Golden Oxen's First Amendment Forum

I like symphony's and fine art too, but we gotta get all the people moving, to change the system.

With some magic........

ABRACADABRA!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0yRuQTTbFM

I will be checking in often.

Hello GO,

I will reply to your latest passive aggressive swipe here, since I refuse the register for the open sewer operated by you and the bishop whose ring you kiss. It seems that you have taken offense to this:



About which you said:

Perhaps because I am a fan of Mr. Kunstler and his ideas, I have always found it objectionable that a poster who continually publishes Mr. Kunstler's articles corrupts the postings by inserting a picture of his own, in a prominent position above the piece.
The picture is assumed by the casual reader to be part of the article, since no source is given or the poster has the ill manners and disgusting practice of not notifying the readership that it is his, not the authors.

Don't get me wrong, Criticize all you want, lambast his ideas with impunity. Please have the class and decency to post it in it's original form or point out to the readers that you or another placed it there as a comment.

It is another practice of the censors and so called god's of the diner. They seem to think they have the right to modify the works of others, distort it with their personal views, and we are supposed to nod our approval. This was never brought up by me on the Diner because of the sheer waste of time in criticizing the censors or god's of their despicable actions and disrespect of others. We all know the replies, if any, that would have come from my voicing displeasure at this common Diner censoring tactic. It would be called "Enhancement" by the gods.   

Image placed on top of Mr Kunstler's article Piketty Diketty Riketty with no mention of who placed it or source, a common Diner practice.

You know full well that I am the "poster" who publishes Kunstler each week, since RE refuses to. You could easily have directed your comment to me, but chose to strive to manufacture some sort of issue from it in a typical passive-agressive swipe. Allow me to answer you directly and honestly.

Part of the responsibility of operating a blog is to keep it entertaining, and a visual component is necessary. Diner Blog posts require illustration. As consumers of information, we are conditoned to expect images. And when such blog posts take on a second life, and are reposted in other media (such as Facebook),   FB looks for an image with which to associate the post. Hence the selection of suitable images each week to illustrate the theme. Selecting such images is akin to what a photo editor does, and it a role I take seriously. You are correct to observe that it is effectively, "comment." THat is why I have tried to take care to understand the article and to select images that reinforce the meaning of the article rather than detract.  Other bloggers, when provided a back link to their reposting at DD, have expressed gratitude for the added illustrations.

This week's image is by Anthony Freda (http://www.anthonyfreda.com), an artist whose work bristles with pungent social commentary, a visual complement to Mr. Kunstler's own work. In fact, you'll find the cited work, "The Haves and Have nots," on his main gallery page. Given the subject, I thought it quite on point:

So-called capitalism is more like gravity, a set of laws that apply to and describe the behavior of surplus wealth, in particular wealth generated by industrial societies, which is to say unprecedented massive wealth. The human race never saw anything quite like it before. It became both a moral embarrassment and a political inconvenience. So among the intellectual grandiosities of modern times is the idea that this massive wealth can be politically managed to produce an ideal equitable society — with no side effects.

Part of having responsibility is exercising it. And the result is to leave oneself open to critics. And as we have seen, everybody's a critic.

It is tiresome to work to build something, only to have it continually torn down by those who would rather criticize than contribute. In that context, a poem by John Ciardi, gone some 30 years now but still a giant, comes to mind:

In Place Of A Curse

By Ciardi, John

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected,
I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who,
having been slugged no harder than anyone else,
never got up again, neither to fight back,
nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.

They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding,
I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven.

But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness,
I shall take last to love, and never wholly.
Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell -
but let it be read over them as they enter:

Beware the calculations of the meek, who g am b led nothing
gave nothing, and could never receive enough.

And BTW, the reason the spacing on the word g a m b l e d is odd is because here, on your "First Amendment Forum" the word "gamble" gets auto-corrected.

Ironies abound.

The unjustness of this sentence will be loaded with unintended consequences; of this there can be little doubt.

As we used to say in the FSoA before peaceful protest became a criminal act, "No justice-- no peace."

Quote from: Surly1 on April 27, 2014, 06:51:58 pm

GO, Joe P,

I have pretty much concluded that the problem must be in my browser. Joe, I am using Safari. If you have any  wisdom to share, light me up[. I have diddled with my preferences but still can't get the quote function to work; but it works fine on DD.

Troubling-- but I hope it's the worst thing that happens to me.

Pardon me but I could not help but overhear your quandary. If I may, you may wish to go about it as follows:

DO NOT simply click "quote" and wait for a reply box with the quote inside. Rather, click "reply" and wait for an empty reply box.

Having come this far, then scroll down and your box will disappear off the top of your screen. Fear not friend for it can be brought back down.

Scroll down until you see the post you want to quote.

Having rounded on your prey, it is then just a matter of highlighting the desired discourse and only then click "quote".

You will be pleasantly surprised to scroll up and find the quote appearing prepacked in the reply box.


With Compliments, WJ

Why, I did the very thing that you suggest, and that does indeed work.

Thanks.