Parenting

By James Kwak

My seven-year-old daughter’s new favorite song is, no joke, “Banks of Marble,” sung by Pete Seeger. I swear I had nothing to do with it. She found a Pete Seeger CD one day, which I didn’t even know we had, and put it into our old boombox/CD player when my wife and I were out. (There was a babysitter over, but she was mainly taking care of my toddler son.) When we came home later that afternoon, she announced that it was her favorite song, and that her favorite part was the last verse.

For those who don’t know why this is remarkable, here are the lyrics to the last verse and final chorus:

I’ve seen my brothers working
Throughout this mighty land;
I prayed we’d get together,
And together make a stand.

Then we’d own those banks of marble,
With a guard at every door;
And we’d share those vaults of silver,
That we have sweated for

Of course, this is the girl who is quoted in White House Burning saying, at age five, that Social Security sounds like “the best program ever.”

86 thoughts on “Parenting”

  3. she got the cleaned up version by Pete Seeger. the original Wobbly song ran: Then we’ll storm the banks of marble Kill the guards at every door Then we’ll share the vaults of silver That the people sweated for.

    Vivian Lewis, ed. http://www.Global-Investing.com

  7. Wow, people challenging the choices of a 7-year old who likes a tune from an American Master. Next, they’ll have us believe that borrowing zillions from Communist China to pay for a Brave New World of surveillance and bonuses for Wall Streeters protects their freedom. The decline and fall writ large.

    Thanks James for reminding me of a great tune from a different time.

  9. @ Mr. Kwak:I was gonna say “cue tea bagger bast*rds screaming ‘socialist’ NOW” but I got here too late.

    Well Mr. Kwak, at age 7 she’s got my vote over about 85% of any Republicans in office you’d care to mention. Careful though, Oliver Stone’s dad was a bigtime Republican, so don’t celebrate too early James. If you let her come to it on her own (which I’m hoping you’ll break away from Asian parenting tradition of forcefully jamming your thoughts down into her lower esophagus) my guess is she’ll drift quite naturally to Progressive.

  10. Thank you for leading me to this song. It is so hard to believe that there was once a time when songs like this weren’t an anachronism. My 87-year-old father is what he still calls “A Roosevelt Democrat,” and this song reminded me of the stories he has told us about his childhood during the Great Depression and what the government programs meant to his generation. It also reminds me of his oft-articulated dispirited state that his children will not do better than he has–will likely do much worse–despite our education levels and lifetimes of hard work. He begged me to take him to Occupy Wall Street events a few summers ago, but I was afraid it would be too much for him and he would be arrested or manhandled by police. Gotta protect those banks and bankers!
    Those Banks of Marble, indeed. Nothing has really changed, only the level of wealth has actually increased for the 1% since Pete sang this.
    I fear for my children and for the sweet little girl who rediscovered this song.

  11. ‘Wow, people challenging the choices of a 7-year old who likes a tune from an American Master.’

    So, you’d have been fine with her liking this;

    The street free for the brown battalions,
    The street free for the Storm Troopers.
    Millions, full of hope, look up at the swastika;
    The day breaks for freedom and for bread.

    For the last time the call will now be blown;
    For the struggle now we all stand ready.
    Soon will fly Hitler-flags over every street;
    Slavery will last only a short time longer.

    Flag high, ranks closed,
    The S.A. marches with silent solid steps.
    Comrades shot by the red front and reaction
    march in spirit with us in our ranks.

  12. Since I know from past experience how limited is the history IQ of many who post here, at one time Pete Seeger had no problem with Nazism. He was part of the Almanac Singers who wrote songs against American interference in Europe,prior to late June 1941, that is).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_for_John_Doe

    ‘Songs for John Doe was the 1941 debut album and first released product of the Almanac Singers, an influential early folk music group.

    ‘The album was released in May 1941, at a time when World War II was raging but the United States remained neutral. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were still at peace, as provided by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. American Communists and “fellow travelers”, including the Almanacs, followed the anti-interventionist stance dictated by the Soviet Union through the Comintern, which accounts for the appearance of anti-war songs on the album. However, on June 22, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Almanacs changed direction and began agitating for U.S. intervention in Europe. Songs for John Doe was quickly pulled from distribution.’

