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Egads!

Dan Crawford | September 25, 2010 2:48 pm

Comments (30) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
30 Comments
  • coberly says:
    September 25, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    reminds me of somthing they tried to teach me in school.

    “lifeboat ethics.”

    you see, there isn’t room in the lifeboat for everybody, so we gotta make up our minds to throw some people overboard and forget about ’em. 

    this was a very long time ago. i forget just who it was we were supposed to forget about then.

    now, in a real lifeboat situation you might face that choice.  but to plan for it, and to build your ethics around that fantasy, is simply to choose to go to hell with your eyes wide open.

    not unlike the famous “ticking timebomb scenario” we heard so much about recently.

  • jazzbumpa says:
    September 25, 2010 at 5:06 pm

    Obviously, the guy you throw overboard is the one with the bomb.

    Next question . . .

    Cheers!
    JzB

  • Nancy Ortiz says:
    September 25, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    JzB–OMG! Why didn’t I think of that! Brilliant! NancyO

  • coberly says:
    September 25, 2010 at 7:43 pm

    jazzbo

    keep throwing bombs like that and

    people are gonna start to look at you funny.

  • jazzbumpa says:
    September 25, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    Thank you.  I’ll be here all week.

    Cheers!
    JzB

  • coberly says:
    September 25, 2010 at 8:56 pm

    well, now that we are back to being serious

    i’ll mention that none of the people i talked to who patiently explained the solemn wisdom of lifeboat ethics

    ever imagined that they might be one of those who got tossed.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    September 26, 2010 at 12:16 am

    Gawd will provide. Herod was conducting a census for the purpose of assessing regressive taxes on the impoverished peoples of the nations vanquished by Rome. An impoverished couple travelled to Bethlehem to be counted and the wife of Joseph was with child. When they reached Bethlehem, there was no room at the Inn that they could afford and they stayed the night in a stable. Their child was born in an agricultural feed manger and he was called the messiah.

    Rome needed the taxes to support the corrupt life styles of the Roman empire, so they took from the poorest to give to the rich. Isn’t that how the story goes ? 

  • Troy says:
    September 26, 2010 at 12:17 am

    This picture is actually demonstrative of something that bugs me but I haven’t been able to describe very well, how the wealthy’s consumption of the national product actually impoverishes us even as it provides us income in a trickle-down manner.

    See, instead of building this $1M Sea Ray the factory could have been used to build 50 $20,000 sailboats instead, greatly increasing the wealth of our society.

    But that’s socialist thought. Sorry, carry on.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    September 26, 2010 at 12:43 am

    P.S.

    It is more likely that a camel will travel through the eye of a needle than George Bush will reach Heaven.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    September 26, 2010 at 3:48 am

    I saw, today, really poor people, in downtown Denver. They were massed in a plaza just off of 22nd and Curtiss. They were all black people.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    September 26, 2010 at 4:04 am

    Now why is it that the waltons ( Arkansas Walmart ) spend their money in the US trying to destroy the FDR legacy (SS and Medicare) while channeling production to the communists ? Yet they are called real Mericans ?

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    September 26, 2010 at 4:32 am

    By my mind, Merica is confounded by oration with nothing to say. The discource is falatial, geared to wealth, which is to say nothing.

    The roots of this great society, the decision of how we distribute wealth is not an economic decision but a societal decision. Poor Michael and Colin Powell, black men serving white masters, allowed the likes of Rupert Murdocch and GW Bush to have their way with us. Pathetic, yes, but at the same time instructive and insidious.

    Rupert Murdoch destroyed jounalism in England and America by selling tabloids for $.05 dollars less to the Hilton hotel industry.

    We are a brain dead society, no doubt.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    September 26, 2010 at 5:02 am

    reminds me of somthing they tried to teach me in school.  
     
    “lifeboat ethics.”  
     
    Lifeboat ethics. Lifeboat ethics. Sounds like something from the “Great Gatsby” which is more than a passing observation, me thinks.



    Come gather ’round people
    Wherever you roam
    And admit that the waters
    Around you have grown
    And accept it that soon
    You’ll be drenched to the bone
    If your time to you
    Is worth savin’
    Then you better start swimmin’
    Or you’ll sink like a stone
    For the times they are a-changin’.


    Coberly, You seem like an entitled twit. That is why my instinct is to not take you serious. I may be wrong. All the best.\Sandi

  • jazzbumpa says:
    September 26, 2010 at 11:25 am

    Troy –

    The only thing you have wrong is the trickle down part.

    That, alas, does not happen.

    Lo siento,
    JzB

  • jazzbumpa says:
    September 26, 2010 at 11:30 am

    Sandi –

    You seem like a wordy, unfocused twit who reaches big conclusions on little data.   That is why my instinct is to not take you serious. I may be wrong.

    Also, you might want to read a little more extensively here before you decide who the twits are.

    All the best,
    JzB

  • save_the_rustbelt says:
    September 26, 2010 at 11:49 am

    For the record, the pleasure boating industry is, in good times, a major creator of high value manufacturing and service jobs, and a major driver of small businesses related to boating and tourism.

    So perhaps this is not such a good picture…..

  • save_the_rustbelt says:
    September 26, 2010 at 11:51 am

    See my comment below.

    Boat builders do not see their paychecks as trickle down.

