Crony Facebook Capitalism - Reichstag Black Swan?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Crony Facebook Capitalism - Reichstag Black Swan?

Glenn makes an awfully compelling case for a theory about the government trying to get its hands on controlling Facebook by manipulating the IPO through crony capitalism. The idea is to make the IPO tank and hurt the little guy so the government can step in and save the day (and get its hook into the company).

I hadn't realized how close Obama was to Zuckerman before the IPO. I wonder how Zuck baby feels about Barry now. I wonder if Barry has stopped returning his calls...



Here's the article on The Blaze where the video came from:

Beck: Facebook’s Failure May Be Part of Government Plan to Control Internet
by Mytheos Holt
May 25, 2012
The Blaze

That’s the hypothesis that Glenn Beck offered on GBTV tonight, and like many of Beck’s hypotheses, you might be surprised at the evidence that exists for it. In a nearly 20 minute segment, Beck meticulously and carefully picked his way through the past record of the company that handled the IPO for Facebook – Morgan Stanley – and pointed out that they don’t exactly have a record of success in helping companies go public.


“Morgan Stanley was the lead consultant on Fannie and Freddie bailouts,” Beck said in the segment. “They also set the IPO for General Motor. Whoa.”

The evidence from that point continued to mount, all to support Beck’s contention that the administration wanted Facebook to fail. Why? So that it could be brought into the orbit of the government as one of many formerly powerful companies that had to take money in exchange for loyalty. Beck suggested that the reason the government would want this is because control over Facebook via public money would enable them to have huge amounts of control over the internet, which they would then use to stifle dissent.

It's an interesting idea. And it sounds pretty convincing seeing that the government keeps trying to get its claws into the Internet.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

This is loony talk. If Facebook “goes down” a replacement will spring up in no time. Before Facebook there was MySpace, that was just a few years ago. What is there to stop a competitor? Beck is saying what, that there’s going to be a Facebook bailout?

All I see here is guilt by association against Morgan Stanley (as though there’s any big investment bank with clean hands at this point); what “evidence from that point continued to mount”? Facebook execs attending Obama fundraising events? Did I miss the convincing part?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Beck is saying what, that there’s going to be a Facebook bailout?

I don't recall that part.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

Beck is saying what, that there’s going to be a Facebook bailout?

I don't recall that part.

Michael

As they do on Jeopardy, I phrased it in the form of a question. He talks about the Government saving Facebook, and thereby gaining control of it. How? They overpriced their IPO, so what? Speaking as a non-insider: EVERYONE KNEW IT. Now, what, they’re going to go bust? Ultimately it’s all just weird innuendo coming from Beck.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

I've seen weirder stuff.

People laughed their asses off at Beck when he first mentioned yearning for a Caliphate as one of the main drivers of trouble in the Middle East. They also laughed when he said Islamists are getting in bed with the left and will cause a disruption in the Arabian countries around the Mediterranean (way before the Arab Spring).

When he promoted buying gold, people scoffed mightily. Anthony Weiner even tried to make a Congressional investigation of his sponsor. Goldline. When he said Soros was behind a lot of left-wing funding, you could hear the guffaws in the media. Not to mention the reactions to what he said about ACORN and Van Jones and on and on.

He really gets timing wrong, as he is the first to admit, but he generally doesn't missfire a lot on large-view connecting the dots.

This Facebook speculation might be a misfire, but I have seen him be right too many times to dismiss it out of hand. When you look at SOPA, the UN's recent Internet regulatory efforts, and so on, it's not really difficult to see the government's interest in controlling the Internet, first to protect the little guy (for show), then as an enormous propaganda machine.

Who would have thought that global warming was an excuse for cap and trade laws that would result in a heist of trillions through The Chicago Climate Exchange (which Obama helped set up)? People hooted up a storm when Glenn first said that, but now it's common knowledge, not yet by Joe Six-Pack, but by people one degree above him in being informed--and that's not even the intellectual level.

Obviously government manipulation would not be the only factor in something as big as the Facebook IPO. There are other things like the Oceans of Greed Insiders Club, interbank competition, the media show, etc. But I think it's worth it to keep an eye on matters from a government infiltration into Facebook perspective and see where they go.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

Here's a thingee with Yaron Brook talking about the Facebook IPO. Nothing revelatory, but still relevant.

