The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism: Part III, Land of the Toys

“Located in the fictional land of Cocagne, Pleasure Island serves as a haven for wayward boys, allowing them to act as they please without recrimination. However, the truer and more sinister purpose of Pleasure Island is eventually revealed as it begins to physically transform the boys into donkeys, apparently by means of a curse.”
– Wikipeida “Land Of Toys”, as found in the Italian story The Adventures of Pinocchio.

“By the time the Grunge Era came around, the “slacker” and “loser” characters were heroes, the guys who knew that life was really all about having fun. We were a self-depreciating group of people who proudly declared that we were what our parents always wanted to be: laid back and carefree. “Loser” and “slacker” were terms of endearment. We knew that the whole suit-and-tie job was a one way ticket to becoming Principal Vernon from The Breakfast Club. So many of us ended up slacking our way into fast food jobs. We were the guys from Clerks.”
–
5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation:John Cheese, Cracked.Com

So what’s the value of your college major? Let’s take a look shall we? (I’ll wait..)

Chronicle of Higher Education, Median Earnings by Major and Subject Area, click link to see original article.

So if you visit the link, you’ll see that the humanities and arts earn crap for wages. I make more as a Specialist in the Army ($35,000) than I would have as a counselor (~$29,000). The real kick in the teeth is that arts and humanities that aren’t part of a major university are funded by grants and charity. Guess what’s down with our bad economy? With so many people out there with degrees supply exceeds demand. It’s a sellers market. Many question the idea that college actually socializes people. Many students show small improvements over high school in learning.

“But at some point between my grandfather’s time and now, getting your hands dirty became something to be ashamed of. My generation perpetuated that. We made it socially unacceptable to:

A) Do any job that requires sweat and/or a uniform.

B) Work 70-hour weeks to get ahead.
–
John Cheese

There is a shortage of skilled factory workers because The Federal and State Governments have pimped college as some kind of investment. Those higher paying jobs go overseas, the crap jobs stay here. Universities got fat on student loan money, the students got the debt. We’d call that usury if done in any other industry.

What a life lesson these 20-somethings are learning. The law of supply and demand trumps a sheepskin. Always has. Always will. I am 58 years old and no one has ever asked what my GPA is. People come to this blog and they don’t know whether I have a PhD or an eighth-grade education. They judge me on what I have to say and how I say it.

Underemployment rocks because it knocks out that sense of entitlement. People also learn what real work is.
…
“I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field,” he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State University. The counselor’s main advice: Pursue further education.

“Everyone is always telling you, ‘Go to college’,” Edwards said. “But when you graduate, it’s kind of an empty cliff.”
–Underemployment is good for college grads:April 23, 2012 by Don Surber

In The Adventures of Pinocchio, wayward boys turning into donkeys symbolizes what we call teens abandoning education. The children-turned donkeys are sold to salt mines in the story and Disney version of the film. In Italian culture, the donkey are associated with stupidity. It’s stupidity of a different kind that turns youth into entitled leftist jackasses. Young people are told that college is the natural place to go after school. College is dumbed down: the “hook up” culture, easy fluff courses (for credit), lowered standards and no academic rigor. Students think they can keep acting like a teenager (or child) until they graduate. And the attitude continues when it’s time to payback the loans.

Crushing debt and a shitty resume are a ticket to the salt mines of today. Many “college graduates” are working low paying service jobs now. The economy is in the dumps so there are engineers and physicists waiting tables, I’ll concede that. But a hard science or computer science major has jobs waiting no matter what. Those with soft subjects have to buck up or be the economy’s bitch. Those who went to party, those who think the world owes them a living are in for a rude awakening just like the wayward boys in the Land Of Toys.
(h/t: Ace of Spades April 24, 2012
Overnight Open Thread (4-24-2012),& instapundit)

America’s Army: We don’t need no stinkin’ draft

The year was 2004. Talk all over the interwebs and on tv was that George W. Bush was going to start a draft. Democrats were doing poorly at the polls despite rallies and protests.

“Today, more than 30 years since the draft ended in 1973, there’s buzz of bringing it back. Besides the countless Internet rumors of an imminent draft, there are in fact two proposals in Congress that would reinstitute conscription.

But the bills — one by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and another by Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-S.C. — are unlikely to go anywhere.”

