This is nothing new…

As of this morning, It is difficult to identify who the Global role model really is. Global opinions about the USA are collected by Pew Research Center, and we should not be surprised to find out. As hard as Bush and his religious base tried to make the USA a theocracy, at the exclusion of a great percentage of the population, they failed. Bush tried and failed to show the world a morally superior nation, instead, he showed the world what hypocritical horse’s asses we really are. America is demonstrating the symptoms of marketing influence and profiteering infection. Since the 1950s the US took a huge plunge into an abyss of greed, taking the common citizen with it. In the past this greedy condition was expected of the lords of industry. But, now Americans are hopelessly infected by the same greed, thanks to marketing, profiteering , ‘grab it all’ mentality. This mentality has roots in American’s history of turn of the century business magnates, sometimes referred to as a moguls, tycoons, barons, or industrialists. Robber baron is a term that revived in the 19th century in the United States as a reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices.

Americans have become scavengers. Grab it when you see it. The carrot dangling in front of the mule was Wal-Mart marketing for profit showed its customers. All customers saw was the carrot, the conditioned programming of the American public responded like hungry animals. Trample any obstacles in your way. There is a pattern here, why Americans stand in line for hours or days to get a ticket to an event, be first through the door for a sale or buy scalped tickets. American behavior has been programmed by mind controllers calling themselves advertisers and marketing agencies. These agencies are mind controllers hired by corporations to hypnotize consumers and cause mob thinking to buy. Programed customers MUST HAVE their product, at any price.

The consequences of this programming becomes the face of America to the world. The American sees themselves as moral role models full of Christian love and generosity, but, like Pavlov’s Dog when the trigger is pulled, starts to salivate.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov won a Nobel prize for his work studying the laws on the formation of conditioned reflexes, a topic on which he worked until his death in 1936. His discoveries in this field paved the way for an objective science of behavior.

Pavlov became interested in studying reflexes when he saw that the dogs drooled without the proper stimulus. Although no food was in sight, their saliva still dribbled. Pavlov’s discovery was that environmental events that previously had no relation to a given reflex (such as a bell sound) could, through experience, trigger a reflex (salivation). This kind of learnt response is called conditioned reflex, and the process whereby dogs or humans learn to connect a stimulus to a reflex is called conditioning.

Classical Conditioning (also Pavlovian or Respondent Conditioning) is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov^[1] . The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance. The neutral stimulus could be any event that does not result in an overt behavioral response from the organism under investigation. Pavlov referred to this as a Conditioned Stimulus (CS). Conversely, presentation of the significant stimulus necessarily evokes an innate, often reflexive, response. …

Most Americans haven’t a clue they are nothing more than programmed experiments. Inundated every day by ‘Mind Controlling’ stimulus called ‘commercials’ Americans are just experimental subjects.

The world sees this and no longer tolerates the consequences. The American experiment has failed the world, as demonstrated by recent history..

Wal-Mart Worker Dies When Shoppers Break Down Doors

Victim’s family awarded $36 million in Walmart shooting

Accident waiting to happen

Worried About Big Retailers Ruining Christmas?…Stop Worrying, They’re Too Late!

Deadly Consumerism

Experts say fear a factor in competitive shopping mentality

Shopping gone out of control

Image of the United States

Image of the American People

Americans’ greedy lifestyles a debt to society

america the greedy

From io9:

We now return you to your regular political blog surfing.

In a completely unrelated piece of news, No Pony For You!

Paul Krugman makes a point I’ve pointed out before: they really are just making a best guess at correcting this crisis. And my guess is as good as theirs. Better, even, as I can sense bubbles and come close to timing their collapses.

Remember that every time an ‘expert’ says “employment may top out at 9% next year”. Can anyone explain who came up with that number and how? And why so many telejournalists repeat it as gospel?

But let’s add some other key points:

Democrats disdn’t ‘tax and spend’ us into this crisis. The biggest spending presidents in history - and in the last 30 years - have been Republicans.

Liberals didn’t cause this crisis.

Black Americans didn’t cause this crisis.

Hippies didn’t cause this crisis.

Feminists didn’t cause this crisis.

Mexicans didn’t cause this crisis.

Welfare Moms didn’t cause this crisis.

Academics didn’t cause this crisis.

Atheists and agnostics didn’t cause this crisis. Neither did Muslims.

Hollywood didn’t cause this crisis.

Gay people didn’t cause this crisis.

Conservatives and business leaders caused it and financial experts keep guessing how to stop it. And their answers seem to - coincidentally - keep taking money from all and giving it to the well-off few.

This isn’t about rescues or expertise. It’s about conservative pirates hijacking our wealth. And it’ll continue until the public gets angry enough to mock all the conservative thieves and liars and drive them back into hiding, shamefaced.

Maybe we should have Jim Crow laws to keep conservatives from voting and pass amendments to keep them from marrying and breeding.

John Gorka sure puts a nice touch on this.

I hope you’re having a nice holiday weekend.

Although he doesn’t actually come right out and say it, my Washington Post summary email on Charles Krauthammer’s column today called From Market Economy to Political Economy did one of those “Shorter Chuckles” thingies, saying,

This is not the time to pursue an economic agenda based on liberal social goals.

Is it ever with these twits? Onward and forever to tax-cutting and cannibal capitalism!

Creepier still is what he actually has to say, conflating the evils of lobbyists who have a worse reputation than lawyers lately, Wall Street bankers who as a group are probably less popular that the C+ Augustus still aggravatingly living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. that Chucky has been fellating O’ these many years, and the entire city of Detroit with its principle industry as both a wholly subsumed nationalized colony of Washington DC with its hand out like any common crook lobbyist as well.

