Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity Mass mind control artist Rush Limbaugh has convinced millions of brainwashed Americans that The Register is an "obscure UK tech site." In the US, Limbaugh is famous for using the country's highest-rated radio program to control millions of small American minds over more than two decades. He's also famous for being "a big fat …
You said:
"I learned about the true history of the cold war: how Communism failed due to the greed of individuals and how Capitalism lasted only a few decades longer. I learned about Socialism and how it was a reasoned amalgam of both ideas: a free market…but regulated to curb the worst of our instinctual excesses."
I don't dispute your main point, but I will correct your terms: socialism and communism failed everywhere they were tried. Every state in Europe, for instance, has a mixed economy, where the state provides many services but persons and corporations own the majority of the means of production. The nice places to live in this world are all _social democracies_, all of which have _mixed economies_ ranging (from left to right, very roughly) from Denmark (nice place #1?) to the U.S. to Turkey. There are a few socialist states still around like Cuba, Vietnam, and one communist state, N. Korea. Capitalism, which is the private sector of mixed-economy states, can only begin with some structure. To prevent its devolution to mafia or warlord (failed) states, two kinds of regulation are vital: democracy, which is the regulation of the public sector (government), and financial laws which regulate the private sector.
Oh, and Paris because she is Palin's nicer half.
You and I obviously come from two different schools of Political instruction. "Mixed Economies" are socialism. At least in my instruction. They are a slightly more capitalist-leaning form of socialism than some place like Cuba…but they are socialism nonetheless. In Communism, the means of production (virtually all of them) are owned by the state. In Socialism, only certain (usually vital, or projects too large for private endeavours) industries are owned by the state. In Capitalism, virtually nothing is owned by the state.
Simplistic, but you get the drift. If you want to argue over semantics, we could be here a very long time. I was raised to understand there being a fairly huge difference between “Communism” and “Socilaism.” Goodly chunks of Europe, Pacific Asia and Canada would all qualify as “Socilaist” according to my instruction. If you don’t like the use of that term in that context, feel free to substitute your own nomenclature. I argue the nomenclature doesn’t matter, merely the information the word was intending to convey.
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and I listen to Rush nearly daily .. he's great .. I'm a libertarian myself .. so Rush is just wrong on Iraq and Afghanistan IMO .. but that's ok .. Conservatives in America don't mind different views , it's the Liberals here that have to march in lock step or risk punishment by their peers ..
I prefer Walter E Williams hosting the Rush Limbaugh show .. Karl Rove was a pretty cool guest host a few weeks ago too ..
I can hear you liberal brits wincing from here .. hahahha
Cade Metz reports from San Francisco where they just re-elected Nancy Pelosi to the Senate and Jerry Brown as Governor .. not to mention Arnie as Governor before that .. and Gray Davis before that ..
So, from a San Francisco based El Reg writer, I would expect no less that Rush / Fox bashing ..
it's ok .. luser ..
Who is Rush? Rush is a political pornographer, pandering to a lot of mental masturbators. There's nothing like having your adrenal gland stroked by an expert.
The problem is that the ones being pandered to have so little self-awareness that they can't comprehend that they are being manipulated, and so believe that they are listening to news with some grounding in reality when in fact it is simply entertainment.
The last time some called Rush an entertainer, the fan bois went barking mad.
Is this a troll? Yes, yes it is.
Well, does anyone reading and posting on El Reg imagine that the insult will energise the Register to lead in the IT Field rather than just report on developments?
IT isn't difficult to do if you know the secret/knack.
Or will the East lead the way with that particular and peculiar skill, with El Reg picking up crumbs, rather than feasting on success, whilst reporting on IT?
I really feel horrible when I see The US and UK people bash each other over such nonsense.
Anyway, here's the deal. I live right where Rush's career started -- Sacramento. Alongside others like Christine Craft back in the day on KFBK. (Yeah, I've been here long enough to remember this)
Anyway, As outside countries and folks can probably tell, there's something wrong with the United States right now, I will try to put some light on the problem.
