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Comments
Man, Stupid shit does happen here too. Cuba tried to get North Korea son weapons through shipment, sadly they went through the panama canal so it got pulled over.
...you'd think they'd have been smart enough to tell the shippers to go around the Americas.
Then again, wouldn't the coast guards of the Americas have good reason to suspect any ship which actively chooses to go past Tierra del Fuego rather than using the Panama Canal?
I love how they keep finding stuff inside that cargo ship over and over.
It was like, we are sending Sugar. Honest. That old school plane fighter? We don't know how it got inside the ship, really!
So, national TV is now full red.
Ironweaver, Alex, whoever. Any good reasons not to hate all socialists?
Because not all socialist have a cult of personality agenda?
Plenty do. Cuba's, North Korea's, Lenin is still embalmed. And that's only one reason for the hate.
Anyone with a cult of personality isn't actually a sociailst anyway.
I wonder if being self-sufficient is part of the requirements to be classified a state or nation. If it were, many nations would be failing miserably at it.
Interesting vid on what and what isn't appropriate joking material:
I'm, umm, sorry, for trying to pick up a fight last night with that comment.
Not only you tried to pick up a fight, you also failed at it.
...okay, I'll take it on myself and post this too. So, you know. When it comes to attitudes towards certain political views, you can expect me to have roughly similar outlook. You can guess I get pissed off when folks try to tell me they've got better picture of things going around in here that I might have, and, I can tell you, at least some views I've seen expressed under the banner of socialism sounded to me pretty much dangerous or creepy, not to mention a couple of things I'm not gonna mention at the moment.
So, er, I guess that's enough for introduction.
You know, the thing is, it's rather... so to say... inclusive to dismiss all of socialism. For one, saying all of these folks deserve hate is a pretty blanket statement. Let's just start with the little factlet that social democracy started out as yet another attempt to bring forth socialism. (Granted, social democracy tends to receive scorn from harder-core options for not being socialist enough, but it's the thought that counts.) I'm gonna take a guess and assume you actually don't sleep with collected writings of von Mises under your pillow.
Damn, I feel like I contradict myself as I write it.
Anyway, luckily I still have that one thing to fall upon. It's like, you know, being overly emotional over things makes for rather faulty decisions, and that's the thing to watch out for. At the lower end, you just pick up fights with random people on the Internet. Hmmm.
I guess.
ahh, shaddup
Sure, there are folks who would dismiss all of socialism on principle, but I generally am not overly fond of these kinds of views. As for you, you seem to do it on an emotional basis, rather than ideological. You know, I'm pretty sure we'd know by now if you were a Randian or whatever.
at this point I pretty much assume "what's bad for US corporations is good for pretty much everyone else in the world"
Is this one of those "Sweden is socialist" things? Because if I had to specify each time that I'm not referring to social democracy, progressivism, etc. that would be annoying, and if I meant otherwise, that'd mean I'd have to hate almost every Venezuelan politician I can think of.
By the way, I've been curious, I can't find a straight answer and you seem to know about these things. What's the difference between progressivism and social democracy?
*shrug* The more I think about it, the more reasons I find to get emotional.
Edit:
I'm not saying I'm in any way knowledgeable in the matter, so that'd be how I picture it. I'd say progressivism is less of a political orientation. I mean, it seems like progressivism is sort of a vague attitude that tends to be prevalent towards the left side of political spectrum. Alternatively, you might say progressivism is a view that it is desirable to stimulate progress (social, technological, in general, or whatever) because it will bring improvement in living conditions or whatever you're trying to improve, but I'm not sure how many people who call themselves progressive will look at it this way. It and social democracy got mixed up because of how progress is inherent to, I'd say, most socialist doctrines.
By the way, it's not "Sweden is socialist", it's more like, "Sweden is like it is because folks had ideas about socialism". Which isn't all roses anyway, because Swedish eugenics program (that ended in 1970's) was seen as a logical extension of their welfare state. You owe society as it owes you, so if it benefits from you getting your ovaries removed or whatnot, you know what you ought to. Not to mention Swedish model does not have to work everywhere, Sweden had both time and favourable conditions to experiment. But, you know. I wanted to make a point these sorts of things often had their start in socialist sorts of movements.
Pffffheheheheh. Like I didn't know what you mean.
Dunno, perhaps you could now explain what you mean by socialists and socialism, so I'd know when and how to respond. Through a priv even. I wanted to play nice, avoid making a caricature of myself, show how I actually am not some sort of rabid lovechild of Churchill and Thatcher, that sort of thing. The very least I'd know when not to try too hard. Heh eh heh heh. *SNORT!*
Pffff
Socialism is, at its base, about sharing resources as equally as is managable and reasonable between people. It argues that capitalism is an inherently stacked system; that is, that within that system, it's much easier for those with access to many resources to access further resources. At least on the economical side of things.
From a more social perspective, for lack of a better term, socialism can be highly variable. Someone can believe in broadly socialist resource distribution and have discriminatory social views, just as someone can believe in heavily capitalist views on resource distribution and have an inclusive set of social views.
Given all the different branches of socialist ideology, it's impossible to provide a singular statement about what socialism is or ought to be. That said, I can very definitely say that socialism isn't "red" -- that's a mangled symbol of a mangled revolution, which provided the basis for propaganda against the whole system rather than individual instances of its execution. There were times when it was extremely common for people from many walks of life to openly hold many socialist views and call them such. Largely, these times were from before the Cold War, before socialism had a singular, monolithic public image filtered through the lense of the USA's interests.
It's worth keeping in mind that when Marx first began scribbling his considerations, Russia still had a peasant underclass and capitalism itself was still relatively young, depending on when one considers capitalism to have started in earnest. Initially, socialism was a response to an incredible wealth disparity in a place and time when currency was yet to completely displace monarchs as a source of authority. The excesses of capitalism have continued to grow worse, though. Whether that's an inherent result of the system or a result of incorrect application of the system could be (and has been) debated for longer than any of us have been alive, but there's no doubt that capitalist incentives have motivated, for instance, no small amount of imperialist initiatives. The European land-grab of Africa is a good example, since much of Africa wasn't "claimed" in the sense that colonialist Europeans "claimed" land, being an open source of both natural resources and labour -- both of which are exploited to this day.
But ultimately, as I've said before, what's going on in Venezuela right now doesn't look much like socialism to me. After all, as soon as you have a privileged class and an underprivileged class, you cease to have socialism.
Well, I'm back from limbo. If people were wondering where I was, I managed to get an internship at this financial company in Chicago. It involved working 9-5, 5 days a week, while commuting from the northern suburbs to downtown Chicago and back. So, I was either at work or too tired to do anything.
Welcome back!
Sounds like quite an experience. How was it?
Honestly, I hated it after a while. The job itself was performing various security audits for the firm, basically spreadsheet jockeying, nothing bad by itself but it was made much worse by my bosses. One was incredibly overbearing and nitpicky, and somehow managed to turn 1 meeting into 5, and a simple meeting summary into a 2-day project, amongst other things. The other was just plain insufferable (think the 80s guy from Futurama if he was a real person). That combined with a really shitty commute added a lot of undue stress that just wore me down.
Regardless, I got paid and I got to put something really nice on my resume. So, I can't complain too much.
Would adding sea-salted cashews to baked potatoes be a good idea?
Don't think so.
Just put some butter; that's usually enough.
I need a source of flavor. I have sour cream, colby jack cheese, and bacon bits. I don't have butter or chives.
Bacon bits, definitely.
I know sour cream and bacon bits are used traditionally with baked potatoes.
You can't go wrong wwith bacon!