What a joke this crackpot old man has become:
Welch said he will no longer contribute to Fortune following critical coverage of the former CEO of General Electric, saying he would get better “traction” elsewhere. On Friday, Welch suggested that the Obama administration, calling them “these Chicago guys,” had manipulated the monthly jobs report in order to make the economy look better than it actually is just weeks before the election. Welch has been battered by criticism since making the suggestion on Twitter.
Monday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer said there were a number of things wrong with Welch’s tweet, the biggest of which was that the economy doesn’t back up the former executive’s claim that the numbers were faked.
“I think it’s exactly the opposite of what Jack Welch is saying,” Serwer said. “Things are actually improving.”
CNNMoney, which shares content with Fortune.com, ran a story on Friday covering Welch’s tweet. The piece said that even conservative economists thought Welch was wrong to question the jobs numbers. On Tuesday, Fortune.com ran a story detailing Welch’s record as a job destroyer. GE lost nearly 100,000 jobs during the 20 years in which Welch ran the company. “I never put myself out there as an employment agency,” Welch told Fortune.
Following the story, Welch sent an e-mail to Reuters’ Steve Adler and Serwer saying that he and his wife Suzy, who have jointly written for Reuters and Fortune in the past, were “terminating our contract” and will no longer be sending our “material to Fortune.” Reuters’ story about Welch’s tweet quoted money manager and blogger Barry Ritholtz, who said Welch’s comments were laughable. Reuters wrote that Ritholtz comments were referring to allegations that Welch regularly manipulated GE’s earnings during his tenure as CEO in order to best Wall Street profit estimates.
How long before he is at Fox News and Town Hall?
The more important thing about this is just how thin-skinned our elites are- they have everything in the world going for them, yet when they say something factually inaccurate or stupid, they can’t handle even tepid criticism. It’s the same with all of them. We’ve all read the New Yorker piece about our poor, victimized millionaires and billionaires, we all remember the reaction of the Koch boys, who spend fortunes influencing elections but then get all sorts of butthurt and launch a PR campaign after Jane Mayer wrote about them. And who could forget this classic:
We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
It’s time everyone starts to realize that these guys aren’t that tough and they aren’t that smart. They’re just lucky, they’re just pampered and sheltered, and they’re basically petulant trust fund douchebags. They’re the photo-negative of the dread-locked pot-smoking trustafarian- instead of a jamaican knit hat and a hemp hoodie, they wear Brooks Brothers and Bruno Magli’s. But they’re just as entitled and just as worthless.
And no trustafarian ever brought down a world economy with his greed.
shortstop
Plus, Welch has an Elmer Fudd voice, so when he whines he’s even more laughable.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Petulant Trust Fund Douchebags would make a great band name although for the life of me, I can’t imagine what genre of music such a band would play.
Oh, and that picture remains one of *the* best graphics that totally sums up how Our Galtian Overloads fucked up everything. In this case a picture speaks a gazillion dollars in lost pensions, economic output, etc., etc.,.
Xecky Gilchrist
My Poedar (Poe’s law radar) seriously redlines when I see this “we eat what we kill” piece. Is there any indication it isn’t really a parody to troll the puffed egos and wannabes of Wall Street?
kindness
After what I saw of Welch yesterday wrt his meltdown and defending his meltdown I wondered how a person like that EVER became a CEO of anything, let alone of GE.
I actually felt sorry for him. It seemed to me the Alzenheimers had caught up with him. Now it looks more like he was trolling for that sweet sweet Faux News gig. Well, I gotta hand it to him. Alzenheimers will make working at Fox much easier to swallow what ever Ailes is selling that day.
Napoleon
Funny thing about that second extended quote is that the author doesn’t even bother to pretend that he has given a reason why the financial sector as presently structured contributes value to the country.
Omnes Omnibus
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Imagine a Vampire Weekend/Dave Matthews Band mash up.
scav
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Some combination of whiney fifes and joke fart things is what I’m getting whiffs of.
Joel
Jack Welch looks like Kuato, acts like Cohagen.
negative 1
I would LOVE to see these guys try and teach public school. I’m sure the students would respect them, and definitely do exactly as they said. They would have no problems getting kids to sit down, listen to them, or generally not ignore everything coming out of their mouths.
One thing about the article is true – I bet they’d be complaining pretty quick.
blingee
Sounds like he already got offered something at Faux. I’m sure they are keeping a seat warm for him and just working out the details. He’ll fit right in with the rest of the crooks and liars.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see him on Celebrity Apprentice too. Is that piece of shit show still on?
negative 1
@kindness: because he was a fool then? His great contribution to business was laying people off. The fallback of the uncreative, unqualified faux-tough guy.
geg6
How is that self-proclaimed MoUs show themselves to be nothing but childish, little wimps? They are always telling me that they rule the world, but if that is so, why are they always crying about someone being mean to them? Especially, us proles? I mean, aren’t we just the replaceable cogs in the wheels of their vast enterprises? Are we not just as low as the dirt under their feet? Why do they need us to validate them?
