MY GOD THAT's....that's.....10.6% of our GDP. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

Well said.

The size of government, according to Reagan, was to be small enough to drown in the bathtub.

Size matters.

Thanks for obliging! Zuckerman looks down from Olympus and states the people must suffer for the transgressions of his rarefied circle. Courageous and serious of him to offer such a selfless remedy.

Thanks for obliging! Zuckerman looks down from Olympus and states the people must suffer for the transgressions of his rarefied circle. Courageous and serious of him to offer such a selfless remedy.

Thanks for obliging! Zuckerman looks down from Olympus and states the people must suffer for the transgressions of his rarefied circle. Courageous and serious of him to offer such a selfless remedy.

Thanks for obliging! Zuckerman looks down from Olympus and states the people must suffer for the transgressions of his rarefied circle. Courageous and serious of him to offer such a selfless remedy.

Pardon the multiple posts. I am not insane. There was a problem with posting.

I am not insane.

Only the insane feel the need to avow their sanity.

The best part is that there really is a dragon that's going to eat the king, but he's only attracted to the new clothes.

Setty for the win.

In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds' worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to Stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question. As to the Russians, their motives in the Spanish war are completely inscrutable. Did they, as the pinks believed, intervene in Spain in order to defend Democracy and thwart the Nazis? Then why did they intervene on such a niggardly scale and finally leave Spain in the lurch? Or did they, as the Catholics maintained, intervene in order to foster revolution in Spain? Then why did they do all in their power to crush the Spanish revolutionary movements, defend private property and hand power to the middle class as against the working class? Or did they, as the Trotskyists suggested, intervene simply in order to PREVENT a Spanish revolution? Then why not have backed Franco? Indeed, their actions are most easily explained if one assumes that they were acting on several contradictory motives.

Love it. States and classes, including ruling classes, are not rational beings; history became much more explicable when I realized this. It actually makes the world a little scarier, to me, but better the truth.

Homage to Catalonia is one of my very favorite books. I wish more wars and political crises had such level-headed reportage from the thick of it.

Okay, I did laugh a little too much at Tucker Carlson defending Rupert Murdoch by stating, haughtily, that "nobody is outraged over the US Gov't's warrantless wiretapping". Maybe I am insane.

GREED&STUPIDITY dance hand in hand through this life. As for my guess---I'm with stupid.

yeah...the guy that didn't know Bernie Madoff was handling $40m of his charity's money is the one to trust with financial soothsaying.

Considering he KNOWS so much, he does not seem to know THAT much!!
"“I never heard of Madoff. I never met him. I’ve never done business with him.”

AND
He is a Billionaire.... Boston Properties owns about 142 properties with 46.8 million square feet and has a market value of $6.2 billion. so I guess, $30M/40M is loose change for him!!! What does he know about existential threat?

here

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDyXWDT5zQvE&refer=us

"nobody is outraged over the US Gov't's warrantless wiretapping".

Way too funny. New slogan for Fox News: "Fair and Balanced. We wiretap both and living and the dead."

"nobody is outraged over the US Gov't's warrantless wiretapping".

Way too funny. New slogan for Fox News: "Fair and Balanced. We wiretap both the living and the dead."

'Depressed' Ferret Flees Siberian Circus

14 July 2011
The Moscow Times

A ferret has escaped a circus in the East Siberian city of Chita along with a monkey and a red-breasted parakeet — apparently because they all were feeling down due to bad weather.

"We believe the creatures have fled because of their depression — the rain in Chita just doesn't stop," the circus' art director, Zhanna Lazerson, told Interfax on Thursday.

"We found the monkey in a doghouse in the morning, and the two animals were cuddling in their sleep," she said. "But the search for the ferret and the parakeet goes on."

She said the escape has added to the animals' depression in the circus because the male parakeet was partnered on stage with a female parakeet who is now missing him.

The ferret is less missed, with Lazerson calling him a "terrible glutton, idle to the core."

Nevertheless, the troupe hopes that the animals will return to their circus home once they get really hungry.

Weather forecasts say the rain won't let up in Chita this week.

I am voting for wicked, because I find it hard to believe that so many people COULD BE THAT STUPID.

I am sending this post to my US Representative, provided it fits on a postcard.

Wicked or stupid?

Neither.

Indifferently evil.

Play the Sims. Torture everyone in town then kill them. Play Populus. Raze your village. Play Civ. Create a utopia, then go on a massive rampage of destruction, re-create utopia, nuke your own cities until only one remains, then successfuly send a ship to Alpha Centauri, thereby "winning" the game.

Why?

Why the fuck not?

The thing to understand about the aristocracy is that their first evil is pride. Not greed, or hate, or envy, or wrath. It's the belief that they, and only they, are really people. As such, the things done to, and with, non-people can't really matter.

Their behavior is not inconsistent. It is consistently indifferent to reality.

That is exactly what one expects from pride.

They aren't playing around out of any sense of purpose or malign intellect -- that is, they're not acting with wicked intent. That is far too sophisticated; they are too petty. They're acting because they can, then rationalizing whatever happens afterwards.

Damn, NOoC, that was perfect.

Why do people make the mistake of thinking of the "or" in "wicked or merely stupid" as an exclusive OR.

If A is true and B is True then A OR B is true

Isn't it obvious the answer is "Yes". They are wicked and stupid.