Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Barack Obama, July 17th – “Think about what these stalling tactics mean for the millions of Americans who’ve lost their jobs since the recession began. Over the past several weeks, more than two million of them have seen their unemployment insurance expire.”
Raul Castro, July 18th – “Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work.”
The world is upside down.
Castro/Palin 2012!
“Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only Cuban labor union allowed — has instead written that “reorganization” will ensure redundant workers are reassigned rather than fired”
I burst out laughing when I read that sentence!
“Redundant” workers will be reassigned,to other redundant jobs. They’ll shuffle the deck chairs in hope that somehow it’ll magically fix the problem.
Yet I meet Canadians who vacation regularly in Cuba, and swear it’s a worker’s paradise!
I’ve shamelessly stolen that for Twitter, Black Mamba.
🙂
But I’m a bit worried that Raul wasn’t born in the U.S.
Not that I’m a “birther” or whatever – as Mark Steyn wrote, that’s way too weird – but the jokes do sort of write themselves.
I can’t keep up with you girls. You’re too quick.
Raul Castro, complaining that the Iron Rice Bowl makes workers lazy. That’s just amazing, that he would come out and admit the truth like that. Times must be tough in Cuba, usually they just shoot the extra people they don’t need.
Ammo shortage?
but but but….what about ‘from each according to their ability and to each according to their need”????
it’s so simple really.
From Claudia @ Octavo Cerco, http://octavocercoen.blogspot.com/2010/07/sad-highways.html
“The boy who finally sold me some cheese couldn’t have been more than 25. I asked him what happens when the police catch them: he said they run as fast as they can, trying to save at least some of the goods, while the police chase them back into the woods.
“They chase you into the woods?”
It’s hard to take seriously the ridiculous image of a uniformed officer knocking a peasant down into the grass to seize twenty bananas. As the poor boy hadn’t come to hear a lecture from me, I simply paid him and left, but the idea was making my head spin. Are there not, according to Raul Castro, a million unproductive people in Cuba earning salaries? Why don’t they start by getting rid of the jobs of these predators on the family economy and allow the farmers to sell their products wherever they want?”
The difference is that Castro doesn’t need to purchase votes, while Obama does.
I don’t agree with you. Google Unemployment Stories and you will see there are so many desperate people in the States who are on the verge of losing their unemployment money. Many of them are people over 50 who are discriminated against for jobs. But I agree with the Republicans that the Democrats have to come up wit the money in another way and also stop linking unemployment extensions to other Democratic projects.
The world is upside down.
I think it was Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes” who first made that observation.
The monkeys are in the white house indeed.
Phantom – fave. Soviet joke, stolen from P.J. O’Rourke. Short version:
Gorbachev era. A man tells his wife he’s off to buy bread. He waits in the line for hours and hours – in the rain; finally, as he comes to the front of the line, he hears: “bread is finish!” and the window slams shut.
The man freaks out. “I’m a veteran!” he yells at passers-by. “I bled for this country! I believed in the Revolution! Now I stand in the rain for hours and can’t buy a stinking loaf of bread!”
Upon this, an innocuous man in a trench coat emerges from the crowd and takes him by the arm, the grip friendly yet very firm. “Comrade”, whispers this man, “what are you thinking? Only a few years ago, you would have been sent to Siberia for making such remarks, and then only if you were very, very lucky!”
Mollified, the veteran returns home. “What is wrong, Sergei?” asks his wife; “are they out of bread?”
“No, Olga, it’s worse than that. They’re out of bullets.”
Cuba is a paradise , why our own Dr. Suzuki said so.
a model of sustainable agriculture. that can’t even feed itself.
Sometimes the best capitalist is an ex communist. One only has to look at China. Mao’s fanatical Red Guards filled with zeal couldn’t squeeze another grain of rice out of the system and millions starved. Like an alcoholic face down in a puddle of vomit there comes a time when repeating destructive behavior must stop.
Not quite related (well, in my patented tangential way, meybe at the very end):
Murray Rothbard way back in the early 90s mentioned the possible propsect of Russia going the gold-based currency route.
And now, only a few days ago, a quite serious market guy and austro-libertarian economics enthusiast, opined that if Russia would go the gold-backed currency route, the US dollar would be destroyed overnight.
Wouldn’t that be the ultimate upside down world.
(see I made it RELATE).
Black Mamba: fabulous soviet joke and very nicely written.
Soviet Union:
“We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us”.
Free Markets:
Unequal distribution of happiness with opportunities for each to be more or less happy
Socialism:
Equal distribution of misery, without opportunity or incentive to improve the situation.
Fred,
The inability to comprehend such a blatant fact is merely evidence of the mental disorder inflicting the progressives.
