We just went and saw The Lorax, and I can understand why the right-wingers are up in arms about it being environmentalist propaganda. It’s basically one long advertisement against deforestation, corporatism, and greed. It was even a bit insufferable for my tastes, although Finn really enjoyed the musical parts.
On another note, it really is kind of instructive to see how desperate some pundits are to believe that there is an iota of seriousness and sincerity in Paul Ryan’s budget plans.
If the Lorax speaks for the trees, we need some magical creature to speak for the mathematicians.
I didn’t see the movie, but wasn’t the book just as “overbearing”? I don’t understand why they’re complaining about Hollywood propaganda when Seuss’s original was quite “radical” in its message. The book’s already generated as much “controversy” for the same reason…so yeah.
Yup. I’m a Seuss fan. And a fan of many of his anti fascist, pro democratic messages. And I’m an environmentalist.
But I never liked the lorax.
It was the only one with a pretty grim ending, though it offered hope at the end. Definitely different in style than the rest.
And again, I haven’t seen the movie, but the trailer seems to imply that life is just fine without the truffula trees. Not so in the book…
From what I had read at Grist, the movie is actually less environmentalist than the book, though I probably won’t ever see it to find out…
So Dick Cheney just had a heart transplant. Is it common for a 71 year old person to get something like this?
I really don’t know, I’m just curious.
So, he’ll feel emotions like compassion and remorse now, right?
it’s probably too late for that no matter which model they try on him
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He got the latest model from China.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."For those who may not have seen it. This was floating around on Facebook several weeks ago, and seems pertinent here.
Dr. Seuss – Real Meanings
Yeah, but the anti-choicers just love them some “Horton hears a who”.
Great collection of modified covers, BTW.
And then he threatened to sue them 🙂
Brilliant all. And I fully support them all. Well Lorax may be bit much
Paul Ryan is a genius, and unusually courageous for a politician…his budget, I’d enacted, would finally reduce healt care costs, while unleashing unprecedented economic growth. You Progressives fear his plan because it would doom your scheme to get as many Americans dependent on Government as possible…you guys will most likely win, since you can run ads where Republicans push Granny in a wheelchair over a cliff…to use a sports analogy, you’re the favorite…you’re argument, while lacking intellectually, has emotional appeal…I mean, after all, who would want to push Granny off a cliff? Hail Mary time.
You sound like a religious person telling me that the only reason I’m an atheist is because I don’t want to submit to God. Or that I know that there is a God, and that I’m just in denial. I suppose considering The Free Market<sup>TM</sup> is like a religion, it’s only fitting that you seem to think that you know why we “really fear” Paul Ryan’s plan.
The horrible free market, where individuals have to interact with each other VOLUNTARILY…as opposed to Governmental action, where you don’t get a choice…how ironic that those considered “pro-choice” when it comes to abortion hate the free market, the ultimate representation of free choice…
Because bodily autonomy isn’t the same thing as economic autonomy. Also, following your argument to its logic, there should be zero taxation at all. It’s an undermining of the social contract.
Also, economic coercion (The Free Market) isn’t a free choice. Just ask the Hyatt employees who are being coerced with a choice to eat, or give up their privacy and FB passwords. I wonder which one people will choose in a time of desperation…
They are free to resign…if Hyatt is so evil, then find another employer…or… better yet…start your own company! Pathetic.
White Privilege, right on schedule.
or just the privilege of not living pay check to pay check without many options, wow Liberty seems to be divorced from reality that most people are living in right now
Jim…sorry buddy, but I lived paycheck to paycheck for 90 percent of my life…I was free to resign from any employer at any time…spare me your Progressive bulls—. I employ over one thousand people…many of whom live “pay check to pay check”…I did their job…if they thought the right way, with the necessary work ethic, the could do what I did…I am shocked at how many people do not “grab the bull by the horn”!
Hilarious! Literally laughing my ass off!