The problem Today, is much deeper than a single agency within the United States. But to break some of this down, We have to start with an agency called the FCC. The FCC was supposed to use it's engineers and authority to regulate POWER and FREQUENCY of the public spectrum, in the public interest. (As tech's you all likely can understand this makes sense) But what's happened is the opposite, the public spectrum is now basically corporate owned and the engineers are used to enhance corporate interests over that of the public's interests. The FCC chair is a presidential appointee, so your going to get SOME bias that way, but this isn't the depth of the problem. Anyway, somewhere down the garden path, the FCC failed it's original mission (doubt you can even find this ORIGINAL mission statement anymore)
So what Americans have now is corporate media owned public spectrum.
But let's look back in time again. Back in the day in the 90's I'll say, most Americans were hard at work with building, constructing, and labor, computers were not a part of daily life like now where you could look facts up instantly and catch "Journalists" in lies like you can today.
So we have KFBK and Rush around lunch time every day on one of the loudest stations out there on an AM blaster shooting skip and reaching an ever growing audience who's only source of information was AM, FM, and UHF/VHF broadcast spectrum.
Somewhere along the line, Corporate media learned if they follow government programs and positions, they have nothing to fear from negative complaints (from the public) in their public file.
So for the few people who know the truth about things, catching Rush in half-truths and spin, or outright lies really have no consequences. Since a hand full of complaints isn't enough to bring the station's frequency allocation under scrutiny by the FCC.
This situation has allowed many similar stations (with this knowledge) to propagate over the the same time-line.
The other thing going on, is the Democrat vs Republican paradigm. In the 90's you were one or the other or you didn't matter. So you've got millions of people listening to this rubbish around lunchtime every day during the work week, and few if any had the resources to verify or validate anything, Rush became gospel to them. You either listened to Rush, or you plugged your nose/ears where you were exposed, or forced to listen to it.
Rush has always, been one of those slimy kind of people where you can't just say things the way they are they have to be bent out of shape first. You know the drill, misleading headlines, out of context quoting, a plethora of corruption vs truth. For all practical purpose, Rush played the Republican card fully.
What the Reg has, is a guy with a big ego, who doesn't care who the true source of anything is, just as long as he can grab it, and mold it, and make his point which cow-tow's the government position, or drive R's against D's. The thing which must be understood here is when considering a corporation, and profit, D vs R goes out the window. D isn't vs. R anymore, D and R both support Corporate interests. In this they are the SAME. This doesn't mean if your registered D or R your Heart is the same as your enemy, YOUR HEART DOES NOT MATTER.
D vs R is institutionalized, you think your little heart matters when there's profits to be made on the HIGH end? Don't delude yourself.
I'm talking about Powerful forces, with large bankrolls. Who now have corporate person-hood. The only rule of the game is to be "With Government opinion" , as long as you can stay there, you can tell the public the sun is really the moon and you'll still be a journalist in the morning.
This is why we have these people with big ego's now, who you know, spray graffiti on the side of El Reg, and take a pee on the floor of your server room. They have Zero respect for you, you were simply used by Rush like I might use a Broken PSU to rip the fan out of. OR a propane torch on a circuit board to get the parts off. Leaving black and green toxic waste and a room full of smoke in it's wake. Of course the hand full of resistors, caps, diodes, semiconductors, plugs etc are taken and re-purposed for the new agenda.
Today we have an intermittent constitution. This allows oath breakers to run around doing whatever they want, and then hiding behind state secrets to protect them. This is also why not one bank of note-worthiness has been prosecuted, or taken into receivership.
Don't blame the American people for this situation. It's a combination of problems which the people don't have control over. The corruption is the Government, Not the people.
Which brings us back to big media. If all they do is go with the flow of government agenda, the people over time are no longer an informed population.
