COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, October 01, 2010

Fired Up or Just Burning Down?



"If you're willing to step up to the plate and realize that change is not a spectator sport, we will not just win this election—we are going to restore our economy, we are going to rebuild the middle class, we will reclaim the American dream for this generation." - Barack Hussein Obama


93 comments:

  1. Dutch Politician Wilders Faces Hate Speech Trial Over Comments on Islam

    Wilders Faces Oct 4 Trial

    Consider yourself lucky to be a citizen of the US.

    At least for now.

    All the world is a victim and at least half of the world is it's enabler.

    .

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  2. America, land of the free, speak freely but, please, not too loudly. I still can't believe Congress has seen fit to legislate the volume of TV commercials.

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  3. Careful what you wish for:

    Say the Yuan appreciates substantially in value won't that give the Chinese even more power to purchase foreign operations?

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  4. A couple trillion is not enough?


    :)


    .

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  5. It is somewhat ironic that one of the main drivers of the Hate Speech laws was to prevent anti-Semitic speech. I think many in west would be less tolerant of Anti-Jewish speech than Anti-Islamic speech.

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  6. America, land of the free, speak freely but, please, not too loudly.

    Exactly.

    Coming from PC Canada you should know all about noise pollution.

    There is no control on the content, something PC Canada might not know anything about.


    .

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  7. Yeah, I think they are busy trying to unload some of those US greenbacks before they slip further in value.

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  8. Hi,
    Nice Blog... I really like this…I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made for this blog.
    I have added your blog to Blog Roll at
    http:// carshpping-uk.blogspot.com. So would
    You put my blog too; our visitors can get relative and useful information form your site.
    I will hope you would add my blog.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  9. Controls on content - in the advertising world, in Canada, the government has some regulations on what you can say to kids in TV commercials and makers of those commercials are thus concerned with the ads meeting those regulations. In the US the in-house corporate lawyers are the arbiters of what can be said.

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  10. Hi,
    Nice Blog... I really like this…I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made for this blog.
    I have added your blog to Blog Roll at
    http://carshipping-uk.blogspot.com. So would
    You put my blog too; our visitors can get relative and useful information form your site.
    I will hope you would add my blog.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  11. While America may be the land of the free, the Elephant Bar is the realm of book burners.

    Deleting those comments that do not reverberate the echo the management prefers.

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  12. I think many in west would be less tolerant of Anti-Jewish speech than Anti-Islamic speech.


    Yes that is because Islam, during the years of Hitler (til today) supported the FINAL FUCKING SOLUTION....

    Islam is not a faith of peace, in word or deed.

    Here is a nice statement that would get me arrested in Europistan today.

    Mohammed was a child molesting murderer. Illiterate and war like the elevation of Mohammed to Prophet is criminal.

    Islam's taking Jewish (and Christian texts) and changing them sucks. (Same can be said about Christianity)

    Currently Islam is the seed generator for most terror in the world.

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  13. Yeah Dr. Hiss, more and more like the Belmont Club.

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  14. No, the management just got tired of listening to the same hateful garbage day after day.

    Don't like it go find a lefty bar to troll.

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  15. Most of the patrons of this bar, Ash, wouldn't give the sweat off their balls to a muslim dying of thirst. If that's hate speech, so be it.

    On his basic premise, that muzlims are a cancre on the ass of civilization, Wio is right. On the basic premise, that Israel is too strongly influenced by the obnoxious ultr-religious, Rat is right.

    But to be subjected to squabble hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month was just too much. That's not censorship; that's "preserving your sanity."

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  16. I think there has been more to the editing of posts than just that issue. Scrolling helps aid sanity. I find it easy enough to scroll by Bob's copious posts without much pain at all.

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  17. Canadian Law Logo
    logo Canadian Hate Laws.

    Supreme Court of Canada
    The Authority for Canadian Hate Laws

    * Canadian Human Rights Act
    o Section 13 is used to attack websites which promote hate as defined in this section;

    * Canadian Criminal Code
    o Section 318 - Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

    o Section 319 - Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of ........
    o Section 320 - A judge who is satisfied by information on oath that there are reasonable grounds for believing that any publication, copies of which are kept for sale or distribution in premises within the jurisdiction of the court, is hate propaganda shall issue a warrant under his hand authorizing seizure of the copies.


