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As Seen On TV

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The other day I warmed my Michelina's frozen lasagna kibbles by stoking my pot bellied stove with student loan oriented junk mail. Now that was depressing.


Screw you Jeno. You'd think that a man who'd lived through the depression would take better care of his employees. I can't remember the last time I put a dime in this clown's pocket, which makes happy.

Having to work for this asshole...now THAT'S depression.


leave it to fox to pry this dusty old prick from his coffin. I actually have pity on him because he cant take a crap...all bound up. Anyone remember when he gave out blocks of velveeta to the poor in the hillside? I used mine for insulation...good r value


interesting how he thinks that now we have tv and central heating we're immune from a depression....


says the man who screwed a whole lot of old ladies out of their pensions (same as it ever was), who are now still using the canning skills and frugality they learned in the depression to get by. (i know this for a fact, fucker.)

i wonder how it feels to be living in florida on the money that was earned by other people?

not only are the rich willfully stupid about history ("if they aren't wearing swastikas and shouting in german it *can't* be fascism"), they never suffered then nor will they in the near future when the rest of us will be dumpster diving for food.

fuck him. fucking fuck him.


Outside of the hatred displayed here for the guy, deserved or not, his message is essentially correct. If someone thinks we're going through the same as the Great Depression, you are woefully incorrect.

How many of you saw Jeno's comments while watching that cable station on your $300 tv, then text messaged your friends from your slick cell phone (with camera), or went on your computer (or laptop from your favorite coffee house which your drove to in your Ford Focus or Prius)) and blogged about how much of prick Jeno is because you are suffering just as much, if not worse, than those during the Great Depression?


um yeah. let's try for some facts, at least personally:

1. the tv was a hand-me-down. in fact, i've never bought a tv in my life. we do have cable/broadband, but we work from home and almost never go out--not to eat, not to watch movies, not to drink in public. and because i spend about 10 hours a day working on various unpaid/semi-paid/future-think jobs, i can't imagine spending my free time watching FoxNews.

2. i have the cheapest cell phone available (came free with the el-cheapo plan, though it does have a camera). i have a cellphone because i once didn't have a landline. keeping it was an extravagance, i confess, but one that makes work-travel possible.

3. computer was a hand-me-down, and it's my workplace.

4. we have one car for a family of four, and is the most practical used car we could find.

as far as Depression era living--we live pretty well, though it's on less than $30,000 for a family of four. we live all year round on the garden produce from one of the aforementioned old ladies with canning skills, which will come in great handy when food comes to be so expensive that normal people have to eat processed swill. it is true that one of our family's only extravagances is organic food from scratch.

poverty can be deceptive, since i for one have nice things almost entirely as gifts/hand-me-downs from wealthy family members.

while i don't personally feel pressed for getting through the day to day, and i don't anticipate (due to a very handy parent-paid college degree w/o debt) job loss, i think Jeno knows absolutely nothing about what it means to survive with foreclosure in the near future, and what it will mean when jobs become even more scarce.

this depression may not involve gathering coal in rail yards, but methinks you ain't seen nothing yet. our collective debts spent buying those expensive gym shoes and HD TVs on credit are coming due.

poverty today looks different because we are different and the values/times are different. that doesn't mean there won't be people out draining your car of gasoline or going through the grocery store dumpster.


also: almost all the "nice things" Jeno points to as extravagant lifestyle markers in the average american were bought ON CREDIT. it wasn't real money. now, all those people who own those things are going to have a lot of nice things with no job and perhaps even no home. i think the first thing you're going to see is the proliferation of garage sales/flea markets and a flooding of eBay. all that crap's gonna go for pennies on the dollar. then what?


Scrib:

I don't drive. and our family car is a POS 87 Volvo GLE with about 300k miles.

My camera doesn't have a camera, and I have an el cheapo plan...the only person I text is the Missus, and that's because text messages are cheaper than overage charges when I exceed my 250 minutes per month limit.

Our TV is at least 15 years old and going to be obsolete next year.

and my computer cost me $50.

so, suck it.

I am a little better off in that I don't have an enormous credit debt to pay down at the same time that I'm working my ass off just to cover my family's basic overhead. We ain't rich, but we do okay.


I think you proved my point. Life isn't a bunch of roses for us (and for me), but it ain't nowhere near what the Great Depression was. My family has the basic comforts of life, but many during the GD didn't even have those. Can it get worse for our generation? Sure. Can it get better? Equally sure. IMHO Jeno was correct, but he is so old news.


Scrib:

I think your "point" was a broad false generalization (read: we all have the ipod, wireless, prius, etc...) and mis characterization of the respondents to Jeno's "you whippersnappers don't know what depression is" bullhockey...which hbh and I summarily ripped to shreds.

I can also relate to his growing up on the Range somewhat as a good chunk of my childhood was spent living in a two room shack on a small parcel of land in central Texas. No running water, no elecricity. No phone. No TV...though we eventually got them, we were there a while before those luxuries were implemented. We heated by a potbelly wood fired stove, and read by lamplight. Hell, I didn't even have a social security card til I was 17. Instead of playing video games, I cut wood for the stove and worked the garden that provided the bulk of our food.

We didn't do this out of choice...we did this because we were poor.


Oh .. I love it when you get all testy and judgemental with each other like that. But I guess I missed it since this post got buried in all of the homegrown excitement or maybe also because zra apparently put scribbler in his place with the 87 volvo and texas shack poverty cred ...