And I have to say, looking across the pond, I have to say you have similar problems over there. But understand Americans don't hate citizens of the UK, and Rush isn't an example of a patriotic American.
I served, He didn't.
Peace all..
but I think there's a flaw with one of the things you said cake:
"I argue that those who make the conscious choice to do so are those who have most advanced our civilisation"
That makes the Pope some sort of laser-shooting cybernetic genius in my book.
I guess my real question would be, how do you define a conscious decision and what enables it? I think that the fact that we can 'suppress' emotions is probably just an extension of the mating behaviour seen in apes (i.e. a weak subordinate male won't mess with the dominant one because he probably won't survive) and probably its benefits to society have allowed it to become more ingrained over time. Maybe I can better explain with a slightly unrelated example. Why is it that you don't, when you get home from the shops with some chicken, just tear into it and start munching? Is it really anything to do with suppressing instinct or is it because you're conditioned not to eat raw meat (because generally it's bad for you). Does your stomach turn slightly at the thought of eating raw beef mince? There's nothing wrong with eating it really, and there's all those lovely French sandwiches which take advantage of that.
This guy has been brainwashing American simplemends for years. Mostly made up of simpleminded religious fundamentalist, they have been the leading factors in irrational thought for years. They think that dinosaurs walked with humans, that a great flood eveloped the Earth, and that a grey haired old man that lives in the sky created everything.
- Reads The Reg and loves it
- Thinks Rush is pretty darn entertaining
- Thinks he understands when to take seriously both El Reg and Rush and when not to
- Agrees with Sarah Palin on many issues
- Does not want her to be President
- Eats an occasional Big Mac
- Is as intelligent as anyone reading this
- Like most people, doesn't want to be pigeonholed
- Understands however, that many people need to do so because ???
We're in agreement.
It's amazing how all it takes is for one person to take one thing Rush has to say out of context, and the nuts come out of the woodwork.
Someone in this chain of nonsense commented about socialism being some sort of balance between capitalism and communism... Geez, people, go back to civics class...
Rush is *not* evil. His comments concerning the Reg are from the eyes of someone who is unfamiliar with the tech circles; naturally, from his POV, the Reg is "obscure." I'm a NetWare consultant; from the POV of a die-hard M$ consultant, NetWare is a "legacy," "fringe" OS - yet, I work with it every day. A little perspective goes a long way.
Sheesh...
I understand your confusion.
What you describe as the older, more basic concept of liberalism is now (to those who have heard of it at all) referred to as "Classical Liberalism" in order to distinguish it from the socialist oriented "modern" liberalism that is practiced today. What we now refer to as Liberalism would in other countries more likely be called socialism. Note to US Liberals: This is not a criticism, be whomever you want to be, it's my observation based on the actions of the Democrat party.
In a perverse twist, the modern liberalism removes individual rights and liberty in an attempt to induce "fairness" to the system. What exactly constitutes fairness, and who gets to decide is an open question, but generally the "haves" in society are demonized as having more than they deserve (although they earned it in some form or fashion), while the "have nots" are held up as victims of the despicable "haves".
The solution according to modern liberals is not for the "have nots" to earn their way to prosperity with the help of a free market and broad civil liberties, but rather for the government to take, through legislative force, taxation, etc., from the "haves" and give to the "have nots". A sort of perverse Robin Hood system where the honestly wealthy are robbed and the poor are dribbled just enough of the bounty to keep them dependent but happy voters.
The true motive for the system is to grow the size and power of government over the people, something the US constitution was intended to prevent, but which has been disregarded for decades. Both political parties are guilty of this, which is why you see the American voters first punishing the Bush Republicans in 2008 and then the Obama Democrats in 2010. We despise them both because despite their wholly opposite methods, the end result has been the same; bigger government, more wasteful spending, fewer personal liberties.
For a detailed explanation of Classical Liberalism, I invite you to read this: http://mises.org/daily/4596
Sorry for the confusion - it must be the language barrier ;)
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