In article  , Grizzlie 
Antagonist   wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 23:57:58 -0500, "Deborah Terreson"
>  wrote:
>
>>In article  , Grizzlie
>>Antagonist   wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 16:36:13 -0600, USA  wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 16:11:35 -0600, "HombreVIII"

>>>>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> wrote in message
>>>>>news:l1cb419i6fr0eh7b8oufeu55btepsu0q9t{at}4ax.com...
>>>>>> All media is left leaning
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Which explains why the terms "monopoly" and
"anti-competitive" haven't been
>>>>>uttered in a sentence together on television in decades.
>>>>>
>>>>>Hint: The media telling us how extremely left wing it
is and that as
>>>>>reasonable people we should always hold a view more
right wing than
whatever
>>>>>it says does not make it true.
>>>>>
>>>>>http://www.bartcop.com/libmedia.htm
>>>>>
>>>>What a lame site.
>>>>
>>>>Other favorite liberal arguments go something like:
>>>>
>>>>"GE is a huge evil corporation and it owns NBC so obviously
>>>>conservatives (the big corporation) are in control of the
media."
>>>>
>>>>If that were true there would be no fag shows or fag
anything on Bravo
>>>>(a cable channel owned and run by NBC). But there are plenty of such
>>>>trashy crap shows in evidence.  For example, ever hear of
"Queer Eye
>>>>for the Straight Guy"?  Or how about the NBC show
"Will and Grace"?
>>>>These days a homo is inserted into every TV show almost as if every
>>>>family has one of their own which is far from accurate.
>>>>
>>>>If conservatives were doing the hands on running of either the
>>>>entertainment or news departments of the alphabet networks and their
>>>>cable clones, you wouldn't hear the words gay, lesbian, or homosexual
>>>>and you certainly wouldn't see any.
>>>>
>>>>Why does GE let liberals run NBC news and entertainment divisions?
>>>>Because they are still making big money.  When that ceases to be true
>>>>we might see a change.  In light of what happened with idiot Dan
>>>>Rather, it seems Viacom is starting to pay attention to how
costly CBS
>>>>News is to run because it has virtually no ratings.  Even so they
>>>>won't become a conservative run news division but rather
CBS News will
>>>>probably pretty much cease to exist.  Hopefully NBC and ABC will
>>>>follow shortly there after.
>>>
>>>
>>> People get mixed up when they operate from the paradigm that "Big
>>> Business" = conservative or conservatism.
>>>
>>> Big Business is NOT conservative.  As an institution, it may not be
>>> particularly liberal either, but Big Business is NOT conservative.
>>>
>>> Some libertarian/free market types will use conservative arguments to
>>> justify the actions of Big Business, and the Big Businessmen
>>> themselves might ape those arguments when they feel it is in their
>>> best interest to do so, but that's not the same thing as saying that
>>> Big Business = conservative.
>>>
>>> Anyone who thinks that Big Business = conservative needs to channel
>>> Russell Kirk and ask him about that - because the First Conservative
>>> of the 20th century must turn over in his grave every time someone
>>> identifies conservatism with "Big Business".
>>>
>>> Big Business is all about what will maximize stock prices, market
>>> share, and the compensation received by the CEO's who run it.  It's
>>> not about ideology at all.
>>>
>>> So, for example, if drilling in the Arctic (I favor that by the way,
>>> I'm fed up with high prices at the gas pump)
>>
>>You can thank major retirement plan investment dollars going into the
>>commodities markets for this one. A finite resource being sought after by a
>>larger amount of dollars is of course going to raise the roof. Started about
>>6 years ago, and they're only getting worse. I read (and I'll see if I can
>>find an online copy) a report on the oil commodities markets in a paper a
>>few weeks back. If the markets were not being flooded with this money, we'd
>>be looking at prices more along the lines of 35 to 40 dollars a barrel.
>>
>>Isn't it nice to know that you are subsidizing retirees every time you pull
>>up to the pump?
>
>
>
> My folks are retirees so it could be worse.

So are mine, but goddamn, neither of them supported me for the whole time I
was growing up. Mom put in 12 years and dad put in 5. I figure that if they
knew they were going to stop working at some point in the future, it was up
to them to make plans and not expect that I'm going to carry them when I'm
grown. It's not like you or I had a choice in the matter of our births or
owe our parents or others of their generation anything for it.