Keith G
So?
geg6
@blingee:
Well, they did cut Caribou Barbie’s contract, so they have the cash available for Welch. Somehow, I don’t think Welch will bring the sparkles to the FOX audience the way Sarah did.
muddy
I dunno, don’t they usually find people that are at least adequate in looks? They like that he said that shit, but he’s not photogenic enough to be on all the time. People should be careful with their fingers around him, he looks like a snapping turtle.
ETA: what geg6 said.
trollhattan
Somebody in comments below linked to this bit of Uberclasse butthurt.
Coffee’s for Closers!
http://gawker.com/5950189/the-ceo-who-built-himself-americas-largest-house-just-threatened-to-fire-his-employees-if-obamas-elected
ericblair
@Napoleon:
Yep, some vastly overpaid prick from the New Yorker article goes Galt and what, we have one less hedge fund in the world? Oh noes, whatever will we do. It seems that the rich fuckers who are running companies that actually, you know, do something, aren’t the ones who are always whining about taking their marbles and going home.
Nicole
@geg6:
Because if we’re not validating them, it means we’re soon coming after them with torches and pitchforks.
trollhattan
Also, too, what Welch did to GE Meg Whitman is now doing to HP. How do these assholes keep falling up?
Bob2
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/10/06/the-problem-with-high-frequency-trading/
Well, there’s always this.
BGinCHI
How will Fortune survive!!??
These fucking people.
Linnaeus
@geg6:
Because neofeudalism needs cultural buy-in from the lower orders.
geg6
@Nicole:
Well, I’m certainly down with that. Is there a sign up sheet?
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
It would have to be totally unoriginal, completely suck, and yet be inexplicably popular. Guaranteed SNL gig for sure.
Regarding Jack Welch, I’ll also utter the following blasphemy: The blatant stupidity and ignorance of so many of our moneyed elites only shows how rigged the system is.
No way any of these fuckers had the brains to earn it on their own.
Villago Delenda Est
This vile toad needs a tumbrel ride, stat. After he’s waterboarded to reveal where all his assets are hidden, so they can be confiscated and put to better use.
Reasonable 4ce
Off topic. But in case anyone missed it, here is the latest 3-day Gallup tracking poll that pegs Obama’s job approval at 53 percent.
gVOR08
I’ve said for years that they not only want to steal every nickel in the country, they want the rest of us to admire their chutzpa while they do it.
Mudge
They are smart enough to work in an industry that privitizes the profits and socializes the losses, and we all are stupid enough to allow that to continue. Always remember that Mitt made millions regardless of whether an acquired company survived or went under.
ranchandsyrup
I, for one, cannot wait until the Kenyusurper wins and the winger chorus has to resort to “WE ARE STILL A CENTER RIGHT NATION” to feel like they “won” something.
blingee
@trollhattan: Yup, I can’t understand why people keep hiring Meg Whitman with her record of running companies into the ground. Carly Fiorna cut HP off at the knees and now they hired Meg to finish the job.
All these people know how to do is slash and burn to get the numbers up for a few quarters but ultimately destroy the core of the company.
aimai
@Linnaeus:
Well, but its weirder than that because in this case its the neo feudalists who need the cultural by in. The Barons didn’t give a fuck what the serfs thought about them. But these guys apparently shed bitter tears at the thought that Barack Obama, a jumped up serf if ever there was one, didn’t tug his non existent forlock in their general direction.
The only thing that Obama should have done differently was to follow the precepts of Louis the XIV and a) centralize power, b) strip the nobility of their power base, c) create a lavish court that they needed to come to in order to keep their priviliges, d) institute backless stools at cocktail parties to be assigned to temporary favorites.
aimai
Nethead Jay
@Joel: Hahaha, well done.
ChrisNYC
The thing I enjoyed most about the Welch thing is the reflected embarrassment to the mcnbc and nbc news people who sit there and kiss his ass and some of whom no doubt consider themselves part of the elite on the basis of their acquaintance with him and people like him. He’s a tantrum throwing baby and sounding like Trump (“sending our material” oh please gross old man and gross wife — no one wants your material). Sort of a nice Hollywoodification of all of them.
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: Given Whitman’s ironclad and well-known record of failure and claiming credit for other’s accomplishments, I think I could say that’s what they hired her for.