–

Feeling a draft: Talk of conscription has young adults tuned in to politicsBy Natalie Miscolta-Cameron

John Kerry and John Edwards would lose to Bush and Cheney. John McCain and Sarah Palin would in turn lose to our current president. With a nation still at war in Afghanistan, the economy a mess, North Korea and Iran going nuclear, young people are still tuned out.
The left sold its current campaign as “not-Bush”. A Democrat in the White House would end the wars, bring money and troops home, the seas would recede, the Earth would heal etc. etc.

Now for some reason the left is shilling the idea that our nation and society is “out of touch” with the military and the current war in Afghanistan. For the past 10 years the left has lied and screamed at the military. From a war on military recruiters, angry protests and demands for troops to come home, to shitty Hollywood movies and shrill TV agitprop, the message is clear: the military is evil and soldiers are scum.

So it’s a shocking swerve that for some reason the left is all over the draft again.

. Over the past decade, this all-volunteer force has been put to the test and has succeeded, fighting two sustained foreign wars with troops standing up to multiple combat deployments and extreme stress.

This is precisely the reason it is time to get rid of the all-volunteer force. It has been too successful. Our relatively small and highly adept military has made it all too easy for our nation to go to war — and to ignore the consequences.

–Toss out the all-volunteer military:By Thomas E. Ricks, Washingtonpost.com

---

“A call up by Selective Service would force Americans to question a war’s necessity and probably would have prevented the killings. Nytimes.com: Lawrence J. Korb, on the Bales killing spree in Afghanistan.

“Reinstating the draft would compel the American public to be part of the shared sacrifice and moral issues at hand. “Nytimes.com: Rep. Charles B. Rangel,

The left says we’re out of touch with the military. That somehow the military belongs to someone else.

I call BULLSHIT.

Let’s look at the numbers shall we.
Via Wikipeida:

Component	Military (total)
United States Army	561,979
Army National Guard	362,015
Army Reserve	205,281

Now let’s get to the cold war (circa 1989)

NATO ORDER OF BATTLE 1989 V8.5, Last update by Mr. Johnson: 27 May 00, Last update by Pat Callahan: 6 April 10 (older PDF version at Scribed.com)

Component	Military (total)
Army (Active)	761,000
Army National Guard	454,000
Army Reserve	588,000

Holy bodycount Batman! The active Army was 1.35 times the size back when the Wall Came down. 1.25 for the National Guard and 2.86 times the size for the Reserve! If ever there was a need for a draft it was during the Cold War against those Dirty Commies. There were five Army divisions in Germany alone. The 8th Infantry, 2nd & 3rd Armored would cease to exist in 1992. There are now only two active brigades in Germany, with one being cut. Like when the Berlin Wall came down, the world is more peaceful now.

The US military has withdrawn from Iraq completely. And in 2014 most US troops will be out of Afghanistan as well.

With the talks of cutting why does the left want to go back to the draft? Some see draftees as “cheaper” than the volunteer force. No family programs, no MWR, no bonuses. The left and idiots on the right see them as:

Nowadays, everybody who’s nobody serves – a natural consequence of incentivizing service with signing bonuses, comped education, and plush pensions.
–TAH to Mande Wilkes; thanks for being a dick (Thisainthell.us)

Just pack’em, stack’em and rack’em, it’s how the left wants to fill the military. They long for the 1950′s, when young men got drafted out of high school like Elvis. Or were sent there by the courts(until the Supreme Court put a stop to that). Others see sacrifice or lack thereof. Like how the left was obsessed with George Bush’s daughters partying. As if he had some duty to send his daughters off to basic training.

Thomas Ricks, who I just quoted above, is a fellow at the Center for A New American Security. For wanting to abolish the service academies to trying to gut our retirement, these jack-wagons are all about the stupid. Sadly they now infest the Pentagon.

Would a draft make more American’s care about the military? No. The left shit on the GI as soon as Vietnam was over. LBJ (and JFK) sent the military on many adventures:

“In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the 82nd Airborne into the Dominican Republic to prevent what he called a second Cuba. He told Sen. J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.) that if he hadn’t had the deployment-ready military units, he would have had to rely on diplomacy to solve the problem.”
–
An all-volunteer military poses challenges for U.S.,Walter Pincus, WashingtonPost.Com

Oddly enough, I think Pincus was trying to advocate for a draft.

The reason the left wants to talk about putting young people in the military is that they have nothing to talk about. Not a damn thing. Green energy? NADA. Ending the war? We’re still fighting. The Economy and the “1%”? Not only is the economy in the toilet, but the very rich are doing even better after Bush.

