You ought to know.

for a more politic spin of fsl’s musings, see: “Partisan Politics—A Fool’s Game for the Masses
By Robert Higgs on Oct 12, 2009 in Uncategorized

Because I despise politics in general, and the two major parties in this country in particular, I go through life constantly bemused by all the weight that people put on partisan political loyalties and on adherence to the normative demarcations the parties promote. Henry Adams observed that “politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” This marshalling of hatreds is not the whole of politics, to be sure, but it is an essential element. Thus, Democrats encourage people to hate big corporations, and Republicans encourage people to hate welfare recipients.

Of course, it’s all a fraud, designed to distract people from the overriding reality of political life, which is that the state and its principal supporters are constantly screwing the rest of us, regardless of which party happens to control the presidency and the Congress. Amid all the partisan sound and fury, hardly anybody notices that political reality boils down to two “parties”: (1) those who, in one way or another, use state power to bully and live at the expense of others; and (2) those unfortunate others.

Even when politics seems to involve life-and-death issues, the partisan divisions often only obscure the overriding political realities. So, Democrats say that anti-abortion Republicans, who claim to have such tremendous concern for saving the lives of the unborn, have no interest whatever in saving the lives of those already born, such as the poor children living in the ghetto. And Republicans say that Democrats, who claim to have such tremendous concern for the poor, systematically contribute to the perpetuation of poverty by the countless taxes and regulations they load onto business owners who would otherwise be in better position to hire and train the poor and thereby to hasten their escape from poverty…”
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=3596

fsl, above, may have been impolitic, though, is he, really, a bigot?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigot
“…and is intolerant of those who differ.”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/impolitic
“Not wise or expedient; not politic: an impolitic approach to a sensitive issue.”
~~
further, from skysurfer, above: “The powers that be have us at each others throats in a right vs. left debate while they take millions in contributions from their buddies on Wall Street and then turn around and give Wall Street billions. This ends up costing …”

“Divide and conquer refers to the common strategy of seeking to cultivate neutrality or support from those considered ‘moderates’ as a way of undermining and marginilising those deemed the ‘radicals’”
and it’s reverse http://www.wepin.com/articles/afp/afp06.html

“The left is responsible for so much more that is wrong with our country and the world, than there is space here to list…. drowning us in sex, drugs, and the likes of Barney Frank bankrupting the entire world to give poor people $500,000 houses—–I could go on but what’s the point?”

You are right that there is no point – bigots have no point.

Within the confined of rationality, all the voters were presented with the two alternatives and TheBamster won by a slim electoral margin. All that tells us is that our forcee choices were between
a borderline senile republican, and man with a remarkably negative public relations fiasco of a last name.

Remove the black vote, which voted 95% for The Bamster because he is ‘not bush’ and tell me again how rational it was to vote for him. No one rationally garners 95% of a constituency unless there is pure bias in the decision. While you’re at it, remove the voters like myself who abstained because of the betrayal of the republicans in name only for over 14 years and tell me how rationality prevailed.

Obama won for only one emotional ‘reason’: he was NOT that addlebrained, incoherent, marionette, an inarticulate douchebag, and not by that many electoral votes that disaster of an administration bush presented us with for 8 years and 5 generations of debt laden depression to work our way out of while he retires to a life of luxury, privilege and nearly unanimous disdain, international embarrassment and ignominy.

I may not have been clear about the left. The left is responsible for so much more that is wrong with our country and the world, than there is space here to list. Suffice it to say that the coarsening of our culture, legitimizing the murder of babies in the womb (not that I have horse in this race–especially when we see how so many children, particularly black children, are turning out so badly, providing billions of dollars of construction and tens of thousands of jobs for prisons—it is likely a net good to society even though reprehensibly immoral) drowning us in sex, drugs, and the likes of Barney Frank
bankrupting the entire world to give poor people $500,000 houses—–I could go on but what’s the point?

The right, or what passes for the right, has been complicit in these debacles by not doing what the right had done in the past: opposing the left with some serious attitude. I don’t mean to say the right is the answer either.

to paraphrase skysurfer above:

“Nothing will change unless we realize that it is not the democrats versus the republicans, but the democrats and the republicans versus SOME of us who truly see that progress has not been accomplished by left or the right.!”

Health care reform will be another nail in our collective coffin, to appease without progress.

Turner said he has learned to live with less, yet he still bemoans the decline in his net worth.

“To drop out of that league[the elite top of the fortune 400], that was hard to do,” Turner said. “I’ve had the experience of being on top and riding the roller coaster down again, nearly to the bottom. You know, if you economize and don’t buy new airplanes or long-range jets, or that sort of thing, you can get by on a billion or two.”

I wanted to respond to a couple of posts here, but I remembered the above quote. The powers that be have us at each others throats in a right vs. left debate while they take millions in contributions from their buddies on Wall Street and then turn around and give Wall Street billions. This ends up costing TRILLIONS and leaves our children with NOTHING!

flipspiceland pretty much has it right. Although the real issue has little to do with dems or reps. (I spit on the GOP too). Almost every one of them is a corrupt scumbag. No matter what they say or do, their only goal is to achieve more power and money. Nothing more. I know it’s impossible to believe that people could get that corrupt but take a look around this site. All of the scumbags on Wall Street and in Congress that brought our financial system to its knees are still in power and making even more money at taxpayers expense. Do you think that happened out of stupidity or ignorance or accident? Although I don’t believe in a massive conspiracy, the process does feed itself. Former GS guys bailing out GS – and the world doesn’t see anything fishy there. Geez!

For capitalism to work, the screw-ups have to pay the price when they screw up. That means when GS might go under because AIG can’t pay the bills for GS’ indefensible risks – TOUGH! The gov’t can still “save the day” – just not with same guys that got us here. How hard is that?

Since solving the problem isn’t the goal – only saving the people that caused the problem – we have what we have today. This is not a failing of capitalism and its not going to be solved with socialism or “collectivism”. Those systems have lead to the very corruption we have today. The “Elites” decide “how much we need” while they get to look out over the huddled masses and enjoy anything they could ever possibly want on the backs of the masses.

It has happened over and over and over again. They always think that THIS TIME they’ll be smart enough to do it “right”. Unfortunately, it always ends the same – tyranny and death to those that desire to be free.

I’ll decide how much I need, thank you. You’ve got a whole wide world out there that believes in these systems. Be careful, though. They might not let you leave. Meanwhile, the best and brightest want to come here.