But what the fuck did HP employees do to deserve what’s happened to them? Good friend of mine was there during the Fiorina years. Quit right before everything tanked in late 2007; been unemployed ever since. His girlfriend finally left, he got foreclosed out of his house. He doesn’t care. He’s not working for HP anymore and he’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him.
cckids
@negative 1:
Yeah, they’d have NO problem with the $35-40K salary, would they? No private schools, no “charity” benefits, no awesome new car every year. Yeah, you get the summers off, so you can go compete with your high school students for part time jobs at Burger King. No vacations in the Hamptons, skiing at Vail, etc. Enjoy, asshole.
Brachiator
OT: gotta catch a train. Has anyone seen the story about Canada’s war on science? Something about defunding ozone tracking? Any Canadian posters up on this?
More later if I can get a Wi Fi connection.
pseudonymous in nc
And as Barry Ritholz noted (and Krugman linked), Crazy Uncle Jack’s tenure at GE was noted for its remarkably… predictable quarterlies.
Jamus4
Again with the hippy punching, Cole?
Honestly, how does this analogy make your point any stronger:
“they’re the photo-negative of the dread-locked pot-smoking trustafarian”?
Is this some sort of weird “both sides do it” argument? What, one is completely harmless, and the other is very harmful?
Seriously, I hate chainsaw Jack too, but if some of his heirs decide to blow the family fortune on weed and rock concerts, I would view this as a very positive development.
Chris T.
When they ask:
I have an answer for them: Yes, not only do I think that, it’s actually true.
russell
That piece was floating around in the spring of ’10, so about two and a half years ago.
Think that guy is teaching kids or mowing lawns?
One of the big revelations of the financial crisis of ’08 has been what insufferable pricks work in investment capital.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Chris T.:
They think that they’ll have computers front-running the classroom for them.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Similar tale with a happier outcome–a friend worked for HP’s printer division in San Diego during the Fiorina years, and actually survived her reign of terror. Apparently the place broke into spontaneous applause when her resignation was announced. [awkward]
Anyway, he left soon thereafter to do the same thing as a consultant and has never been happier.
ding dong
Jack Welch and his ilk remind me of two people I knew through work. One was a big shot at GM in its heyday and the other guy was upper management at Travelers. They both boasted about getting out of paying taxes with the way they had structured their finances. It took everything for me not to kick them very hard in the balls especially since they both thougt it was oh so hilarious. They’re both dead now.
Capt. Seaweed
Laugh it up. He’ll be our new Sec. of the Treasury soon enough.
burnspbesq
@The Moar You Know:
HP is a bloated carcass of a company that continues to exist because the margins on consumables for its installed base of printers are astronomical. There’s plenty of blame to go around.
shortstop
The mouth of the Republican party is crazy, irrelevant old men.
Eastwood, Welch, Trump, Sununu. Who’s next? Bernie Madoff screaming from prison about how Obama has failed him?
kindness
@negative 1: No Welch is worse than that. GE used to be one of the industrial giants here in the US. Welch turned them into a brokerage house and let the manufacturing fall aside. Now when GE’s Finance division isn’t killing it like the old days, GE dies little by little. And the beginning of the demise is Welch’s fault.
shortstop
@Jamus4: Um, check your premises. Trustafarians aren’t hippies.
shortstop
@ding dong: And you’re not, so you win!
smith
Is Jack Welch a grown-up or a 5-year-old child being told “no” for the first time? It’s probably been so long since someone hasn’t fawned over him, he doesn’t know how to handle it.
What a fucking crybaby he is. Does he realize how utterly butthurt and babyish he sounds?
I want to apologize to all 5-year-olds out there for comparing them to a scumbag like Jack Welch.
Stooleo
Don’t forget this prick, who is threatening to fire his employees if Obama wins.
smith
@Stooleo:
Isn’t that illegal?
ericblair
@ding dong:
Excellent work. Please standby for new instructions.
JoyfulA
@trollhattan: Oh, dear, and when you follow the links back and back, you find out this guy made his money selling underwater swamp land, before he used that money for his time-share business. Another Galtian overlord whose efforts won’t be missed.
Culture of Truth
I bet I can hold my pee longer than Jack Welch
Joel
@Stooleo: Isn’t that coercion? I believe that’s illegal.
Bill E Pilgrim
Yes, no one was complaining or raising warnings during the boom and bubble years, except Paul Krugman and lots of others.
But then it’s true you didn’t hear them, just as you don’t hear them now, but instead dismiss them as shrill and crazy loons chattering in the distance.
trollhattan
@JoyfulA:
No kidding. Fricking time share mogul is at best a half-step above casino mogul. Maybe he and Adelson can both “quit” and have a playdate?
