Politics
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- mg330
I'm with you Ukit. These republicans, Jindal, etc. all think that somehow, we're just going to forget what THEY and BUSH did together to get us here, and follow some promise of theirs as their party continues to fall apart with irrelevance.
- DrBombay0
Hi we're the Republican party. We have brown people in our party now!
- All that anger is going to kill you Rick.tommyo
- I'm not angry, I think it is funny how the GOP is trotting out all sorts of brown people to show the world.DrBombay
- You must be blind if you can't see it.DrBombay
- Not sure why you feel the need to constantly make things personal. You overplay your hand with lots of anger.tommyo
- No one is angry here. So you can stop saying that anytime.DrBombay
- I see what you are trying to do there though. Nice try.DrBombay
- The irony of you personally attacking me about making it personal is making me laugh too. :DDrBombay
- It's okay if you don't get it.tommyo
- What is to get? Getrefresh is running around with his hair on fire about Obama, and you choose me to jump on. You are dumb as a treestumpDrBombay
- dumb as a treestumpDrBombay
- Case in point.tommyo
- still not angry though.DrBombay
- See: "Not sure why you feel the need to constantly make things personal."tommyo
- you do the same thing, how do you not see that?DrBombay
- when I was cussing and such, I was only acting like the majority here. True? False?********
- blaw0
So last night I say to mrs.blaw, "Who's that guy sound like? Someone from a sitcom we watch. Yeah, it's Kenneth from 30 Rock. Unquestionably."
Apparently, I'm not alone in this opinion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/20…- we were talking about this earlier too!! haha.bulletfactory
- TheBlueOne0
Huh. Last night I said to Mrs Blue, "Wow. Bush used to just spoon feed platitudes - "freedom, freedom, terror, terror, no child left behind. we're resolute. nucklear. freedom. God bless America, good nite."
Obama spoke in sentences and dared, DARED, to give specific metrics and time tables to some ambitious things. I was shocked. He set out benchmarks that I'm not even sure he can meet and dared give the Republicans the meat to run on against him on '12 (the shrink the national debt one for example...). Interesting. We will see.
Jindal was just FAIL. I started twitching and staring slack-jawed at the "Golly gee, the government sure screwed up Katrina, we don't need them! Government bad!" Wow. You went THERE? I started throwing a shoe at "Hey, volcanoes! Who needs to monitor those things?" And then just switched to ESPN when he lied "...and they're going to build a monorail to Disneyworld! tsk tsk tsk"
This guy's national political career is done. THIS guy was the republican Great White Hope? Sad. Palin had a great night.
- tommy, attack TBO for being angry please, kthxbaiDrBombay
- Grrrrr. Blue Angry. You won't like when Blue get angry!! GRRRRRRTheBlueOne
- ukit0
BWAHAHA!
http://www.politico.com/politico…
Responding to a comment that Jindal’s response to President Obama’s address wasn’t the GOP’s best moment, Steele said, “I thought it was OK. I mean, I didn't see it. I heard it -- I was in the car.”
OK, I can't pick on Jindal any more. It's a little too easy.
- designbot0
One thing that struck me the wrong way about Obama's address was the fact that he kept talking about loosening up credit and lending. I understand this is a fundamental to a strong economy, but wasn't loose lending promoted by the dems (Community Redevelopment Act and others) a major factor in this whole crisis? He made specific comments on young couples buying their first home, or people getting loans for cars......how about saving your money and not overspending? I fear that the message being sent is not a good one. I am concerned that Americans will continue to live off credit and live outside their means. We need to get off this pipe dream that being "American" entitles us to a nice home, cars, piles of useless gadgets and other material junk that we don't need, and can't afford. End consumerism. The ever-expanding consumption of goods on plastic money(aka credit) is not advantageous to the economy.
In some sense I feel like we have been given a healthy reality check that our current way of living cannot continue...in another sense I feel like the government is sending the opposite message by their actions.
- DrBombay0
How many cars and houses do you think you would sell without credit? Like if you had to lay down the full price before getting either?
I agree with you fully on Credit Cards, but credit is necessary for other purchases.
- I see your point. Personally, I think the only thing credit (not credit cards) is necessary for is a house...and absolute emergencies (like medical bills, etc.)designbot
- emergencies (like medical bills etc.)designbot
- What about cars? Grocery bag full of 50 dollar bills?DrBombay
- I am hypocritically a firm believer in paying cash now (I am currently paying off a car loan) I know it is sort of radical thinking but it just makes sense.designbot
- but it just makes sense.designbot
- as long as we are in debt to anyone (including banks) we are but slaves.designbot
- ********0
"Oooh! Someone drank the koolaid. Why don't you look up Li's Copula formula and see how that relates to how financial institutions invested capital the since about 2000 and you get back to me. See, because obviously unregulated financial institutions investing huge sums of money worth many times over the actual GDP of the fucking planet into highly leveraged capital that their analysts got all wrong had absolutely nothing to do with it."
-Blue
Gaussian Copula Function
It has been brewing for quite some time.
- TheBlueOne0
I half-agree with you designbot...disagree with you on the primary role of things like the Community Redevelopment Act etc.
One way of looking at it is we no longer operate an economy of scarcity. In this Marx was right, that industrial society can produce goods, and cheaply enough, to satisfy all the basic necessities of life. After you provide that, the question becomes - Then what?
Sure, we had this huge Post-War boom from 1946 onwards, but real wages stopped increasing in about the early 70's - and we had our first crash then. I posit it's because all the major consumer goods had reached it's apex in the US - everybody had by that point TV's, radios, cars, furniture, etc. You had up to that point capital investment into means of production because it did produce high rates of return in investment. Once the market was saturated, not so much. It's at exactly that point you see two developments - the outreach for globalized markets and the construction again of financial instruments designed to produce profit without any real productive value. That combined with even MORE focus on marketing/advertising and planned obsolesence of products.