[william.scherk]

People laughed their asses off at Beck when he first mentioned yearning for a Caliphate as one of the main drivers of trouble in the Middle East.

I was one of those 'people' who criticized Beck's prophecies in re the Middle East uprisings of 2011. He was wrong in the large and wrong in the small. Within the plot he discerned there were occasionally going to be real data points (George Soros was a Nazi not one of them). My job when examining Beck's multiple claims was to check. The kind of prophecy that Beck performs can be checked. It was, and it was found wanting. His maunderings on a conspiracy of America's enemies (The Leftists, the Islamists, the Shadowy People) were what interested me, his global grasp of essentials. His speculation on how the hundreds of pieces (or dots) fit together in the Grand Conspiracy was -- to me -- sloppy and unconvincing in its broad claims.

In any case, one's previous notions and speculations are not necessarily probative in relation to other, separate claims. And each claim can be examined separately.

They also laughed when he said Islamists are getting in bed with the left and will cause a disruption in the Arabian countries around the Mediterranean (way before the Arab Spring).

It is sad that Beck abandons a line of inquiry so soon. Beck made causal claims and claims of collusion that were not true. Whether fudging the truth to poke outrage (as with his sleaze on Soros/Nazi) or fudging the math to raise alarm, Beck is good at his craft.

His craft is not journalism or even reportage. It is closer to evangelism, from my POV, a mashup of radio mouth with clown/jester/showboat/Preacher.

That Islamism and even the sad rump of fanatics who wish a Caliphate exist and are active is not a surprise. The issue is Beck's ability to discern and measure its impact and its ramifications -- if not its historical course and the context that current situations expose. What did Beck tell us of value -- in terms of Warning, Prevention, Exposure, Averting Disaster? As far as I can see, nothing moved in the world because of Beck's views on the Middle East. Not one coherent policy prescription emerged from his desk. Instead, something is 'proved' and the zone of vigilance moves on.

This was (to some minds is) the biggest story of (either) Human Yearning to Be Free of our recent past in North Africa and the Middle East -- OR -- it was/is the largest, most effective and most dangerous conspiracy of all at the moment: Terrorists/USA/Big Money/The Left/Alinsky/Revolution all rolled in to one, threatening US interests and the integrity of its institutions of governance.

Huge story -- the Biggest Story Evah when it was first cooked, ladled and peddled. Now, not so much, and now the ability of any Beck follower to comment intelligently on current, breaking MENA events and issues drifts back to zero.

The 'disruption' of the settled course of dictatorship continues, so. In Egypt, for example, two men are heading into the run-off election for the Presidency. Is Beck on it? Is this issue, or the thousand and one issues of the so-called Arab Spring still in his purview? The hellish return of Ghannouchi to Tunisia which caused Beck's eyes to bulge -- how did that turn out?

Remember his big map of conflagrations? The fires burning, all started by the same criminal enterprises combining forces ... ? The fire in Libya, the fire in Jordan, the fire in Lebanon ... etcetera? It all fits together. It was all part of A Plan.

And now Beck lets us down by turning to yet another series of dots on his screen, to connect up a fresh horror.

Michael I know you are a fan (with reservations). This does not meant that those who mock, counter or oppose items and features of Beck's witless 'reportage' are anti-MSK or anti-MSK shibboleths. I can stand beside you in support as we march off to Truth. I can stand with you when premises are checked, when Bad Guys get their due, when the evidence is collected, tagged and logged. I can march with you a long way on the Road of Reason. Where we differ is not in our equipment or process -- we use the same equipment and process.

He really gets timing wrong, as he is the first to admit, but he generally doesn't missfire a lot on large-view connecting the dots.

I disagree with your opinion. Such broad and sweeping claims about 'a few misfires' is the headline. Reading the actual story of Beck and the Dots and how he operates in constructing a Narrative of Terror -- this reveals facts counter to your conclusions.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here is my take: Beck does his job well. He is an entertainer and Cassandra of the airwaves (internets). He scares his audience. He gets them riled against The Enemies. He points to dots, fires, quotes, scripture, revelation, suspicions and charges ... he pins them together. We (the audience) are scared, riled, and ... misled.

