We’ve been here before. A century ago, a man who revolutionized an industry, and as a result gained both social and political as well as economic power, used his position to introduce America to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” In a 1931 interview, Adolf Hitler said the man was a “mentor” to him who had clarified his understanding of the threat posed by the Jews. In addition to a car factory, the man also owned a newspaper all his own, in which he could have published everything he wanted America to know.
Henry Ford also refused to build military aircraft, vehicles, tanks or anything else at the beginning of WW2 and had to be removed from his position of ownership of the Ford Motor Company by his wife and other family members on the Board of Directors as well as shareholders in the Corporation under pressure of the U.S. government. His grandson Henry Ford II was put in the head position after being released from the Navy and discovered that the old man had been running the company by cooking the books and almost by personal decree instead of by sound financial and business practices. Sound familiar?
Henry Ford turned down a contract to build Rolls-Royce Merlin engines for the RAF, so Packard got the job instead. He wanted nothing to do with the British government at all.
Over 8,000, plus tens of thousands of trucks, jeeps, tank engines, etc., which is why old man Ford got the boot because the U.S. government needed Willow Run and The Rouge for wartime production and Henry Ford was stonewalling them.
I have to admit to having been part of the problem myself, when I was a child.
when we'd spend half the summer in Detroit every year, there wasn't a lot for me to do but go to places like museums. so the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village and the Ford Plant Tour were places I made my dad take me to over and over again. he hated it and finally broke it to me that despite funding a swell museum, Mr. Ford wasn't our friend. my dad, being a machinist's son, was perfectly happy to look at the old machines, occasionally pausing to tell me about the miraculous steam engine and how the lathe built civilizations.
It should come as no surprise that in Dearborn one of the elementary schools was named Lindbergh. And no surprise that Ford was an early supporter of Father Charles Coughlin, the early and insidious right wing hate radio jock.
As a runaway Catholic I can say that the church has been late to the scene of all of history's atrocities except the ones they initiated. They now have an enlightened pope, but the reactionary College of Cardinals seems to have prayed him into old age and illness.
As for Coughlin, I suspect the church was relishing his celebrity and found him useful in recruiting. He was the pioneer of hateful airwaves long before Limbaugh, et. al.
Oh boy, Tom. Yes. That guy has always given me the heebyjeebies. The Ford/ Hitler, Musk/Trump is just too frightening to ignore. The NYT was reluctantly forced to rewrite it's Trump Veterans Day headline like, three times. Telemundo/Univision is taking a liking to T-Runp. Their new owner looks to be a bit of a fascistic personality.
Perhaps the major media, NYT reluctantly, is finally getting scared and starting to pay attention to what is really news. They also had better start thinking of how tenuous their Constitutionally mandated "Freedom of the Press" has become. Being told what to say might just be their future if they don't get their shit together fast.
yeah, those guys DO seem to be living in their Fools' Paradise. I guess the theory is that without the NYT, nobody's gonna know about all the horrible shit TFF's gonna be doing, which will feel to him like he's not having any effect on things.
I gotta say that the idea of many NYT staffers spending a few months making license plates is not entirely unappealing. it'd certainly teach them that they're actually just like the rest of us.
He is just a disgusting human being. I don’t know what else to say about him. I had a long day at work and I’m tired so I have no patience for a Nazi fuckface like Elon Musk. He joins the ranks of the orange nazi fuckface and they can both take a flying leap into the abyss.
Additionally, he goes about populating the earth with at least nine children (may be more by now) whom he doesn't have time to parent or commit to their mothers. 'm sure he values his seed above all others and is playing his part to spread whiteness. His concubinage is just another part of his bigoted business holdings.
I am positive that those unfortunate kids are much better off without his parenting time and so are their mothers.
He and the melonhead have the same "family values" , I guess.
I fail to comprehend how the various religious entities can accept the many marriages, porn stars, rapes etc that make up melonhead's "family values". That really puzzles me. I mean since they are such excellent "christians"?
You are right about the kids, but the lesson they will get from him is beget and forget. It's likely that their mothers will ensure that they and the kids are included in the will. When he gets to his check-out time it will be quite a feeding frenzy.
If I had the time and the money, I would dedicate my life to organizing advertising and viewing boycotts. For example, any company that gives money or support to republicans doesn't deserve the patronage of anyone who considers themselves a loyal American. Of course, that would also have health benefits: We would have no news to watch to annoy us, and virtually no processed food or drinks.