They are children who will always want and need a mommy to care for them. They are losers hoping for an undeserved and unearned win in life.
In the western world there is no reason for anyone but the sever disabled to not have a life of their own making. It’s called opportunity and there is lots of it around.
another old one is
‘when the soviet paradise is achieved every citizen will have his own rocket ship!”
‘indeed comrade, then we can fly to Vladivostock when eggs are on sale”…
“Gorbachev era. A man tells his wife he’s off to buy bread. He waits in the line for hours and hours – in the rain; finally, as he comes to the front of the line, he hears: “bread is finish!” and the window slams shut.”
~Black Mamba at July 18, 2010 12:59 PM
That’s a myth.
They lined up for a lot of things in the USSR, but bread was not one of those things.
The slogan of the Bolshevik Revolution was “Peace and Bread” and there was never a shortage of bread except during the war.
The Soviets got plenty of cheap wheat thanks to the Canadian Wheat Board and they had so much bread that farmers fed loaves of it to their cattle.
Okay, substitute “maggoty meat” and the joke still works.
i remember traipsing(val da ree..val da rah) thru Varna and Constanta on the Black Sea in the sixties….can remember the shortages…REAL shortages of choice and supply in basic foodstuffs…
and this was pre Ceausescu….who REALLY forked things up way worser….
“That’s a myth.
They lined up for a lot of things in the USSR, but bread was not one of those things.”
and that’s a myth . . they lined up for everything, especially bread.
http://www.realussr.com/ussr/queues/
Lesson: capitalism works, no matter what Fidel or Obama say.
Modern Liberalism is a thang to behold, those ohe so brilliant thinkers have brought us bath houses, swingers’ clubs, Russian peelers, and turned society into dribbling idiots with their Nanny Nation laws and rules. Modern Liberalism is the very definition of loopy upside down logic, that’s why they love Islam so both of their political ethos are 1400 behind intelligent civilized societies.
moving continually forward while maintain core sensibilities and the wisdom that took us 2000 years to acquire…
THAT is us…
how all these other assholes got into my room is a mystery.
They absolutely did line up for bread. It was often one of the last things to run out but it certainly did. Especially in Ukraine.
A lefty on another forum sarcasticly asked…
“Whats wrong with a little socialism”..?
I replied…
Socialism has been bastardized to serve its ruling tyrants.
Some could say capitalism has similar traits, except,
In every place socialism has been (IMPOSED) ..life time rulers(dictators) emerge.
eg..Castro, Mugabe, Kim, Chavez.
Like democracy capitalism is the worst form of economic governance, except for all the others.
Capitalism …”the act of trade for profit or gain” ..is as old as man himself,
while socialism in the form of the state, inserts itself into that trade only to extract a bounty a(dues) to be used to perpetuate itself.
Capitalism breeds self-esteem, ingenuity, wealth creation, ambition, philanthropy, self-reliance, individuality.
Socialism breeds parasites.
Mad mad World when Raul Castro makes more sense than the President of the USA.
I think Cuba is worried. Another Socialist Nation would have no qualms about invading its territory. None at all. Its with fellow Democracies that
99. % never go to war with each other.
Like I said, we need nukes.
Canada has To many riches, that shares a sphere Full of vultures & other carrion eaters.
JMO
In 1982, eight years before Russian communism collapsed,one of my uncles went to see relatives in Russia. The Kolchoz farming village, about 40 kilomtres from the city of Orenburg, of about 800-1,000 people had one store. The only item on the shelves at any given time in the store was clothing material. Whenever shipments of other consumer items arrived, the people would line up and buy until the items were sold out.
Bread was baked in the Kolchoz bakery and meat, when available, was obtained from the Kolchoz butcher shop, cheese was generally available from the small Kolchoz cheese making shop.
The people had their own gardens where they grew the produce they wanted and stored it in their homes.
Fast forward to 2008 and the small country village stores are full of daily use products, kind of like your expanded local corner store. The city stores are full of consumer products of all sorts even if the people are not able to spend as much as North Americans and Western Europeans do.
Black Mamba’s Castro/Palin 2012 is hilarious.
Theoretically, as automation progresses and slowly reduces the need for human input (and concentrates decision-making) communism could work.
But our race (we with those harmful oppositional thumbs) is still mired in petty human matters. I propose that I be elected. I’ll fix all these problems.
*
policy my ass… isn’t he just dreamy?
*
@Black Mamba, July 18, 2010 12:59 PM
The one with the rifle shoots! The one without follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle AND SHOOTS!
Now THAT’S leadership. How have we gone so wrong?