For the hat-trick, he looks in his crystal ball and declares any attempt to assist the auto industry in modernizing and greening our future stinks of the Soviet Union’s completely planned Diktats on every factory floor, then pronounces the entire effort doomed to the same failure.

All this because we might want GM, Ford and Chrysler to build affordable, fuel efficient hybrid cars if they want a loan.  (And they should look really cool too, but that’s just me.)

The ruling Democrats have a choice: Rescue this economy to return it to market control. Or use this crisis to seize the commanding heights of the economy for the greater social good. Note: The latter has already been tried. The results are filed under “History, ash heap of.”

I smell fear.  Fear that events and the excesses of those who share Krauthammer’s dementia are truly irrelevant, increasingly so in a world that is passing them by.  The more they sink into the “ash heap” of their “commercial republic,” the more outlandish the rhetoric will become.

I’ve no doubt Charlie will be deriding President Obama in stark terms in short order.  He’ll compare Obama to Stalin for instituting virtual gulags forvFOX reporters who never get to ask a question at press conferences.  He’ll demand the Democrats provide bridge loans to house the refugees of a Purity Purge as soon as he doesn’t retain every single incompetent US Attorney hired by AG Gonzales based their use of smiley-faces instead of periods at the end of each sentence in their essay on “What I Did Over My Summer Vacation To Make George W. Bush Even More Awesome.”  Obama will walk on sour wine and only heal everybody those who wait in line long enough to see a doctor that doesn’t speak English — since all the “good” docs, those still permitted membership in those whites-only country-clubs, will have left the country to set up practice in Dubai.

No doubt my crystal ball is fractured just as much as Krauthammer’s.  The problem is that he looks through his murky lens to see the past, and the present — wrongly.

Just keep this in mind with all this talk of nationalization and socialism right now, communists didn’t “loan” capital to industry.  They just took over, declared the state the owners and ultimate authority over everything.  They didn’t just hand over rubles to company managers, with or without conditions.  For the various bailouts to be anything remotely resembling what the Bolsheviks did, we would have to completely replace the management of those companies with federal bureaucrats and destroy shareholder equity.

Indeed, there wouldn’t be any stock market for Chuckles to get his skirts all twisted over when it bolts up and down on the latest message from Obama or Secretary Paulson.  Under Soviet-style socialism, for those who either don’t know nor care to grok, you don’t play with fractions of ownership rights in corporations like so many casino chips.  You eliminate corporations altogether.

Not to put too much an edge on it, when President Obama decides to “buy” GM et al., I’ll worry about our new socialist overlords.  Telling the automakers that they only will get the USA as a co-signer on their loan application if they promise to use the money for good — good for the USA btw — is just plain old-fashioned horse trading, capitalism in it’s purest form.

There are no free lunches, right?  You want something from me, I get something in return — and if you want it bad enough I can demand very favorable terms.  What part of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” stuff don’t these Free Marketeers understand?  I mean, Detroit doesn’t have to take the deal and can take their chances.

I’m such a girly man, cooking a Thanksgiving dinner for 12 and doing the lion’s share of dishes.  But bringing loved ones into my home to share the pleasure of each others’ company, that’s the meaning of Thanksgiving — and for that I am truly thankful. 

And what’s not to be thankful about.  Everybody well fed, praising the cook even though I did manage to absolutely ruin on of the pies. (The sweet potato and pumpkin were exquisite, but the apple-raisin blew chunks.)  The kids were playing and doing their snoopy dance, grandson refusing to eat anything that isn’t wrapped in cellophane and driving the daughter-in-law batty (the kind of stuff I live for).

On the annoying side, Jon Swift’s satire can mess with your head.  If indeed, he’s being satirical.

This year as President Bush pardoned two turkeys, who surprisingly had nothing to do with the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, he remarked that it was his “last Thanksgiving as President.” But it might be the last Thanksgiving any of us celebrate since there is a good chance that when Barack Obama takes over, he will abolish Thanksgiving along with other holidays liberals hate such as Columbus Day, Christmas and the Fourth of July.

Spare yourself clicking the link if you’re usually the brunt of everyone’s April Fools pranks (which reminds me of this outstanding list of some of the best ever) or in any way susceptible to outrage when conservative trolls spoiling for a tussle prove their ignorance by painting a liberal straw-man and then knock it down with a Hummer.

He’s really good, had me fooled for a while.  It’s like reading all those asses at The Corner or Hot Air or other retarded conservatives TBogg and  Sadly No skewer on a regular basis — but of course Cliff at SN! was intimately familiar with the real comic genius when it comes to the true meaning of Thanksgiving, GayPatriotWest, who really has no clue how funny he is.

Count me among the easily duped.  Since getting banned early in my blogging career at Dean’s World, I’ve avoided more exposure to right wing blogs beyond those on the left who make sport of ridiculing them, unless you start with “Shorter Dim Bulb Wingnut…” or “This guy’s a real tool…”  So, sadly yes, I too can fall prey to a lack of ironic appreciation no doubt caused by my Bush Derrangement Syndrome.  Count me among the easily duped.

Down with Tryptophan!

Have you heard about that religiously insane Catholic priest who said that Democratic voters shouldn’t be allowed to take Communion? By an amazing coincidence (that seems to be the sum and substance of my earthly existence this time around), one of my younger brothers’ fiancee is a member of his (and a number of other priests performing services there) congregation. He’s one of the priests that might be marrying my brother and his fiancee next April.

Any suggestions or ideas on how I should handle the situation would be greatly appreciated. My initial thoughts are to merely avoid going to the church ceremony altogether so as to create as little consternation as possible, and keep a low profile that evening. It’s going to be hard enough being one of the godless heathens in frelling South Carolina, much less to be doubly damned because I voted for the next president, and apparently that’s a sin as far as the Catholics* are concerned in South Carolina…

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