    Then those anti-war songs were replaced by gung-ho get after Hitler tunes.

  13. Those old leftie songs are inspiring, all right. Jackie, yeah, we’ve lost something on the left. There are no more figures like Seeger or Eugene V. Debs, of whom it was said, “That old man with the burning eyes actually believes that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man. And that’s not the funniest part of it. As long as he’s around I believe it myself.” Our activism just doesn’t seem to have a lot of heart, and I think that’s a shame.

  18. Mike Seeger lived nearby, I’d run into him at the local Krogers, plus he’d play for local Democratic Party events. A quieter and calmer sort than his older sibling (half-brother?). He passed away in 2009, there’s a biography out now. His passion was preserving the music of the mountain people. He and Peggy played concerts locally from time to time, she lived in England and composed many songs on women’s issues, plus whimsical protest songs such as “Its a free world,” on battles for breathing space at a london cafe. I’ve no idea how many today sing Pete’s music, but the oral tradition that Mike loved is alive and well in this part of the country.

  22. Wow, irony is lost on this feed. Calling someone a bad parent because his 7-year old likes a protest song of generations past is polemics at its worst. I’d rather my 5-year old listen to anti-war songs instead of playing shoot’m up video games on the computer.

    Wobblies Unite – All we have to fear is ignorance (with apologies to Winnie)

  23. Sounds like the average American voter: wants Social Security and marble houses at the same time. Good news is she can only go up and has 11 more years to be a decent and cognizant citizen :)

  24. Hey kids, can you say “Go F*CK YOURSELF military/intelligence state!!!!”??

  25. ‘Calling someone a bad parent because his 7-year old likes a protest song of generations past is polemics at its worst. ‘

    Did you happen to notice the title of this blog post?

  26. @ Mr. Kwak, I should also say, If your daughter (who has good taste in music WITH or MINUS political message) likes Pete Seeger, you might introduce her to the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, and my father’s favorite “Peter, Paul, and Mary”. There is a huge wealth of lost gems in those 3 groups. And really you can make a very strong argument these groups were the true rebels before Bob Dylan popped up on the scene to vocally BS his way through songs. If Bob Dylan doesn’t admit he took some huge dollops of these performers’ work to amalgamate into his own, (I said IF) then he is a liar.

    This concert by The Weavers (people are welcome to correct me if I’m wrong on the year) I think was done around 1980. That means Seeger would have been age 61 when he was singing the high notes on this. Try these notes at 61 and see how your vocal cords perform:

  29. Did you ask your daughter, Kwak, if she wanted you to post on Baseline Scenario the information about what kind of music she likes?

    It took thousands of years and tons of mano et mano battles for people to EARN THE RIGHT to have the REAL security that ONLY PRIVACY can provide.

    This is a prison state with enronista perverts doing the predatory stalking.

    Time to break out of prison…

    http://rt.com/usa/anonymous-fawkes-dc-march-902/

  32. Yea, “edwardus”, like your comment is going to make the CONCERN over whether the daughter gave permission to have this “warm anecdote” last on the internet forever….I can guarantee you she will be p-ssed about this as soon as she hits those NORMAL rebellious teens.

    Using kids to make you appear human is hitting the bottom of the moral barrel – and every time I think it is bottom, a new hole opens up and the bottom sinks lower….Kwak had a beauty contest mom moment here…

    Where’s the “warm anecdote” about how the economy is improving….?

  33. Indeed Ed, I completely agree. And take Annie with a grain of salt and a ten foot pole, she is as insane as they come round here, can’t be satisfied, any ways, any hows, always a dry powder line short of happy (maintenance in her world) and on her last nerve, all at the same time. And repetitive too, should I go on? Or let her take over the insults? ?

  38. Around here, 7 year olds are meant to be seen, and not heard from. We already know the problems that arise when you hand them the reigns at 6, they end up becoming lobbyists and writing legislation that, you guessed it, favors hearing from six year olds.