Moochers, the both of them.
trollhattan
@JoyfulA:
Oh noez, I’ze in FYWP moderation on accounta using a bad word.
No kidding. Fricking time share mogul is at best a half-step above ca$1n0 mogul. Maybe he and Adelson can both “quit” and have a playdate?
Moochers, the both of them.
Culture of Truth
The market is going like gangbusters under the usurper, so shuddup
Southern Beale
Oh, well clearly you missed the latest from “King of Versailles” David Siegel, who tells his employees they’ll all be fired if Obama is re-elected.
Yes our Galtian overlords are indeed a whiny bunch these days.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Culture of Truth:
You’d probably lose. Welch’s prostate determines when he’ll pee.
Gex
It is telling about Wall Street that manufacturing and many white collar jobs can be outsourced. But when financial services came up for globalization, suddenly it was a terrible idea. Hmmm…
We could get smarter financial services from India for less than 40% of our GDP. But we can’t because they are protectionist in this one single area.
ETA: What good does it do us to have Wall Street double our 401ks but ultimately tank them before we ever retire? I mean, if you had hundreds of thousands in your 401k in 2003, that doesn’t help you much when you have tens of thousands in them now after Wall Street had their way.
Bill Arnold
@Bill E Pilgrim:
What’s particularly amusing is that the DJI has roared back to within spitting distance of 14000 again, during Obama’s first term. (edit: culture of truth beat me to it.)
Roger Moore
@kindness:
He was 30 years younger when he became CEO of GE. He was probably both generally mentally sharper and more flexible and, perhaps more important, hadn’t spent the past few decades being sucked up to by a gang of sycophants and yes men. Not everyone can go through that experience without losing touch with reality and believing their shit doesn’t stink.
Comrade Mary
Yep: Canada (read: the dupes and crooks and psychopths who voted in Steve and his merry band) has cut the funds for ozone monitoring ($13.3 million a year). Coincidentally, Steve catered to his little boner by spending $28 million on celebrations of the War of 1812.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/09/canada-ozone-science-cuts?cat=environment&type=article
Comrade Mary
Yep: Canada (read: the dupes and crooks and psychopths who voted in Steve and his merry band) has cut the funds for ozone monitoring ($13.3 million a year). Coincidentally, Steve catered to his little boner by spending $28 million on celebrations of the War of 1812.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/09/canada-ozone-science-cuts?cat=environment&type=article
Chris
@trollhattan:
I fucking love the fact that they truly believe they’re the only ones in the world who’ve ever had to work a five AM to ten PM shift.
Captain C
@blingee: Maybe the board has been continually shorting their own company, and for years? I can’t think of any other reason that makes sense (other than generic extreme incompetence). Going from Fiorina to Whitman is like going from Akili Smith to Ryan Leaf at quarterback.
D0n Camillo
@Joel:
He did something similar in 2000. Boasted about in “The Queen of Versailles” that he helped elect Bush. Bush returned the favor by tanking the economy and nearly putting him out of business.
Higgs Boson's Mate
OT: Buried in Romney’s foreign policy speech delivered yesterday at VMI.
I won’t go into how many things are wrong with this speech. Most here will discern them in seconds, but submarines? They’ll definitely keep AQ’s battleships in port.
PeakVT
Even if that was true, we’d all be better off. It would be much better to have the bankster shitheels doing something socially useful, like teaching, or landscaping, or pretty much anything other than wrecking the global economy and generally being parasites.
Culture of Truth
See I pee when I want to period
Higgs Boson's Mate
@PeakVT:
The only way that they’ll take ours is if we get tired of hearing them whine for it.
They actually think that they’re capable, dangerous, little dudes.
Chris
@gVOR08:
I said a similar thing about the Iraq War. It’s not enough for them to have completely destroyed a country based on a gaggle of blatant lies: no, they truly expect the Iraqi people to love them and thank them for it, they truly believe they deserve it, and their indignation when it doesn’t happen is very sincere.
There’s something in the water when you get to a certain level of wealth or power. I mean, you could compare them to a kid frying ants with a magnifying glass or pulling wings of a fly, but even those kids don’t usually expect to be thanked on bended knee or rewarded with a cupboard full of cookies for what he was doing.
Culture of Truth
When Romney is done telling the world to screw off I’m sure they’ll be happy to be his dancing monkey
PurpleGirl
@muddy: Sometimes looks don’t matter. New York 1 has Ed Koch and Al D’Amato on one of their political commentary shows. And they are two the more ugly people in politics.
