– Phone books are a mandate Rob McKenna can get behind.
– That’s a lot of military bases near Iran.
– John Edwards is still a creep, but still a creep who won’t be going to jail.
– The amount of money Sheldon Adleson has to spend is pretty mind blowing.
– David Brooks, wtf?
– And not to pick on The New York Times too much, but this Tumbler of questions for Tom Freedman is brilliant [h/t].
Yet another own-goal by the Dems, courtesy of Bill Clinton, although this time it’s not really his fault.
Seems Obama’s speaking in Cleveland today. At the same location two years ago, Bill Clinton had some very prescient words:
http://content.usatoday.com/co.....9oHrhyt_qK
Thank you, President Clinton!
From the Department of The Recall Election in Wisconsin Has No National Implications:
Tommy Thompson is crushing Tammy Baldwin in the race to replace Herb Kohl in the Senate.
Rasmussen says it’s 52% to 36%.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2.....tammy.html
Cue the ‘Rasmussen lies’ whiny music in 3…..2……..1………
re 2: Even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then.
Competing headlines:
NBC Gives More Time to
‘Obama Boy’ Than to Fast
& Furious Scandal
and
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Promises
“Limitless” Money to Defeat Obama
Oh. Here’s a link to illuminate #2.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/.....mbaugh.jpg
@ 3
I wonder what the relationship will be, starting in 2013 or so, between the unions and the Democrat Party.
The recall debacle in WI likely will be looked back upon as the beginning of the end for the Democrats in this election cycle.
If control of the Senate flips to the GOP, all of those stalled House-passed bills end up getting headlines, and it will be the Democrats recording votes against jobs bills promoted by the GOP.
In a 2013 year in which the economy will likely gather steam under a President Romney, Democrats will face some very tough votes. Tough votes that they are spared this year because Reid won’t bring the bills to the floor. Cowardly.
I keep seeing headlines like this:
Democrats fear Obama may lose
Associated Press, by Julie Pace & Jim Kuhnhenn
With all those electoral votes allocated to Obama by Darryl >>>>>>,
how can this be?
I was arriving at work at 9:05am yesterday morning and heard a brief segment by Corwin Haig (sp?) of KOMO 1000am radio about Darcy Burner’s reference to abortion at last week’s Netroots event. I heard her original statement by following the link on this site, and it was a powerful statement, and I remember it clearly. Therefore, I was absolutely appalled when I heard Mr. Haig state that after Ms. Burner asked women who had had an abortion and who were willing to come out about it to stand, and then (I quote Mr. Haig directly here), asked others “to stand and cheer for them”.
Disgusting.
Listen for yourself at 17:45:
http://www.livestream.com/fstv.....a82c1afcd1
I wrote to KOMO and asked them to correct or retract the story, but, as I wrote in the note to them, I won’t be surprised if a station that has 3 hours a day of the idiocy of the right-wing gasbag John Carlson (sp?) doesn’t.
@ 8
I don’t know what your objection is. It must be “…and cheer.”
You must not object to Burner asking the audience to stand in support of them, as she did, according to what was written in a thread post on this site last week:
The part I really wish had a visual of the audience in video was when Darcy Burner asked the audience to hold their applause for a minute and have any woman who has had an abortion and was comfortable expressing it openly to stand up in the audience. Moments later, she asked everyone who will stand with them in support to stand up as well and nearly every person in the room stood up. It was a really beautiful moment.
Ergo, I assume that standing in support is OK, beautiful even, but standing and cheering in support is a little too much.
Are you really parsing it this closely? Because what Haig probably was pointing out was that Burner asked the audience to support other women because they had an abortion.
I really don’t care either way, but I fail to see how you have a point. Since I went to the trouble of reading the HA summary about Burner I figured I would bring it up.
Seems the mockery of The One by conservatives is working.
Obama talks about himself in the first person every chance he gets. Not only that, he actually goes out – or his staff does – and creates additional opportunties to insert himself into just about any situation possible.
Seems awhile back he inserted something about himself into a bunch of other presidents’ biographies on the White House website.
Mass derision ensued.
It worked. White House removed the Obama inserts:
http://reason.com/blog/2012/06.....un+Blog%29
That…….
That………
http://www.barackobama.com/fat.....;lastname=
……..older daughter looks like a dude………
More good news for The One this June:
U.S. weekly jobless claims climb to 386,000
Applications for unemployment benefits rise for 5th time in 6 weeks
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto.....2012-06-14
And on that note, have a good day, all.
“That……………..older girl looks like a dude………”
That’s all you’ve got? Loser.
Gee, even those of us who post regularly on this site, and supported it for some time, don’t have the time to spend posting the drivel the trolls are now rushing to post at the top of each new thread. We’ve got lives, jobs, and careers, after all (except for RR, who is retired and doesn’t have a job any more).
