Frenchy wrote:  According to you, perhaps I have a faint glimmering of intelligence but conversley, the entire American electorate and its presidents are complete morons?

And I was kind.   Just look at the results.  If a vicious foreign power was given a chance to ruin the US and run it into a ditch they could not do a better job than what the voters and their chosen "leaders" did to this country.   

My re-occurring nightmares are numerical: 14 trillion and 10 million -  and growing.   You think I am kidding?  I am not because I have kids and grandkids here.   

When once the most prosperous country in the world is a welfare state - I mean on Chinese welfare - "morons" in reference to those who conspired to get there - the welfare-hungry voters and their vote-hungry government - the term "morons" is an understatement on my part because deep down I am a nice guy who wouldn't want to hurt someone's feelings.    Thanks for asking. 

It doesn't bother me the slightest when a woman sits topless

I bothers me. 

Until we get used to it, going naked in part or in whole is in-your-face rudeness.     A person like this does it for selfish reasons with a total disregard for those who don't join in this form of exhibitionism.   No, there are no health reasons to go naked publicly.  It's pushing the envelope just for the hell of it.       

Unless the area is designated for the sickos like that, the I-can-expose-myself-and-you-can't-do-shit-about-it idiots are a pain in the ass in one simple way:  They restrict my vision from 360 degrees to 360 minus where their tits or crotch or ass are because I was raised not to stare or even look there.   This applies to excessive cleavage, too.    No, I am not a nun or a priest.

If Perry was short, fat and bald but a supreme economic genius he would have as much chance to be elected as I to be Pope by Monday.   

Granny, 

About your posts, sometimes I wonder who wrote it - you or me. 

The only thing I want to add is that I don't believe in mega trends that involve trillions being random or not deliberate.   The reason is very simple:  Without flood, fire or war, wealth cannot be destroyed.   It's a zero-sum game - when you get poorer somebody is getting richer.   People who whine about trillions of wealth going poof when the stock market tanks don't understand this concept. 

Just as the Great Depression was man-made so was the recent housing bubble.   The only question is who got richer.  We already know who got poorer:  the homeowners and the taxpayers.   The Wall Street thugs did what they do so well; they rigged the game by bribing - sorry, making political contributions to - the politicians to make sure that profits are private and losses are public.   Satan himself couldn't be more creative.    It's a financial turnstile that moves only in one direction.   To anyone who believes "they" didn't know that the housing pyramid will collapse, I have a bridge....

The opposite is wealth creation.   Again, there are only three ways to create wealth:  through manufacturing, mining and agriculture.  That's it and there no other way.     The service sector  - and that includes banking, gambling, prostitution, joke telling, etc - does not create wealth as it only shifts money around.   

The ultimate shocker:  money is not wealth.   If it was, all we would have to do is turn on the presses, give everybody a million at birth and we could all retire at the age of 1. 

Anyone who knows this also knows that shifting manufacturing out of the country is a suicide.  That country quickly becomes a banana republic with a strange dude on top.  Like us. 

Frenchy wrote:  The manufacturing base in France and the UK was run down by RIGHT wing politicians following US dogma of the time.

Which is why I call them ruling elites.   The right vs. left contests known as elections are fakes staged for the gullible voters just like "professional" wrestling.   What makes me so smart, or cynical?    A simple observation:  When the Republicans control both the Congress and the White House, you would imagine that, having all that power, they would immediately start disassembling what the Communist party put in place.   Like the Department of Education, for example.    Or closing the border and expelling all the illegals.   Nothing of the sort happens.

After the Commie takeover in 2008, one would expect them to terminate what that "warmonger" Bush started.   They didn't.   

They claim that we spend too much money on the military and not enough on social programs.   So it would be reasonable to expect them to close a bunch of military bases all over the world.   None of this happens either.   

The game is rigged.    But to give the voters an illusion of a fight both sides have their red meat issues "to energize the base".    Like prayer in schools, flag burning, and gay marriage.   Even right now you don't hear from the Republicans one word about the root cause of our financial disaster:  the jobs being there rather than here.   Total silence.   