Culture of Truth
If one does, though, don’t despair, send the boy to business school
Paul
@Bill Arnold:
Not bad for a Muslim Socialist, is it?! Hell compare that to the conservative capitalist Bush under whose term the Dow actually dropped in value.
danimal
One of the amazing things about Mitt Romney’s Good Week last week was that the crazies were not getting much attention. In the midst of rending garments and pulling hair, maybe we should remember that Mr. Welch is only the tip of a very tall iceberg. If it looks at all like the GOP is going to have power, the crazies will all jump in front of all available microphones or post their Twitteridiocies for all the world to see. They can’t help themselves.
Do not despair. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
PurpleGirl
@trollhattan: Whitman is only continuing the hatchet job begun by Carly Fiorina.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
Thank FSM they spun off Agilent, so the innovative, useful part of the company is going to survive the coming crash.
Paul
This guy just doesn’t get it. So out of touch. People, the average Joes as he calls them, are angry because we had to bail the banks etc out. We had to bail them out while we at the same time had our own homes foreclosed. We didn’t get bailed out. You did!
gelfling545
@negative 1: Oh, yeah! Before I retired I often invited folks who were telling me how “soft” teachers had it to come visit my classroom. (I did suggest they up their insurance first, of course.) No one ever did, though.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
“Please Go Galt”
I’ve been screaming that for close to four years now. So if things get bad, you’re going to take your ball and go home? PLEASE, just fucking DO IT already! You’ll be replaced by hundred of new up-and-comers marginally less greedy than yourself, and society will go right on without you.
What’s that? No, it won’t, because you’re soooo special that you’re literally the only ones on Earth who could do your job, and if we raise taxes from their lowest point in eighty years to their previous lowest point in eighty years, all of a sudden all the people like you will disappear? (Like they did in the mid-20th century, amirite, when taxes were MUCH higher than anyone’s contemplating now?)
Okay. Call. I’ve been wrong before. Go ahead and prove me wrong. It’s okay, you deserve it! Ungrateful society (and it’s not just me, there’s between 47% or 70% of us depending on which of your candidates is counting) deserves to be deprived of your brilliance for failing to appreciate it, so stop trying to save us from ourselves and just retire already. After all, Obama is THE most extreme socialist left-wing president ever, it can’t possibly get worse than this, so you’d better go before it’s too late.
… You’re not gone? Hmm. Whyever would that be?
Bulworth
Sigh. Guess we won’t have Jack Welch to kick around anymore.
LanceThruster
Q: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?
A: Since you’re so rich, how come you’re not smart?
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
The best thing about the “We Eat What We Kill” guy is that he really believes he could make $5,000 over a summer by hitting fly balls to the baseball team.
These people really are beyond loathesome. Hey, we all know these guys work hard. They work loooong hours. But the thing that pisses me off more than anything else is that this dickwad–and, I guess, most of these dickwads–think nobody else does, too. Has he never seen how hard people working crappy jobs at some cash register work? I bet they don’t take hour-long lunches, either; I bet they go without stopping to take a piss, too. Only they don’t wolf down their food or hold it in for hours because they might not make quite as much money if they did; they do it because if they took a few minutes longer to eat, or stopped to tap a kidney, they’d lose their fucking jobs.
That’s what these fuckheads–apologies to Just Some Fuckhead–don’t understand. They work 37 hours a day, 8 days a week because they’re greedy, and they make more money if they work more; they can choose how much to work (within reason). The people this dickwad sneers at don’t get to choose how long or how hard to work: they work as long as their bosses tell them to work, and if they don’t, they’re out on their asses. If the boss wants them to work unpaid overtime, hey, they’d damned well better do it, or their children will be going hungry by the end of the week.
I’d like to meet one of these creatures someday, just to shake some sense into them. Fuck. This guy calls teachers asking for better pay “whiners” while he whines that people are saying mean things about him that hurt his feelings. I’d like to shake it into him that if the worst thing you have to worry about is that if people say mean things about you, then you’re pretty fucking lucky, asshole.
I sometimes feel like I’m going to put my foot through the wall if I ever hear anybody say that liberals or Democrats are “jealous” of the rich, or that we want to “punish success”. I can’t speak for everybody, but all I really want is that these fucks play fair, that they not fuck the country over to make their money, that they fork over a fair share of what they earn to the government to help keep this country civilized, and, maybe most of all, that they acknowledge how much has gone their way in life: A sense of decency, a little compassion and a little humility. A bit of self-awareness or at least a sense of irony would be nice, too. But I guess that’s too much to ask.
Chris
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I’ve always found American whining about NATO allies “not pulling their weight” odd. Because one NATO ally, named France, DID decide to pull its weight back around 1960, in the most drastic way possible – it pulled out of NATO, had American troops taken off its soil, developed its own nuclear deterrent, took responsibility for its own security and stopped looking to America to help ensure it.