Which reinforces my beliefe that we have a handful of out-of-work trolls who are being paid a few bucks a day by the Republican machine to try to dilute the influence of Democratic-supporting websites by flooding their comment boards every day with the same drivel which is being passes off as “talking point of the day” by Fox News and the Murdoch machine.
Shortly after the November elections, they will dissapear again.
At least Puddy came back – even though he still hasn’t repudiated Glen Beck for calling the teenage victims of a white-power shooting spree members of a “Nazi Youth Camp”, in order to diminish their value.
re 7:
It’s the liberal media helping Obama by not allowing his supporters to become complacent. Surely you can see that.
ConcernTrollBob is really at it this morning – must have a car payment coming up.
He has claimed in the past to be “pro-choice” IIRC, yet here we find him undermining a critique of a right-wing radio show that was quite clearly trying to make it look like liberals and Burner-supporters applaud abortion, rather than supporting the women who have made that difficult decision.
It’s a key distinction, and ConcernTrollBob is being deliberately obtuse. The arguement is not being parsed too closely – ConcernTrollBob is merely trying to undermine any argument that could be construed as favorable to a leftist.
ConcernTrollBob (?CTB?) has made claims – atheist, pro-choice, marriage equality – that have been put forward for no other reason than to disarm criticism from the left – all the while relentlessly beating the drum for the most right-wing, most reactionary, most destructive to democracy political party in our nation’s history, IMHO.
He’s a shill and a liar, and the sheer volume of the posts he places here argue that his agenda is manipulation and obstruction, not the platitudinous “I make you think, you make me think” bullshit that he has prattled previously.
Shortly after the November elections, they will dissapear (sic) again.
Probably.
Although if I can hear you crying I’ll stick around for at least awhile afterward.
@ 16
Can you make a little more room for me in your left frontal lobe, Lib Sci? That black helicopter blade keeps jabbing me in the ribs.
I think the HA Thin-Skin Award goes to Lib Sci. What a fucking crybaby.
Bet Obama wishes he’d returned the campaign donations of R. Allen Stanford now.
http://slatest.slate.com/posts.....heme_.html
WSJ just reported this sleazebucket got 110 years in prison.
Hopefully he’ll be joined soon by Obama bundler and former Democrat Senator Jon Corzine.
re 18: There’s a difference between the tin foil set and people who believe that the opposition is capable of planning an attack.
To denigrate the reasonable belief in a conspiracy to the realm of paranoia is just the lazy man’s way of being dismissive of a point that may well have merit.
So now you’re reduced to calling one of the lovely Obama daughters ‘ugly’ (my interpretation of your “looks like a dude”)
You are an unmitigated prick.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
In your dreams, asshole. You’re the one whining when you’re called out.
No one takes you seriously here – aren’t there some low-information voters out there for you to dazzle? You time would be much better spent.
@21
Got it.
“Just ’cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”
That’s been one of my favorite sayings for years. I thought it was a joke.
Leave it to you to put it in serious terms. Jesus, this place is better than The Comedy Club most days. Maybe I WILL stick around after November.
@ 22
If I were to look around for comments about people like, say, Bristol Palin, Trig Palin, Willow Palin, or the Bush twins on HA, what might I be likely to find, Lib Sci?
re 24: There are laws against criminal conspiracies. Are you such a naif that you think they don’t exist?
Isn’t the entire rationale for the ironically named Patriot Act the belief that conspiracies exist? Wasn’t 9/11 a conspiracy? Didn’t we go to war in Afghanistan to capture the 9/11 conspirators? Didn’t the Bush administration insist that Saddam Hussein was conspiring to make weapons of mass destruction.
Didn’t the Clinton’s conspire to murder Vince Foster according to your own conservative hagiography of the evil of liberals?
Wise up, chump. For an elephant, you sure look like a jackass.
Please do, and show us your work. Evidence-based arguments do better around here than whiney complaints that ‘you do it too!! Na’huh!’
Oh, BTW, and related to your present prickishness, have you apologized to Mrs. Rabbit yet for your crass and vulgar insult to her?
The Palins. The morally bankrupt lame-stream media reality show family now known for whining to the lame-stream media when people say things on the lame-stream media about them that they don’t like.
re 27: I think that he was offering a compliment. Conservatives consider beavers to be humble and hardworking citizens of the animal wold.
@16: Right on, especially your last paragraph
@9: While it may or may not be true that my post was clear, it is indeed true that since you didn’t listen to what Burner actually said in context and probably didn’t hear the segment, it is you who have no point. Spin all you want, but KOMO published a story about this event that was misleading at best and probably an intentional lie, either to drum up attention or discredit Burner, an act for which they much be called out.
@ 30
You go, girl. Consider their heinous act called. It wasn’t cheering, it was silent support. So noted. Step to the front of the class and accept your gold star.