  41. looking in the mirror again, anonyoraturd, and thinking it’s “annie”….?

    like I said – where is the “warm anecdote” about the REPETITION in the economy – the suck up of $$ in circulation and the printing of FIAT $$ by the FRB which DOES NOT HAVE A VALID CONTRACT. It EXPIRED in 2012, just like I wish you had :-)

  42. Dorothy, you can wish all you want, but your wish may not always be granted. But you can still, wish on drifter!

  44. I guess all the millions in filthy wasteful oil lalaland who ran away from the perpetual war games that their “leaders” invest in are “drifters”, right?

    DELUSIONAL about what’s coming next for YOU, anonyoraturd…

    EVERY HUMAN BEING HAS THE RIGHT TO MAKE THEIR LIVES LESS MISERABLE THROUGH HONEST WORK.

    What explanation do YOU have for using “technology” to STEAL everything honest labor has the right to have???

    You are a thief, liar and murderer. Global war, drug and slave lord scum and NO ONE is afraid of you….not now, not ever….

    I got a song for that :-)

  45. Look woman, you already got an extra 23 years of life you didn’t deserve you ugly wench, and you don’t how, and you don’t why, all you can do is complain about life and threaten people over your ignorance. I didn’t ask for you to be afraid of me, but if you closely in the mirror and turn your head, you should be afraid of yourself, and the life time of knots you have tangled in your neck and just walked away from. But I now know you can just wish that pain away, and PRETEND it simply does not exist. Carry on, for your days are numbered as a simple complainer, at least you know how ride that horse, but how long can you go w/o electricity or heat I wonder.

  46. As usual, NO CLUE who anonyoraturd is talking about….I am 100% certain it is not me…can such a delusional sadistic internet stalking NSA cretin REALLY be in charge of who gets an extra 23 years of life….??!!

    Did not do the bidding for the DEVILS in Syria? Oh boo-hoo….

  48. Why would Kwak start this thread about his daughter’s music tastes when there are so many predators and misogynists in “finance” as revelaed on this blog over the MANY MANY MANY years of yaddayadda…?

    Weird….

    The slum at the north end of the Strip in Las Vegas NV is spectacular – lower standard of living than so-called 3rd world regions – and no “Middle Class” to support the discarded slaves of Adelson, Mr. Israel First….

    MAN TO LAND RATIO discussion or STFU, MIT “economists”….

    Pre-emptive wars of choice do NOT bring back any booty for the country that launches the war – it ONLY insures that the GLOBAL War drug and Slave Lords – liars, thieves, murderers, sadists and devil worshippers (money god)

    INCREASE the wealth disparity between the moon walking Middle Class of USA and themselves….

    JUST WAR.

  49. Just the lost war on drugs Annie.
    No one besides me and you are even talking to you right now. Look back at the many many years of your repetition. Don’t make me break out the worlds one and only smallest violin and play a pepper hearts tune fer ya, you still have a long ways to go tonight.

  52. I don’t know that they rinse and repeat the lies anymore, it seems more like an add on scenario with no end in sight, you can blame the Brits for that. The depopulation should soon control the body rot problem, with nature being what it is. And you can always check out if the misery factor becomes to great, no more profiting from Annie’s misery, or better yet, manufacture your very own misery pills, force people to take them, in order that you can inflict more misery than you receive. Sort of an, I don’t mad I get even strategy, where the scales balance. You always seem to be a collective other.

  53. I’m so incredibly sorry that I commented on this thread because I thought someone criticizing a 7-year old for liking a ballad from so long ago was a tad overreacting. How this morphed into a tirade of venomous bile, puts paid to the notion of civil society. Sorry James for adding to this din of weirdness.

  54. Log Date: 11-12-13

    When they fight, them claw each other’s eyes out…. But if she is the Democratic Presidential Nominee up against the Republican nominee Chris Crispy Christie Donuts, then jaded voters will go with the Crispy Donut from New Je-r-r-r-r-s-e-y.:

    “The first time Elizabeth Warren met Hillary Clinton was in 1998, when the then–first lady requested a briefing on an industry-backed bankruptcy bill. Warren was impressed by Clinton’s smarts and steel, and credited her when Bill Clinton vetoed the bill in 2000. But the following year Hillary Clinton was a senator and she reversed her position. Warren’s reaction was scathing. “Her husband was a lame duck at the time he vetoed the bill; he could afford to forgo future campaign contributions,” Warren wrote in The Two-Income Trap. “As New York’s newest senator, however, it seems that Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position.” Warren never forgot the betrayal, invoking it as recently as her 2012 campaign.”