> Though I did have to chuckle at a National Review magazine cover (I
> think it was NR) that I saw a few weeks ago showing a cartoon in which
> an aging boomer eats gruel while portraits of his wealthy parents
> (living longer thanks to medical advances and collecting more
> benefits) look on indulgently.
>
> I'm doing a little better than eating gruel :) but that cartoon did
> hit home somewhat.  Although I chuckled at it, it hit home a little
> TOO hard to induce me to buy the magazine and read the feature
> article.
>
> Still, my folks went through the depression and WW2 and brought me up
> so maybe they are deserving of some financial support at my expense.
> I've always wanted them to live long and spend my inheritance.  I
> always wanted to make it on my own.

On one's own doesn't mean supporting someone else, unless it's a child.

The reality is, the necessities in life have become profit driven, to the
detriment of those on the low side of the population demorgaphic, such is
the nature of the commericalized, spiritually dead, materialistic, money
oriented society that we've become. I've pretty much given up on ever
getting medical care again - I've got a fantastic dentist, a wonderful
chiropractor and a nutritionalist-quality, trained chef of a husband. What
more do I need? An oncologist or a gynecologist? Fuck them both. Let the
unregulated system bleed the retirees and the coming 'boomer wave dry. The
free for all business gang rape has begun.

>
>>Wonderful value system, there. Why bother with retirement savings, when you
>>can get a private system to form itself into a neo-socialist redistribution
>>scheme where the consumer supports you! This is better than anything a
>>government could do - it's a 'free' market system!
>>
>>Marx was a dilettante, that's for sure.
>
>
> You might also have described the reason why real estate prices are
> skyrocketing.  At least in my part of the country.  Real estate
> investment trusts are also frequently used as retirement vehicles.
>
> So land is also a scarce commodity pursued by large amounts of retiree
> dollars.

Portsmouth is going to hell, because of this also.  Lots of idle class
retirees buying homes for insane amounts and only living in them one or two
weeks a year. Yeah, those year-round residents are going to keep the local
businesses in the black. The flip side, no one investing wants to see, are
the empty storefronts all over town.

Bob and I are considering getting a home, now that the school loans are paid
off, but I'll be damned if it is going to be anywhere where there's the idle
class retirement dollars in the market. We very well may end up in East
Bumfuck, Montana for all I know. It is so out of control, that in places
like Naples, Florida and some of the hot markets, homes are bought and sold
TWICE in a single day. People are buying homes they don't need, and paying
so much that they have no chance of ever renting the properties they hold.
They are just planning on turning them over in a few months. That is
obscene, and I don't wish ill really, for anyone, but the assholes playing
this game deserve to lose their shirts and live in the back of a car eating
dog food for a year or two.
>
>
>>>  will maximize all of
>>> those things, and if drilling in the Arctic is regarded as
>>> "conservative", then Big Oil appears to be
"conservative" given the
>>> requirements of the moment.
>>
>>My thoughts on the ANWR reserves is to leave it: It's not going anywhere,
>>and if it's never disturbed, it will only increase in value relative to the
>>miles per gallon that can be utilized from it. There is also the point that
>>at some time in the future, the cost of oil may go so high, given China's
>>demands on the markets (they are only going to buy our debt for so long, and
>>when they decide it's time to use their yuan for oil purchases instead,
>>we're screwed), that it may have the ability to impact the military's cost
>>in buying the fuel it may require. At what point does a bit of foresight go
>>into looking at what the markets can do and how it may affect our ability to
>>protect ourselves and actually become policy? I'd like to see it only used
>>for emergency military purposes - a national reserve for our defense and not
>>for women named Tiffany to tool around going shopping in their Hummers
>>with..
>
>
>
> Maybe, but the high price of gas has got to be strangling the economy
> right now and impacting people not as able to pay for it as Tiffany
> is.
>
> I don't know why I should give a shit though.  I'm a fatalist who
> thinks that Western civilization is coming to an end - and maybe
> SHOULD come to an end.
>
Western Civilization? No. There's some fine points to it, but American
shallow consumerist culture? God, I sincerely hope so. This country needs an
enema.
>
>
>
>>> But plenty of businessmen traded with and made profits from trade with
>>> the Worker's Paradises that were the old Soviet Union and Eastern bloc
>>> states.  Funding communism doesn't sound like a particularly
>>> "conservative" thing to do but that was what was
necessary given the
>>> requirements of THAT moment.
>>>
>>> A large number of cultural conservatives decry the McDonaldsization or
>>> the Starbuckization or the Wal-Martization of the country.  When a
>>> part of a large chain makes its presence known in a small town, local
>>> businesses are very often threatened and very unconservative
>>> population upheavals and economic dislocations result.
>>>
>>> Big Business tends to support the unconservative policy of affirmative
>>> action.
>>
>>Believe me, it's only done because an EOE rating for a company means that
>>they can do business with the government. I spent many years as the token
>>tit in the work crew, so the contractor could get the plum DOD contracts.
>>That EOE rating applies to every aspect of business, including sales and
>>Uncle Sam is a huge purchaser.
>
>
>>> There are costs associated with affirmative action that Big
>>> Business - with the advantages of large market share - can pass onto
>>> their consumers with relative impunity.  This has the desired effect
>>> of squeezing out smaller competitors who can't afford to absorb those
>>> costs OR pass them onto consumers.
>>>
>>> Regardless of election results, the overwhelmingly dominant cultural
>>> motifs are liberal (often nihilistically so), feminist, activist,
>>> pro-gay rights, etc.  That's what Big Business sees when it surveys
>>> the marketing landscape.
>>>
>>> Obviously, people who are NOT liberals or feminists or activists or
>>> pro-gay rights represent a significant share of the population and
>>> obviously those people are consumers too - but those people don't
>>> purchase consumer goods as a bloc.
>>
>>That's not quite true. Those consumers DO purchase in blocs, it's just that
>>the data isn't collected to show that. I'm still in the Nielsen Homescan
>>Survey - 5 years now - and as I have over time changed the purchases I've
>>made, and shifted to more locally produced, organic or handmade (just higher
>>quality overall), I've also lost the ability to record those purchases - no
>>bar codes.
>>
>>I went as far as recording for an entire week, all the things I bought,
>>where, how much and how many and what the cost was. All the data that is
>>taken by the scanner. I sent in the e-mail journal and within a week got a
>>response back from Nielsen. They didn't WANT to know really, what I was
>>buying, if it didn't have a bar code on it. The rep on the phone was very
>>nice, and she completely understood what I was doing and why, but they were
>>only interested in providing sales data to the major producers about what
>>was selling and why.
>>
>>This is supposedly an impartial 50,000 plus household survey of the things
>>that Americans buy, but if it's handmade, or locally grown or manufactured,
>>don't bother. It was an eye opener to how much status quo is maintained by
>>selecting the parameters of the data collection. It virtually guarantees
>>that large businesses and goods and food producers will appear to be the
>>only ones in the markets and it's just not so.
>>
>>Their marketing and data collection is off the rails. I won't even get into
>>the inanity of the surveys and the questions and how they are phrased.
>
>
>
> You did all this as an individual though.