I guess consider WA1 gone red, while you’re at it.
“have you apologized to Mrs. Rabbit yet for your crass and vulgar insult to her?”
I must have missed that one. I already knew that Bob is a racist dickhead who hates the elderly black folk of Benton Harbor, but WTF does he have against Mrs. Rabbit?
@ 28
The Palins. The family the left spent three years focusing on while Romney planned and organized without a whole lot of interest by y’all.
Howz that workin’ out for ya?
“Howz that workin’ out for ya?”
Seeing as how the Quitta from Wasilla and her family is now the laughing stock of everyone in the nation but crazy people and is finished as a viable candidate, I’d say that it worked out just fine.
The sociopathic vulture capitalist who hates dogs and for whom a chocolate donut presents a WTF moment is next, asshole.
@ 35
Best wishes. Maybe get the unions involved like in Wisconsin, and Occupy Wall Street-types, and Medea Benjamin when she’s not calling Obama a war criminal. Then there’s Van Jones, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Ayers, and Jon Corzine you can bring aboard to campaign with The One.
Stand Your Ground, Texas Style
A Texas jury convicted a man of murder yesterday for killing his neighbor during a driveway confrontation over a noisy party despite that state’s “stand your ground” law.
The shooter appeared to do everything right. He called 9-1-1, kept the line open throughout the confrontation, he asked the dispatcher to send the police, he videotaped the entire encounter, he told the people threatening him to “back up” and advised them he would use his weapon to protect his life — he did everything except run away.
The three victims he shot (one of whom died) did everything wrong. They disturbed the neighborhood with a very loud party in the middle of the night, they were drunk and belligerent, they ignored repeated requests to turn the noise down, they physically threatened the complaining neighbor, one of them told the neighbor he was going inside the house to get a gun, and when he came back out the group advanced on the neighbor and physically assaulted him, ignoring his repeated warnings to back away just before they were shot.
So why did the jury convict this guy, if Texas law gives that state’s citizens a legal right to stand their ground?
I’m just guessing, but maybe because his name is Rodriguez and the victims were white.
http://www.freep.com/usatoday/.....NTPAGE%7Cp
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I found myself in a nearly identical situation 30 years ago. Mrs. Rabbit and I were living in a south Seattle neighborhood and had a toddler child. The house next to ours was occupied by a renter and her unemployed brother. He and his friends were partying at 2 a.m. with the doors and windows. It was a work night and we both had to go to jobs the next day. We called the police and they came out a couple times to tell them to knock off the noise, but each time, as soon as the police left, they turned up the volume again. They were drunk, rowdy, and belligerent. Mrs. Rabbit, against my advice, crossed the property line and knocked on the back door. No one answered right away, so she yelled “Quiet it down in there!” and turned to walk away. Three drunken yahoos spilled out of the door after her. They spread out in a fan-shaped attack formation. One got between her and our front door, cutting her off. Another crossed onto our property and advanced all the way to our front porch, where I stood in the doorway trying to keep our kid from running outside to her mother. The third was between the other two. I pulled my gun on the guy standing at the foot of the porch steps six feet away from me and told him I would kill him if he came one step closer. At that point, the third guy between the other two reached a hand under his shirt and the guy blocking my wife said, “My buddy has a gun, too!” They were trying to provoke me to shoot them. I think their aim was to distract me so the guy near me could make a grab for my gun. It didn’t work. I kept my eyes fixed on him and told him that if either of his buddies made a move I was going to shoot him first because he was closest to me. He froze and told his buddies to stay where they were. That enabled Mrs. Rabbit to get in the house, drag our daughter away from the door, and call 9-1-1 while I continued to hold off the three drunken young WHITE punks with my handgun. The Seattle Police Department responded with two SWAT teams, about 25 officers in all, with the first units arriving within five minutes. The three drunks were each issued disorderly conduct citations and ordered to leave the neighborhood; the police let them get in their cars and drive away drunk because they simply wanted them gone so nobody would get killed. I wasn’t arrested, cited, or charged even though Washington doesn’t have a “stand your ground law” because I stayed inside my own house during the entire incident. There isn’t a shred of doubt in my mind that I would have killed that guy on my porch if he’d gotten any stupider than he already was, and his two buddies, too, if necessary.
I’m not in favor of enacting a “stand your ground” law in Washington or anywhere else. I wouldn’t confront someone who was disrupting my neighborhood, because that almost certainly will escalate the situation, human nature being what it is. That’s a job for the cops, and I would call 9-1-1 and let them handle it. “Stand your ground” laws encourage people to take things into their own hands, which is what Mr. Rodriguez did, and a teacher and father of young children lost his life as a result. Yeah, the guy who did was incredibly stupid, to the point where it’s tempting to say he had it coming. But we don’t execute people for stupidity in this country (even though sometimes we may feel like we should), and we shouldn’t kill them for that, either, if we can avoid it. In my opinion, Mr. Rodriguez should stayed in his own house and let 9-1-1 deal with the loud party down the block.