    Source URL: http://www.newrepublic.com//article/115509/elizabeth-warren-hillary-clintons-nightmare

  55. Annie, James shared a simple, warm anecdote tinged with a bit of humor.

    On a more serious note, I’ve read some of your recent posts. I sincerely hope you do something about your anger, it seems to have been intensifying since I first visited this blog several years ago (assuming of course that you are the same “Annie”). Be well.

  56. Look, Edwardus, just as YOU have self-appointed yourself Ms. Manners, I can challenge Kwak to be a better parent. He did NOT ask his daughter for permission to share her music tastes with this blog full of misogynists.

    As for YOUR delusional belief that you can divine “anger” every time someone states JUST THE FACTS, Ma’am,

    well, that psychobabble well has run dry – no one drinks the arsenic water of YOUR pharisee judgements….

    Real men don’t “share” anything about their daughters on the internet with GLOBAL War, drug and Slave Lords.

    Get out of the realm that WOMEN rule, wouldja? Home and family is SACRED space and without privacy in their sacred space, IT IS A SADISTIC PRISON.

    But your ethics and morals are so savage and primitive, you have NO CLUE, do you?

    Either that, or it’s always been about imprisoning the female, which is the Saudi way….

    FEMEN has it right – “….poor because of YOU….”.

    There is nothing resembling an “economy” where 480 USA citizens are worth a collective total of 2.08 TRILLION – they basically printing BOGUS FIAT $$$$ and gave it to themselves to pay off MERCENARIES to murder and steal.

    Disgusting that you still practice the red herring sadism of whipping an “annie” when this whole planet is TRASHED and going down from the exploitation of over-population – 80% of the world’s population got here from MEN forcing themselves on women to satisfy their lusts.

    You’re NOBODY, Edwardus….

  58. Hey, good to hear from you again Annie, I dare alot and we have been over this before but maybe you need a refresher course.

    The 1st one to fail you is our pitiful gvt, they failed everyone except themselves and that’s been proved over and over again. The next ones to fail you were your parents, as nice and naive as they may have been, you are not alone here, for they may have had the dry powder commitment and may have just wanted to put a load on their kids (obviously the more kids, the greater potential for failure of at least some), or always needed money. Ours wanted to throw down their double root canal as a last hoorah. The 3rd ones to fail you were/are your husband and possibly some of your boyfriends, could they have seen the strength and anger of your gestures and wanted some way to control you, perhaps, anything is possible. The last ones to possibly fail you Annie, is the rest of your family , or more likely, yourself, yes some fall into a sadistic prison for themselves and can not find any way out. Better that than a crushing of the roofs during a dream or a nightmare that you never wake from I guess.

    Keep fighting the fight until the bitter end, but please note who the real enemy’s are here, and that the battle can still be won, but you have to be in it, to win it.

  60. Your psychobabble is LAUGHABLE, anonyoraturd! Good lord, if that is the quality of made-up crap that NSA analysts are diving from meta-data – or worse – what FOREIGN cash rich CRIMINALS come up with as analysis of USA “character” – then there is NOTHING to be afraid of, its a SLAM DUNK to win the Just War!

    LOL

    No one “failed” me. Cleaning out the ‘hood was prevented by ZIONISTS and other DELUSIONAL monkey brain cretins who keep telling “god” that “god” hasn’t done enough for THEM lately…

    But enough of this TOTAL bs – this is an MIT site where the ECONOMISTS were keeping track of the BASELINE….

    If anything, this website is Exhibit A as prima facie evidence for the widespread “capture” of the economy by liars thieves and murderers.

    Like I said before, where is the warm fuzzy feel good story about the ECONOMY of the moon-walking Middle Class….?

    Btw – stop p-ssing off the Russians, you fools…they always meant to USE the weapons they built…and karma’s a bitch for selling those Winchesters to the criminal element of the peasant class in Czarist Russia….

    Yea, MY parents knew a thing or two….