What did America do? Say “thank you, we wish all European countries did this?” Oh, no – spent the next fifty years mewling about our supposed “ingratitude.” How very curious; it’s almost as if Washington doesn’t actually WANT Europe moving out from under its thumb.
pseudonymous in nc
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
That’s a spectacular fucking lie, and even Kessler had to take note of it.
The US has 11 carrier strike groups. To note that that this is more naval capacity than the rest of the world put together actually understates the point. Yale professor Paul Kennedy has repeatedly said, with good evidence, that this kind of military disparity between a great power and lesser powers has never existed in history, and is pretty much unsustainable.
…of course, Gary Brecher’s argument is that carrier strike groups are floating salvage in asymmetrical warfare, but that just emphasises how Mittens is a old Cold Warrior advised by PNAC retreads.
Violet
I so hope the era of worshiping Gorden Gekko is winding down. We need some new kinds of heroes. Creators. Builders. Adventurers. Discoverers. Anything but the blind worship of born on third base rich guys.
Culture of Truth
“We taught the Republicans a lesson in 1916, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then…”
RareSanity
You guys got it all wrong…
Fox News is for right-wing ideologues, CNBC is the place for canonized, former Masters of the Universe.
The boot-licking douchebags over there can’t get enough of Crazy Uncle Jack.
Culture of Truth
“Each man with satchel of gazpacho!”
SatanicPanic
@JoyfulA: Yeah, timeshares, seriously, there’s something the economy can’t do without. Right up there with costly online college diplomas and payday loans.
Culture of Truth
Romney 2012: Gee Our Old Lasalle Ran Great
tamied
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: That’s to fight off those mean Russians! Don’t you know they’re our number 1 enemy?
Violet
OT–For fuck’s sake, the current top headline and story at TPM:
Followed by this:
Yes, yes, let’s analyze just how freaked out Obama supporters should be. Pay no attention to actual news.
Chris
@tamied:
Well, they certainly will be, if Mittens has his way.
Paul
@RareSanity:
He is the posterboy for why I NEVER have the sound when watching CNBC. I might as well be watching the Iran government channel. They are just as conservative and critical of Obama.
danielx
Right. They’re badasses on a trading floor and clinical sociopaths to boot, but from everything I’ve read they’re physical cowards. I’d like a picture of a former Wall Streeter’s face when he realizes there are consequence to treating someone’s kids like junior traders, by abusing them.
Right at the instant he realizes he’s in for major league plastic and orthodontic work and all his money isn’t going to help him.
Culture of Truth
Romney’s foreign policy isn’t based on Rocky IV. It’s based on Red Dawn.
Chris
@Violet:
I remember reading an article late in the 2008 election cycle where the author confidently predicted this campaign as the ultimate demise of the New Deal coalition; he said the only people the Democrats could attract anymore, especially with Obama in charge, were black people and the “liberal elite,” and with that kind of coalition he was headed for a spectacular defeat; every other demographic in the country was bolting for the Republican Party, and would probably stay there. It was the kind of article you’d expect from a 2004 “Permanent Republican Majority” believer.
That article’s come back to my mind a lot in the last week, as I watch the conservative and mainstream medias (renewing their beloved alliance) run around like chicken with their heads cut off screaming that Obama 2012 is dead and buried.
PeakVT
Relevant to the interests of this thread: Why banks shouldn’t trade.
venice
Wish I’d written that…
Linnaeus
@aimai:
Some of is just complaining by our thin skinned would-be lords, but I think there’s even more at work here. The lords of old may not have needed the approval of the serfs, but the institutions of their time and place were on their side; they were the institutions of their time and place (with exceptions, of course). But the political, economic, and social change we’ve had in the intervening centuries between then and now means that today’s lords can’t base their power in sheer force.
And so culture becomes an even more important tool for the neofeudalists: get nonelites to buy into elite framing, e.g, “job creators”, “makers vs. takers”, etc. so that they 1) use the machinery of democracy to give power to enablers of neofeudalism and 2) offer little to no resistance when the institutions that tend to equalize power are undermined.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ve worked with the MOTU’s. They’re idiots.
John Cole
@Jamus4:
Dude. Hippies are not trustafarians. If you don’t know what a trustafarian is or why they deserve your scorn, go spend a week in Boulder, CO and get back to me.