But this isn’t about what he “should” have done according to some subjective value judgment. It’s about whether he had a legal right to do what he did. I can’t imagine a more clear-cut case for application of a “stand your ground” defense than this one. Texas law not only didn’t require him to back off, but affirmatively gave him a legal right not to. If you can’t stand your ground in this circumstance, you can’t in any circumstance. The only explanation I can think of for this conviction is a racist jury.
Who was the last presidential aspirant that had a secret Swiss bank account?
The rabbit doesn’t know the facts of the case, yet is posting some judgement? Wow, how very lawyerly of him.
I wonder if the rabbit can tell which of the last 4 presidents are military veterans….think he knows?
Who was the last presidential aspirant that hated dogs?
I wonder if the rabbit can tell us which of two candidates for 2008 prez election was a veteran?
Its been very important to the rabbit to inform us which politicians are vet….and I think its important as well. Just curious how he missed the last two democrat party presidents in his postings?
Simple error? Lol
@ 38
Agreed. Too much comes off his keyboard that directly contradicts all basic legal principles. He doesn’t know the Bill of Rights.
Every time he talks about having been a lawyer, I’m reminded of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMCGw8_0NHk
There’s an object lesson here for anyone contemplating using a gun for self-defense. And that is, even if the facts and laws are on your side, your actions will be questioned and second-guessed at every turn — by the cops, the prosecutor, the judge, the jury. And the deck will be stacked against you.
Few, if any, legal cases are so clear-cut that there isn’t room for dispute over what happened. Witnesses will lie about, or remember wrongly, what they saw. Inferences will be drawn from unclear evidence. The system will resolve doubts against you.
I have no doubt I would have pulled the trigger that night, because my wife’s and daughter’s lives were at stake, and I was going to protect them even if I had to go to jail for life.
I also have little doubt that, had I killed those guys, I would’ve been prosecuted. It’s possible I wouldn’t have, as my family was being attacked on our own property and I was inside my own home, but I assumed there would be severe legal consequences if I had to shoot.
That’s not a given, of course. I know a guy who shot a man for kicking down his door and entering his apartment to attack him following an earlier verbal confrontation. Although he shot the guy three times in the upper torso, the victim survived, which tells you how useless a .38 is. The shooter wasn’t prosecuted, but the cops did arrest him, and he was held in jail for three days pending the police investigation of the incident before being released. This was in Tacoma. The shooter was white and the victim was black. My guess is if it had been the other way around there would have been a prosecution even though the shooting victim literally kicked a door in and forcibly entered a residence with the specific intent of harming the occupant.
I’ve been a lawyer long enough to know that courtrooms are casinos, and a trial is a lottery. I don’t trust prosecutors very much, and I don’t trust juries at all. There’s no surefire way of dealing with problem people, but I think the best way is to call 9-1-1 and hope the police do something about it, and if they don’t just leave well enough alone. This whole “stand your ground” thing is utter nonsense. At best, it’s a roll of the legal dice.
But according to Serial “Ridicule the looks of the president’s daughter ” Conservative, it is only about busting the teacher’s unions.
36. Roger Rabbit
Duh. Don’t you know Stand your Ground is only for shooting people of color?
Sen. Sanders on GOP mindset: If it’s good for America, we can’t do it
That sounds exactly like Serial “Ridicule the looks of the president’s daughter “ Conservative.
@ 38
Here’s a great example of the idiocy that is RR, and why I disbelieve he is a former attorney:
Few cases are clear-cut @ 44, and so the only explanation he can come up with for the jury’s decision is racism @ 36.
What a dolt. He can’t even keep a consistent line of thought over an 18 minute period.
Why middle class has taken a big hit
What do you think? Should we change the rules so income is not redistribute upward? Why not?
@41 Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. And yes, I did that off the top of my head, without looking it up.
Still waiting…
@50 All 5 of Ford’s predecessors were veterans — Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon.
There was a time in this country when you couldn’t get elected president, or much of anything else, if you hadn’t served in the military. That came to an end with the election of Bill Clinton, a draft dodger, which broke a string of 9 consecutive U.S. presidents who were military veterans. We’re now on our 3rd consecutive non-veteran president. Military service isn’t expected or respected like it used to be, and we probably can thank Vietnam for that, although I think society’s attitude toward Vietnam veterans has improved in recent years and Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans are being treated much better. Maybe part of it is that voters just have other priorities now; that, with the end of the Cold War, other issues have come to the fore. In any case, Republicans have been able to get away with filling the land’s highest offices with deserters, draft dodgers, and “never served”s. Nowadays, to find an office holder who’s been in the military, you generally have to look in the Democratic Party. There’s a handful of GOP exceptions; but as a general rule this generation of Republicans isn’t willing to serve our country, although they’re always more than ready to send other people’s children to die on foreign battlefields.