    Freedom FROM evil – the eternal battle :-))

  61. Maybe gypsies, tramps and theives could get ya here. But liars, thieves, and murders, oh my Dorothy, not on this site. Perhaps the asteroid belt but definitely not here.

  62. http://rt.com/usa/cia-irs-nsa-personal-information-730/

    Those corrupt and sadistic agencies taken over by Zionists and other DELUSIONAL monkey brain cretins

    SHARED MIDDLE CLASS USA CITIZEN DATA WITH GLOBAL WAR, DRUG, AND SLAVE LORDS!!!

    What part of OUTRAGEOUS CRIMINALITY don’t you whackos understand?

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME

    FIAT $$$$ – illegal printing since 12/21/2012, no less, used to commit economic genocide….as if economic “sanctions” against a country like IRAN is not being also done against WHOMEVER a LOW LIFE at those agencies FILLED WITH FOREIGN employees (MORE than USA born and bred citizens) – the puke-worthy hypocrites at CIA, NSA, IRS –

    they are doing “sanctions” agaimst USA born and bred citizens at will!

    Never bending my knee to any of them.

    JUST WAR

    Millions are starting out in little ways – passive-aggressive tit for tat pharisee insanity interpretation of “law” (virtual detailitis) – and Koch et al heads on a stick will be the FINAL “slam dunk”….

  63. A God you don’t believe in is coming AFTER you annie, maybe it is an Iranian one. And Koch too.

  65. http://goo.gl/sxjDzf : “Almost a decade ago, Pellegrini, 32, ditched her first career, as an investment banker to become a chef, which led to her becoming a hunter, which led to a book deal, which led to her… teaching a group of women how to fire a shotgun…..“It’s going to be intense,” Pellegrini replies, “but you’re going to like it.”……. Reibstein, who is wearing the bone of a raccoon’s penis on a string around her neck — not for fertility, as is the custom, but for “mojo” — has just passed through the last stages of a divorce….she studied at the Chapin School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side; after college came a stint at Lehman Brothers and then, when she grew disenchanted….. Gun hickeys and blood stains aside, she’s a little like Annie Oakley as interpreted by Reese Witherspoon. It was at Stone Barns that Dan Barber, the influential farm-to-table chef, invited her to slaughter a turkey. Doing so changed her life. “I thrust my hands deep into her cavity,” she writes in the book. “It was still warm. I slid my hands high up the inside of the breastbone and felt the windpipe and heart and gizzard and intestines and pulled them out in one handful.”

  66. Yup, Gen X “art” exploding like slow-mo bullet footage around the world – biggest fans….? The Middle East – let’s all pull out the vital organs of our enemies and eat them on live TV….

    That’s rabid raccoon classification, imo – put them out of their misery since there’s nothing human left to the creature….

    China lifting the one child rule – the poverty and pollution and opium addicted nematodes are going to multiply mindlessly without paying fines to the rest of the world for breaching the man to land ratio….

    Meanwhile, the IRS in the USA will extract fines from healthy people who do NOT buy for-profit health insurance – the scheme by which the 480 USA citizens who are worth a collective total of 2.08 TRILLION

    rob Peter to pay Paul for their health care – how many heart operations did Cheney have….? He killed my Grandma (and others on the day the Evangelicals predicted that the world would be raptured) to get the $$$$ for his last one….”economic sanctions” if you do NOT believe in anonyoraturd’s “god” – look it up in The Urantia Book – the SELF-proclaimed “God of Urantia”.

    Can’t even manage Spaceship Earth properly, some “god”….

  67. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbobelian/2013/11/12/jjs-2-2-billion-settlement-wont-stop-big-pharmas-addiction-to-off-label-sales/

    Military trained CEO Gorsky in charge of robbing Peter to pay Paul via big pharma’s J and J (which can’t even properly manufacture bandaids anymore)

    “…..let’s stuff the drugs down that bitch’s throat – the one with the Father who was a “knight of the round table” for the last Czar of Russia….”

    targeted “economic sanctions”….better than letting psychos re-write the history books…

    Just the facts, Ma’am….

