a situation and your clutch on failed socialist/communist policies. > first of all, there's no evidence that this is the case (or, if you've got > some, feel free to cite it). but more importantly, as jeff mentioned, we > shouldn't be occupying iraq, and israel shouldn't be occupying palestine > any more that saddam should've been occupying kuwait or the soviets > should've been occupying afghanistan. Video of Hezzbollah positioning and/or firing missiles from civilian areas of Lebanon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vyc0OZkMrk&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2UMxtFAHw&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68yOJVQA51E&mode=related&search= ... and one of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_awFLt_HTw > right, and the deaths of scores of millions of americas-indians, and tens > of millions of subcontinent-indians, and millions upon millions more > indigenous people at the hands of the western "democracies" indicates just > how precious we consider life, and just how peace-loving we are. What part of left field did *that* come from? American Indians? Sub-continent Indians? How far back do you want to roll the clock for reparations, "I'm sorry"s and "what can I do to make you like me"s? How far back into history do you have retreat before everyone will be satisfied to your liking? The Germans got boned by the treaty of Versailles, do we go back to there? Give California and TN5xas back to Mexico? Maybe Mexico then has to be reverted back to the Spanish. Florida, too. And the French can maybe get Louisiana back. Oh, wait; there's Indians that have claim to that land. Globally then, by your measure, Israel doesn't have a right to exist because they were only carved out in, what, '47? But there's the problem that they were indigenous to the area long before that. The Palestinians, Christ, they're still well and truly fucked because they never had a country to begin with and no one really wants them, anyways. Even Yasser Arafat was an Egyptian (born in Cairo in 1929, quite a while before Israel came around). As much as you rail against the Terrible White Man and his aggression against Everyone Else, there's one thing that seems to be a relative undercurrent: the vast majority of the places that are in strife today weren't always so. As the idea of Empire shrank; as England, France, Spain, and other European countries gradually gave up their colonial holdings around the world it seems that those areas -- areas once prosperous and (dare one say) "civilized" -- shrank, decayed, and have often fallen into war. Examples: Iraq: Under British rule after WWI until '32 then again from '41 to '47 Lebanon (home of the Phoenicians): Under French control until 1943 Palestine: Under British control from '20-'48 Sudan: Egyptian ruled from 1820 (under British consent) and a British colony until '56. Syria: French-controlled until 1936 Timor: Combined rule by Portugal and The Netherlands until 1942 Vietnam: Colonized by France in the mid-19th century, lasting up to WWII (30 years later, what happened there?) I am in no way saying this is the right path to be on, but it's interesting none the less that areas of strife today used to be relatively peaceful when they weren't governing themselves. Beirut, for example, was once considered a leading city in the Arab world. "[Beirut was ] the intellectual capital of the Arab world and a major commercial and tourist center until 1975 when a brutal civil war broke out in Lebanon." (2) > anyway, the united states was well aware of the ongoing extermination of > the jews, but delayed opening a second front for political reasons -- which > essentially amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? Would you like to see a modern-day repeat? Let Iran become a nuclear power and you just might. > does iran have a nuclear weapons programme? probably. would it be willing > to give it up in return for israel dismantling all of its nukes? probably. > is that offer ever going to be made? probably not. As the only democratic country in that part of the world (whether it be Jewish, Christian, Muslim or worshiping the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) the country of Israel is a natural ally to the West. To ask them to disarm would be asinine. > it was imperialism's fault. and so long as the west was unwilling to > renounce imperialism, it was as culpable for the bloodshed as were germany > and japan. See above. > remove the army from saudi arabia, discontinue the sanctions on iraq, and > discontinue military and political support for israel's occupation of the > west bank and gaza. not because bin laden said so, but because, no matter > what you think of his methods, bin laden's grievances (shared by the > entirety of the muslim world) were legitimate. That could quite possibly go a long way to stabilizing at least a portion of the region. I would say, however, that support for the state of Israel would have to go ahead. There is a very, very large part of my thoughts on all of this that default to isolationism. That we just take our ball and go home. I'm not at all certain, though, that it's possible to do so at this time. > and here's *another* bonus question: > > what would you do about a country that spends more on its military than the > rest of the world combined; that regularly uses its military to interfere > in others' business, killing millions of people while immiserating > billions; that maintains huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons (and other > weapons of mass destruction), while officially holding the position that it > arrogates to itself