Or anything. If you eat, you are involved in agriculture, a very large multi-national industry. Organicly grown crops rely on many corporate entities just to exist. There is virtually no industry you can not be involved with in this century. What did you just type your comment on?
It’s not facetious to hope for better and make choices that honor our values. However, when we make “perfect the enemy of good enough” we avoid the responsibility of making meaningful choices and allow cynicism to disenfranchise us from our own agency.
Yes. And I apologize for not keeping to your point. Are you saying that it’s impossible to make a list of companies from which to purchase goods and services that would further the cause of freedom, justice, equality, and democracy? And at the same time deter the authoritarian cause?
Boycots have always been effective. Concience driven puchses make a difference too. I assume we all here understand that.
Back in the late 1950s, the John Birch Society bigwigs drove Fords because Henry was Hitler's idol and hero, and a very well known anti-semite. The transmissions were manual too, because automatics were a Communist plot to make us weak and compliant. Those were concious purchases, belief driven.
I was presuming Michael was being facitious. That was my point. To carry such logic to the extreme requires SUICIDE. That eliminates part of the problem and absolves one from responsibility from further cause of problem.
I've never been on Xitter and never knowingly supported Tesla or any Musk business. Part of me wishes I were on his platform, so I could cancel it. But I would have done that a long time ago.
I've stopped doing the social medias, could no longer find a f*ck to give about the opinions of anyone on them. They (opinions) are like belly buttons. We've all got one, but they aren't really designed for sharing are they? Mine stopped being of any real use to me many decades ago, and nobody else's ever was.
Elon who? *shrugs* How did so much wrong get stuffed into one meatsack?
Works for me, but then I've never used Xitter, wouldn't buy a Tesla or take one if it was given, and have no plans to go to Mars. I will, however, share this as much as I can. Maybe his bankers and Board will take him down when they realize that he can't pay the bills any more. One hopes that we have a backup for Starlink.
Careful of the term “vermin” as Trump has been using it to refer to his favorite punching bags. Fecal matter? Scum? We do need a word to convey our feelings. Vermin would have been fine until Trump/Miller put it out there.
I called him vermin for a long time, now he has used it on others. What he always does. Call others what he is. Every accusation is a confession.
He is lower than any other living creature so I’ll just adapt and go back to cretin. But he’s so much worse than stupid, maybe evil soul, or Dorian Gray. What a challenge??
I don't like the use of "fecal matter," because it is fertilizer, and it is the food of my favorite insects, the dung beetles (I had an article on dung beetles in the June 1997 Smithsonian).
I really like "effluvia"...sounds so smart, so CLASSICAL. but it's also vague as hell, which throws the listener back on his own imagination, making "effluvia" as tame or disgusting as that imagination permits.
I don't think any of them are *quite right*, although they would probably all work. Maybe "untreated sewage." Trump is full of untreated sewage! Vomitus is maybe too disgusting, but maybe tht's an advantage. Forgive me, I'm a bit on the spectrum, and I'm very picky about my words.
Xitter may be pronounced with an sh in China, but in Catalan it's pronounced ch as in chitter, which sounds as trivial and stupid as twitter. I never got involved with it because how could anything called a tweet be taken seriously?
I am still on Xitter, but don't now and never did actually read anything on it. I use it simply to post opportunities to sign petitions and write letters for good causes. I have no way to know what impact that might have on anyone, but there have to be still some sane folks on that site. I post as Skeeter in case anyone here wants to see what action opportunities I've posted.
I hadn't realized that George Soros had sold out his Tesla stock; good for him. I had bought a small number of shares in Tesla around 2012 because Elon Musk intrigued me and I wanted to learn more. By 2018, he began to disgust me, so I donated the appreciated shares to my donor-advised-fund, not wanting to be a part of anything involving Musk. I stand with George Soros!
I haven't been in one since I drove the Model S probably a little over a decade ago. It was not tinny. But I've heard others complaining recently of Teslas being tinny. I don't doubt it.
all I can think of is that axiomatic joke in which somebody says something unacceptable, realizes he needs to apologize (but doesn't really feel it) and proceeds to make a statement to clean up the first thing that's even worse, so he tries to clean up THAT one and it gets even worse than that until...
if I ever took the hijinks of the very rich seriously, I don't remember when that was. today, because of the "young tech billionaire" thing, those hijinks are just louder.