Bull, it’s not about being a progressive or a conservative, it’s about being a human being and knowing that not everyone has the same opportunities that I have had and not everyone can just quit a job without one lined up due to having to you know live. This is also exacerbated by the fact that there aren’t many jobs similar in skill level to those who work at a Hyatt.
People need to be taught their thoughts create their reality…every human being on this planet can be “rich”…even Jesus taught this truth…
Jesus isn’t real; at least not literally. Mythical, based on several other real people? Perhaps. And that mythical person not only gave up anything he owned, but had disdain for people who worship wealth.
Seabe…he’s real, but not in the way that “Christians” believe…this was a man who discovered “God”…disregard the Churche’s teachings, and read the words of the man himself…literally simultaneously the ultimate left and right winger…
…and libertarians wonder why other consider them to be delusional.
So your theory is, if everyone was as wonderful and superior as you, nobody would have to be an employee. Everyone could own their own businesses and employ hundreds of people, and we wouldn’t have to worry about people on the bottom half of the income scale, because there wouldn’t be anyone on the bottom half of the income scale.
Whatever the truth of your situation, whatever the virtues that brought you there, an understanding of math is surely not among them.
You’re missing the point…I’m not “superior” to anyone…virtually anyone can do what I did…but I never said that everyone can own a business…but, since wealth is not a zero-sum game, every one can be successful and “rich”! Let’s Do It!
The tragedy is people limit themselves by their negative, self-defeating thinking…this is a friendly Universe if can learn how to ask for what you need!
Liberty is threadjacking. it’s Sat night so no harm feeding I guess
Yeah, usually Booman’s the one feeding him, but w/e…I’m kinda bored.
well, you’re doing good
I’m done. No mas.
understandable,
Threadjacking?! Good Work!
Paul Ryan has balls, I’ll give him that.
But the last we enacted one of your people’s crackpot schemes for “unprecedented growth,” the financial sector blew up and we almost went into a global depression.
Pass.
Joe…exactly which “plan from one of my people ” was that? You mean Reagan? Whose post-Recession growth rates tripled Obamas?
Dont you mean rates of debt increase? And Reagan the first president to raise the level of American debt since the second world war, which forced him to pass the largest tax increase in history focused on rich people, after which the economy took off? As opposed to his tax cut which scuppered the rising economy that he inherited from carter (yes the economy was growing at the end of Carters term)
I’m sorry that your hero spent 6 of his 8 years raising taxes.
Financial deregulation, which brought about the Great Recession, and was propounded by market fetishists like yourself.
The damn I-phone creates way too many typos! What the hell was Steve Jobs thinking,
Take some personal responsibility, ya’ luddite.
Good Work!
Loathe as I am to dispute the comic stylings of Liberty For All, I think the Villagers are swooning over Ryan 2.0 precisely because the Republicans have chosen to sell it as a “bipartisan” plan to help “fix Medicare and keep it from going bankrupt,” rather than the libertarian dystopia our resident comedian prefers.
I’m flattered…my wife thinks I have no sense of humor at all…it kind of pisses me off…
No, you can tell her we all think you’re hysterical here. But Seabe cracks me up as well. Actuslly you two make a great comedy team.
Wow–that made my week! I really do like you Progressives…why? Basically, Y’all want to steal my money, either through Obama’s taxes, or Bernacke’s inflation…I guess I need counseling…
I’m sorry, but I’ve got to jump in here. It’s not your money, LfA. It belongs to the guy who had it before you. Then again, it wasn’t his either, because someone else had it before him. All the way back to the very first person anywhere who ever had anything that someone else wanted.
So it’s his money. Therefore, we can’t steal his — your — money because we don’t know where you live. And that other guy is probably dead. That would make his keeping your money problematic. Especially because you have it now. Because you stole it.
