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What most people ignore, especially the "white, blue collar" people involved, is that the concept of the traditional 9-5, 35 year corporate manufacturing job is disappearing from the Western world. It's a harsh reality, especially to the people caught up in the wave of change who all of a sudden find themselves with obsolescent or obsolete skills, but this has been the way things have been going since the 80s, and they will fight that change with all their power, holding the clock back, blaming anything and everything except harsh reality.
It's denial, because you can't fight reality -- you can only accept it. The thing is, the sooner you accept reality, the sooner you can DO something about it, as opposed to making it worse when reality finally kicks your ass. (For example, if the Transmission plant in Windsor had taken the opportunity several years to shut down and re-tool for a year, they might be in a position to produce these new generation transmission that GM needs -- but, if I remember events correctly, the union fought the layoffs that would have required, and so, now the entire plant is gone.)
Economies evolve. Countries evolve. This may be the last hurrah of the manufacturing sector as a power broker in politics, but, it's a hurrah of the 20th Century, not the 21st Century. Much as how the power of the rural vote is only preserved by current districting schemes and agricultural subsidies, the manufacturing sector will (if it hasn't already), become a very loud vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless, their power only preserved by government action.
What worries most about this isn't aid to manufacturing sectors -- I think a core manufacturing sector SHOULD be preserved at all costs, for strategic reasons if nothing else -- but it's what people might do to aid the manufacturing sector at the expense of the rest of us. You can work with a delusion quite a while until it turns around to kick you in the butt, and a lot of damage can happen in that time. George W. Bush's foreign policy stands as a great example of that. Tags: interesting links, politics - general
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This is coming up again and again, and now that it looks like Obama is going to be the nominee, I strongly suspect efforts to spread this are going to double.
The only real way to fight bad information is with good information. The problem is, it's easy to smear somebody with a single line, and the proof of innocence might be many pages long. Doubly hard if people want to believe the bad information, whether out of prejudice, willful ignorance, or actual malicious intent, and so won't take the time to consider proof, because it's obviously 'false and misleading.'
Report: Hoax Anti-Obama E-Mails Still Fool Dumb White Guys
Hopefully, I'm wrong about this -- that this will be a campaign fought on important issues, like the military and foreign policy and the economy. The last two Presidential elections were about character, and, the person with the 'better' character won -- and where is the United States now? Character is no replacement for actual competence. Tags: politics - general
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Clinton, McCain Push Gas Tax Break Economists Panned
*shakes head*
And why do they do this? Because either McCain and Clinton have so little respect for the voters they think people will fall for it, or, people deserve the lack of respect from them because they DO fall for it.
Economic Populism never works. It sounds great, but, you can never, ever have your cake and eat it too. It either breaks down, or you just end up pushing the cost down the road. Might take years, but, when it falls apart, it usually does so in a catastrophic fashion. (Zimbabwe, anybody?)
Besides, the last time I checked, the United States is at war. $10 billion would help rebuild a whole bunch of barracks buildings, for example... Tags: politics - general
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Cdn freed in Sudan being refused help getting home: lawyer
Assuming this is true, then what the bloody good is Canadian citizenship? Either freaking prove Abdelrazik was guilty of something, something so heinous that he no longer deserves to be a Canadian (you'll note that even Paul Bernado, that sick damned bastard, is still a Canadian citizen), or given him the full level of assistance a Canadian citizen, innocent of any crime deserves, and bring him home -- especially if you're the people who suggested he should be put in jail in the first place.
Either legal protections mean something to all people, or they mean nothing. You can't have this half and half shit, justice defines what's right -- because the nature of justice and morality changes, usually to suit the powers that be. Or, as I like telling defenders of Bush's attempt to gain extended executive powers -- all those executive powers that you wanted to grant to George W. Bush. Well, unless something radically changes between now and Jan 2009, now it looks like a Democrat (or McCain, who's as bad as a Democrat according to some 'proper' Republicans) is going to have access to those powers as well, for warrantless wiretapping and all those other things. Yes, the godless heathens can now read your email without a warrant. How does that make you feel?
The limits on government power should be defined by how much power you want the OPPOSITION to have. Because, at one point, the opposition is going to be in power, whether you want to believe it or not. And if you take measures to make sure the opposition never gets into power, it's no longer a democracy, and this entire argument is moot. Because, in that case, it's now the law of the jungle -- and I don't think most political pundits and supporters out there truly understand the ruthlessness required to survive in that scenario. Tags: philosophy, politics - general
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