I admit that the combination of this guy's supposed "position" with the very flammable atmosphere of this historical moment makes what the dumb fuck says a little more worrisome.
but finally, he's just one of those Walking Human Jokes. I mean...isn't he?
I THINK (in retrospect) what I might have meant was something like "yeah but how far that flamethrower throws its flames might be somewhat up to us."
plus at the moment I was posting, I'd probably heard his name a few too many times that day. it's a shitty name for a walking POS because it's a beautiful word (sexy things, tasty melon, etc.) most of us will never be able to use without a flash of his ugly, self-satisfied smirk.
never was self-satisfaction so globally unsatisfying.
that last might have some epigrammatic possibilities with a little tweaking.
Henry Ford also refused to build military aircraft, vehicles, tanks or anything else at the beginning of WW2 and had to be removed from his position of ownership of the Ford Motor Company by his wife and other family members on the Board of Directors as well as shareholders in the Corporation under pressure of the U.S. government. His grandson Henry Ford II was put in the head position after being released from the Navy and discovered that the old man had been running the company by cooking the books and almost by personal decree instead of by sound financial and business practices. Sound familiar?
You mean canceling StarLink for the Ukrainian Army? Sure does.
Henry Ford turned down a contract to build Rolls-Royce Merlin engines for the RAF, so Packard got the job instead. He wanted nothing to do with the British government at all.
How many thousand B-24s did Ford built at Willow Run?
Over 8,000, plus tens of thousands of trucks, jeeps, tank engines, etc., which is why old man Ford got the boot because the U.S. government needed Willow Run and The Rouge for wartime production and Henry Ford was stonewalling them.
whatta prick.
I have to admit to having been part of the problem myself, when I was a child.
when we'd spend half the summer in Detroit every year, there wasn't a lot for me to do but go to places like museums. so the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village and the Ford Plant Tour were places I made my dad take me to over and over again. he hated it and finally broke it to me that despite funding a swell museum, Mr. Ford wasn't our friend. my dad, being a machinist's son, was perfectly happy to look at the old machines, occasionally pausing to tell me about the miraculous steam engine and how the lathe built civilizations.
It should come as no surprise that in Dearborn one of the elementary schools was named Lindbergh. And no surprise that Ford was an early supporter of Father Charles Coughlin, the early and insidious right wing hate radio jock.
the most galling thing about Coughlin was how long the fucking church thought everything he was saying was just fine.
I will say that, having driven past his church on Woodward many times, I always thought it was pretty impressive in its insistent gaudiness.
As a runaway Catholic I can say that the church has been late to the scene of all of history's atrocities except the ones they initiated. They now have an enlightened pope, but the reactionary College of Cardinals seems to have prayed him into old age and illness.
As for Coughlin, I suspect the church was relishing his celebrity and found him useful in recruiting. He was the pioneer of hateful airwaves long before Limbaugh, et. al.
You've certainly described the "holy fathers" to a T.
Oh boy, Tom. Yes. That guy has always given me the heebyjeebies. The Ford/ Hitler, Musk/Trump is just too frightening to ignore. The NYT was reluctantly forced to rewrite it's Trump Veterans Day headline like, three times. Telemundo/Univision is taking a liking to T-Runp. Their new owner looks to be a bit of a fascistic personality.
Perhaps the major media, NYT reluctantly, is finally getting scared and starting to pay attention to what is really news. They also had better start thinking of how tenuous their Constitutionally mandated "Freedom of the Press" has become. Being told what to say might just be their future if they don't get their shit together fast.
Indeed.
if so (and I hope it is) it's taken them long enough, the ninnies.
yeah, those guys DO seem to be living in their Fools' Paradise. I guess the theory is that without the NYT, nobody's gonna know about all the horrible shit TFF's gonna be doing, which will feel to him like he's not having any effect on things.
I gotta say that the idea of many NYT staffers spending a few months making license plates is not entirely unappealing. it'd certainly teach them that they're actually just like the rest of us.
that is to say, if you prick them, they bleed.
He is just a disgusting human being. I don’t know what else to say about him. I had a long day at work and I’m tired so I have no patience for a Nazi fuckface like Elon Musk. He joins the ranks of the orange nazi fuckface and they can both take a flying leap into the abyss.