    Canadian Hate Laws have Invited Controversy

    Canadian hate laws have invited controversy since their inception because there is a fine line between freedom of speech, which is honoured by Canada, and Canada's desire to treat all identifiable groups fairly and promote in those groups a sense of their security and safety in the Canadian community.

    http://www.canadianlawsite.ca/hate-laws.htm




    I'm not supporting the laws but I think a reasonable understanding of them might aid discussion.

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  18. SO, that $700 Billion TARP is going to cost . . . . . . . . . .. . er, Probably between $50 Billion, and Zero?

    And, might even turn a profit?

    Gee, I wonder who saw That coming?

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  19. "probably" hunh? I've got some real estate in Florida you might be interested in.

    The little bit of reading I did on it yesterday regarding AIG indicated that they were shuffling the debt obligation off of the Fed and onto Treasury and the 'plan' was to sell shares to the public in the new entity. Care to buy some freshly minted AIG shares to go with your Florida real estate?

    :)

    I hope they nice propaganda coming out of the gov. re TARP will prove true.

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  20. By the way, whatever happened with that supply convoy the Pakis had stopped. Is it rolling again?

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  21. Pervez Musharraf is coming to believe he is missed. How do we get away from Pakistan?

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  22. Slip out the back, Jack.

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  23. Turn in our key, Lee.

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  24. We're through in Afghanistan. We've been "through" in Afghanistan since 2003. We'll make it official next year.

    Meantime, we've got another damned mess. We're dependent on the enemy (Pakistan) to allow our resupply convoys. It's insanity.

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  25. There's a reason why Afghanistan is known as "where empires go to die."

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  26. the good ole America of yesteryear:

    "WASHINGTON (AP) — American scientists deliberately infected prisoners and patients in a mental hospital in Guatemala with syphilis 60 years ago, a recently unearthed experiment that prompted U.S. officials to apologize Friday and declare outrage over "such reprehensible research."

    The U.S. government-funded experiment, which ran from 1946 to 1948, was discovered by a Wellesley College medical historian. It apparently was conducted to test if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent infection with sexually transmitted diseases. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.

    ...

    And while deliberately trying to infect people with serious diseases is abhorrent today, the Guatemalan experiment isn't the only example from what National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins on Friday called "a dark chapter in the history of medicine." Forty similar deliberate-infection studies were conducted in the United States during that period, Collins said.

    In Guatemala, 696 men and women were exposed to syphilis or in some cases gonorrhea, through jail visits by prostitutes or, when that didn't infect enough people, by deliberately inoculating them, reported Wellesley College historian Susan Reverby. Those who were infected were all offered penicillin, but it wasn't clear how many were infected and how many were successfully treated.

    She reported that the U.S. had gained permission from Guatemalan officials to conduct the study, but did not inform the experimental subjects.

    ...

    The revelation of abuses by a U.S. medical research program is only the latest chapter in the U.S.' troubled history with the impoverished Central American nation, which has a per capita gross domestic product about half of that of the rest of Central America and the Caribbean.

    The U.S. helped topple the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and backed several hardline governments during a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and cost 200,000 lives."

    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/10/01/us/politics/AP-US-Syphilis-Experiment.html?hp

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  27. the good ole America of yesteryear:

    I'd have to look up the details but there has been a history of experiments like this going back into the 30's that also involved cover ups.

    As I recall one was on black sharecroppers in one of the southern states (Alabama?). It was a long-term study on syphilis. Not only did they let subjects die from it in some cases, they also obviously by not telling them they had the desease allowed it to be spread; wives, children, others.

    From your comment Ash you seem to imply that this only happened in the "good old days" of the US and not in the current enlightened times.

    Time to grow up hoss. It's a shit world.



    .

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  28. Yes, Quirk, it is a shit world, but to many here the America of yesteryear was a better place than the America of today. Then there is the meme that America is second to none.

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  29. Well, that part is obviously right; America IS "Second to None."

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  30. And, in a lot of ways the America of yesteryear Was pretty damned good.