The 'timing,' like 'minor details,' like 'claims' -- the timing holds the dots and fear and anger together into The Big Scary Story. If the timing is wrong and the events prophesied do not occur (on schedule) and the sky does not fall in and Tehran does not nuke Tel Aviv and Turkey does not go wild ... well, we the audience can be of two minds. It is like when the Russellites passed the date of The End. When the Rapture passed the Seventh Day Adventists. When the Starship failed to pick up Bo and Peep in San Diego to take them to a level beyond human.

When the world did not end, the cults cinched tighter, more fully believing. Those who scoffed, mocked or chortled at the mad apocalyptic dramas ... we are many, but we are not the same person, and we are not the enemy of truth.

Edited May 26, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

It's one thing to say Glenn Beck "was wrong in the large and wrong in the small." It's quite another to put up side-by-side in-context facts and quotes that prove this opinion.

It's one thing to say Glenn Beck "abandons a line of inquiry." It's quite another to show that he had the "line of inquiry" being attributed to him in the first place.

It's one thing to say Glenn Beck no longer has national relevance (like you did elsewhere). But it's quite another to show just how little that relevance is when--on Googling his name or looking at things like the May 2012 Forbes Celebrity 100 listing (Glenn is #23 in Celebrity, #11 in Money, #43 in TV/Radio, #77 in Press, #53 in Social, and #58 in Web)--the information you get shows that his name and national relevance are all over the place.

And on and on...

I can easily dig up one quote after another from him where he says--explicitly says and not just infers--that when disparate anti-American forces collude (like in the Arab Spring), they do not centralize and receive orders from the same place. In fact, they don't like each other and are generally making an ad-hoc arrangement. They fully intend to cut each others throats once they get their common "enemy" vanquished and/or ad-hoc goal achieved. That there is no central force trying to take over the world (at least no earthly force ).

But no matter how many times, and in how many forms, he says things like that, people who don't like Beck will continue to frame his position as if he were talking about a master plan from James Bond-like villains.

It's true that I have some issues and disagreements with Glenn. But, judging from the nature of your opinions, they are not the same issues you have.

We probably agree on disliking Glenn's over-reliance on fear as a persuasion tool and agree that we do not share his cosmology, but that seems to be about it.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Michael, yes, if it isn't one thing, it's another thing. We have hoed down a few rows together with Glenn Beck, notably some close work on the roots of some of his Soros claims. It is one thing to prophecy and another to check the prophesies. And it came to pass.

It's one thing to say Glenn Beck "was wrong in the large and wrong in the small." It's quite another to put up side-by-side in-context facts and quotes that prove this opinion.

Yes, but we are not cooking today, we are eating. The work we did together trying to figure out just how wrong Beck was in re George Soros was an example of engagement with the meat in Beck's MENA sandwich. We chewed it and we chewed it and we spat it out. In the large, the Islamic Menace Fire and the Burning Across the Land did not occur as charted. In the small, an example is Egypt today before the run-off. In no stretch of the imagination does today resemble Tomorrow as charted by Beck.

It's one thing to say Glenn Beck "abandons a line of inquiry." It's quite another to show that he had the "line of inquiry" being attributed to him in the first place.

Good point. The "line of inquiry" was an allusion to the Fiery Middle East -- as interpreted through The Coming Insurrection and the other touchstones and documents that we both examined. This line of inquiry kept readers, listeners and viewers apprised of the meaning of events of MENA 'disruption,' how they all fit together into The Plan.

It's one thing to say Glenn Beck no longer has national relevance (like you did elsewhere). But it's quite another to show just how little that relevance is when--on Googling his name or looking at things like the http://www.forbes.com/profile/glenn-beck May 2012 Forbes Celebrity 100 listing (Glenn is #23 in Celebrity, #11 in Money, #43 in TV/Radio, #77 in Press, #53 in Social, and #58 in Web)--the information you get shows that his name and national relevance are all over the place.

Yeabut. Firstly, your paraphrase distorts (what was said elsewhere). That Beck has no Fox show is one thing. That this makes him without relevance is another. My claims were delimited, not general. And the example you bring does not pertain to my own line of inquiry here which is also delimited, nor does it pertain to points raised in my video Radio Show (which is worth listening too if only for the fun of Diana screaming).

And on and on...