“The left wants to conjure up the specter of conscription to equate Iraq with Vietnam. The issue has gained some traction because it is clear the U.S. Army is spread very thin by deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and needs to be rebuilt. But it does not follow a draft is necessary.“
–
Draft duplicity: William Hawkins, WashingtonTimes.com.

The last time the left thought a draft was a good idea this was the result:

Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 during American involvement in the Vietnam War and ended in December 1971.[2] Considered part of Johnson’s Great Society by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as “New Standards Men”
…
Although entrance requirements were loosened, all the Project 100,000 men were sent through the normal training processes with other recruits, and performance standards were thus the same for everyone.[4]

The men recruited or drafted under this program did not receive the same training as other recruits and draftees after Basic Training was completed. Mr. McNamara and his “Whiz Kids” insisted that these men had to be put into virtually all fields, and this was a disaster.

Again with the wiz kids and the think tanks. I wonder if the grandkids of those “Whiz Kids” work for CNAS or other Foggy Bottom Good Idea Factories.

It’s about getting out the youth vote, not talking about the economy and that your wallet is a lot slimmer but your taxes are higher. It’s about a big lie. And speaking of lies, here’s Ricks again:

We had a draft in the 1960s, of course, and it did not stop President Lyndon Johnson from getting into a ground war in Vietnam. But the draft sure did encourage people to pay attention to the war and decide whether they were willing to support it.

Resuming conscription is the best way to reconnect the people with the armed services. Yes, reestablishing a draft, with all its Vietnam-era connotations, would cause problems for the military, but those could never be as painful and expensive as fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq for almost nine years. A draft would be good for our nation and ultimately for our military.

Yup, a draft for “the young”. We don’t need more drugged out, criminal, spoiled mama’s little special snowflakes. It failed under LBJ. We had a dip in recruting when the war kicked off so the DoD gave out waivers for felonies. And now the DoD has to kick out the druggies and criminals they made the mistake of letting in. We need motivated people, not Forest Gump. Those who want to make a difference are. A Private in the Army or Marines, a Seaman Recruit or Airman Basic would rate “master” or “expert” in the Vietnam-era. Those on the left say they want to make a difference, but they offer no help for vets. They love them the phoney “vets”, the “psycho” vets and those who say they hate the military, but no jobs or love for real vets. They hate the successful vets who return to their communities. They hate seeing Marxists getting blow’d up, seeing Commie countries being beaten on the battlefield. They want the 60′s back.

The all volunteer military is a success and we got this Mr. Ricks. We don’t need a draft.

(h/t: blackfive.net, “hotair.com)

If I wanted America to Fail, Oligarchical Collectivism: Part II

Oligarchical Collectivism: Part II

Remember, if it can’t be grown, it must be mined.
(h/t: hotair.com)

The Theory and Practice of California’s Oligarchical Collectivism

The historical review describes how, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mechanised industrial production raised “the living standards of the average human being very greatly”, and that it became “clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared . . . hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations” — a threat to the Party’s perpetuity, because, “. . . if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would learn to think for themselves”, become politically conscious and so depose the ruling oligarchy; therefore, “. . . in the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance”. Given that large-scale, mechanised production could not be eliminated once invented, the Party arranges the destruction of surplus goods — before that makes “the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent”. Hence the perpetual war
– Wikipedia: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the fictional book that underpins Orwell’s 1984

“And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their “smart growth” plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. “What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s,” Mr. Kotkin declares.”
–
Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus, WSJ.com, via Instapundit.

…
But that’s just not realistic. If we did things purely by “organic” means and rejected synthetic methods, we could only support a world population of about 4 billion people. And if you think needing an additional 1.5 million cows to replace “pink slime” sounds like a lot, we’d require 1 billion more livestock for just the U.S. to replace synthetic nitrogen (plus 2 billion acres to plant feed crops for these animals).
–A red light on green food rhetoric, By Rick Berman (DailyCaller.Com)

I’ve always suspected that “Green Jobs” or anything “green” was a ploy to drag our economy down. Rush Limbaugh famously observed that many dirty commies became environmentalists after the Cold War ended. For the left, the USA was their last hope. Can’t take over with a coup, but they can vote their wacky policies in.