Serial “Ridicule the looks of the president’s daughter” Conservative is bothered because Roger has the ability to think about all sides of and situation, and comprehend nuance. He’s upset that Roger doesn’t parrot GOP talking points. So sad.
@50
That was not the question @41.
Brush up on your reading skills…..
@49 What, exactly, are we getting in exchange for pampering the rich? If they say create jobs, my question is where are the jobs. They’re not building better mousetraps or selling them more cheaply; the stuff available to consumers — including the food and drugs we put in our bodies — is increasingly crap and too often downright unsafe. There are days when it seems like America’s only remaining industry is scamming people. Because that’s largely what the rich do nowadays. There are very few people left making an honest billion.
@48 Feel free to argue an alternative theory if you’ve got one.
@54 I was answering the question @39, jackass. Did you forget already that you asked it?
Looks like Egypt’s generals are moving their country toward a military regime.
bub doesn’t argue – he snipes.
Eric With-Holder BLINKS big-time!!!
Holder things this will end the issue. Who knows if it will or won’t. They need to review all the documents first. And if anything relevant ends up not in this batch, With-Holder will drag Obama down.
Obama must have told Holder to comply RIGHT NOW. This is serious..and so are the White House Security Leaks.
Holder should have given all this stuff to Issa a year ago. Does With-Holder want Obama to lose? Appears that way, doesn’t it
Other than Bristol Palin, who’s both an adult and a public figure (God only knows why) you’d find a few snipes here and there, but really not that much.
@60 Lest you forget, “Fast and Furious” started on Bush’s watch. By all means go after Holder. But, by all means, go after the Republicans who fucked this up, too.
@36
Nah, it was because he was in the other guy’s driveway and he was the only person with a gun. Even Texan’s have their limits.
re 42: “Its been very important to the rabbit to inform us which politicians are vet….and I think its important as well. Just curious how he missed the last two democrat party presidents in his postings?
Simple error? Lol”
Republicans run on their supposed strength as warriors who will protect the country in times of conflict. I think, in that case, it is very fair to ask whether they protected their country in the conflict of their generation.
Let’s take the 2004 presidential race as an example: Bush and Cheney (one a deserter and the other a draft dodger)ran as the strong Republican warriors who would protect us against terrorist attacks (like the one that occured on their watch) and smeared a real Vietnam era veteran (Kerry)as a coward and an exagerator. Saxby Chambliss did the same to Max Cleland.
RR’s point is well taken that Republicans wrap themselves in the flag and are often physical cowards who never served while simultaneously smearing the true soldier patriots as less than valorous.
So, the point is that Republicans of the Vietnam era are lying, traitorous physical cowards, and Democrats are not. Capiche?
@64 Conservatives also are the first people in line whenever our “socialist” government hands out taxpayer money. See, e.g., eastern Washington farmers …
re 42: So, I take it that you do not think that it goes to the character of Romney(who is of the Vietnam era) that as a young man, he physically bullied smaller peers, but evaded the opportunity to use physical force against those who were fighting back (as in Vietnam).
In the vernacular of the times, Romney would have been termed “chickenshit” — a character judgment that impugns his credentials as a potential president.
Obama was too young for Vietnam and the draft had ended by then anyway. So it doesn’t make sense to compare his lack of a military record with Romney’s draft evading.
So, I’m hoping that I’ve made it clear to you that Romney is a chickenshit bully and Obama is not. And part of what’s great about America is that you have the right to vote for your chickenshit candidate over the quality Democratic candidate.
@ 60
I see it another way. He meets, he stalls, he claims he’s cooperating, he doesn’t disclose the documents, and eventually the White House claims executive privilege. But they drag it out past the election and it doesn’t get coverage, at least not by NBC, which ignored it until just this week.
@65
Newt G. and Bob Barr were two of the biggest pork barrellers in the house and they complained to no end about pork and socialism. What a couple of cretins.
# 34: What DIDN’T happen was John Huntsman didn’t get the nomination – he never got higher than 10% in any of the primary races. Now HE could have been a vialble opponant, one that could have caused some real problems for Democrats this fall.
What was left were the low-hanging fruit. Romney is just the last one left on the limb. He’s managed to go a couple of few weeks without sticking his foot in his mouth, but I doubt his handlers are going to be able to control him all the way to the campaign. After all, he’s got several debates still to go. Right now they are kicking reporters out of any events where he is departing from a prepared speech. I’m waiting for his next “Corporations are people too, my fried…” slip.
I’m fine with someone that was against the war not going.