  68. Yea, it’s gonna be a big year, as the Cisco chief retreats to the golden parachute he never found, and the righteous never get the respect that he deserved.
    Instead the psychiatrist snuffs out the evil within, and it’s the pedal to metal for arrogance and hypocrisy, as our political country descends into the poverty it’s citizens were destine to become. The Bible warns that you should not be poor, or old and sickly at the end, for these people shall have no recourse against the strength and desperation of the youth which had no other option. It was written.

  69. Like I said from the beginning, she’s gonna be p-ssed one day that Dad exposed her music tastes on this blog full of DELUSIONAL misogynists – it WAS NOT the “youth” that killed Grandma – it was the EMBEDDED bible-thumping hedonists and nihilists from the Bush cabal that hid their murderous thieving schemes behind bible words and monkey brain made up crap – “prophecy”.

    You all know what you can do with that “bible”…

    From The Urantia Book – Page 614, “How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates and subject.”

    NEVER bending my knee to the Global War Drug and Slave Lords.

    Hiding behind the bible to commit crimes against God’s Will for the HUMAN SPECIES…..?! Keep heaving “rationalizations”….nothing to save in the souless….

    Why is this FACT about God-given rights not an “ism” coming out of MIT in regards to a “global economy”….?

    Every HUMAN BEING has the right to make their lives less miserable through HONEST WORK.

  71. No, I think she is going to end up more like an orphan at the end, and
    @ Every HUMAN BEING has the right to make their lives less miserable through HONEST WORK.
    Hey, don’t let me stop you.

  72. Counterfeit Fiat $$$$ is TOTALITARIAN in its ambitions.

    anonyoraturd, Go bend your knee to the self-proclaimed God of Urantia who rules from “virtual” reality – convincing you that the pimple on your ass is “theoretical”…

    No one knows what the health care costs are because after spending billions on spy centers, the health care needs of the people they are spying on is NOT data worthy of “meta” analysis?! Keep it theoretical…?

    As for the kids of the elite, that son of the the C-suite father at GE Financial services who riddled the bodies of 5 year olds so badly that the children were unrecognizable – the Sandy Hook Elementary School incident – well, wonder what music he listened to….? If that particular shooter was NOT the spawn of some bankster, he would have been dealt with in a manner where the shooting spree would have never happened….been locked up a LONG time ago. There is nothing the elite crave more than to have their soulessness be given a medical diagnosis that has their surname attached to it…stay tuned, there might be something named after the Newtown CT shooter once a big donation is given and charity balls are organized….the American Dream realized – yes, you can have enough $$$$ to wander the world as a sadistic nut – “stopping” everyone from making their lives less miserable – should be a DSM category for apparatchiks at NSA – Russians had an “unofficial” diagnosis for the Stalinistas….

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders

  74. @ anonyoraturd, Go bend your knee to the self-proclaimed God of Urantia who rules from “virtual” reality – convincing you that the pimple on your ass is “theoretical”…
    I repeat, do not let ME stop you.

  76. This blog is a fine record of the brick by brick dismantling of everything humanity has earned through honest labor – you banksters are iniquitous…!

    Urantia Book quote, “132:1.3 Unless the moral insight and the spiritual attainment of mankind are proportionately augmented, the unlimited advancement of a purely materialistic culture may eventually become a menace to civilization. A purely materialistic science harbors within itself the potential seed of the destruction of all scientific striving, for this very attitude presages the ultimate collapse of a civilization which has abandoned its sense of moral values and has repudiated its spiritual goal of attainment.”

    Absolutely NO PROOF, anywhere, there your craven avarice and sadistic pleasure in power over others through the push of a keystroke in virtual reality is anything other than the madness of a rabies infected mind.

    LAUGHABLE that you nimrods are STILL attempting to present yourselves as RELIGIOUS leaders on top of being filthy rich from war, drugs and slavery!

    LAUGHABLE.

  80. I encourage you to introduce your daughter, and yourself, to the classic Brit folk song “Palaces of Gold.” It is not an oldie but it is destined for history, written in the wake of a mining disaster, all of which kill poor working stiffs. You cn find Martin Simpson singing it on YouTube but I prefer Martin Carthy dextrous finger picking.

    Palaces ofGold
    If the sons of company directors,
    And judges’ private daughters,
    Had to got to school in a slum school,
    Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley,
    Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry,
    With a view onto slagheaps and stagnant pools,
    Had to file through corridors grey with age,
    And play in a crackpot concrete cage.