Speaking of judgemental, how did you happen to be watching fox news Adam? I can't even imagine ... and where is the rest of the video? Or could they only handle two minutes of him on the satellite uplink from sunny fla - Land of wrestlemania

My favorite part: This was my very first chance to see the legend in action with grown up eyes and ears. Local legend and heresay has it that Jeno was always running his mouth with everyone nearby bouncing their heads up and down in agreement as only the "boss" can do. Seems like this was just a little taste of it, sans the copious profanity that was always there to season it (according to the legends, that is).


Meme warfare confluences via aggregates, JP. You just run across these things.


Zra, the only thing you ripped to shreds was your own logic. Simple question: are people now worse off than people were during the Great Depression? I argue no. You argue yes, apparantly.


The greatest difference between now and the GD is that the process of selling out of the american family to the media had really only just begun (a radio in every living room). Now it's cemented and expected with access to information a monthly untility bill..and there are those who cant afford it. And when it comes you have to sift through walls of carp to find a dimly lit jewel of truth. again, Jeno is a prick and former king of the duluth old boys club...he and his minions have killed the rest of Duluth to benefit their Canal Park profit streams...I damn them to a pizza-tot hell covered in boiling plastic cheese


Speaking of great depression ... anyone here ever try to get a business permit to operate in canal park? I mean on PUBLIC land?

We'll see how thing roll under Donny but in the past it was next to impossible. Don't want to upset "certain businesses" (direct quote from why-even-bother-to-name-him/her-here)

So yeah ... I do know about working 7 days a week for chicken scratch Mr. Palucci, I certainly do. How's democracy working for you lately?


you know, Scribbler, i know a fair number of people who lived through the Depression. they would tell you that your answer depends on who you were and what you mean. there were people who became economic refugees, because their poverty meant they could no longer own property or there was no work for them. there are plenty of people living in downtowns around the nation right now who would tell you they are living the same world, though it's more clearly segregated from the rest of us than it was then. (crack and meth have also done a fine job getting the poor into jail where they belong.)

most people in 1930 who lived close to the land and had been higher working class, middle class or higher did just fine and suffered very little in the way of food during the Depression. the middle classes were more of a percentage of the population, also.

while Jeno's family may have been cash and labor poor in the Depression, they made do, as most people did then. i'd warrant he didn't go hungry, since most people didn't.

a major difference today is that the poor have been fed credit cards along the way--something that didn't exist in the 30s.

we are just beginning our slide. food will continue to rise in price, as will oil. no one but people who depend on boosting the american psyche for their own profit are saying otherwise.

i've known the pinch of a cold house in the past, and i know people right now who leave their homes in the fifty-five degree range or close off rooms through winter. i know one guy who heats his house with the engine of an old bus, don't ask me how. if we couldn't buy heating oil or whatever heats your home, what would we do this time around? how many of us have functioning fireplaces or stoves? at least Jeno's family could use coal. if i couldn't afford to heat my home this winter, i surely couldn't afford to retrofit my home for alternative heat sources. i'd be better off with a campfire in the yard. i am surely not alone in this regard.

poverty food looks different from the 30s. most people then could and did trade services for garden produce and dairy directly, though there was no cash to be had. people were skilled in labor, and the country was rural, so people could grow food. today, practically no one grows food themselves, and labor is not performed for most people directly, but for companies. (and has often become so specialized as to be impossible to market "door to door.") so we are only beginning to see the effects of what expensive food will mean--and we already know that the cheapest food is the highest carb and most processed, so instead of starvation, we get obesity and related illnesses. the poorer you are (at the moment), the fatter you become. (and the younger you die.)

we have a governmental system that is supposed to be a "safety net" for people, but we all know people who fall through those cracks right now. so how will it be as the beast continues to creak and grown under the pressure of a forever-war and the final destruction of the dollar's dominance on the world stage?

not only will Jeno never suffer one whit during any coming economic crisis or Depression, he probably hasn't driven through a ghetto in his fucking life.

the New Depression will look nothing like the old one, and that's just the facts. what will hurt us the most is that we have been living very high on the hog for a very long time. we will ignore what is happening until we ourselves are hit hard. if you needed to tomorrow, would you be ready to live off food you grew yourself? chances are you'd starve before you managed it.

drive through rural america now, and you will realize that when things go south, there are an awful lot of people who will be far less resourced than people were in 1930. they don't remember how to cook from scratch. they don't know how to grow food. they don't know how to do some of the most basic laboring things to repair their homes and other necessities. there will be a very steep learning curve, and lots of people will not make it.

when there truly are armies of young men who are unemployed, will they simply be shunted to the military (as they are now, as IED fodder), or will our government actually have the foresight to rebuild the CCC and fix the national infrastructure? where will the money come from? especially now that people see all that welfare stuff as "socialism" and to be avoided at all costs? keep cutting taxes; i'm sure that'll turn out well.

basically, i think you are not only making assumptions about people here (which were refuted), you and Jeno are both sounding like those fat industrialists at the turn of the century who denied and denied the poverty of their nation. he has a motivation--he's looking to remind himself how he's a self-made man and deserves every gas-guzzling, lobster-eating moment of his life. what's yours?

what's coming down the pike will look nothing like then. but it will be bad. all i can say is that if you have the wherewithal, it's time to get those lily-white hands dirty and stop pretending the teevee tells the truth.


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