  • coberly says:
    September 26, 2010 at 12:29 pm

    Sandi

    i am puzzled by your comment.  I can understand your not liking me,thinking i am wrong, even a twit, certainly rude, but “entitled”?  I think you may be wrong.

  • coberly says:
    September 26, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    Troy

    just imagine if you didn’t have to work 24/7 to afford that 20k sailboat, but worked 20 – 30 hours per week at something useful, and built your own boat with your free time.

    i don’t have anything against the rich, or a million dollar yacht.  what i am against is an economic system that robs you of your life’s time and energy so you can make money for someone else to buy a yacht he doesn’t even care that much about.

  • cursed says:
    September 26, 2010 at 5:20 pm

    I don’t believe that Jesus was called Messiah to his face. It was only after he became worm food that some people started having second thoughts.

    Your fundamental view of how Rome expanded is flawed. In the early days of the Republic surrounding comunities welcomed the oportunity be absorbed into the Republic, because the Romans established a more effiecent and just administrative system then there nieghbors. Rome was not established primarly on conquest, and had a less regressive tax system then the individual communities that comprised the Levant. It was not intil after Jesus that Rome desended into a corrupt abyss.

    So no, that is not how the story went.

  • coberly says:
    September 26, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    cursed

    i’d agree that’s not how the story went, but i think your version would surprise at least the Sabine women.

  • sammy says:
    September 27, 2010 at 9:46 am

    This cartoon has it wrong.  The guys in the water are the ones “drowning in taxes.”  The guy on the yacht is fine, but  he just had to fire or not hire the guys in the water in order to pay his taxes.

  • kharris says:
    September 27, 2010 at 11:52 am

    There is, as I understand it, an instance in which a Roman outpost somewhere along the Northern frontier were confronted with an entire barbarian tribe – men, women and children – set to advance toward the Roman position.  The barbarians charged, and the Romans were too few to hold them back.  The barbarians cut through the Roman line…and kept right on going until they found a place to settle under Roman dominion.  Heckuvalot of migratory pressure from the East back then.

  • coberly says:
    September 27, 2010 at 12:44 pm

    sammy

    because as we well know, taxes in this country are collected on gross income.  you have to pay your taxes before you pay the help.  i read it here so it must be true.

  • Cedric Regula says:
    September 27, 2010 at 1:02 pm

    Not being a religious type, by bible studies have been rather limited, but I think it was St. Peter who ran around the countryside proclaiming Jesus as the savior and messiah shortly after The Big Ascension. Then the romans crucified St. Peter too.

    By the year 300 AD Rome was pretty much in shambles and their President,  Constantine, moved the capitol to Greece where it was safer. There he tried to unify Christians and pagans by writing the first Christian bible that combined elements of both. This religion became Catholicism.

  • coberly says:
    September 27, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Cedric

    your history is not the one i heard, but in any case

    i don’t think you can read the new testament and come away thinking it is a fraud.  it just doesn’t read like one, though i will admit that many parts of it are dubious…  the story as a whole rings true to me.   set aside the resurrectiona and the miracles and just listen to what the man said.  those are not the words of a charlatan. or even a clever writer of fiction.

  • Cedric Regula says:
    September 27, 2010 at 4:52 pm

    I’m not claiming that Jesus was a fraud. Most historians believe he was real, and said what he said. I never read either testament, but you know how you hear things thru the grapevine in Christendom.

    The other parts I mentioned are true history as far as I know. St. Peter spread the word more than Jesus actually was able to. The Constantine bible and catholicism contained quite a bit of paganism because rome in 300AD was about half and half.

    You are reading a more recent publication however, but I’ve actually been in a catholic church and have seen wooden, graven idols of Saints! And the crackers and wine thing sounds a little iffy, wouldn’t you say? Then there is the Trinity, but what’s one god to do?

  • coberly says:
    September 27, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Cedric

    and i’m not saying that people don’t read into the gospels what they want to hear.  just look at what they read into what i write, fer chtissakes.  thing to remember is that “jesus spoke always in parables, ‘lest the wicked hear, and hearing turn, and i should save them.’ “

    the man was not handing out instruction manuals for getting into heaven.  he was giving people something to think about.

    anyway, I think you mean Paul and not St Peter.  Jesus himself is not ony free of superstition but seems to be positively against it.

    God knows what the catholics are up to. I got some solace there once, and I think that is the good they do.  Certainly a lot of what they do is not altogether good from my perspective. I don’t know much about how the New Testament was put together (in the time of Constantine?)  but it has seemed to me from time to time that the stuff that got rejected should have been rejected and the stuff that got kept is…  well, some where between inspring, interesting, and likely to be true.  and by true i don’t mean that i agree with James, for example, but i supect that the letter from james is really a letter from james and tells us what at least one early christian thought.

    and since you mention the Trinity, I can’t see that I have any basis to have an opinion of what one god can do.  If he wants to divide himself up into three “persons” that doesn’t even violate the conscept of “one god” in my rather science-fiction informed imagination.

    i come up with a rather … ideosyncratic… idea about the crackers and wine.  sort of thing that could get me burned at the stake if they knew…but i can’t shake the idea that ol JC was rather bigger than what they know.

  • Bill White says:
    September 28, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    I say, tax them all, and let God decide.

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    January 17, 2013 at 5:43 am

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