These are some very deep issues that we as a society and as a civilization has to address, and I am of the opinion that the COnservatives do not have the tools to respond to this crisis in the short and long-term basically for the reasons George Lakoff outlines here in his point #6:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2…
And that whole essay is well worth reading if you want to understand what Obama is saying.
Anyway, back to the economic thing - We saw a couple of bubbles grow and burst because we have in fact an excess of liquidity sloshing around...too much money that can't be invested profitably in production, thus the rush for the tech bubble in the 90's and then this one-two combo of the housing bubble combined with a bubble based on financial instruments using those mortgages as collateral. As much as the Republicans want to lay the fault of this at the feet of near-sighted greedy poor people who just wanted what everyone else had, these mortgages were pushed onto that market segment by the banks. Poor people wanting things they can't afford is normal, rich people exploiting them for their own gain is the moral hazard here, and a system that does exactly that, and when it blows up, turns around and blames the poor people is not only usury, but borders on psychopathy.
That said, I'm not sure what the answer lies in this propping up of the banking system currently going on - the system is broke. I liked alot of what Obama said last night, and how he said. But this bit with getting the credit markets flowing again? I'm not a believer in what he's done so far. Their not moving because there is absolutely no way to know who holds what and any measurable way as of yet to assign market value to it. Everyone is afraid that what they hold is worthless, and even more afraid that what the guy next to them is holding is worth even less. Nationalization is one way to do this. Letting the market just go by itself is another, although that might be so painful to society (here and abroad) that you invite deep and lasting social disturbances that will tear apart societies and governments. That is probably not a risk the world is willing to pay.
But doing these half measures is like ripping a band-aid off slowly. I'm of the opinion that Obama is playing a longer game and is holding his cards close to his vest. I think he's doing a lot of headfakes for expedient political purposes.At least I hope that is the case, if not than it's getting close to a blind and short-sighted direction of failure.
- Well said. In regards to the Community Redevelopment Act I think it was a bad idea, but I agree you can't make the 1-to-1 here. There were no guns pointed at these lenders heads....greed is the key word.designbot
- there were no guns pointed at these lenders heads....greed is the key word.designbot
- so l...o.....n... . ... .. ...********
- ... g... . ...********
- @getrefresh
?designbot - He's used to 30 second blips of information from FOX to get his talking points...TheBlueOne
- ..anything longer than a paragraph forces the "What are you, an egghead?" default response.TheBlueOne
- DrBombay0
- Maybe this is what he was referring to? http://online.wsj.co…tommyo
- are you apologizing for a racist? you lil cutie!!!DrBombay
- What I wrote was obviously a joke. I'll label it next time for you.tommyo
- Don't be so angry!DrBombay
- this is actually kind of funny. I see it as more of a total stereo type than racism. Most black folks I know I don't think would be offended by this, they would probably laugh.designbot
- be offended by this, they would probably laugh.designbot
- ...For a mayor to send this out is a really stupid move though. The fact that some folks might find this racist or offensive should be enough to deter anyone.designbot
- enough to deter anyone...especially in positions such as mayor.designbot
- ********0
... another $410B Spending Bill affirmatively voted for today by the House Democrats.
- awesome, FREE MONEY YAY! Fuck working for a living!DrBombay
- I really wish I could just print up money. Seems like the responsible thing to do when you run out.tommyo
- It's an omnibus spending bill for chrissakes...TheBIueOne
- SillyBilly0
- I predict you'll feel like a troll and disappear soonGeorgesII
- TheBlueOne0
"Anybody who doubts that the global economy is facing its most serious downturn since the 1930s should take a squint at the latest trade figures from Japan. Exports in January were 46% lower in January than they were a year ago – a phenomenal drop for a country that is so heavily dependent on sales of its industrial products overseas.
Japan has got used to economic setbacks over the past two decades: it has been in and out of recession on a regular basis. But make no mistake, this drop in exports does not mean recession: it means depression."
- BattleAxe0
and yet it is still going to get worse , how much worse?
that is all I hear, it is going to get worse, so if you have your debt under control or none at all, and you don't give a flip about selling your house, have hard assets investments and not in the market , how much worse I want to know.
- Much worse.TheBlueOne
- nobody knowsDrBombay
- I know.********
- ... I can predict the future.********
- ha ha worse or , holy shit worseBattleAxe
- TheBlueOne0
Ha - "I hate your politics". Just slightly dated (2002) screed, but still relevant...should be required reading for this thread:
- Should also be required reading from the same place:
http://whatever.scal…TheBlueOne
- Should also be required reading from the same place:
- TheBlueOne0
Nice. FOX is giving airtime to people who are urging armed rebellion against the Obama government.
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/…
And I remember when FOX called people who didn't think the Iraq war was a good idea unamerican and traitors.
Fuck Rupert Murdoch and these nazis.
- Even I think Glenn Beck is whacked!!! Yep, he keeps saying folks should raise pitch-forks.********
- they should you damn sissy's. It has nothing to do with obama i t has to do with the policies. You little sissy girls.********
- Your response to anyone that disagrees with you is to call them a racist. Well fuck off bitch step up to the plate.********
- get ur rifle, hurley. oh yeah right you won't.DrBombay
- very scary, Mexico is going first 4,000 troops just called into border city JuarezBattleAxe
- Even I think Glenn Beck is whacked!!! Yep, he keeps saying folks should raise pitch-forks.