Ken (Kulak), you may enjoy this:
=======
Monty Python’s Flying Circus –
“Cheese Shop”
[ from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, third season, first shown 30.11.1972 ]
The Players:
John Cleese – Mousebender;
Michael Palin – Wensleydale;
The Scene:
An Edwardian-style shop which carries the signs:
‘Ye Olde Cheese Emporium’;
‘Henry Wensleydale, Purveyor of Fine Cheese to the Gentry and the Poverty Stricken Too’;
‘Licensed for Public Dancing’;
Two men dressed as city gents are Greek dancing in the corner to the music of a bouzouki.
Mousebender enters.
MOUSEBENDER:
Good Morning.
WENSLEYDALE:
Good morning, sir. Welcome to the National Cheese Emporium.
MOUSEBENDER:
Ah, thank you my good man.
WENSLEYDALE:
What can I do for you, sir?
MOUSEBENDER:
Well, I was, uh, sitting in the public library on Thurmond Street just now, skimming through Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peckish.
WENSLEYDALE:
Peckish, sir?
MOUSEBENDER:
Esurient.
WENSLEYDALE:
Eh?
MOUSEBENDER:
(In a broad Yorkshire accent) Eee I were all hungry, like.
WENSLEYDALE:
Ah, hungry.
MOUSEBENDER:
In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, ‘a little fermented curd will do the trick’. So I curtailed my Walpoling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles.
WENSLEYDALE:
Come again?
MOUSEBENDER:
I want to buy some cheese.
WENSLEYDALE:
Oh, I thought you were complaining about the bouzouki player.
MOUSEBENDER:
Oh, heaven forbid. I am one who delights in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse.
WENSLEYDALE:
Sorry?
MOUSEBENDER:
(In a broad Yorkshire accent) Ooo, I like a nice tune – you’re forced to.
WENSLEYDALE:
So he can go on playing, can he?
MOUSEBENDER:
Most certainly. Now then, some cheese please, my good man.
WENSLEYDALE:
Certainly, sir. What would you like?
MOUSEBENDER:
Well, eh, how about a little Red Leicester?
WENSLEYDALE:
I’m afraid we’re fresh out of Red Leicester, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Oh never mind, how are you on Tilsit?
WENSLEYDALE:
I’m afraid we never have that at the end of the week, sir. We get it fresh on Monday.
MOUSEBENDER:
Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout yeoman, four ounces of Caerphilly, if you please.
WENSLEYDALE:
Ah. It’s been on order, sir, for two weeks. I was expecting it this morning.
MOUSEBENDER:
It’s not my lucky day, is it? Er, Bel Paese?
WENSLEYDALE:
Sorry, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Red Windsor?
WENSLEYDALE:
Normally, sir, yes. Today the van broke down.
MOUSEBENDER:
Ah. Stilton?
WENSLEYDALE:
Sorry.
MOUSEBENDER:
Emmental? Gruyère?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Any Norwegian Jarlsberger, per chance?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Liptauer?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Lancashire?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
White Stilton?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Danish Blue?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Double Gloucester?
WENSLEYDALE:
….. No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Cheshire?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Dorset Blue Vinney?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Brie, Roquefort, Pont-l’Évêque, Port Salut, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carre-de-L’Est, Bresse-Bleu, Boursin?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Camembert, perhaps?
WENSLEYDALE:
Ah! We have Camembert, yes sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
You do! Excellent.
WENSLEYDALE:
Yes, sir. It’s, ah ….. it’s a bit runny.
MOUSEBENDER:
Oh, I like it runny.
WENSLEYDALE:
Well, it’s very runny, actually, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
No matter. Fetch hither le fromage de la Belle France! M-mmm!
WENSLEYDALE:
I think it’s a bit runnier than you’ll like it, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
I don’t care how f*cking runny it is. Hand it over with all speed.
WENSLEYDALE:
Oh …..
MOUSEBENDER:
What now?
WENSLEYDALE:
The cat’s eaten it.
MOUSEBENDER:
Has he?
WENSLEYDALE:
She, sir.
(pause)
MOUSEBENDER:
Gouda?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Edam?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Caithness?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Smoked Austrian?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Japanese Sage Darby?
WENSLEYDALE:
No, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
You do have some cheese, do you?
WENSLEYDALE:
Of course, sir. It’s a cheese shop, sir. We’ve got …..
MOUSEBENDER:
No, no, don’t tell me. I’m keen to guess.
WENSLEYDALE:
Fair enough.
MOUSEBENDER:
Er, Wensleydale?
WENSLEYDALE:
Yes?
MOUSEBENDER:
Ah, well, I’ll have some of that.
WENSLEYDALE:
Oh, I thought you were talking to me, sir. Mr Wensleydale, that’s my name.
(pause)
MOUSEBENDER:
Greek Feta?
WENSLEYDALE:
Ah, not as such.