I’m fine with someone that just kept the head down and their mouth shut and didn’t go not going.
I’m OK with someone that was pro-war, skipped out when it was his time to serve, then changed their mind about this whole war thing and wasn’t a pro-war after that not going.
But, when you spend your entire adult life as a hawk and you skipped out when it was time to serve and none of your kids ever served, fuck that.
I liked that Jon Huntsman has two kids in the navy. Huntsman’s alright in my book.
Did you see his chocolate doughnut moment?
AIG says Maiden Lane III loan fully repaid
A little bit of good news.
@ 71
What, no trooper uniform criticism today? The donut is more likely to gain lasting traction?
Keep working on that Obama re-election slogan. We’ll show Clinton and Obama clips in response.
More on @ 72
To date, AIG has paid back more than $152 billion in government support.
Without a doubt, AIG over-extended, and then the problem was hugely amplified by mark-to-market rules, which only increased the panic as the bottom fell out of market prices even though the underlying assets are still performing.
I have no problem with increased regulation to deal with the first issue – over-extension.
My concern is use of mark-to-market rules when things are going screwy. Market forces should ordinarily prevail since what the market is willing to pay for an asset is the best example of what an asset is worth.
However, when people are too scared to buy and an asset plummets in value despite healthy underlying asset performance, what do we do? Do we overrule market valuation and set something artificial, like, no changes more than 10% in a day and 30% in a week (just grabbing numbers out of thin air) to create stability?
I have no idea what the right answer should be.
But people who had cash on the sidelines in the Fall of 2008 are now very, very, very rich.
I wasn’t one of them.
“his chocolate doughnut moment”
They probably don’t serve those at 1% equestrian events. Hmm, probably something that sounds French. Croissants, maybe?
“What, no trooper uniform criticism today?”
Yeah, what’s really important is Obama’s birth certificate. Asswipe.
Sociopathic power trips resulting in organizing the bullying of a weaker classmate and then later masquarading as an officer of the law, complete with flashing red light. And that’s only the stuff we know about. So far. It’s no big deal to you narcissistic fascists, Bob, obviously, but other people actually might not want to see a sociopath in the Oval Office.
@ 75
Especially if whomever assumes the Oval Office after The One stops the gravy train to the unions.
$26B in the auto bailout that didn’t need to be spent, because of all the shit the UAW was given in the bankruptcy they didn’t deserve. You a UAW member, Doctor Steve? ’cause if not your taxes are higher and your kids’ college educations will be harder and you should at least get something for yourself to defray all that extra expense.
Shouldn’t you?
@67 The way I see it is Holder is handing over the requested e-mails months before the election.
@73 “We’ll show Clinton and Obama clips in response.”
Feel free.
@76 I prefer a gravy train to unions over a gravy train to corporations. More people benefit. More deserving, too.
@74 “I have no idea what the right answer should be.”
Seeing a problem with mark-to-market is an admission that markets can break down and fail to fairly price assets. Which happens to be true. But marking to market can’t get you out of a liquidity squeeze.
“But people who had cash on the sidelines in the Fall of 2008 are now very, very, very rich.”
Not if they kept it on the sidelines, as many did.
26B is peanuts compared to the trifecta for the 1% being sought by the Republicans. No capital gains, dividend or estate taxation. After all, how blue-bloods bring home the bacon in the form of a paycheck?
@31:
Yay for SC/Bob… master of snarky and irrelevant attempts at obfuscation.
Yawn.
So, did you guys hear about this…
“juvenile and weird”
Romneys is going to be tarred with ‘weird’…becasue he really is. You don’t even have to bring up the cult – he’s got whacko personality defects out the wazzoo to cast doubt on his bona fides for President.
@82
Serial Bub is a not-very-good amateur hack for all things right-tard.
He’s got just the sniping, sniveling, sneaky disposition to fit right in with the college Republicans and their asinine dirty tricks and nasty ‘pranks’. He clearly is without a job other than posting here all day every day in efforts to inject the latest Fox talkingpoints into civil discourse.
fortunately, no one here takes him seriously, and his obsessive posting here keeps him from doing actual harm with actual low-information voters.
What if Rasmussen was right?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....47240.html
@ 83
Next thing you know the Romney bus will be holding down the Obama bus and cutting its fuel line.
@85
That is exactly why Rasmussen exists – to provide right-tard commenters with talking points without regard for, um, facts.
Truthiness, epitomized.
@86
See? Can’t even bring himself to acknowledge the weirdness of Romney’s bus circling an Obama event and blaring its horn.
Serial bub will defend anything, as long as it’s Republican.
62. Roger Rabbit spews:
Good luck selling that. The tragedy happened under Obama’s watch. Holder has withheld key documents for well over a year.