Another thing: I don’t even know Bernanke. I doubt if I could pick him out of a line-up or would be called upon to do so under threat of arrest. If he is, in fact, instigating inflationary policies so that he can give the money to me, I would suggest to him — if I knew him & I knew where he lived — that he just send me a few chickens. They could breed & then hatch, so the chicks would be mine, rather than stolen from the dead guy, even though the dead guy might’ve just had the eggs, rather than the chickens. (It hasn’t been decided which came first.) The original chickens might have been stolen from Bernanke, however, even though he agreed to send them to me, because once chickens enter into the public trough, anyone else at the trough, like the pigs, can claim the chickens are stolen, regardless of the fact that hogs are generally too self-absorbed to notice that the chickens are there. Also, they like the smell.
Frankly, LfA, I think you’re just pissed off because you’re not poor any more & you think the Progressives made you that way.
And good night ladies!
Wilderness…you need to distinguish between “money” and “wealth”…as do all Progressives…I’ll use this analogy one more time …imagine you, and I, and Thurston Howell (remember him, from Gilligan’s Island?) end up shipwrecked on a desert island…on day one, the total GDP of the island is Zero…there are no goods and services available for purchase…even though Thurston Howell has several Million dollars in his chest…it’s WORTHLESS!! He cannot buy anything with it! Now, let’s suppose that Wilderness Wench is proficient at growing crops, while Liberty is proficient at building huts…they come to an agreement! (Free Market!)…Liberty builds Wenches hut, in exchange for Wilderness growing Liberty’s crops…oh My God…somehow, the GDP of the island went from Zero to the value of the hut that Liberty built, PLUS the value of the crops that Wilderness grew…! We created “wealth” where none existed…note how Thurston Howell’s “Federal Reserve Notes” have no value (unless Liberty and Wilderness, who built huts and grew crops agree to accept his pieces of paper as legal tender)…
Actually all you are doing is sucking money from everyone at a greater rate than you are paying it out to them to “create wealth” but nice try. Theres only a certain amount of money in the world, and you are shoving it into a bank account where its not avalible to be circulated back into the system and encourate other people to “create wealth.”
What youa re saying “I’m a vampire and when I suck blood from this person I am forcing him to buy Iron tableds to replace it, and thats creating jobs for the people that make Iron tablets. So logicly if I suck everyone in the worldto the point they can bearly walk that’s creating wealth for everyone”
Or in other words, You are not comma buy 500 plasma TVs so the fact that you are earning 500 times everyone else is actially unhealthy for wealth creation, as you are not creating any demand as your consumption is just that of one person, and you are reducing the ability of everyone else to buy a plasma TVs by decreasing the amount of money avalible to everyone else. The gold standard would make that even worse as there only a finite amount of physical gold to be given out. Your analogy is that of the 2 of you consuling the resources equally if the Island equally, rather than you consuming 500 times less than the other guy in terms of your relitive income.
But maths is hard when you are feeling guilty about that your are doing and desperatly need to justify it. And thats what I am seeing in the increasing desperation of your writing here. Guilt.
Or put it another way, on your island you want half the corm the other guy is growing, for a piece of the house the sise of a trashcan, or you are paying the guy a bucket of grain for half the hous the other guy built…
“There’s only a certain amount of money in the world” !!!!!!!!!!! Wrong!!!
Hopeless!
What about 10,000 years ago, when the entire planet was “poor”? No TV’s, no houses, no cars, no I-phones… Where did it all come from? No profit motive, no TV’s, no houses, no cars, no I-Phones…
Pull your heads out!
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Pushing it a bit, that was before the agricultural age. Not much more to do than let the wives find food by hunting and fishing. The human population was just in the tens of millions worldwide. I did find the human population grew by just 10 million between 1,000 BC and 0 AD. Perhaps the males found comfort in artistic drawings inside their cave dwellings while keeping the campfire burning.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."You say its wrong, but you offer no facts to counter what I just said. What are you, a child? Are you the person that Robert Louis Stevenson said thought that if he gelt repeating something over and over it becomes true?
Guess you didn;t like bieng reminded of the fact that St Reagan was a tax rasiser either.