Love TC's site where we can call a fuckface a fuckface.
I know MaryPat. It felt really good to get that out last night.
Additionally, he goes about populating the earth with at least nine children (may be more by now) whom he doesn't have time to parent or commit to their mothers. 'm sure he values his seed above all others and is playing his part to spread whiteness. His concubinage is just another part of his bigoted business holdings.
I am positive that those unfortunate kids are much better off without his parenting time and so are their mothers.
He and the melonhead have the same "family values" , I guess.
I fail to comprehend how the various religious entities can accept the many marriages, porn stars, rapes etc that make up melonhead's "family values". That really puzzles me. I mean since they are such excellent "christians"?
You are right about the kids, but the lesson they will get from him is beget and forget. It's likely that their mothers will ensure that they and the kids are included in the will. When he gets to his check-out time it will be quite a feeding frenzy.
jeez, Karen. you're APOLOGIZING?? for what???
I don’t know David. I hope I didn’t apologize..😹..did I??
a little bit.
Well said Karen.
Hey Karen why dont you say what you think??????
There MUST be many abysses to choose from. Deep ones.
If I had the time and the money, I would dedicate my life to organizing advertising and viewing boycotts. For example, any company that gives money or support to republicans doesn't deserve the patronage of anyone who considers themselves a loyal American. Of course, that would also have health benefits: We would have no news to watch to annoy us, and virtually no processed food or drinks.
Or anything. If you eat, you are involved in agriculture, a very large multi-national industry. Organicly grown crops rely on many corporate entities just to exist. There is virtually no industry you can not be involved with in this century. What did you just type your comment on?
You are being facitious, I presume.
It’s not facetious to hope for better and make choices that honor our values. However, when we make “perfect the enemy of good enough” we avoid the responsibility of making meaningful choices and allow cynicism to disenfranchise us from our own agency.
Grow a garden or help a friend do so.
I think you missed my point.
Yes. And I apologize for not keeping to your point. Are you saying that it’s impossible to make a list of companies from which to purchase goods and services that would further the cause of freedom, justice, equality, and democracy? And at the same time deter the authoritarian cause?
Boycots have always been effective. Concience driven puchses make a difference too. I assume we all here understand that.
Back in the late 1950s, the John Birch Society bigwigs drove Fords because Henry was Hitler's idol and hero, and a very well known anti-semite. The transmissions were manual too, because automatics were a Communist plot to make us weak and compliant. Those were concious purchases, belief driven.
I have been thinking about you off and on Ransom. If your first name was Brenda or Brian you’d B. Rideout.
I was presuming Michael was being facitious. That was my point. To carry such logic to the extreme requires SUICIDE. That eliminates part of the problem and absolves one from responsibility from further cause of problem.
I've never been on Xitter and never knowingly supported Tesla or any Musk business. Part of me wishes I were on his platform, so I could cancel it. But I would have done that a long time ago.
I've stopped doing the social medias, could no longer find a f*ck to give about the opinions of anyone on them. They (opinions) are like belly buttons. We've all got one, but they aren't really designed for sharing are they? Mine stopped being of any real use to me many decades ago, and nobody else's ever was.
Elon who? *shrugs* How did so much wrong get stuffed into one meatsack?
Oh gosh - look at Congress! I also shrug.
Works for me, but then I've never used Xitter, wouldn't buy a Tesla or take one if it was given, and have no plans to go to Mars. I will, however, share this as much as I can. Maybe his bankers and Board will take him down when they realize that he can't pay the bills any more. One hopes that we have a backup for Starlink.
Been off and gone for couple of years. Musk is vermin. So was Ford.
Careful of the term “vermin” as Trump has been using it to refer to his favorite punching bags. Fecal matter? Scum? We do need a word to convey our feelings. Vermin would have been fine until Trump/Miller put it out there.
I called him vermin for a long time, now he has used it on others. What he always does. Call others what he is. Every accusation is a confession.
He is lower than any other living creature so I’ll just adapt and go back to cretin. But he’s so much worse than stupid, maybe evil soul, or Dorian Gray. What a challenge??
I don't like the use of "fecal matter," because it is fertilizer, and it is the food of my favorite insects, the dung beetles (I had an article on dung beetles in the June 1997 Smithsonian).
I suggest slag. Scum would be OK.
