Lesson of the Week 03-01-2011 (Finding the Ping in the Groove)

[landson11]

On another note...is that a hard rubber mouthpiece that you're playing? If so, what brand is it?

[SilverJ4]

shawn you are killing and i've learnt a lot from you. on a side note, please give up the birther stuff!! even glenn beck has acknowledged it is total crap. you can disagree with obama, which i do, without resorting to weird conspiracies. I only mention this because i noticed it in your playlists - again i stress thanks for videos and id love to hear you on bb clarinet

[ShawnThunderWallace]

@SilverJ4

I appreciate your kind words. With regard to the "birther" issue. I don't know if Obama is a U.S. citizen or not because he hasn't shown his long form birth certificate. I suspect that he is as Beck, Hannity and a host of other conservatives do. However, I beleive it's Obama's responsibility to quiet this by just showing his birth certificate. And, in fact this is what Donald Trump said on "The View" a couple weeks ago. I have all kinds of videos in my play lists. It doesn't mean.....

[SilverJ4]

..these theories functions both to deflect attention from real grievances e.g. public workers are facing an effective tax increase (i.e. pay 'freeze' fiscally the same) whilst taxes on the rich are cut and that although polls show 75% of the population wants national health care it is said to be 'politically impossible' (ny times) also spending a lot of time on truthers and birthers makes it look like any opponents to the government are kooks. i recomment you check out chomsky or hari. thanks.

[ShawnThunderWallace]

@SilverJ4

I'm willing to check anything out so send me some links to some stuff that you think I should check out. However, to be clear. I don't trust the government and am philosophically very fiscally conservative, although I'm closer to the middle with respect to specific social programs. I beleive that the answer for the severe corruption in our national politics is campaign finance reform and more people voting for 3rd party candidates. Our 2 party system is more like a 1 party system....

[ShawnThunderWallace]

@ShawnThunderWallace

A 1 party system with 2 factions. Obama is nothing but Bush part 2 with respect to most substantive issues. 3 wars is better than 1 and violation of civil rights ala the Patriot act has actually gotten worse under this administration. We'll see what happens but I'm not voting for Democrats or Republicans until they prove to me that they can be trusted!!!

[SilverJ4]

You would like noam chomsky - just read some of chomsky.info. what you say about the party system is exactly what he says. personally i'm for a strong state because it can theoretically be influenced by the public rather than corporations which are private tyrannies. that isnt a repub. - democrat issue of course as both Reagan and bush 2 were extreme big government guys. the us system is one where the public sector has a job: it takes all the risk and makes most of the innovations e.g. internet.

[SilverJ4]

- which was developed at MIT with pentagon funding. the private sector has one role: make profits. oh and the financial system which has grown sharply since Reagan has an insurance policy with the people - its called 'too big to fail'. so i appreciate you saying that you are fiscally conservative but it is hard to know what that means today as nobody seems to want it and business interests would never allow under the current system. as for campaign finance you are bang on.

[ShawnThunderWallace]

@SilverJ4

I agree 100% with them. People would have thought that the Tuskegee Experiment was a conspiracy theory also. So, I'm not in the business of just believing what the main stream media tells me. In fact, If I relied on the main stream media for my information I'd think that Britney Spears was the greatest artist of our times and that Kenny G is the king of the saxophone.

[SilverJ4]

@ShawnThunderWallace

I hear you Shawn, and I want to stress again that i've got a lot out of transcribing you etc. all i would say on the 'mainstream media' ground is - think about the kid gloves treatment that the truthers and birthers have got on mainstream media including fox. they have numerous interviews etc that would not be afforded to genuine critics like noam chomsky or norman finklstein - these are guys with real substantive things to raise. i think that the kid gloves treatment of..