JustRuss
Among his many sins, leave us not forget that Welch was responsible for putting Timmeh Russert at the top of NBC News. Every time I see Spawn of Russert I can’t help thinking Welch is having a little FU chuckle at our expense.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@pseudonymous in nc:
I was told, many times, that the primary missions of the USN were to keep open SLOCs (Sea Lanes of Communication) and to project power. The SLOCs seem to be fairly open (What ever happened to the Somali pirates BTW?) so the only other use of all of that floating hardware is to project power. Romeny is too stupid to see it that way, but you can bet that his neocon BFFs sure aren’t.
gogol's wife
@Violet:
I made the mistake of starting to read Daily Kos again, and now I regret it. When things looked good, they were crowing in a way that I thought was “counting your chickens.” Now they’re dumping on Obama for his “crappy debate performance.” It occurred to me in the middle of the night that we were all worried about an “October surprise,” and we thought it would be something like the collapse of the Eurozone, Israel attacking Iran and starting a regional conflagration, etc., etc. You know, something big. Who could have known it would be one off performance in a debate against a shamelessly lying opponent, followed by the complete implosion of our supposed allies? I’m completely depressed by this development.
Anoniminous
@pseudonymous in nc:
And the Millennium Challenge Wargames.
This without drone launched anti-ship missiles. If Ripper had had those it’s a good bet the entire fleet would have been (virtual) fish habitat.
I note for the cost of one F/A-18E/F Super Hornet ($66.9 million) a nation can buy 10 MQ-1 Predators and the control systems to run ’em. So for the price of one carrier air squadron an OpFor could throw 120 to 140 armed drones with a mix-and-match of roughly 1,000 kgs of missiles into the attack or (roughly) one Chinese HY-1/HY-2 Silkworm or one Exocet and two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
Surface ships are a stupid buy even with today’s technology.
FlipYrWhig
@Violet: Josh Marshall’s HuffPo Junior act — HuJu? — has been wearing thin for several years now. “Panic: Is It Too Late To?”
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: Some people like to be depressed. They bleed just to know they’re alive, that kind of thing.
SatanicPanic
@gogol’s wife: Lay off the GOS. I haven’t been there in months and it’s been great. One of these days I’ll write a GBCW just so I won’t be tempted to log in and argue with those lunatics.
Comrade Dread
These guys wouldn’t know a genuine Class War from a polite criticism if it lined up against a wall and shot them in the face.
MikeJ
@Anoniminous:
Predators have a max speed of about 115kts. You can shoot them down with a Cessna and small arms.
trollhattan
Sombody fire up the ABL Bat Signal, this could use her treatment. Jesus, some folks are thick.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/today-in-what-this-racist.html
some guy
what part of “parasites and skimmers” do these Wall Street douchebags not understand about the precise and actual role they play in the economy?
trollhattan
@MikeJ:
How many sharks with frickin’ lasers for the price of an F-35? Now that’s a navy I could get behind.
Felinious Wench
Everyone thinks teaching school must be so easy until they actually see what it takes to do it. Or as soon as one of their students has a loaded gun fall out of their backpack in class.
God bless my husband and the other wonderful teachers in this world.
Bill
OT, but does Gallup now actually have Romney ahead nationally?
http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx
The numbers I’m seeing are all over the map suddenly. It’s hard to keep track.
mainsailset
Looks like Eric just found a buyer for RedState.
pseudonymous in nc
@Bill:
They’ve just switched to their “likely voter” screen for the headline poll. The RV number is O+3.
MikeJ
@trollhattan: I remember when saying, “we’re ashamed to be from the same state as the president” could lead to legitimate threats against your livelihood and even against your life.
pseudonymous in nc
@trollhattan: From comments at that link:
Oh, New Jersey.
Violet
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, I don’t read the actual articles very often, bu the LiveWire is usually worth checking. Just went there to scroll through that and BAM! “How worried should Obama supporters be? Code Orange or Code Red?” So stupid.
I think the panicking Obama supporters has become its own story. Kind of ridiculous. Let’s hope Romney steps on his dick sometime soon to change the narrative.
trollhattan
@MikeJ:
Yup. We had this kerfuffle, locally, back in the good old days of 43.
http://www.wnd.com/2005/02/28903/
The First Amendment is back, baby!
pseudonymous in nc
@Violet:
HuffingTPM Post.
Violet
@Felinious Wench: Or until a student’s parent threatens to sue you for not passing their kid. Or until a kid gets hauled out of your class by the police for drug possession or murder. Or a kid goes into a drug-induced seizure and collapses right in class. “The dog ate my homework” is the stuff of fairy tales. Real classrooms are like war zones half the time. Those pansy-ass MOTUs wouldn’t last a day.
bemused
I want to scream when I hear these assholes whine about how many hours they work and how they barely get to see their families, wah, wah. That’s their choice. They could work less and make less money AND see their families more if family life was actually their priority but it’s not. Money and the rush they get from being wheeler dealers is. They are phonies that want to be adulated for being financial hot dogs.