I can easily dig up one quote after another from him where he says--explicitly says and not just infers--that when disparate anti-American forces collude (like in the Arab Spring), they do not centralize and receive orders from the same place. In fact, they don't like each other and are generally making an ad-hoc arrangement. They fully intend to cut each others throats once they get their common "enemy" vanquished and/or ad-hoc goal achieved. That there is no central force trying to take over the world (at least no earthly force http://www.objectivi...fault/smile.png )

.

This seems like an argument with someone no longer in the room, perhaps the departed Mr Jack Straw, former foreign minister of the Crown. This also seems like another sketchy Them assertion, as bald and inviting as any other Them assertion. The argument affirms its consequent by accepting as fact that which is at issue: Michael, 'collusion' is not descriptive, but wrong, and so cannot hold the weight of the rest of your assertion, let alone Beck's monumental operatic fantasy of actors and events.

When you recast my arguments, you distort my intent and the fruit of our inquiry. When you try to compress complex events and actors into a summary paragraph it can result in a distortion across the board. Michael, I do not recognize the world I now know better through your descriptive paragraph, nor my cautions.

We stand shoulder to shoulder in seeking to understand the enemies of the West. I do not consider Beck a useful tool for my understanding of events in the Middle East. Mileage may vary, but that is pinko-libertarian freedom of opinion for you, freedom I relish even up here in the hellhole.

I understand (in part) your alienation and share it profoundly. I am by no means among the mainstream of opinion in my own worlds, despite my socialist-slave colouration. I understand the alienation from sources of information that in the American marketplace range from unbelievably awful to the best on earth. It is a hard garden to weed. We face the rows of rampant news and weeds and lies and crap with our sleeves rolled up and our Roundup at the ready. We understand each other to some measure, I am sure.

And so I understand the lure of The Preacher. And I think to some extent your affinity to Beck is both good and natural and not indicative of anything but an appreciation of a Great Showman.

But no matter how many times, and in how many forms, he says things like that, people who don't like Beck will continue to frame his position as if he were talking about a master plan from James Bond-like villains.

Those dang people, huh? They do not LIKE him, so they dislike his framing. Or, they dislike his framing so they dislike him and reframe. Who knows? No matter. Those dang people and their reframing. Ugh.

If you have more to take issue with from the comment above, Michael, happy to correct my mistakes.

It's true that I have some issues and disagreements with Glenn. But, judging from the nature of your opinions, they are not the same issues you have.

We probably agree on disliking Glenn's over-reliance on fear as a persuasion tool and agree that we do not share his cosmology, but that seems to be about it.

I imagine a conversation between us ... perhaps at the November Festivities ... wherein we discover just how much of our stances and attitudes are similar. If you think we are far apart, I can surprise you and you me. We both reach for Reason as our sharpest tool, and two such folks chipping away at the same subject often reveal facets and wonders to each other. Of great truth and awful beauty. If I thought you had no insights to share, I would not engage.

Beware the Black only and the White, the too-Simple and Explains-too-much. Truth is usually messier and muckier and spottier and much harder to predict than anyone's fantasies of order and conspiracy.

Edited May 27, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

Your video has been deleted by the user. I have no clue as to what it is about except your preliminary frame. And that's not enough for me to say anything intelligent about it.

When you recast my arguments, you distort my intent and the fruit of our inquiry. When you try to compress complex events and actors into a summary paragraph it can result in a distortion across the board. Michael, I do not recognize the world I now know better through your descriptive paragraph, nor my cautions.

You mean something like this?

And so I understand the lure of The Preacher. And I think to some extent your affinity to Beck is both good and natural and not indicative of anything but an appreciation of a Great Showman.

Not indicative of anything but???

Say what?

I am going to be frank here and there is no way to do it without sounding offensive. But my intent is not to insult. Merely to identify as clearly as possible.

I find people of the left often to be incredibly arrogant and obnoxious like this comment of yours I just posted. What's worse is they do not show any sign of being aware of the fact that they are being arrogant and obnoxious.

In their comments, they come off to me as living in a fantasy world where their opinions have not only taken the manifestation of fact, they need to provide a character-flaw-like excuse for why someone they deem intelligent will not see their opinion as fact.

It's really easy for a left-wing person to think that someone likes Beck to the point of ignoring facts simply because he is vulnerable to showmanship. So the foolish, albeit otherwise intelligent Beck fan gets fooled by his weakness. Easy peasy, right?