the right to conduct a nuclear first-strike if it feels > like doing so; that refuses to abide international law, if the law doesn't > suit its purposes; that is developing a new generation of nuclear weapons, > as well as space-based weapons? I'd say I'm damn glad I live *there* and not somewhere else. Seriously, though, Iraq (I assume that's your primary example) was correctly dealt with under the first Bush administration, though poorly (not) completed. It should have been dealt with, again, during the Clinton administration. It wasn't. Hussein invaded Kuwait (a British protectorate from 1899) believing that the country, only around since 1961, was rightfully his territory. We all know how that turned out for him. However Hussein should have never have been allowed to disregard the UN's conditions brought about at the end of the War. It doesn't matter who was involved in the conflict (34 different nations) at its resolution; the international community put down conditions and he routinely ignored them. (That goes to further highlight the UN's complete and utter inefficacy which is a discussion for a different time.) (1) http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200408310659 (2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut#History ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:00:36 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my peenis is always hard 2fs wrote: > Of course, he probably is still popular among the citizens who most benefit > from his policies. > > But the other logical problem in Ferris' position is this: many powerful, > wealthy people preach endlessly on the virtues of self-reliance, > responsibility, and hard work, and against the evils of handouts, > "dependency," and lack of incentive that supposedly result therefrom. > > Yet huge percentages of them have inherited vast amounts of their wealth; > they protest vigorously against the "death tax" (which affects only the very > wealthiest); and their own children get handout after handout (as do many of > their wives: the percentage of non-working women is, I would hazard, far > higher among the wealthy than among any other class), yet rather than > eliminate inheritance entirely - on the grounds that compelling the children > of the wealthy to foster those virtues I mention above and not fall victim > to the evils listed above - they fight tooth and nail to keep and enhance > those benefits. And of course there are all the various money-market means > of capital increase, which do not result from any sort of labor but merely > arise as an effect of ownership (as laws and regulations are currently > structured...to whose benefit...): again, a lack of self-reliance and the > absence of any connection between work and gain. Reduce the capital gains > tax while refusing to raise the minimum wage? We're just encouraging > self-reliance...among people who can't already afford to not have to earn > another penny the rest of their lives and live solely off interest, > dividends, and capital gains. First off: I've never collected a paycheck from a poor person. By that I mean that jobs -- jobs ranging from those paying minimum wage on up to ones that pay excruciatingly well -- are created how? By people with money. Secondly, regarding minimum wage: do you work for minimum wage? I did when I was in High School. Then I got some crap pay per hour when I delivered pizzas, relying on my tips more so than the actual pittance I was paid. The point is you aren't supposed to make a career out of a minimum wage job. Ever. If you have a talent for a job that pays minimum wage one of two things will happen: you'll get promoted and a raise or you'll go and work for someone else doing the same thing, but for more money. Anyone who rails for minimum wage hikes is railing against the wrong thing. They should pay a bit more attention to why the Hell so many people are thinking these jobs are career decisions and not something to get you through High School. If, however, you don't finish the education you've been given (given, as it were, by all the taxpayers in your state) you've successfully pissed away one of the first government benefits you were granted and probably set yourself on the path to finding what other ones are out there for you to leach from. Failure in education can cause a great, great domino effect both on an individual and on a cultural subset of any population. Fix education and, given time, you'll see societal improvements. Thirdly: Who the Hell is the Government to, upon anyone's death, step in and seize assets of any sort? As appealing as it is to seize the money of the dirty rich (Paris Hilton is a fine one to roll out as an example) there are repercussions further down the food chain that you might not be considering. The death tax, which collects up to fifty-five percent of the value of estates when the owner passes away, hinders economic growth and disproportionately hurts those at the bottom of the economic ladder--not just the bwealthiest Americans,b as critics of the repeal are so quick to claim. Often, the death tax forces employers and businesses to downsize, laying off mid- and lower- income workers. And although some businesses in America may be able to endure this tax, for many small businesses, this untimely tax rings their death knellbno pun intended. You would be hard pressed to get even the most outspoken of opponents of repeal to argue that a policy which encourages the failure of small businesses benefits average Americans. This tax can also destroy family owned farms, the lifeblood of our agriculture industry. These farming families are what we call land-rich but cash-poorbwhile their estates may be large, all their worth is tied up in land. To pay the exorbitant death tax, many families are forced to sell land or equipment, often crippling their ability to farm at all. Worse still, many farm families borrow to pay off the death taxes owed, only adding to the difficulty of running a sustainable farm operation. Does the United States Senate believe the burdens of rising land prices, volatile markets for their products, and the unpredictability of the weather are not enough for farm families to bear? And it is not just large-scale operations that are squeezed by the death tax. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania the average farm is 103 acres, with the land valued at roughly $8,000 per acre. That makes the average farm worth over $800,000 in land alone. Add a house, a barn, livestock, and the necessary equipment, and that farm is worth well over the $1 million deduction that the estate tax will revert to in 2011 if the Senate fails to act. To demand that a family dissolve its livelihood simply to pay an unfair tax is bad policy at best, callous governance at worst. The death tax also stifles competitiveness in the U.S. economy. Small businesses drive our economy, creating the majority of Americabs new jobs. Often, these businesses are owned by families and passed down through generations. Yet this tax punishes the entrepreneurial spirit of the initial owner and creates disincentives to take forward-looking, responsible risks in the marketplace. With a dwindling number of family owned and operated businesses, only the giants in the marketplace will be able to survive. Besides being inherently unfair to family farmers and small business owners, the death tax is simply not sound economic policy. (1) The Communist Manifesto rattles off ten things that really have to happen to realize the Communist worker's paradise. Number three: "Abolition of all rights of inheritance." Interestingly enough it also lists its tenth tenant as "Free education for all children in public schools." We're already there with that. Gradual shift from private education to publicly funded began in the Northern States, early 1800's. 1887: federal money (unconstitutionally) began funding specialized education. Smith-Lever Act of 1914, vocational education; Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 and other relief acts of the 1930's. Federal school lunch program of 1935; National School Lunch Act of 1946. National Defense Education Act of 1958, a reaction to Russia's Sputnik satellite demonstration, provided grants to education's specialties. Federal school aid law passed, 1965, greatly enlarged federal role in education, "head-start" programs, textbooks, library books. (2) But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not intended the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class. The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor. (3) (1) http://tinyurl.com/hwqgs (I hate to quote Santurm, but it's a decent piece. In apology I offer this: http://santorum.com ) (2) http://www.criminalgovernment.com/docs/planks.html (3) http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 15:10:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my peenis is always hard On Sun, 24 Sep 2006, FSThomas wrote: > Thirdly: Who the Hell is the Government to, upon anyone's death, step in > and seize assets of any sort? I realize that a complete repeal of the estate tax is highly unlikely to happen, but I *would* like to see some reform--as someone who had to pay the tax himself. It wasn't so much the amount I resented as where it was going. I would have felt a lot better about it if I'd been allowed to donate the amount to charity rather than write the check to the IRS. Barring that I'd rather see it go to my state than to the feds. And I guess I am a little annoyed that this all happened before they raised the exemption amounts to make up for years and years of not adjusting for inflation. How would either of those proposals go down among the readership? Those who don't think the rate should be 100% and apply to everyone, that is. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:12:53 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my peenis is always hard On 9/24/06, FSThomas wrote: > > 2fs wrote: > > > Of course, he probably is still popular among the citizens who most > benefit > > from his policies. > > > > But the other logical problem in Ferris' position is this: many > powerful, > > wealthy people preach endlessly on the virtues of self-reliance, > > responsibility, and hard work, and against the evils of handouts, > > "dependency," and lack of incentive that supposedly result therefrom. > > > > Yet huge percentages of them have inherited vast amounts of their > wealth; > > they protest vigorously against the "death tax" (which affects only the > very > > wealthiest); and their own children get handout after handout (as do > many of > > their wives: the percentage of non-working women is, I would hazard, far > > higher among the wealthy than among any other class), yet rather than > > eliminate inheritance entirely - on the grounds that compelling the > children > > of the wealthy to foster those virtues I mention above and not fall > victim > > to the evils listed above - they fight tooth and nail to keep and > enhance > > those benefits. And of course there are all the various money-market > means > > of capital increase, which do not result from any sort of labor but > merely > > arise as an effect of ownership (as laws and regulations are currently > > structured...to whose benefit...): again, a lack