Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

So what does he think the 10,000 engineers a year he demanded will do?

Not to honk my own horn, but:
http://theothermccain.com/2011/06/15/pointing-out-the-obvious-they-dont-teach-economics-at-harvard-law-school/#comment-226380365

Heads up folks. This is not stupidity at work. This is venality.

I don't have time to expand on this but this is the mind of a man who doesn't pray nor invest any time in pursuits like philosophy that contemplate the meaning of life. It's all about "structure" and "fairness". And these people criticize those who reject the theory of evolution yet they are constitutionally incapable of adapting to change choosing instead to fight change (irony alert!). Evolve or perish.

Tells you everything you need to know about what drives "progressives". Hint: it isn't progress.

The jobs are only threatened by new tech if the old tech is a union shop. Of course, using Obammy's view of econ he should immediately shutdown all green tech efforts (new stuff) to protect all the union jobs. (old stuff)

Sigh...

Unfortunately, I don't have Ayn Rand's Anthem handy and cannot quote it directly, but the paraphrase: "Candles were invented only 100 years ago, but that was after extensive studies were done to ensure that the previous industry would not be destroyed by competition from candles."

I always find it ironic when people like Obama use running water to shower in the morning, dress in machine-sewed suits, dine on mass-produced tableware (although the White House may be the lone exception to this), get into their cars, drive to work, use the computer, and then complain about advancing technology. There's Amish people out there - it's not like you even have to leave the country to find out what pre-Industrial Revolution life was like.

The only surprising thing here is that Obama didn't blame Bush for inventing the ATM.

Did the progressive just say that the problem with the economy is because of progress?

No, that ain't dumb.

Obama must not get out much.

The ATM appeared in my nearest grocery store in 1977 (while Obama was still in high school and Jimmy Carter was president).

Then, about a decade ago, that ATM was augmented by a "bank branch" with a staff of three. That looks like an employment boom to me.

But then, the boom occurred while Bush was president.

You know, Obama isn't entirely wrong. What he doesn't get is that it is his job-killing policies that is driving business towards more efficient (labor saving) production. If .gov drives up costs and increases uncertainty through excessive regulation, businesses can do little but try to find ways of getting by without hiring new workers. A persistent meme right now is that many of the jobs lost in this recession (it is a recession when the unemployment rate is > 9 percent, no matter what the growth rate in GNP says) are not coming back. And the blame for that falls squarely in the lap of the Reid-Pelosi-Obama Bermuda Triangle, the place where jobs go when Democrats have their way. Having forced businesses to cut out the fat, just think what would happen now if we had a .gov with a Palin-esque philosophy of getting out of the way and letting business do what it does best?

It's possible he really doesn't believe this nonsense but thinks we're stupid enough to accept it because he says it's so. If this is the case, his condescension is disgusting, but if he really believes what he said that's terrifying.

CYOcEDdy25LbV97RQkd7exS3tia.CKyEbDN27xlPVdz9sw--


Don't ask me how to pronounce that. It is easier to pronounce on the planet I come from. But if you trick me into saying it backwards, I disappear. Superman has been trying for years and years without success.

Someone needs to tell Jackass Barry that one reason for the automation of low-end jobs is the ever-increasing cost of employing PEOPLE at such jobs, thanks to minimum wage laws AND constantly-increasing regulations. This is why one sees elevator operators only in venues where the folks who decide to employ them don't have to pay for them (Congress, for example).

Actually, there's a kernel of truth in Obama's remarks. One reason for the decline in manufacturing jobs, for example, is increased productivity. A modern car assembly plant employs about 2,500 workers, compared to 10,000 workers 40 years ago. In many ways, some manufacturing jobs will never come back.

The problem, though, is that very few people in the current administration have any kind of real world private sector experience. Obama and his crew have never made a product nor provided a service. They're mostly professional politicians, academics or have worked outside the private sector for labor unions or non-profits. Likewise with many of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. Has Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi ever run a small business?

I'm not saying that they aren't smart, but these are the folks who wouldn't take math and science classes. They're mostly lawyers and policy wonks, people that don't know how to use even a hammer or a screwdriver. They don't know how the real world works, and are intent on forcing others to serve them. They think they're too smart to change the oil in their car.

So they implement all sorts of regulations and mandates that have little to do with practicality or practicability. At least King Canute knew that he could not command the sea.

But then, maybe the Democrats know they can't command the sea. They're more interested in implementing a command economy. Perhaps the Democrats don't care if any of their policies work or not, just so long as they can make fundamental changes in our society.

I can't decide between "Obama is a Commie-Luddite" and "Obama is a Luddite-Commie"

Obama's Ludicrous Luddism.

First:

"They don't know how the real world works, and are intent on forcing others to serve them. ... They're more interested in implementing a command economy. Perhaps the Democrats don't care if any of their policies work or not, just so long as they can make fundamental changes in our society."