But answer this. Is it so unreasonable to accept that a person may like the Beck show, but also like the Beck facts? And without the facts, he would not watch the show?

From what I see, when the rosy glasses of lefty-world goodness are the main filter for viewing reality, that is precisely the most unreasonable thing they think anyone could imagine. In fact, they claim Beck has no facts--at least nothing that has not been grossly distorted.

And I speak as a person who used to see reality mainly through the rosy glasses of Objectivism-world goodness and who used to accept Rand's identification of the mental weaknesses in others as the only reason they identified and evaluated specific things differently than I did. So I am intimate with the mental process, albeit from an opposite perspective.

(As an aside, there is another draw for me for Glenn. I have profound admiration for him as a capitalistic innovator of the highest order--literally innovating and revolutionizing certain market concepts from out of nowhere, taking huge risks and succeeding big-time. But that is not germane to my point.)

When I first wrote some thoughts here on OL called Moral Perfection, I had an inkling of a critical problem in my previous use of Objectivism. But I couldn't put my finger on it. I, like you mentioned above in what you do, allowed reason to trump my rosy filter when I could pull it off. But that wasn't enough. There was that damn hole and I kept bumping up against a fundamental belief (which I believe you believe):

The ideal is the practical when it is true.

If that becomes a primary belief to you and not a corollary, the only thing you have to do is convince others that your ideal is the true truth and you are done. They will do the rest forever and ever amen and you can thus help save the world. Time is not an issue. Ah yes. There is another part. Whoever doesn't see that true truth that you proclaim is true is mentally defective in some manner.

Well, recently I came across a person who explained the difference between ideal and goal (i.e., the practical) in such a simple, convincing manner, I felt enormous relief. He closed the hole for me. His name is Dan Sullivan.

In fact, because of Sullivan's presentation, I am better able to understand how to implement many of the great concepts in Objectivism while avoiding the pitfalls (at least the ones I discern). I want to add, ditto for left-wing ideas. And religious ones. And even weird ones like Scientology. I'm serious. Often in the left-leaning material I read (and religious, etc.), I come across some critical slants and issues I had not considered, but that need to be addressed if true understanding is my measure (i.e., my ideal.)

To be clear, I am starting to take great delight in looking at what I haven't considered so far.

Sullivan's insight goes like this.

(Note, I am not blowing his gig by discussing this. He explicitly tells people to spread his ideas even though he charges an arm and a leg for consultation and doesn't seem to go much beyond his core ideas from what I have read so far. I will open a separate thread with videos on his thinking. And further note that the following discussion is not the whole of Sullivan's approach--merely one small, but critical, part of it. btw - This discussion is my understanding, so I am not speaking for Sullivan per se--merely for what I have understood and taken from his work.)

If you look to the horizon, you will see a place that does exist, but one that you will never reach. The more you travel toward it, the more it moves. Sullivan says that this is very easy for most people to understand and they are not bothered by it at all. They learned at an early age that the horizon is merely a way our mind has of understanding space--a way to overview the playing field, so to speak.

We have a similar mental way for dealing with time. It is called ideals. An ideal is not a specific point in time you can get to while acting in a certain manner and then you're done. Since we all live in specific points in time, the moment you believe you have reached an ideal, it is still there in the future, beckoning you and taunting you with how little you measure up (if you let it). So while nobody is bothered about not reaching the horizon, people are enormously bothered about not living up to ideals.

People often make a conceptual mistake of thinking that once you achieve an ideal, you will live your life forever in that new state. And that never happens. People always have a future so long as they are alive.

Sullivan got to thinking about this because he looked at folks like athletes in the Olympics or high-powered businesspeople and noted that many of them did not achieve happiness once they reached the ideal they had worked for over years of strenuous effort. Some did, but some became absolutely miserable.

He noticed that the miserable ones always judged themselves according to what they had not yet attained, irrespective of how much they had achieved. This is deadly when you do it at a moment of triumph and their example proves it.

When an ideal is thought of like the horizon, though, it becomes extremely useful in guiding our actions.