of self-reliance and > the > > absence of any connection between work and gain. Reduce the capital > gains > > tax while refusing to raise the minimum wage? We're just encouraging > > self-reliance...among people who can't already afford to not have to > earn > > another penny the rest of their lives and live solely off interest, > > dividends, and capital gains. > > They should pay a bit more attention to why > the Hell so many people are thinking these jobs are career decisions and > not something to get you through High School. Who says "so many people are thinking these jobs are career decisions"? Viewed individually, yes: a low wage is an incentive to get a better job. Viewed from a larger perspective, however, the fact remains that *someone* needs to do those jobs. There should be no such thing as a full-time job that does not pay enough (in many cities) to afford rent. I deal with these people daily: folks who are trying to go to college but have a very hard time doing so because they're having to work more than one full-time job to get by. At this point in their life, yes, they lack further qualifications - but it's exactly that they *don't* want to "make a career of it" that they're *in* college. > Failure in education can cause a great, great domino effect both on an > individual and on a cultural subset of any population. Fix education > and, given time, you'll see societal improvements. Well, I agree with you. It's likely we disagree on the means to fixing education, but ... yes, education is important. As for the kind of education too many students are receiving, see this: < http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/American-Apartheid-Education1sep05.htm>. Even in my college classrooms (where I'm obviously not seeing those who fail the most egregiously), I see quite clearly the effects of students who receive excellent educations compared to those who receive terrible ones. Their intelligence, their drive, and their willingness to work hard might all be first-rate, but in terms of knowledge and skills, they're way, way behind. Often, they're behind enough that in my position teaching a classroom of students (as opposed to being a tutor working one-on-one) there's far more they need from someone like me than I possibly could have time to give them. This connects to my point about inherited wealth (which I didn't say we should eliminate - only that those who argue about individual effort almost always overlook the benefits those with inherited wealth begin with): one core reason those who argue against government support and in favor of free-market approaches is the notion that the former distributes rewards with no clear relation to effort, that it saps incentive, and that it's ultimately less fair and more inefficient as a result. But at least concerning the first two points, far too often free-market advocates never consider that rewards are *already* distributed w/o relation to effort (via inheritance), and that if it's true that suffering is the engine to achievement (as you seem to imply), then all those non-suffering trust-funders ought to be lazing around on their asses. And, of course, some do - but others work just as hard as anyone else, but with the advantage of starting on third base. Thirdly: Who the Hell is the Government to, upon anyone's death, step in > and seize assets of any sort? Well, if you believe who the hell is government to seize *anyone*'s assets, sure, that's a consistent position. But the answer is: the government is the hell the same party that "seizes" assets when someone *inherits* them as it is when it taxes assets that come people's way in every other mode. I don't understand the "taxing twice" argument either: if you buy a new car, you pay sales taxes on it. If you turn around and sell it to me, I have to pay sales taxes on it as well: I can't say, well, the taxes have already been paid. I don't have time to go into detail and research the implications of the articles you cited and quoted - but I do recall reading that the "family farm" scenario often noted with regards to the estate tax is a red herring: very, very few of them qualify. I find it amusing, though, that on the one hand free-market economics laws are supposed to be so powerful, so attuned to the deepest deeps of human nature, that defying them in the slightest way, even out of the most sincere charity, is an abomination that will ultimately lead to disaster...yet they're simultaneously so very fragile that any little minor inconvenience along the way (such as having to pay taxes) is apparently enough to utterly sap entrepreneurial energies, causing the potential entrepreneur to throw in the towel and resign himself to a life working minimum wage at McDonald's (especially if it's $8/hr. instead of $6/hr!), because he just wouldn't want to have to pay those extra taxes. I also note that the will and incentive of the (potentially) wealthy man is given the most capacious passageway: we wouldn't want to do any damned thing that might discourage the wealthy from creating more wealth (like, say, eliminating the ceiling on FICA taxed wages, which results in those who earn more than ~$85,000 to get an extra 8% or so on each dollar - because, not having that extra 8% will cause the poor dears to just stop earning money above the former ceiling) - whereas when issues that provide disincentives toward the *poor* are pointed out, well, that's just the poor's problem for having such weak wills and being unwilling to do the right thing, tough it out, and eventually earn money. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V15 #223 ********************************