The government can’t pick winners in industry. Free markets mean growth and freedom. Yet we have a party that feels Americans are “soft”, need more “regulation” and this party has big donors who view Americans as stupid. Oh and a paranoid racist maxist was the White House’s “czar” for green jobs.

Cali has a problem with high speed rail. Californians want to drive their cars. They want to fly. They don’t want to pay for a train to nowhere. During the 70′s and 80′s the American public was told that solar power et al. was the future. Oil would be expensive the greens said. Oil would run out. War in the Middle East. Then it was the Green House Effect. Now Climate Change and saving the Planet. Billions wasted for bullshit. Trillions more if the UN has it’s way.

In 1984, Orwell had a crapsack world where the people were kept down by a police state and government repression AND a perpetual “war”. This war had no possible end. At one point a huge floating fortress is constructed just to soak up manpower and steel. The shortages from this war kept everyone under the thumb of “Big Brother”. The ruling Party lived better off as they controlled the access to resources. Orwell guessed right about Marxism. In the USSR, the Communists had hand built limos and access to better medical care while the average Soviet had lines and shortages (and shitty medical care).
Remember folks, the left (celebs, politicians, activists, journalists) are like you and me only better! They’ll be able to afford houses, cars and other nice things. They can get guns and travel by air without being strip searched by MiniLuv the TSA.

This just goes to show that the left is good at fighting, not good at running things. They need a “forever” war. The oikophobia led to an embrace of Communism (as it was murdering millions), appeasement of radical Islam (ditto) and green wackos (give’em time). They want us to believe that Mother Earth[tm] is in GRAVE DANGER!

The title refers to both 1984 and the sad, sad state California is in. Cali was once the “Golden State”. From the Gold Rush of the 19th Century to the era of Silicon Valley in the late 20th, it was opportunity. Then left of course smelled money. From hippies, to cults, to political radical to nude encounter groups, everything weird and leftist flocked to Cali. The “Blue State” (high taxes and lots of redtape) model was born there . And there was born the lie that our would be Commie overlords want to help us.

Bullshit. They just want us to be proles and go back to the USSR.

I give you Hans Rosling as the antidote to the Green & Blue lies, there is hope for the future:

So it seems that someone’s fond of dogmeat…

Seems our president admitted to feasting on dog in his younger days.

Go to the field for a week and come back to the strangest things…

Update:

If you still tell “She can see Russia from her house!” jokes, but you’re whining about a few days of #ObamaEatsDogs,#YouMightBeALiberal.

— ‘Jim’ ‘Treacher’ (@jtLOL) April 21, 2012

Can’t get to the choppa…

So it seems that the Air Force is trying to replace it’s old UH-1 Huey’s.

USAF Still Deciding What it Wants in New Choppers
By John Reed Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 12:04 pm
Posted in Air, Policy

Air Force officials are still making up their minds as to whether the service will move to buy an existing chopper or a new one to replace the service’s ageing UH-1N Huey utility helicopters and HH-60 Pave Hawk combat search and rescue choppers.

The Air Force has a problem with picking new aircraft. The plan to replace their KC-135 was such a goat rope it sent an official to prison. They killed the C-27J program the Army wanted.

And now the sordid tale of the UH-1 replacement. Hueys are associated with the Vietnam war. The distinctive “wap-wap” of the rotors, “Fortunate Son” playing in the background…

The Chair Force uses the choppers to help secure the vast fields of ICBM’s and ferry VIPs around DC. Being made in America back when men wore hats to work, the Beatles were playing concerts and Detroit still made cars (and not shitty rappers), the UH-1′s are long in the tooth. So a plan was hatched to get some UH-60′s from the Army. The Blackhawk was made to replace the Vietnam war era chopper and the taxpayer already paid for it.

Cue outrage by industry and professional government spending gadflys.

Industry wants to sell new aircraft. Budget watches were angry about the spending shenanigans (no-bid contracts) of the Bush Administration.