And you do realise you are putting forward the Marxist view of history? The change 10,000 years ago invilved the beginning of agriculture, which allowed people to have a stable form of food production, which allowed people to settle in one place. Before that people were hunter gatherers, and if you dont think that people went out chasing bison for reasons that are akin to the profit motive thaan you are simply wrong.
It’s self-evident…give me “proof” that shortest distance between two points is a straight line…money and wealth are not the same…money that cannot buy anything has no value whatsoever…wealth equals goods and services…in addition to being a medium of exchange, money is a STORE OF VALUE…a convenient to store value for those who produce more goods and services than they consume…it is self-evident that there is a fixed amount of wealth…look around you!
uh dude, you just admitted that what you are trying yo say is bullshit
The fact is that the explosion of credit allowed people to circumvent the linited amount of WEALTH that Is left over from people like you sucking out of the system for a while at the cost of near feudalism these days due to crippling depts. And the fact is that without money/WEALTH in the system people cannot buy goods that people produce. That flatlines demand, which casues factories to shut down and causes depressions. And where is the money/WEALTH? Mouldering in your bank account.
That one of the reasons that in the most prosperous times of american general prosperity, the top rate was 91%. That encourages people like you to invest their mosny in factories, wages good causes etc which puts that money back in the system and leaves them very well off. Rather than sit their stroking themselves over their score card. Its like water flowing through a system, which coined the term liquidity.
Maths is not yoru strong point and you have no idea how a healthy system works. You probbaly have a good idea how the unlealthy Cancer ridden system works though.
Good try, S…the difference between you and I is that, unlike you, I have been on both ends of the sociol–economic scale…I have experienced the fact that our thoughts, Irrefutably! create our reality…do us all a favor, and rent the movie “The Secret”…take responsibility for your life!
Did you really say go watch “The Secret”? Wow. Here’s a thought, if we’re going to watch the Secret you read some history and economics books. Oh, and “Atlas Shrugged” and any other books by Ayn Rand don’t count since she even said they were fiction.
But it’s true! I never got “rich” until I stopped thinking about what I didn’t want!
Sucking Wealth Out? How? I put capital at risk to open a health club…no one else does it…that action created jobs…how does it “suck wealth” out? WTF are you talking about? I risk stored value to create more value! Wake Up!
Becasue you are hoarding your “wealth” rather than letting it circulate back into the system where it can create more jobs. That leaves less for everyone else. This isnt rocket science. Thats why the slump at the beginning of Reagans term only reversed itself when he began raising taxes. In other words, how come with all his tax breaks Bush only created maybe 3 million jobs in 6 years, before the bottom fell out? And how come Clinton balanced the budget Reagan threw into a massive deficit? AnAnd you dont know one thing about what ends of the spectrum I’ve lived in, btw.
Greed isn’t good.
One final thought. How come fully half the GOP supports tax cuts because they believe it will kill the federal goverment rather than create prosperity?
Interesting. You are quite deluded but you provide amusement.
I actually have no problem taking a greater share of your money. I don’t feel guilty for it whatsoever. Taxation is biblical and I am still something of a Christian. If raising your taxes means we can build roads and bridges and fund education and cover healthcare costs for our seniors then I’ll sleep easy.
We have very low inflation in this country. Inflation is expected to be at ~2% for the next decade.
Ishmael…I thought the maximum tax rate permitted in the Bible was ten percent! I’ll take it!
Wrong. The bible mentions a voluntary 10% TITHE contribution to the CHURCH, but it also mentions a poll TAX of which no maximum is given.
If you read Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, you’ll learn that the underlying reason for the collapse of many societies, past and present, is deforestation. This is usually done to open up land for agriculture and to procure building materials. In either case, the effect is to expose the soil to erosion. (If you’re familiar with planetary boundaries, deforestation leads to exceeding the land use boundary and run-off causes other problems.) The Fertile Crescent in the Middle East used to be fertile, but deforestation lead to the dry conditions now present there. Some countries are preserving their forests; Japan is an egregious example because it’s preserving its forests by “exporting” deforestation – importing lumber from other, often undeveloped, countries who deforest their own lands.