Sullivan says that when you project a goal, you start from a point in time that he calls "Actual 1." When you reach the goal, you come to another point of time, "Actual 2." The happy people are the ones who look back from Actual 2 to Actual 1 and congratulate themselves on how far they have come--even if they fell short of their intention (say coming in second place for an athlete instead of first). As we use ideals to establish goals, the unhappy people will always measure how short they have come up. The ideal taunts them from a mental horizon.

This is a brain illusion--an on-off switch--that can make people miserable for their entire lives. But it is easy to fix (which is the reason for my sudden feeling of relief.)

Sullivan gives the example of bulimic girls. Excluding other psychological factors in this disorder, the girls are always looking at the ideal (somewhere in the future) when they look in the mirror. Something deep in their brain fools their aware self.

They never consider the measure of what they look like now compared to what they used to look like. And there is no arguing with them. They hear your words, but they do not perceive what your words convey. Their minds literally perceive reality in an incorrect manner and they live in misery, morally castigating themselves from within what Sullivan calls "the gap." This is the mental place between what you want and what you have attained.

The gap is not bad in itself. You need it to measure so you can set future goals. But when it takes the place of what you have achieved, when you see your whole life as a timeless "Actual 1" and a timeless ideal as your "Actual 2," you can never leave the gap and you live in a constant state of neurosis.

Some people even commit suicide from this place. They destroy their relationships. They throw away their careers. And on and on. (In my past, I have had too much personal experience with this for comfort.)

Getting back to ideology and preaching, I view people who become overly-guided by ideology in the same dilemma. The only difference is that they use their timeless ideal as a way to point the finger at others, condemn them and laugh at them. And when others do not act in the manner they accuse (i.e., based on their ideal), they literally do not see it--in the manner the bulimic girl does not see how skinny she has become when she looks in a mirror.

Am I saying this is your case with how you judge Beck and, even more, how you constantly say I think about Beck? I suspect it is true. All the indications are there. But there is also your constant willingness to look for a brief moment and set aside your ideology. So I don't believe this is a "mental defect" in the manner of the kind of character weakness (i.e., vulnerability) with which you constantly categorize me. I believe it is simply the ideal vs. goal switch going on and off at random.

There.

Now I have made myself just as arrogant and obnoxious as I said your statement was. I have crawled into your skull and told you what is in your brain that you are not aware of--and how this leads to your ignorant errors. So to lessen that a bit, let me say I might be wrong. I don't think I am, but I might be.

I certainly don't think you are a puppet of ideological masters, although, like all of us, I do know you live within time. And within time, we all have waves of awareness. Up and down and up and down. We try to level it with reason.

I am in the same boat, too. Like I have said in the past, it took me a long time to take off the rosy Objectivism-world glasses, but keep the Objectivism I spent so much time learning. So, in my mind, I am not speaking from a moral or intellectual high-ground to a defective person. I am not a guru talking down to others and giving them my timeless enlightenment. I am more like a witness sharing what I have seen with someone I like and admire.

Just as I think about you, I also think about myself.

And I think the same about Glenn Beck.

I even think the same about Ayn Rand.

No one inhabits the Ideal That Time Forgot.

Ideals, morals, principles, ideologies, what have you, are time tools, not timeless states. They are primarily tools of degree to help us see and understand the time playing field of our lives, and only secondarily tools of kind (i.e., value). Even Rand called morality a "code of values to guide man's choices," i.e., a tool for measuring and moving toward the future within the context of our specific lives. Morality to her is not a definition of a state of being (although sometimes she slipped in this department).

A specific value may--or may not--be an intrinsic part of our identity, but the code is definitely a chosen tool. Thus, as in my earlier musing, moral perfection is not a state, just as ideological perfection is not a state. They are measures you use to help set goals. If you identify a goal using the same words as the ideal, you can say you have reached ideological (or moral) perfection when you get to that goal.

But that does not elevate you to a timeless superior state of ideal being. It does not remove time from your existence. That same ideal will still be out there beckoning and possibly taunting you.

What about ideological people like Beck and Rand (and Marx and Jesus)? To me, they point to different places on the horizon and it is up to me to see if going in that direction will take me across a swampland, an ocean, a volcano, a fertile prairie--or off a cliff. The ideals of these people are open to interpretation and interpret them I do--and will continue doing. But I correct my course as I travel. The reality of the cliff is not abstract, so no ideal ever presented to me can replace my own eyes and my own brain--and my own future.