In the meantime, both sides dump billions on the Wall Street thugs because the thugs got to be "too big to fail".   

My comments are in bold type. 

From Yahoo.com: 

"Territorial, hierarchical and incredibly violent, the gangs are mostly composed of young boys, mainly from dysfunctional homes," which the UK ruling elite created Cameron told the House of Commons in an emergency debate on the riots.

"They earn money through crime because the ruling elite of UK shipped jobs to China, particularly drugs because that's the only thing that can be sold in UK for a decent profit, and are bound together by an imposed loyalty to an authoritarian gang leader because the ruling liberals are neither authoritarian nor leaders.   

They have blighted life on their estates, with gang-on-gang murders which is to their credit and unprovoked attacks on police", which is a damn lie because UK has no police.   In the US we call them social workers"

As if to show how correct my last post was, this is a quote from FT.com:

David Cameron will lay the ground for such a move on Monday, in a speech a week after the worst of the violence took place in London. The prime minister will argue that there has been a “slow-motion moral collapse” in the country, and argue that the problem needs to be tackled in various ways, including through the benefits system.

He is expected to say: “I and ministers from across the coalition government will review every aspect of our work to mend our broken society: on schools, welfare, families, parenting, addiction, communities; on the cultural, legal, bureaucratic problems in our society too.”

Now we can be grateful to the rioters for waking them up.   It was brutal but somebody had to do it.   Thanks for the job well done, thugs. 

Another totally preventable crime.   Aren't immigrants fun?  And assets. 

Dilligaf wrote:  If you are an atheist, would it matter if you were a sinner or not?  Even more,  is there sin if you are an atheist?

I should have used quotation marks.   My definition of a sin is an action that hurts another person who does not deserve to be hurt.   This is operational even in a total absence of deity.       

Before you jump to my throat in order to rip it out, let me suggest that everybody does it.   

You guys are cruel and have no compassion.   

He should get 30 months.    This is based on the Norwegian math that computes to 83 days per life.   I am ashamed to live in a country that shows no mercy and does not try to make a person like this a productive member of society.   Maybe he would invent a cure for cancer or at least for herpies. 

In the meantime, Islam is defeating us by invasion through immigration. 

Islam would be powerless had it not been for the co-conspirators:  the white, guilt-ridden ruling elites of Europe and North America.   

The dogma of free elections and democracy shows here what a fraud they both are.   The average Joe still believes that voting is a civic duty and that the ruling elites pay attention to Joe and how he votes.   

What Joe will soon realize is that once the November circus is over, the ruling elites will continue screwing him again by sending his job to China - "You know, Joe, it's a global economy" - by letting all kinds human garbage in to compete with Joe for those 7-buck-an-hour jobs at 7-11 - oops, sorry, Joe, those jobs belong to the Indians now - by shoving Spanish signs where there were none before into his face, by doubling his medical expenses because half of the patients are the illegal vermin that doesn't pay anything so he has to pay twice: for himself and Ramirez. 

Unfortunately, Joe is just a useful idiot and he will go voting again four year later because he believes in the dogma of his civic duties.     

What he doesn't know is that the only reason the ruling elite wants him to vote - without caring much how he will vote - is to legitimize the system.  That's it.    Even the commies with their one party rule and a KGB agent under every bed had their "elections".   

Few things make me gag up more than the term "western democracies".    US included. 

Frenchy, aren't you sorry you started this thread?   That's my way of saying: blame him not me 'cause he made me do it. 

Frenchy, The I would declare martial law and shoot looters was supposed to be my line.   Now what do I do?

Frenchy,  This is a goldmine.  I only wish this thread was in Armageddon so I could better demonstrate how rich the English language is but, hopefully, this will do.   

