He said meat.:mamoru:
Founding Fathers is in Buffalo isn’t it?
:HOWIEJOKE:
Your head.
^oh OK.
75 Edward Street.
Founding Fathers has the smartest bartender evar
So you’re saying that when more/better and capitalist/individualist became synonyms, things went to shit?
So I’m back in town for a few days. Shall we have a political beer meet this weekend to celebrate the 233rd anniversary of when George Washington squandered all of Martha Fairfax’s money and saw that the only way out of the english debt trap was independence?
I am always down to drink.
I think we should start drinking tomorrow AM.
AND THEN THE BRAIN TRUST ASSEMBLED
Do it.
I’ve got Friday off. If the weather clears, boat beers fo sho.
how about sterling beers and bbq?
i like that idea. sterling is close enough to stop by for lunch.
Come to think of it, so is erie basin, pull the boat in there and feed me because you feel bad that i have work.
I’m saying that this was when blind consumerism started taking hold… like all invasive 'isms it eventually choked out the blind patriotism that was the major religion just prior to, all the while managing to quell the minor uprisings of most other 'isms along the way. Yes, “more / better / me / now” is at the root of most of the dilemma at hand.
<- off tomorrow. Whats the itinerary?
chk lvl 2 kthxbi
Im going to adress something from early on in your argument before I get into the whole big picture. In your first few sentences you said that we have had an “experiment in democracy”. Right off the bat you need to understand that democracy was not our chosen style of government, and democracy alone is a big reason why we are in the situation that we are in economically.
The truth is that we are supposed to be a republic, or a “republican” government. For example, “and to the republic, for which it stands” is not in the pledge of allegiance by accident. Did you also know that the word democracy is found neither in our declaration of independence or the constiution? The truth is that democracy is not freedom. James Madison warned in the federalist papers that democracies can be “as tyrannical as any king”. Democracy is simply majoratarianism, and that is not freedom at all. For example, a truly democratic election in Iraq, without puppet candidates, or US interference, would most likely result in a Shiite theocracy. This outcome would be democratic but would it truly be free? How would the women of Iraq feel about this? Would they be free? Would the current adminisration be prepared to accept a democratically elected Iraqi government, no matter what its attitde towards the US occupation?
Simply put, freedom, is the absence of government intervention and coercion. In our lives and the lives of people abroad. So with that in mind, lets take a look at our monetary system and our “free trade” style economy. Does it seem that our monetary system has government involvement? Lots of it? Does it seem that as things get worse and worse the answer is always from the same people, that we need more government regulation? Does it seem that the people telling you this, are the same people that messed everything up in the first place? We are led to believe that the actions of our government are always pure and mean to benefit the people. But even if the politicians mean well, they only make things more confusing, more suffocating, and more difficult for the true free market process to occur. The fact is, that we havent had a free market system in this country in decades, even longer. I would go so far to say that we have also been a socialist country for about just as long.
Its not as hard as your making it out to be. If it was this difficult, noone wouldve warned us about what was coming, but some people did. Some people knew that the housing market boom wouldnt last forever. Some people knew that the special privileges given to fannie and freddie would distort housing market values and allow them to gain capital that wouldnt normally be available to consumers. Its not rocket science, but we are led to believe it is. We are led to believe that we need PhD’s in economics to understand the bussines cycle but nothing could be further from the truth. Ive read over 3,000 pages through 4 books (not to brag) on the federal resereve and trust me, ive got a pretty damn good concept of how this monster works, and when you boil it all down, all of this was bound to happen eventually. The people running the federal reserve knew, the governors of the bank knew, hell even CFP’s and banking consultants must have bee scratching their heads or had full awareness.
You are starting to come around and realize that yes, it is completly wrong and only a band aid solution to borrow, and flood the markets with capital to keep bussineses afloat. When a countries economic cycle busts, the best thing to do is to let the bankruptcy occur, and let the good assets prevail. That is how the recovery starts. Delaying that recovery only results in a worse outcome when the actual monetary note (the dollar) collapses. I almost dont ever want to have kids because i dont want them to be brought into this awful mess. Why burden someone else with the mistakes we have made? The amount of government involvement in our economy is layered so thick that it almost seems they are trying to make it impossible to understand so that we just stop askign questions.
To quote congressional representative Ron Paul at the house banking committe Nov. 9th 2007 in adress to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke “How can we expect to solve the problem of inflation, that is, the increase in the supply of money and the devaluation of the dollar, with more inflation?”
Yeah because we didn’t try to win and capture bin Laden in Afghanistan. We just gave up, right?
We still tried to win in Afghanistan in the same way football teams try to win in the preseason. We played the starters for the first quarter.
We dropped the ball in Afghanistan and now we are trying to fix our mistake.
There are over 100,000 troops/personnel in Iraq, could you imagine if we had that in Afghanistan? Or something close to that?
Come on, Iraq was a mistake brought on by either lies or screw ups by the Bush administration. Afghanistan was the real place for this war on terror.
What? Talk about nailing jello to a tree… Are you arguing that anarchy is ultimate freedom?