Anyway, there it is. Food for thought.

Michael

[william.scherk]

The video was remastered a few times and is live again. Like I said, worth a listen just to hear Diana shout and scream her determination.

I really like your comment. If I have in any way provoked that kind of incisive, deep reaction, good on me. Thanks! I have been so grossly insulted this past year that I find nothing galling at all in your words. As we chisel we each, the wonderful and awful facets emerge.

I should do your comment justice and cast it into a video Radio Show too. With pictures of gross leftist tropes and so on ... too bad for my vanity that you quote only two snippets from my lengthy rant, but we provocateurs take payment in many ways.

Food for thought? Food enough for a month of picnics. You have turned on the Fountain of Goodness, I believe. I shall begin my search for images of picnics, cornucopias and fountains. Food for thought and savouring indeed in this comment. Now perhaps you realize why a re-read month--old thread comment can be cheering to me. That is why they pay you the big bucks, Maestro.

[media=]

Edited May 28, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I am flattered.

Michael

[william.scherk]

I have made making Radio Show videos as easy as pie, Michael! And we can now offer a fun alternative to The Screams Of Diana Hsieh at the same time. I like your comment, and will re-visit it again. I am overdue for a Syria rant in the other place, so it cannot be now (I give you the shameful details of that gig backstage). In the meantime, keep the Fountain of Goodness flowing. We can offer Radio Shows to give the good doctor missus doctor a run for the pay pal.

I know, I know, do not let the thread drift drift drift to Diana Hsieh, the Glenn Beck of County Road 676. But, just think -- we could match her her Sunday snoozefest, stitching together a Radio Show response in return.

I could just take the best of the week from OL and cut up a video Radio Show to go head to head in the Youtube Sweepstakes.

In addition, we can market a deluxe OL Radio Show lineup by monetizing and showcasing our own RICHES here, Michael. If I remember correctly, you own a portion of the copyright on anything I produce here, and so on, and so on. So.

The Paul Mawdsley Lectures, a New OL Radio Show! With hypnotic music and empathic pictures. His greatest hits in one 2 hour 3D DVD/download! George H Smith For Ladies Only Anarchy downloads. "She wants Philosophy Inaction videos of her screaming her fool head off? We will show her."

If we are going to be arrogant and obnoxious, we can yet still chip out facets awful and wonderful.

Edited May 29, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

Very very wonderful idea! I can aid as my son is an actual radio broadcaster. So far confined to local temperatures and Biebee intros, but full of promise. Also in my city, Mayor Ford is on radio, and only talks on Rob Ford radio, no silly press scrums for our mayor. Also, no silly itinerary - Rob does as Rob wants and it is none of our business!

I propose for OL Radio a Lifestyle spot (codeword for Women) on topics like, Objectivist Men, Devils or LA Ks? (Bobby Vee as visitor ?) and a deep analytical series on SOLO IS SO UNBELIEVABLY DULL AND ONLY DISCUSSES CRISTIANITY AND INTELLETUAL PROPERTY...JEEZ!

Many more ideas from same source, call day or.. well, day

Carol

Creativw Consultant

[william.scherk]

SUBJECT: Objectivist Orgasm Endless Loop

Okay, first I have to get this out of my system once and for all. To Ninth and Jonathan and the sparks of sharp humour on OL, a loop ...

"

" -- Something tells me Phil would not approve, but you never know.

Published on May 29, 2012 by daemonesk

I will add a disco-reggaeton and a Mozhdah instrumental version, but for now, a freaky little loop about the best way to get yourself to the Big O, using reason and modern machinery. Performed by She Who Will Not Be Amused. A perfect intro loop for all OL Radio Shows!

Category: Nonprofits & Activism

Tags: internet radio Diana Hsieh Objectivism Orgasm Machine Wilhelm Reich Comedy Parody

[media=]

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dayaamm!

Is this turning into the Objectivism Acid Trip?

Michael

[9thdoctor]

Here’s a data point in favor of whatever dark conspiracy Beck is talking about related to the Facebook IPO: Eliot Spitzer wrote a piece defending it. That’s like getting Michael Moore to praise a health insurance company. Something’s rotten in Denmark.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_best_policy/2012/05/morgan_stanley_and_facebook_s_38_price_did_the_underwriter_misprice_the_ipo_.html