Jesus Appalled By Americans?

POSTED BY: Mavourneen
UPDATED: Monday, April 9, 2007 23:32
VIEWED: 11915
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6IXSTRINGJACK

Saturday, March 24, 2007 12:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
No it's Adriana Lima. I looked at her picture. Most guys would feel lonely too.

BTW- what ARE your work hours?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

Yeah.... I was joking about Adriana, but.... I really wasn't joking about Adriana.

I work 3 to 4 days a week, 12 hour shifts from 6 at night to 6 in the morning. Pretty rough sometimes, especially on the 4 day weeks, but I love my weekends. That's why you see me around here all kinds of weird hours. I'm rarely on when I'm not working.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

ALLIETHORN7

Saturday, March 24, 2007 2:46 AM

Hate to cut in to your lil' conversation, 6ix, but there're a few things I gotta point out;
1) Charity is very much done out of a guilty copnciense (And, yes, I have seen a few of the bastards who won't give a dime to a homeless dude, and then give twelve bucks to some guy in a Santa costume on a street corner). Problem is, EVERYONE does charity of a fixed desire that the problem, whatever it happens to be, will go away if they throw enough money at it. I know that I'm but a young boy, and my opinion doesn't count for shit- I openly admit THAT aspect of life- but, Gorramit, Society at large (Not jusat the U.S.) has stagnated; we are too capitalistic. We lost the values of actually doing something; we assign the work to lower peons and sit on our collective asses and count pennys. Being frugal is actually more helpful than giving to any old charity- if you save money, than you help yourself and your family and freinds. Giving to charty's- while it once was a good thing, it now has lost its point. There are two dozen I could name off-hand (BEFORE you give me ten minutes to write some down!), and they simply will not get things done- if you want to help folks, volunteer yourself. Keep your money- most folks will gladly give it away to almost anyone so that problems just go out of sight- not gone, not away, just masked under a green cape. It really is sickening to me- Society has lost all sense of actually helping one another just cause they can, and not because it looks good.

2) (FINALLY!) People spend too much on nicities- cuz they are there to begin with. We've been conditioned to spend what we have left on whatever happens to catch our eyes- it's part of the reason why America is a Super-Power. I agree with you, though- America has lowered the bar, the rutters in D.C. Capital. Truth is, the Bueracracy has its' head shoved so far up its ass that the head is starting to come out of the throat once again- a rather awkward posistion to be in. In the words of Carlos Mencia, "Dee dee dee!"

3) The only thing I really got a problem with; taxes. Once it goes to the IRS, it's not your money any longer. It's Uncle Sams', for better or )Most likely) worst. So it ain't "Forced Charity", as you put it. What they do may not be right or just- but, we common folks don't get a say. Like you don't tell Bill Gates how to spend his odd 90 or so billion bucks, you can't technicaly tell the Gov't either (I say "Technicaly", cuz folks do it anyways). Also, we may be some odd 9 trillion in debt, but one must remember; as a country, we make 12 trillion a year. Even saving a fraction of that, we could be out of debt in a few years time. Maybe twenty or so, which isn't really all that much, when you look at it.

That's all, I think.
Having fun yet?

-Danny

I wanna take the Bullet,
The one aimed straight for your Heart;
I wanna meet the wolves halfway,
And let them Tear me APART,
But that's not the way they do it here...
THRICE RULES!!!!!!!!!

SIGNYM

Saturday, March 24, 2007 7:13 PM

Hi there Danny! It's always nice to have new and thoughtful crew members come on-board!

As a general response on the topic of charity, I have two thoughts that always pop up on the topic. One is a paraphrase of William Blake: Pity would be no more, If we did not make men poor and the other is the disquistion on heroes in Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage. In essence the play says that if you need heroes (or charity, in my intepretation) that's because someone f*cked up. A well-planned war needs no heroes, a well-planned society needs no pity.

If it were possible to have a decent-paying job for everyone who wanted and was capable of work, then our need for "charity" would be waaaay waaay down- limited to victims of natural disasters, accidents or disease. But in our capitalistic system where the scarcest resource of all is a decent-paying job, one wonders... or at I least do... that in a world where so many people need houses, clean water, education, and medical care, and where the earth could use reforestation, recycling, clean energy and general remediation why do we have so many poor people? There is certainly no lack of work to be done.

I leave that thought with y'all for further dicsussion, but right now I have to boogie from my work (yeah, workng Saturday AM) to home and hop on the OTHER treadmill!

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SIGNYM

Sunday, March 25, 2007 4:19 PM

No bites?