Seems like you Obama Zombies can only blame someone else for everything that goes wrong. Unfortunately for you Zombies, the majority of voters don’t want to hear constant excuses and blaming others. They want a leader who says, the buck stops here. Obama simply cannot do that. He doesn’t have it in him and he is getting worse in the blame game.
If all Obama has in response to criticism of his regime and actions is to blame others, he will soon be Jimmy Carter II.
@ 88
I will acknowledge the hilarity of it.
Remember 2008, when McCain’s campaign never got on track and was flailing?
This ain’t 2008.
You keep pushing ‘weird’. We’ll counter with ‘competent’.
@ 62, 89
Actually, under Bush there was a different program. The goal was to trace the guns by following them closely.
Fast and Furious was a program intended to let a lot of guns purposely fall into evil hands, then turn up again during crimes committed in the US, so the crimes could be used nefariously to support gun control.
Big, no, HUGE, difference.
One, maybe two US agents, and hundreds of Mexican nationals died because of Fast and Furious.
Good luck with that.
Competent destroying jobs, whether at a steel mill, or the state of Massachusetts.
Competent at vulture capitalism.
Competent at maintaining his Swiss bank accounts, not to mention those Cayman Island accounts.
Competent at promulgating health care plans, Romenycare being essentially indistinguishable from ‘Obamacare’.
Competent at running Bain Capital.
Competent at gang gay-bashing.
Competent at relating to the common citizen? – HAHAHAHA
Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?
Obama continues to plummet–
Take a look at the RealClearPolitics poll of polls. Fox News has Obama at +4 with an older poll. Look at the 4 most recent polls by others like Gallup etc. All Negative.
Also look at the Obama/Romney spread. It keeps tightening and is now well within margin of error.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-1171.html
Finally, look at the 2 most recent polls in Michigan..
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-1811.html
Look at the polling trends Obama Zombies.
Your guy is in deep shit and it is getting deeper daily.
What miracle is Obama going to unleash to reverse the negative trends in various states and nationally?
I thought this election was a slamdunk per ylb.
@ 92
Romney’s first year as gov, MA was 51st in job creation.
Romney’s fourth year as gov, MA was 52nd in job creation.
Climbed 19 spots in 4 years.
If Obama inherited a mess, credit Romney for making a difference with an equally bad starting point. You can’t start loser than in last place.
If there are 50 states, how can Massachusetts rank either 51st or 52nd???
Given the state of the economy, it’s clear that Republicans aren’t good with numbers.
@ 95
The ranking included DC.
Time to take a quick look at Romney, so far….
His claim to success as Governor of Massachusetts has been refuted – 57th in Job Creation, deficits increased under his administration, his signature Health Care refor is basically the same as the one for which he criticizes Obama.
His claim to “executive expererience/competence: in the private sector has been demolished as it has been detailed who he outsourced jobs, looted corporations of cash then laid off the workers, used bankruptcy lasws and state and local subsidies to enrich himself at the expense of others.
He believes that Corporations have the same rights, if not more, than individuals.
He has no empathy, having talked about how he likes to fire people, and his sons described how he tied his dog in a cage to the top of the family station wagon for a long road trip (the dog ran away upon being let out, never to be seen again).
He’s a bully who likes to throw around his weight and priviledge on anyone less advanged than him – as evidenced by how he likes to fire people, outsource jobs, and put together a mob to hold down a “gay” fellow while he gave him a haircut as a teenager. He liked to dress up as a state trooper with lights on his car to scare the dates of friends.
He has had an exceptionally priviledged life, living off his father’s wealth and accomplishments. He didn’t think anything of advising students to get their parents to pay for their college if they couldn’t do so themselves. He said he “only” put in $10M to get his son’s investment business started.
He’s a ChickenHawk who actively avoided the draft with a ministeral deferment (which he has tried to obfuscate through several discussions) where he served as a Mormon missionary in France while arguing for U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In 2004 and 2008 he argued in favor of Bush’s offensives in Iraq, but then said his son’s shouldn’t have to serve because they were doing just as much service in helping his campaign (how narcicistic of him!).
I really can’t see how in the world anybody would vote for this guy.
Romney makes Nixon look like a “Peacenick”.
Romney makes the Kennedys and Roosevelts look absolutely plebian in comparison.
Romeny’s idea of selfless service is what he expects everyone to perform for him.
And Republicans want this guy to be President?
# 97: erratum: that should read “47th” in job creation.
@ 98
Apparently, in Michigan, where Obama ‘saved GM’, so do more than just a few Democrats.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballo.....e-michigan
That’s the second poll in a week to show Obama and Romney in a statistical dead heat.
In Blue Michigan.
Which should be beholden to The One, so I gather from those who claim he ‘saved GM’.
Dollars spent playing defense in Michigan and Wisconsin are dollars that can’t be spent playing defense in PA and VA.