    Chorus (after each verse):
    Buttons would be pressed,
    Rules would be broken.
    Strings would be pulled
    And magic words spoken.
    Invisible fingers would mould
    Palaces of gold.

    If prime ministers and advertising executives,
    Royal personages and bank managers’ wives
    Had to live out their lives in dank rooms,
    Blinded by smoke and the foul air of sewers.
    Rot on the walls and rats in the cellars,
    In rows of dumb houses like mouldering tombs.
    Had to bring up their children and watch them grow
    In a wasteland of dead streets where nothing will grow.

    I’m not suggesting any kind of a plot,
    Everyone knows there’s not,
    But you unborn millions might like to be warned
    That if you don’t want to be buried alive by slagheaps,
    Pit-falls and damp walls and rat-traps and dead streets,
    Arrange to be democratically born
    The son of a company director
    Or a judge’s fine and private daughter.

  81. “Baseline Scenario – What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it”.

    Mission creep….gets you every time…

    Standing in the grocery store line, I looked up to see as many cameras as inside a casino – can you TRUST the person watching the cameras? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

    The CRIMINALS turned all of CIVILIZED society into a prison.

  82. So what was Obi Wan talking about, specifically? Pond scum, or the froth that rises to the top of polluted waters – “scum” when used in a descriptive science sentence where everyone knows that no one knows, yet, what the chemical composition of the scum is and whether there are so many reagents in there, it’s not done morphing ….(note to self, “YIKES!”)

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pond+scum?show=0&t=1385059404

    or was it this?:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scum

    These are the questions kids will ask – if home is where they are free to think, learn, relate with humans of all ages…

    If you are searching for music to background the Gowanus waters drama of Wall Street, what could be more perfect than “Bolero Ravel”….? It lasts almost a whole 7 minutes – more than most porno clips…another area of over-investment the billionaire class dove into…

    Man to Land Ratio

    Beat swords back into ploughshares

    there’s your double entry bookkeeping :-))

    There are no Middle Class bank accounts left to launder tax dollars to the Global War, Drug and Slave Lords in the Karakoran Pass…yeah, too bad all the other over-investment in a nuclear arms race is off the table, you can’t use the “Raid” against the billions who will crawl over you. either. The banksters sold out the house from under you and are now signing it over to GLOBAL Lords….the perpetual war machine a done deal on Spaceship Earth….

    The Old Testament, the New Testament, and now who is going to write the “legal” Testament of these times? Holy Books keep adding “revelations”, don’t they?

    Seriously, why not at least ding Jamie’s personal credit rating based on how all the fines levied against his “leadership”?

    It is farcical and un-enforceable to continue to ding everyone else for being so stupid as to have played a rigged game – but then the phone was always cut off on you when you made any observations about “regulations” when the coup d’etat was actually taking place – mano et mano – during the implementation of The Patriot Act….even though the “inside jobs” were clearly documented to be taking place inside corporations like Allied Signal in NJ….

    Katyn Forest Massacre schtick conducted by Nihilist Scum via the internet – yea, wonder why the website doesn’t work with a 4 year lead time and BILLIONS to build that fantastic infrastructure of communications and “security” spying…why isn’t it declared a matter of national security (ahghanistan is, but not USA citizen’s health??) and then have the NSA just ask what we need and tally it up and get the FIAT $$$$ moving along…?

    The questions kids ask about “FIAT” $$$$….

  85. You’re too much, “JFK” :-)

    It’s like they’re adding “Conspiracy Theory” to Operations. You have to have the Lie be airtight, too.

    The classic definition of “conspiracy”. Go figure….

    Here’s the thing, the same people who lay legal rights, for themselves via The Patriot Act, just go take their freedom to launch all their plans of empire “in secret” – the first thing they did “in secret” was to set up a spy network on the internet. They know everything that you are doing. “Economic sanctions against strata upon strata of the productive citizens living in a sustainable civilization because it was built on agriculture. Not on virtual reality, nihilism, and hedonism.

    Meanwhile, they are so stupid – that their economist/shaman/bad alien dude can’t do math. The empire set up on extraction can’t financially maintain the empire. Duh.

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