[shrug] I’m going by collocquial usage. Never heard “hard-nosed” used as a compliment. The dude who won’t take your check is hard-nosed. (Well, the dude who won’t take my check is hard-nosed; the dude who won’t take your check is hard-headed.)
Drinking water from a stream is free or is the act of bending over to drink it “paying” for it? Finding some fruit on a tree. Finding some berries ona bush. Finding a rock you can throw at a rabbit that you can cook, the rabbit might not be “free” but the rock was. Seems to me that nature provides all sorts of free things.
Or maybe just greedy & self-serving. Most doctors, lawyers, businessmen, engineers and scholars are not poor. And many (not all) have become well-off by exploiting others. Which is pretty much what the republican party and American business is all about.
SS
Good point. Although serious scholars can do quite well for themselves, if one considers all dimensions of scholarship to include tenured professors, researchers, writers, high-level consultants. Now that I think on it though, most of the serious scholars I’ve known (admittedly not that many) do not tend to vote republican in the first place. The R’s have become far to anti-intellectual to suit them.
SS
Unless you are a member of the one percent, you are being duped. Repeatedly. Now members of many of the professions you listed are likely members of the one percent. They get service from the Republican Party so are not being duped. But since most elections require numbers greater than 45% to win, there are an awful lot of dupes out there.
Actually, I tend to vote pretty much the same as negroes, ignorant or otherwise. It’s the ignorant whites that are the real problem, especially as so many of them don’t realize they are ignorant.
Obamas White House has not even TRIED to plug the CDO hole which is the major cause of the collapse in 2008. His Justice Department is curiously uninterested in prosecuting any of the frauds that are widely alleged to have occurred in conjunction with the collapse. I agree the Consumer Dept. would be a good thing, but he does not seem to be able to defend it from the Republicans. He is either bought or ineffective, and his biggest campaign donors happen to be from Wall Street. How 'bout that?
Politics at the Presidential level is a very superficial game. Remember all the idiot independents who voted for Bush “because I’d like to sit down and drink a beer with him.” I bet if Damon could get the nomination he could campaign better than anyone presently campaigning for any political party. Not saying much, but there it is.
Agreed. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle involves picking up the free lunch that nature serves. (Okay, the sun pays for it…)
Another kind of “free lunch” is entrepreneurship. If you are the first person to learn that walnuts sell for $3.00 a pound here, but that people a few miles away are willing to pay $3.50 a pound for 'em, then, less the cost of transportation, that’s a 50 cents a pound free lunch.
Also, when you’re in jail, they feed you… Not the kind of free lunch I really want to eat, but there it is…
Oh, one more: when a really big guy like me goes to an all-you-can-eat buffet. I pay $9.00, but roll outta there having eaten $15.00 worth of vittles!
There is plenty to criticize Obama for, but the Consumer Protection Agency appointment is being blocked by Republican Senators, a couple of whom are meeting periodically throughout this month in order to keep the Senate technically “In Session,” to prevent Obama from making a recess appointment (the same is true for the NLRB). make your peace with the fact that he’s an Eisenhower Republican, and your only defense against apocalyptic revolutionaries.
That is absurd. He published Ringworld’s Children by himself in 2004 and I read Jerry Pournelle’s blog and he talks extensively about their creative meetings on their collaborations. It sure doesn’t sound like Pournelle is carrying all the load.
Also the guy is 73. It is pretty remarkable he is still an active writer.