The USA Oligarchy-Austerity-Schadenfreude Thread

[JackRiddler]

Yeah, I think everything about their presentation of "self" is coached and they can't be unaware of this:

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006 ... h_were.php

Utter hypocrisy in a mostly irreligious society. Or should we call this a form of politeness? They are trained to speak this way of the category, while all around them are those who don't buy into the organized religious insanity, while one-third or perhaps even most of them are effectively atheist.

.

[Nordic]

my son, aged 8, keeps telling me he doesn't believe in god. santa clause, yes, but not god.

wtf?

[Saurian Tail]

Rules: Posts must chronicle the USA's decline from violent interventionist self-declared beacon of democracy to neo-feudalist cocktail party masquerading as laughable self-declared beacon of democracy.

Do it 4 teh lulz.

[Plutonia]

Is this even real? Buffet pimpin' his new stable of Ho's?

Bank of America Deploys Bankers on Street Corners to Solicit for New Accounts
By DJ Pangburn Monday, August 29, 2011

Bank of America executives and employees today revealed their true job: prostitution. Near Union Square a fleet of Bank of America representatives were soliciting for new accounts like a pack of drug dealers.

Last week was an up-and-down experience for the banking titans, who saw their share prices slip 2.88% to $6.24, only to be resurrected by the ethically-neutral multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffet’s $5 billion investment, which caused shares to rise 15 percent to $8.03 in early Thursday trading.

Apparently Buffet saw potential growth in the upcoming $5 ATM fees, BofA’s involvement with the sale of death merchants Blackwater (now Xe) and new account fees designed to replace its once lucrative but now lost overdraft fee booty.

Before Buffet swooped in like a savior, however, BofA’s financial health was considered suspect by analysts and talking heads, mostly because of its exposure to mortgage debt through Countrywide Financial and the belief that the bank did not have the requisite amount of capital to weather the financial storm. Indeed, BofA lost half of its market value as the full ramifications of the 2008 sub-prime mortgage fiasco (which they helped precipitate) unfolded.

Now good ol’ BofA has its bankers out in the streets soliciting new accounts to add an injection of capital, perhaps as an overture to Buffet himself, a man known for hardly ever making a bad investment. (After all, he bets on Goldman Sachs, who are equally adept at the Wall Street casino).

The bankers could be seen on the corner of 14th Street and University Place on Union Square, hawking their wares like so many prostitutes before them—though there is quite a difference between fleshly pleasures and the imaginary and hallucinatory quality of currency.

It made this writer chuckle.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/136050/ ... -accounts/

Send the hurricane back.

[Bruce Dazzling]

The normalization of creeping fascism begins early!



Playmobil Security Check Point

Product Description

The woman traveler stops by the security checkpoint. After placing her luggage on the screening machine, the airport employee checks her baggage. The traveler hands her spare change and watch to the security guard and proceeds through the metal detector. With no time to spare, she picks up her luggage and hurries to board her flight!

From the first product review:

Great lesson for the kids!, September 9, 2005

By loosenut (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Playmobil Security Check Point (Toy)

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

LULZ!

[norton ash]

This has been making the web rounds. I think she's a plant... so I'm mostly hating on the people who set this up, Jeff Foxworthy, and the person who titled the youtube video. Folks who distribute this patriarchal pandering as somehow authentic and lulzworthy are stupider than the character she's playing.

[Nordic]

The normalization of creeping fascism begins early!



Playmobil Security Check Point

Product Description

The woman traveler stops by the security checkpoint. After placing her luggage on the screening machine, the airport employee checks her baggage. The traveler hands her spare change and watch to the security guard and proceeds through the metal detector. With no time to spare, she picks up her luggage and hurries to board her flight!

From the first product review:

Great lesson for the kids!, September 9, 2005

By loosenut (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Playmobil Security Check Point (Toy)

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

LULZ!

Seriously had to check and make sure that wasn't from an Onion piece, or something similar.

WOW.

[Stephen Morgan]

http://ampedstatus.org/exclusive-analys ... -trillion/

[Luther Blissett]

This has been making the web rounds. I think she's a plant... so I'm mostly hating on the people who set this up, Jeff Foxworthy, and the person who titled the youtube video. Folks who distribute this patriarchal pandering as somehow authentic and lulzworthy are stupider than the character she's playing.

I've met plenty of people like her.

My ex-wife explained a local community college class exercise that she once had to participate in, where only a couple of adult students were able to identify their own state on a map.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Thats Kellie Pickler.

She was on American Idol and went to get a music career as a country music singer. That is from a celebrity episode of Are you smarter than a 5th grader. So it could well be a set up.

If you're wondering how I know, well I didn't 3 minutes ago.

[82_28]

Total goddamn fucking plant. I can't believe I just watched that. That was a hideous display of some sort of psychological function meant for varying generations.

True story. I was once playing blackjack at Bally's LV, oh around 15 years by now. Jeff Foxworthy was playing there, as in playing, he had a show there. His big ol' mug out there on a sign on the strip. Well, he cruised by our table we were playing at and my friend yells out, "hey, Jeff tell us a redneck joke."

He just laughed. Not in a, I'm sick of my shtick way. Or an "oh gosh somebody recognizes me" way. But a totally arrogant, totally unamused by those below him way.

Guy's a plant too. Fuck Foxworthy and long live the rednecks, I guess.

Just from that one impression, notwithstanding his redneck shtick which was temporarily amusing back then, I've always disliked him, completely, since.

[82_28]

And they always got names like "Pickler" and "Foxworthy". Gimme a break.

That "I didn't know France was a country" shit is a double bind bound with the cultural "significance" of Foxworthy's dumb-fuck southern stage presence. Double binds are very hard to explain to people who do not already grok the game, which is what makes double binds almost impossible to explain to most people.

You can describe it as "when you feel confusion but think you know what is going on" that there be the old double bind. But that's about it. It can be experienced vicariously as well as, obviously, personally.

Yet the game show presence, the 5th grader smarter than you presence, the happy little kid and the over the top brazen manufactured stupidity by the "celebrity", is, what makes that clip an example of the double bind. Combine that with the character of Foxworthy and you have the whole kit and kaboodle wrapped up.

[norton ash]

Thats Kellie Pickler.

She was on American Idol and went to get a music career as a country music singer. That is from a celebrity episode of Are you smarter than a 5th grader. So it could well be a set up.

If you're wondering how I know, well I didn't 3 minutes ago.

So it is, Joe. All choreographed then.

Speaking of celebrity game shows, has anyone seen the 'journalist' editions of Celebrity Jeopardy featuring CNN types like Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper or Maria Bartiromo? They're ALL shockingly stupid, about things like basic geography, history, politics, literature, science. They invariably get their asses kicked by old stoner comedians like Cheech Marin and Michael McKean.

(I have an ancient Jeopardy habit like most nerds... it goes along with the coffee as my dinner settles.)

[Joe Hillshoist]

I gave Cheech my autograph once.

[stefano]

The CW is developing unscripted format "Extreme Musical Chairs" from the Gurin Co. and 405 Prods.

Series would transform the popular children's game into a physically demanding competition with multiple rounds of elimination set in an indoor obstacle course.
________
The CW is a joint venture between CBS Corporation and Warner Bros., just found that out.