    Depending on how far back you go, and who you were, of course.

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  31. I recall 1966 being a good year.

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  32. 1966 was a Damned Good year. :)

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  33. Well, fuck what's the prize for someone agreeing with for the very first time in EB history.

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  34. You just gotta be "right" more often. :)

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  35. I would think that I'm always right considering I never really make comments pertaining to legitimate facts?

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  36. "Yes, Quirk, it is a shit world, but to many here the America of yesteryear was a better place than the America of today. Then there is the meme that America is second to none."

    Don't you see that posting that article about a disgusting medical experiment in the past does nothing to disprove the two proposition you just mentioned?

    Wherever people have power there will be abuses of power. In the US, in Africa, in Asia, or in Canada. There are plenty of dicks all over the world who can rationalize their actions no matter what bullshit they choose to pull (if they even bother to try to rationalize it).

    How you come down on the two propositions you noted above depends on subjective feelings and experiances. It's unlikely you, a Canadian, are going to sway the minds of a bunch of aging Americans and a few wild and crazy chicks.

    Why try?

    .

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  37. For one thing, that wouldn't be "news" to hardly anyone (IF anyone) who participates in this blog. There were many such "scientific" tests conducted in the U.S. (and, the rest of the world,) and being the literate li'l newshounds we are, we've all read about a few of them.

    You could, within a minute, find a few score involving, quite often, blacks/prisons/The South.

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  38. If you will remember: Eugenics was quite the rage back then (Hitler didn't develop in a vacuum, you know.)

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  39. Quirk wrote:

    "It's unlikely you, a Canadian, are going to sway the minds of a bunch of aging Americans and a few wild and crazy chicks."

    For the record, old boy, I'm an American who lives in Canada.

    Yes, rufus, it is for all those reasons that it is quite absurd to assert the supremacy of all things American. America is just another country that has flaws, deep immoral flaws, like all those other countries.

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  40. As he crossed the Idaho line into Jackpot he slipped the clip into the Sunshine .25, chambered a round, lay the weapon beside the Book of Mormon stolen from the last motel, got a pack of smokes, put the gun in his pocket, turned off the muzzie rap station, 104.7 BOB out of Twin Falls, and entered Cactus Pete's for a little roulette action.

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  41. Some good, seriously disturbed, imagery there Bob!

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  42. Canada was formed by British and French invaders of native American lands.

    The British flag flew over Canada as late as the mid 1960's. There still remains a schizophrenic division as to which language, French or English is spoken first.

    History is still very much in process in Canada and the French and English roots are still very tightly entwined. A present day Canadian is as guilty or innocent of their heritage as an American of the 2010's is of the 1960's, the 1920's or the 1700's of the American experience.

    The kindest evaluation of such an argument is silly adolescent nonsense.

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  43. I love the line "lay the weapon beside the Book of Mormon stolen from the last motel"

    It is, so, Cohen brothers. Like in "No Country for Old Men,"

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  44. For the record, old boy, I'm an American who lives in Canada.

    Sorry, I knew you were an American citizen but I thought you said you had been living in Canada for forty years or so.

    If that were true, it would be like me having moved to Michigan when I was four saying that I was a 'good 'ol southern boy' because I was born in Tennessee.

    .

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  45. "... turned off the muzzie rap station, 104.7 BOB out of Twin Falls, and entered Cactus Pete's for a little roulette action."
    bet the farm on Red 17 on a hunch and went numb when the ball landed on Black 24.

    He staggered back running his fingers through his black curly locks as the dealer raked his chips from the table.

    He took another step back and drew the Sunshine .25 and was trying to move it to his temple when he was wrestled to the ground by security.



    How's it going Bobbo?


    .

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  46. Damn! I had an extremely long and mentally draining week and there isn't even anyone around the bar to keep me company.

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  47. Down town Ely rocks. Nevada Hotel eve has a walk of fame.

    And lovely art work, and the most magnificent chandelier made out of horns I've ever seen.

    The bikers are in town.

    In this motel instead of Arabs listening to rap music I got illegal aliens by the handful.

    Ely is over 6,000 feet elevation.