I really like "effluvia"...sounds so smart, so CLASSICAL. but it's also vague as hell, which throws the listener back on his own imagination, making "effluvia" as tame or disgusting as that imagination permits.
or am I completely wrong?
Why not nazi fuckface? And, I had a good day off work and I’m not even tired tonight, and he’s still a Nazi fuckface
at no point have I EVER had an issue with "Nazi fuckface."
whew. I sure am glad we cleared that up. "Nazi fuckface" is where we START from. "Nazi fuckface" is a superb beginning, but only a beginning...
these gummies are very intense.
Too bad we’re on opposite sides of the country. Otherwise I would have one of your gummies.
I had to look it up, having never done so before. I like it!
Slag is good, but in British usage it is similar to whore, woman who has many sexual partners.
Those beetles that roll dung? Cute.
Oy. The last thing I want to do is to use a term that's used to diminish or damn women! I will have to think of something else.
And, yes, the dung rolling beetles. If you want to see my article, I can send it to you. Just email me at holzmandc@outlook.com
The ultimate recyclers
Your article may have been where I heard of dung beetles!
That certainly would thrill me! I love them! My favorite insects. Although certain butterflies are high on the list.
“Untreated sewage”? Excrement? Dross? Vomitus?
I don't think any of them are *quite right*, although they would probably all work. Maybe "untreated sewage." Trump is full of untreated sewage! Vomitus is maybe too disgusting, but maybe tht's an advantage. Forgive me, I'm a bit on the spectrum, and I'm very picky about my words.
Xitter may be pronounced with an sh in China, but in Catalan it's pronounced ch as in chitter, which sounds as trivial and stupid as twitter. I never got involved with it because how could anything called a tweet be taken seriously?
I am still on Xitter, but don't now and never did actually read anything on it. I use it simply to post opportunities to sign petitions and write letters for good causes. I have no way to know what impact that might have on anyone, but there have to be still some sane folks on that site. I post as Skeeter in case anyone here wants to see what action opportunities I've posted.
Thanks. Added two words from two languages, neither of which am I fluent. Soon to be multilingual. Useful when visiting Walmart.
I just call it and the posters twits -
I hadn't realized that George Soros had sold out his Tesla stock; good for him. I had bought a small number of shares in Tesla around 2012 because Elon Musk intrigued me and I wanted to learn more. By 2018, he began to disgust me, so I donated the appreciated shares to my donor-advised-fund, not wanting to be a part of anything involving Musk. I stand with George Soros!
Thanks TC. Well done!
As for Tesla, among other things, they are ugly, inside and out. As is Elon.
Having recently finally had a ride in one, they are also "tinny".
I haven't been in one since I drove the Model S probably a little over a decade ago. It was not tinny. But I've heard others complaining recently of Teslas being tinny. I don't doubt it.
The events surrounding Oct 7th sure has revealed much about all sorts of people. Little of it positive.
Boycott All Things Musk. My mantra since I first “met” the asshole.
He has no regard for life. This Reuters article is about Musk’s animal abuse and death rate in his Neurolink business.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-faces-federal-probe-employee-backlash-over-animal-tests-2022-12-05/
Tom Kudos!
all I can think of is that axiomatic joke in which somebody says something unacceptable, realizes he needs to apologize (but doesn't really feel it) and proceeds to make a statement to clean up the first thing that's even worse, so he tries to clean up THAT one and it gets even worse than that until...
if I ever took the hijinks of the very rich seriously, I don't remember when that was. today, because of the "young tech billionaire" thing, those hijinks are just louder.
I admit that the combination of this guy's supposed "position" with the very flammable atmosphere of this historical moment makes what the dumb fuck says a little more worrisome.
but finally, he's just one of those Walking Human Jokes. I mean...isn't he?
As the old saying goes, "clowns with flamethrowers, still have flamethrowers."
hard to argue with this point.
I THINK (in retrospect) what I might have meant was something like "yeah but how far that flamethrower throws its flames might be somewhat up to us."
plus at the moment I was posting, I'd probably heard his name a few too many times that day. it's a shitty name for a walking POS because it's a beautiful word (sexy things, tasty melon, etc.) most of us will never be able to use without a flash of his ugly, self-satisfied smirk.
never was self-satisfaction so globally unsatisfying.
that last might have some epigrammatic possibilities with a little tweaking.