“Buying the UH-60 comes with a fixed, known cost, and can be done now. But buying any other aircraft, or even just running a competition, even if the Blackhawk wins, introduces both delays into the program, and price uncertainties. Further, does anyone think that if there was an open competition for the CVLSP, the Air Force wouldn’t succumb to the temptation to load the requirements up with goodies that should really be in the “nice, but not needed” category? “
–
Xbradtc, showing more common sense than many in on Capital Hill
(except Gen. Norton Schwartz )

The bad economy almost forced the USAF to take the Marines hand-me downs. Thus they inherit choppers at the end of their life cycle that need major work, to replace choppers at the end of their life cycle that need major work. Instead there will be a competition :

“For [the Huey replacement], we’re anticipating a summer 2011 draft request for proposal release and the final RFP early fall,” said Maj. Gen. Randal D. Fullhart, a top service aircraft-buyer. “We’re proceeding toward an initial operating capability for common vertical lift support platform program in 2015.”
– AF lays out helo-buying strategy, By Philip Ewing

Let’s see how that worked out for the Army:

“The Army, however, is still the Army. There’s a danger it could just go from one extreme to another and become so gun shy about new programs that it forces itself to take baby steps when it could make strides, but won’t for fear of stumbling again. And at very least, as you’ve read here, all this testing and evaluation isn’t free. Service officials have to take care that the NIE and the rest of the new evaluation infrastructure doesn’t get so expensive that the Army risks the progress it has been hoping for.“–
The Army’s new golden age of testing,By Philip Ewing

Clearly, if you want a successful program, keep Philip Ewing and XbradTC the hell away from your office…

Seriously, this is wrong on so many levels. A simple program becomes mired in proposals and PowerPoint slides. Requirements creep and seep until we can’t afford it. Hell the proposed Ground Combat Vehicle is now at 70+ tons and it’s a troop carrier!

Something needs to be done before the DoD gets 80′s era spending in a 70′s economy. We can’t afford boondoggles and cuts. Someone has to take charge, ’cause the current leadership aint..

Of Housewives and Presidents

“But he doesn’t connect on that issue either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, ‘Well, you know my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues and when I listen to my wife that’s what I’m hearing.’ Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why do we worry about their future. [...] He just seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women and I think that comes across and I think that that’s going to hurt him over the long term. He just doesn’t really see us as equal.”
–Hilary Rosen opens mouth and inserts foot.

It’s the new tone! Call a woman a “‘cunt,’ ‘bitch,’ ‘whore’” if she’s a conservative. Attack an MS & cancer survivor who raised five children without nannies. And offer a back-handed “apology” too.

Hmm..women who stay at home while a husband works? Conservative, like guns, no nannies, traditional values…

Not "real women" according to left.

The left hates people. Average Americans are just cattle for the elites to whip. Of course cows get slaughtered. Abortion, taxes, political correctness, environmental wackiness. It’s just one set of wannabe elites bitching that they can’t have you shot for thoughtcrimes.

The spouse of a police officer, doctor, firefighter, lawyer or any profession with long hours and major commitment has a tough job. Often they sacrifice earning power so they can be with children.
That don’t matter to the feminazis who declare that any stay at home mom is not a real woman.
The honor of being real women goes to the libertines who abort the results of their drunken hook-ups. Welfare teen moms, political hacks and rich lefties who say the right things. People who don’t work for a living but expect the rest of us to pay for them.

“We are proud to provide pro-bono support to Sandra Fluke, an incredibly courageous young woman who is standing up for the rights of women everywhere in the face of sustained, personal attacks. This week, we began helping Sandra, a full-time law student, manage the enormous volume of incoming media requests …
…
I am proud of our staff for donating their time and energy to work with Sandra during this important and difficult time.” – Hilary Rosen, Managing Partner, SKDKnickerbocker
(Washington Post quoted in:legalinsurrection.com )

Unlike a rich bitch going to law school on her parent’s dime (and expecting the tax payers to pay for her good times), a non-working spouse has to balance a budget. A man or woman staying home with kids has to make sure they get to school, go to the doctor and make sure the younglings are fed. That’s a real job folks. Kids are expensive and time consuming until they turn 18. They can’t raise taxes or get a government bailout. Nor are they able to get free PR flacks. Or nannies.

Ann Romney could have had nannies raise the kids while she worked in some office job. She chose to be a part of their lives. The left either views kids as a burden (or worse) or they pawn them off on nannies (Ask Judge Kimba Wood).

If we think of the household as a household, Ann Romney’s decision to stay at home makes perfect economic sense: Her decision to be a full-time mother enormously improved the quality of life for Mr. Romney, for the couple’s five sons, and — let’s not overlook this critical factor — for Mrs. Romney herself.
–The Economics of Ann Romney
, Kevin D. Williamson, http://www.nationalreview.com

Of course the left doesn’t understand families. Evil can’t comprehend good.
(but someone in the Whitehouse makes sure they stay away from Rosen’s stink, behold the gusty call!)