Plenty of people work 2 to 3 jobs and don’t get to be with their families because they are doing it FOR their families and trying to survive.
Bill
@pseudonymous in nc:
Doesn’t the fact that it’s of likely rather than registered voters make it more problematic?
NobodySpecial
Fucking entitled babies.
1) The only way they make money is either by selling someone a false bill of goods (because no one is putting their retirement funds into a gamble) or by working for a snake oil salesman for 100+ hours a week and pretending like they actually own part of the company. Hey, dickwads – that money you like to slosh around on bets? That’s real people’s hard earned you’re fucking with at the roulette table.
2) Being in love with money and the perception of power doesn’t make you special and it doesn’t make you indispensible. It also doesn’t make you ten feet tall, bulletproof, and fire resistant.
IanY77
The fuckers pay a negative tax rate too. Not supposed to be an employment agency? THAT’S WHAT THE FUCKING TAX CUTS WERE FOR.
Monkus
And they chose a profession in a socially worthless industry in order to get rich. So, also, many aren’t principled. I know many a maligned climate scientist who could outnumber these jerks in his sleep.
Just Some Fuckhead
I should point out they don’t really work very hard. They MAY put in long hours but those hours are relaxed hours, a few here for golf, a few more for nice meals, plenty more for shooting the shit with fellow movers and shakers. What they are exceptionally good at is figuring out how to separate people from their money, like any successful con artist.
Mike G
Back in the eighties when I used to regularly read Fortune (before I realized it is basically ‘People’ magazine for corporate America) it would enthusiastically fellate Jack Welch on a regular basis. Good to see them showing some vestige of a backbone for a change, probably because he’s not as powerful a bully as he was then.
Compare and contrast the publicity this economic vulture received for his conspiracy theory about BLS numbers, for which even he does not claim to have any evidence; with the complete shut-out of dirty fucking hippies suggesting that Iraq very likely did not have any nukes during the MSM bloodlust for invading Iraq in 2003.
Someone powerful in the ‘establishment’ can rant complete horseshit and command national media headlines for days, even if they are a senile crank, while the rest of us wait in vain for unpopular truths that don’t fit into a money-and-power-worshipping, Murka-Fuck-Yeah mindset to be given any attention at all.
gelfling545
@Violet: God, yes. One morning some years back I was doing hall duty with a teacher’s aide – nice man, really big guy & well respected by the kids. He clapped one young man on the back & greeted him & then said “Ah, TJ I need to talk to you in the office. Just wait for me there.” The office was was a few steps from our post. He turned & told me to get the kids out of the effing hall & into the auditorium & shut the gd door. He never cursed in the building – ever.
He went into the office, herded the kid into the principal’s private office & shut the door.
He had felt a weapon of some type in the boy’s back pack. Turns out is was an assault rifle. Cops came, took the kid & weapon & Mr. M. went back on duty. His pay as a teacher’s aide was barely above minimum wage. He never seemed to think he had done anything special and probably
most people in the school never even heard about it but it has sure been carved into my memory. Just helping the kids – that’s what he did. Did I mention that we taught 8th grade? Yeah, these teachers (& aides) just have it too easy. It’s easy to criticize the schools when you’ve spent little time there as an adult but most people who spent a day there would come out saying there’s not enough money in the world to compensate for what education professionals have to do every day.
trollhattan
@gelfling545:
As chilling a story as I’d ever hope to read. Wow.
Wayne LaPierre would have rather it ended with a “well-armed” staff gunning TJ down.
Anoniminous
@MikeJ:
Don’t need a Cessna. At the moment you can fox drones with a couple of hundred dollars of parts and some tech savvy. It won’t stay that way. The point is spending tens of billions building new surface ships when minor technical and engineering fiddle-dee-dee, that we already know how to do, to drones make them nothing but big fat targets is dumb.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Brachiator: If you have any questions about that, I’d be happy to answer them. The situation is really getting quite grim up here, and there’s a shit-ton of buyer’s remorse on the Harper Government(tm) going on… except among the mouth-breathers. They’re in hog heaven.
Kyle
Yes. Being a hypercompetitive abrasive dickhead generally does not go down well in job interviews for teaching positions, let alone the classroom. Perhaps a fundie military school in the South would take you, if you can fake sufficient ignorance of science and logic.
kuvasz
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”
Arnaud Amalric
Matt McIrvin
@pseudonymous in nc: That article’s comment board actually has wingnuts bedwetting about Obama on Friday. About Obama, and about Elizabeth Warren.
I guess that jobs report really shook them. Some of them, at least.
Howlin Wolfe
Awesome post, Mr. Agoraphobic Misanthrope!