    There's nobody at the bar with the courage to join me here.

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  48. Even Lyndon B. Johnson and Micky Rooney made the walk of fame here.

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  49. There is a 104.7 FM BOB

    It might be 107.4 though.

    Out of Twin Falls.

    The arab terrorists were listening to it.

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  50. Not here.

    There was also a star for one Rather B. Quirk, horoscopist.

    Played here in 1956, it said.

    I can tell you this, when we stopped for smoke breaks out in the desert, there is no quiet like it, hardly even the noise of a slight breeze.

    Parts of the Oregon Trail went this way too.

    Got some good pics.

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  51. And there was still a little snow on two of the peaks we passed.

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  52. I'm baaaack.

    Man, Itunes upgrade overwrite a file and Windows died...

    There was nothing I could do but reload Windows and of course my backup was corrupt. I had to rebuild everything (an ongoing process)even down to finding new drivers from Dell.

    My Dell copy of Windows was so old that when I finally got back online just after 2:00 this afternoon, I had to download and install well over 100 security updates from Microsoft.

    I lost all my Outlook Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks.
    --------------------------------
    Glad to see the proper decorum being observed! :-)

    Sorry Dr. Hiss is hissing though from my perspective, the atmosphere has been much improved lately.

    knock on wood.

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  53. bob, if you want to share your photos over the web, you need to go to a site like Flickr, create an account and start uploading. Then you can give us a link.

    Get your daughter to help you.

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  54. I just had a itunes update that went into error. I just cancelled it. There was no harm to my computer.

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  55. Whit how do you share just one photo and not all the pictures there. You know what I mean the way, T, does it.

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  56. How's that new Apple? You like it?

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  57. I'm not sure, Mel. I know that some can make some folders private and others wide open to the public.

    But I think you're talking about something like this.

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  58. ...that you can make some folders private...

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  59. I love the Apple more than I thought. And yes that's what I mean. So in other words if I just want one photo to share out of my photos how do I make it a link like that.

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  61. Get your daughter to help you.

    She tried and couldn't get it to work but we'll have another go at it.

    She rode English saddles yesterday.

    Still on Scooch.

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  62. Making the link getting the language right seems to be the tough part that she couldn't figure.

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  63. Yes, I saw the whole album. Nice pool.

    But how do I make just one picture a link without going through flickr or picasa web album.

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  64. I think T can do because of the way her blog is setup. She can just click on a photo until that is all you see in the browser. I don't Flickr does that but what you can do is set the permissions on your photos so that only family and friends can see them otherwise they're open to the public but you can set them either way. In fact, you can set them to family only, family and friends, or general public.

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  65. T would show her vacation pictures one at a time.

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  66. You need a website to do what you want to do. You have to be able to publish to the web.

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  67. I have flickr and picasa and yes they are private.

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  68. See you all in the AM.

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  69. Oh, yeah, at the Hotel Nevada there was the skin of a rattle snake over 30 feet long. I know cause I paced it. Very beautiful skin. Bigger than the one I witnessed on the Lochsa River. Very impressive.

    And there were Watch For Elk signs along parts of the highway which I don't recall from former days.

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  70. You need a website to do what you want to do. You have to be able to publish to the web.

    ah; splains it.

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  71. I guess I should head up, too.

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  72. ah, just figured it out. I do have a website, though I don't know what it is, and have never used it. My daughter made me one for the rentals. I could use that.

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  73. To sleep, perchance to dream, Melody.

    Maybe you'll be on a farm again, riding like the wind, like the wind....

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  75. I'm in a no smoking room. Been outside, looking at the stars.

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  76. We're gonna hole up here for a day or two, in this hole in the wall, check out the wild horse round up, of which I've seen no signs, maybe it's next week, maybe I've got the wrong town :) then head out for the big time, to try and earn a living by not working, like much of the rest of the country.

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  77. Grant, Cooper, Stewart, all on the walk of stars here, but no Marilyn Monroe.

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  78. Quirk's star looking too.
    g'nite

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  79. Sorry, Bob got stuck at another site.

    If you're still around, I'll have you place a bet for me.

    Who are the Vandals playing this week?

    .

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