MOUSEBENDER:
Er, Gorgonzola?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Parmesan?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Mozzarella?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Pippo Crème?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Danish Fimboe?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Czech sheep’s milk?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
Venezuelan Beaver Cheese?.
WENSLEYDALE:
Not today, sir, no.
(pause)
MOUSEBENDER:
Ah, how about Cheddar?
WENSLEYDALE:
Well, we don’t get much call for it around here, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Not much ca- It’s the single most popular cheese in the world!
WENSLEYDALE:
Not round here, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
And what is the most popular cheese round here?
WENSLEYDALE:
Ilchester, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Is it.
WENSLEYDALE:
Oh yes, sir. It’s staggeringly popular in this manor, squire.
MOUSEBENDER:
Is it.
WENSLEYDALE:
It’s our number-one best seller, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
I see. Ah, Ilchester, eh?
WENSLEYDALE:
Right, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
All right. Okay. Have you got any, he asked expecting the answer no?
WENSLEYDALE:
I’ll have a look, sir ….. nnnnnnooooooooo.
MOUSEBENDER:
It’s not much of a cheese shop, is it?
WENSLEYDALE:
Finest in the district, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.
WENSLEYDALE:
Well, it’s so clean, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese.
WENSLEYDALE:
You haven’t asked me about Limberger, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Is it worth it?
WENSLEYDALE:
Could be.
MOUSEBENDER:
Have you- SHUT THAT BLOODY BOUZOUKI UP!
WENSLEYDALE:
(To dancers) Told you so.
MOUSEBENDER:
Have you got any Limburger?
WENSLEYDALE:
No.
MOUSEBENDER:
That figures. Predictable really, I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me:
WENSLEYDALE:
Yes, sir?
MOUSEBENDER:
Have you in fact got any cheese here at all?
WENSLEYDALE:
Yes, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Really?
(pause)
WENSLEYDALE:
No. Not really, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
You haven’t.
WENSLEYDALE:
No, sir, not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to shoot you.
WENSLEYDALE:
Right-O, sir.
MOUSEBENDER:
(Shoots him) What a senseless waste of human life.
I did get the juxtaposition and took note of the Mamba bite.
However no one corrected an error in one of the articles:
Obama’s Republican predecessor George W. Bush inherited a surplus from Democratic President Bill Clinton, but handed Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit eight years later, which his White House blames on Bush-era tax cuts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were funded with deficits.
Obama’s Republican predecessor George W. Bush inherited a surplus from the Republican House, but was later replaced by a Democratic House which handed Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit eight years later, which his White House blames on Bush-era tax cuts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were funded with deficits.
Capitalism …”the act of trade for profit or gain” ..is as old as man himself,
Capitalism isn’t so much an economic system, as what free people do if you leave them alone. It wouldn’t even matter if it weren’t the best “system”, because it is the only system where people are truly free, and freedom is more important than money.
Just how *$%*$#* @ messed up is our president’s administration when the man leading a communist nation that *ran out of toilet paper* makes more sense than he does?
Regarding communism vs. capitalism, I’ve heard it as “No one has ever been dragged out of their home at 3 o’clock in the morning and taken to the shopping mall.”
The reason Canadians holiday in Cuba is because it is CHEAP! And you are not allowed to tip the staff at these resorts. And we’ve all heard about the prostitution during Battista’s time? Well it’s still to be got and CHEAPLY. Then the Canadians come home and feel all warm and fuzzy and tell us all how wonderful the system is there, and how lovely are the people and how cruel the yanks are to hinder trade etc..
Capitalism doesn’t mean ‘trade for profit or gain’, with those two words suggesting some lack of ethic.
Capitalism means the act of FREE trade, a private interaction between seller and buyer. This private interaction rested on the viability of the collective; i.e., would this exchange between these two individuals be more functional than one between another? If the goods were viable and of good value, and the price was fair – then, the exchange worked. If anything was problematic, the exchange didn’t take place. Capitalism thus puts the seller and buyer into a direct accountability with each other.
Socialism removes this direct exchange; it inserts a middleman who ‘sets the value’..and the product loses its capacity for validation, testing and accountability. It becomes more expensive (to support that middle group, the govt) and less functional. ..since the exchange can’t NOT take place as the middle group requires the funds.
Kevin S: Ha!
Actually, “capitalism” means a system whereby existing resources can be used to create more resources, or more prosaically, money can make money, as distinct from more primitive systems where only labour can create resources and money functions purely as a means of exchange. Or so I’ve heard it.
Kevin, I take it you’re either not married or you’re not American and don’t know what Black Friday is.
But I liked your joke anyway. If you consider Cash for Clunkers or the HBTC as being “dragged”, then it’s happened here too.