I think there is material truth in that insight. Doesn't know about the economy (at least ignorant if not also stupid) is an aspect of the situation but not its core element.

It's core element is in that urge to command and control, period, no consequences needing attention or concern. Ignorance and stupidity are neither important. They are not the game. Cunning and cleverness are, however.

Command and control itself is the goal. Top-down, unilateral, unambiguous, indomitable command and control. Absolutism. Thus another commenter's insight regarding venality. Venality (modernly "narcissism," anciently "concupiscence") is the inner nature of the impulse to command and control absolutely.

This one is historically unique with respect to its goal. The Nazi Party visualized a new absolutist order, specifically a new religion of nature, its members the leader cadre. The Nazis were apostates. The Communist Party likewise visualized a new absolutist order, comprising a rejection of religion per se, along with spiritual, moral and cultural structures raised by religion, and a creation of mono-dimensional but inherently dynamic structures inherent to, it was thought, the dialectics (give and take) of nature and history. The Communists were heretics.

Both movements aimed at order. Deformed, non-sustainable order, but order. That was the aim, deluded it may be.

But this one is different. This one aims at chaos. It seeks to correct the mistakes of both famous recent European absolutisms. Its reasoning is not supported in Euro-American history. It is supported in African and Arab history. Create chaos, take over, maintain command and control by fostering more chaos.

Efforts to create an absolutist order failed to establish self-sustaining absolutism. So, try it the other way around. Create absolutist disorder and see if that will achieve the goal of self-sustaining absolutism, which to the USA and Europe would be "fundamental change."

Second:

This is an insightful plan that has a record of success in Arab and African regions. al Wahhab has in mind something along these lines when he launches an Arab puritanical campaign against the Enlightenment occurring in the Americas and Europe. He accurately recognized the threat to the absolutist impulse represented by the Enlightenment and knew he had in his Arab/African mixture (Arabs were and are the world's, including Africa's, premier slavers) the success story of self-sustaining absolutism (puritanism by another name).

The advantage of seeking absolutism by way of creating chaos is that the means comprise the end. Whoever can create chaos is already in absolutist control. And, maintaining chaos, as Arab and African absolutists demonstrate, is how one sustains absolutism. The absolutist changes occasionally but the absolutism does not so long as the chaos is maintained.

This is what Alinsky is about. The Nazis and Communists got it backwards, trying to make an absolutist order, yet. That is why they failed. No, make chaos and one is already where one wants to be.

Talking about how they are doing everything possible to help people and make this and that new thing or old thing work is standard absolutist deception aiming at mental chaos in auditors. It's clever. Its practitioners are cunning. They may be ignorant or stupid but whether they are or not is beside the point. The point is the cunning employed towards self-sustaining absolutism by means of chaos. The inner nature of an absolutist or "police state," whether of Caliph, Committee or President, is not order but chaos.

You betcha the Enlightenment is a threat to command and control types. That's why its literary, legal, moral and political products are not generally taught in schools or homes.

Back in the 1940s, 50s, and even into the 60s, the USSR lost a couple of decades' worth of progress in cybernetics. The Official Soviet Line was that computers and automation were "demeaning to the dignity of Soviet Man," because they offered the potential of doing mental labor more efficiently than human beings, thus putting humans out of work. Too bad for them, because there were and are some damned fine mathematicians over there. Eventually the Russians wised up. It seems that Our Beloved President subscribes to the idea, though.

It's possible he really doesn't believe this nonsense but thinks we're stupid enough to accept it because he says it's so.

That is exactly how a sociopathic liar thinks.

Hmm... sounds like R&D, innovation, customer convenience, and banks are job killers. ATM's and their maintenance is pure magic. No engineers, manufactures, sales persons, or service personnel involved at all in the development and upkeep of the ATM!

No wonder Obama hates innovation and entrepreneurship, it messes with his vision of government controlled worker bees. Well, it's not surprising, Obama's stuck in a 19th Century ideology. Nothing new, here. Move on.

I'm constantly amazed that no-one has put together a video on Youtube about Obama, stitching together his gaffes (and some stirring rhetoric at the start).

1. The visionary
2. The love affair (undertone messaging about the ultimate affirmative action hire)
3. The reality of the past (Rezko, voting present, winning his seat by lawsuit)
4. The questions from the past (We don't know his grades, we don't know where he was when)
5. The gaffes and the media (57 states, share the wealth, killing grannies, shovel-ready, ATMs causing recession, FOI failures, Gitmo)

Actually, maybe there's just too much material!

He always seemed to be stupid to me.

Obama continues to surprise me. Every time I think we've reached the depths of his ignorance, he manages to say something that proves he's even more dull-witted than he previously appeared. The things this man actually knows would fill a thimble. Maybe.

Railing against Creative Destruction will not improve our standard of living.