Okay, I'm going to expand on that a bit.

/rant on
"Charity" is what we give people when they can't find decent-paying jobs. Various "charitable" government programs (Social Security, unemployment, welfare and mortgage relief) were effected during the Great Depression because at that point capitalism had fucked things up so badly* that large parts of the United States were bordering in insurrection and chaos. Look up "Hoovervilles" if you don't believe me.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564651/New_Deal.html

The decade of the 1930s saw the Great Depression in the United States and many other countries. During this decade large numbers of people lived in poverty, desperately in need of more food, clothing, and shelter. Yet the resources that could produce that food, clothing, and shelter were sitting idle, producing nothing. At the worst point of the Great Depression, in 1933, one in four Americans who wanted to work was unable to find a job. (Sounds like today worldwide.) "Charity" is what governments do to PROTECT CAPITALISM from it's inevitable self-generated catastrophic failure. All of you pro-corporate types who want to eliminate charity might want to remember that we've been there and done that more than once, and capitalism has had to have it's bacon pulled from the fire more than once by "charity".

I have no great love for "charity". Yes, it is a necessary response to catastrophe like tsunamis, volcanos, pandemics, and disabilities- but used on an ongoing basis as the "bread" part of "bread and circuses" it is a smarmy, self-gratifying meager substitute for justice.

I can think of several ways to eliminate "charity". The first is to look long and hard at laws that govern corporations, because corporations are "super people" - endowed with ALL OF THE RIGHTS (free speech, privacy) of individuals but NONE OF THE RESPONSIBLIES (paying taxes on an equal footing, doing anything beyond their "fiduciary duty" to their stockholders) and facing FEW OF THE SAME PUNISHMENTS (when a corporation faces the death penalty for killing people en masse, we'll be heading in the right direction.) I don't believe in playing in a gamed system, and we should neither be fighting over nor sharing the crumbs that fall from the table.

And the very first thing we need to do is raise the fucking minimum wage. That's not charity, that's justice.
/rant off

* data provided on request
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

CITIZEN

Sunday, March 25, 2007 7:37 PM

[[]CEO[]]
We can't raise the minimum wage, it'll effect our profits and we'll have to lay people off.

What's that, a million dollar bonus for sitting on my arse? Thank you very much.
[[]/CEO[]]

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

SIGNYM

Sunday, March 25, 2007 9:00 PM

A million? Try a couple hundred million!

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

CITIZEN

Sunday, March 25, 2007 9:30 PM

Naw, that's only if they're not very good and are fired.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

SOUPCATCHER

Sunday, March 25, 2007 9:33 PM

Too sad and too true. Gerald Grinstein is the exception that proves the rule. How crappy a commentary is it that we find it exceedingly noteworthy when a CEO says that the workers deserve the bonus more than he does ( http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2007-03-20-delta-pay-usat_N.htm )? I haven't been paying attention to Delta's struggles with bankrupty but I seem to recall that management worked with the unions rather than taking a "fuck you" approach to labor.

And, re: charitable giving, the CBO estimated that repealing the estate tax would decrease charitable giving in the US by 6 to 12 percent ( http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5650&sequence=0 ).

* hat tip to Rachel Maddow for the Delta CEO story

RUE

Sunday, March 25, 2007 11:16 PM

"desperately in need of more food, clothing, and shelter"

If you all remember the famine going on a few years ago in Afghanistan, how shocking it was that people were so hungry they were eating grass ... the same was true in the US 'Great Depression'. But in the US the problem wasn't weather, it was completely economic. People were starving to death due to capitalism.

GEEZER

Monday, March 26, 2007 1:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
"Charity" is what we give people when they can't find decent-paying jobs.

Interesting take on charity. I always considered it what is given to people who, due to age, infirmity, accident, disaster, social situation, or whatever, can't hold a job, get a good education, get health care, pay for major emergencies, etc. I also consider charity to be something that individuals or non-governmental groups do. This sort of charity is done from a desire to help other people who are in need.

Quote:
"Charity" is what governments do to PROTECT CAPITALISM from it's inevitable self-generated catastrophic failure.

I take it that by "charity" in this case you mean (lowercase)social security - the money government spends on social programs such as unemployment, health care, pensions, etc. If this is true, would the countries with the highest (lowercase) social security costs be the nearest to catastrophic failure?

And the next question would have to be: If capitalism is bad and will inevitably fail, what alternative can we turn to? Is there a country we can use as a model for full and decent-paying employment?

BTW, I'll be offline 'til Wednesday, but I'm really curious about alternatives, so don't take my not posting for disinterest.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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