Of course, but there are many, many other individuals in the same place, in
both what they purchase and watch on teevee.  Ancillary to this, I'm often
asked about movie viewing habits and because I do NOT go to a minimum
predetermined number of films in a year, the reasons WHY I eschew them,
which the producers would want to know, are again, not considered. The end
result is those who consume the highest product amount get to set the tone
of what everyone else watches. It's not at all about qualitative issues, but
quanititave ones.

The corporate business model blows. Nowhere does excellence play a factor
beyond the dividend. The manufactured good? That's a means to and end, and
it's all shite.

>  You didn't organize or
> respond to anyone who organized you.  You didn't receive input from
> any klatch.  So I think that my point still holds.

It does and it doesn't. The producer is so dependent on a relatively quick
informational turnaround that they don't really know what the consumer wants
but in a most general way. The largest group, representing the lowest common
denominator is the only thing that matters and it is truly unfortunate for
those interested in supporting excellence.
>
>
>>> They don't organize in the same hive; they don't take cues from one
>>> another on what is and is not politically correct.  Liberals,
>>> activists, feminists, etc DO organize and DO act as a bloc and are the
>>> most readily identifiable consumer group that Big Business sees when
>>> it surveys the marketing landscape.
>>>
>>> So Big Business largely caters to these people.  It doesn't somehow
>>> suppress conservative distaste by making money from these people
>>> because it has no conservative distaste to suppress.  Big Business
>>> again is all about profit and market share.
>>>
>>> So yeah, people who argue that the news media and the entertainment
>>> media can't possibly be liberal because they are owned by Big Business
>>> are indeed missing the point entirely.
>>
>>Business is conservative in it's dedication to buying politicans. That's the
>>truest hallmark of the liberal power sport known in the old days as
>>'patronage'. Basically, there is no conservative or liberalism, there are
>>only those who have enough in their lives and those who'll NEVER have
>>enough.
>
>
> That's my point.  I think.

It's the only one that matters. Now let's go be mean to the shallow
materialistic twits of the world and watch them squirm. ;)

Gigantic Attitude indeed.

Deb.
>
>
>>I like teasing the latter category, they're so neurotic about becoming poor
>>it's fun to watch them twitch.
>>
>>Deb.


--- UseNet To RIME Gateway {at} 3/28/05 4:46:43 PM ---