Every dogma has its gurus and useful idiots.   One without the other spells big trouble for the dogma.    The gurus coin catchy and easy-to-memorize one-liners for the useful idiots to accept them without questioning and spread the gospel.   Pretty soon the biggest bullshit becomes an article of faith.   

The first cliché one-liner I was introduced to when I came here in '66 was:   Wars are good for the economy.   That's how the useful idiots were able to justify the Vietnam war in those days.    They couldn't very well say without turning red that dropping napalm on the Vietnamese kids is defending the United States so they came up with this gem.   

Another brilliant example I was gifted with in those days was :   We owe it to ourselves.  This Nobel-prize winning pronouncement was in reference to the ever growing national debt.   The idea was that we can spend ourselves silly because we owe it to us so it kind off cancels out.   Brilliant. 

The most alluring part of a dogma is that eliminates this painful process of collecting data, sorting through it, looking for a cause and effect or correlations, and drawing our own conclusion.   All without being paid!   Who the hell needs this kind of headache?    Instead, we read a little book of wisdom with cute lines and, voila, we have it all figured out.   

About democracy:  It's a joke of a system propagated by those who figured out how to cheat, steal and benefit from it while the sheep goes voting every four years believing that they doing something important.   I don't know who said it, but this guy was a world-class genius when he said:  If something was realy at stake, the elections would be illegal.   

I can rant about democracy forever and some, so here is one more:  Democracy ends when 51% of the voters discover that they can pass themselves benefits the 49% will have to pay for.   We and Europe are in the the final stage of this terminal illness called democracy.    But, as the dogma says, democracy is good for you.       

I have more dogmas to shoot in the head but I will stop now to see what my wife is up to. 

Frenchy, thanks for putting the effort into your first post and for starting this thread.   I hope others will join.

Frenchy, you are on roll!.   Quote:  When will they realise that intervention in other people's countries DOES NOT WORK?

It didn't work in Korea and Vietnam.  It wasn't worth it in Kuwait.    We are still in what used to be Yugoslavia and will be there forever.  It will not work in Iraq and Afghanistan.   All we got from these misguided do-good feel-good escapades is the dead, the wounded, the crippled, and the trillions in debt. 

I am willing to bet that defending South Korea, Japan and Germany, instead being a source of profit for the US, is costing us money.   A sane country that wants to play a cop for the world would be paid for it.   Like any normal gun-for-hire would.   

Again, I am not sure about it, but knowing how insane the US government can be by doling out the so-called "foreign aid" by borrowing from the Chinese, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the same insane government of mine was actually paying rent for the bases in South Korea, Japan and Germany.    Half a century later. 

Frenchy wrote:   What a tragedy that these fine young men have died purposelessly in a 13th century land which will revert to the Taliban as soon as the Allies leave.


Frenchy, it's outright scary how much I agree with you on this one.   In that single sentence you have included all the elements that show what an endless bs this "war" is.   

The Russians, who were as brutal as they wanted to be and without a team of the Kremlin lawyers supervising every marine and authorizing every bullet before it's fired, couldn't win there.    We will lose this one, too, because we made it a touchy-feely police action and, as we all know, the job of a policeman is never done and the police departments never close because the law enforcement is forever. 

The way we used to win wars was simple:  we didn't make a distinction between the good Germans and the bad ones.  Everybody and everything in Germany was a legit target and nobody had to face a court martial for saying boo to a German prisoner.   

So I agree with you:  they died needlessly.  Just like their brothers did in Beirut, Gulf 1 and Iraq.   

Frenchy also wrote:  I should imagine the families will be grieving and angry rather than feeling proud but what do I know?

Again, a good observation.  If it was my son I would be livid.   Many, if not most, families, I guess, cope with the loss by "being proud" as the only alternative that allows them to feel reasonably good and "move on".  And I don't blame them because, as we all know, anger is unsustainable long term and can actually get you ill.   So they take the "proud" option to escape perpetual pain.   

Finally, I have to hand it to you that it takes guts to post what you did on a US forum.   I am glad you did.