Time spent in Michigan and Wisconsin is time that can’t be spent in CO and NV.
Meanwhile, Romney camps out east of the Continental Divide over the past two months of the year.
I can live with that.
@98 “And Republicans want this guy to be President?”
He’s everything they hope to become. Except the Mormon part.
New Obama campaign song for June:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gqT6En2O78
And America, too.
Today’s Tin Cup Award Goes To …
“Investors with precious little to cheer about these days appear to be hanging their hopes on a last refuge: another round of stimulus from the Federal Reserve …”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47814463
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Ha ha ha — this is precious! Wall Street, the bastion of capitalism, wants another government handout!
This is called the “Printing Press School Of Economics.” It reminds me of counterfeiting jokes I heard years ago.
Never one to be a party pooper, I’m buying stocks as rapidly prudence allows, because if Bernanke is going to throw money at investors, I want some of it too! Unlike Wall Streeters, I’m not a hypocrite about it — I don’t take pretend to be a “free market capitalist” at the same time I’m shoveling Ben Bucks into my pockets.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
RNC website for latino outreach (likely to be as successful as the Aryan Nation’s African American outreach program) – used stock photo of asian children on the front page!!
Just can’t tell them pigmented people apart!
Who let the dogs out?! Who? Who?
@ 104
Wow. Big mistake. Republicans might lose California because of it.
Reagan was not a vet; he spent the war in Hollywood. So did John Wayne.
@105
Hey Serialbub, what’s the fastest growing demographic group in the USofA?
Hey serialbob, are you a job creator?
Obama’s touchy-feely approach to Radical Islamists clearly had an impact on Ft. Hood. This will be the next scandal. Hell, Obama won’t even use the term “Radical Islamic Extremist”. What a reckless dipshit Obama is.
You mean like Osama and all the others that have died since he took office?
I am…are you?
What about Radical Christianist Extremists?
The Outpost of Freedom has endeavored to understand the philosophy of Timothy McVeigh
The Hutaree insignia includes a sword, crossed spears, and the letters “CCR” which stand for “Colonial Christian Republic.”
Phred Phelps
Back it up, serialbob. What are the details.
I’m starting to wonder is Smilin’s some staffer somewhere who’s job it is to try out memes on the left and see where they can get some traction.
Here’s one that will scare some Democrats (the rest will jump ship and vote for him): Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.
But, that’s not going to happen, is it.
Im not bob….
My kid, a hard-core home town sports fan, is watching the NBA finals with a bit of a jaundiced eye. This sums it up well:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/.....ty-thunder
Clay Bennett and Aubrey McLendon? Two of the biggest right wing scumbags alive.
Go Heat!
More Radical Christianist Idiots
He said people other than white Christians would be allowed to live in his South, but only if they bowed to “the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions.”
The Roger Sherman Institute (RSI), a new and unusual institute of higher learning that presents a “‘spin’ on America” that “is distinctly nationalist, patriotic, biblical, and constitutional,” …Bollinger has worked for Liberty Lobby, an anti-Semitic organization founded by infamous Holocaust denier Willis Carto, and as a researcher for the far-right Gun Owners of America, whose founder, gun rights absolutist Larry Pratt, played a crucial role in introducing the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.
Steve Smith, a longtime racist activist with a history of violence and top-level ties to numerous white nationalist hate groups, has been elected to a 4-year term on the Republican Party’s county committee for Luzerne County, Penn., One People’s Project reports.
why are people pissed at bennett? it was no secret what he was gonna do – of course he was going to move the team…DUH! and good for him.
if you wanna blame someone, blame schultz.
no way in hell anybody could make money with an NBA team at the Key…its all about luxury suites now…
well Lab Tech? are you a job creator or not?
LMFAO…we all know the answer.
@ 108
I am. Not a big one, but I am. I pay commercial property taxes, all sorts of state-level fees and assessments, B&O, Emp Sec, L&I, FUTA….
I pay an accountant, an attorney, a gardener, and all sorts of repair people when the situation arises.
And then I come on here and am told that Republicans pay no taxes and don’t pay decent wages and…..
Lemme know if your 16 year old needs a summer job, Lib Sci. I write a lot of letters of rec. Kinda cool seeing my summer kids end up in professional school a few years later.
Damn. I forgot that ‘cool’ is now a racist word:
http://twitter.com/jamestarant.....0562266112
No offense intended.
Hey rhpee6033… 4.7% unemployment is almost full employment. What does that say?
You are as stupid as ever!
You mean how he chooses the next to die each week per the NY Times?
Michael, another low wattage voter!
Only in Obummerland!
I’m more than happy to uncover this site. I wanted to thank you for your time for this wonderful read!! I definitely really liked every little bit of it and I have you saved as a favorite to see new information in your website.
@125 We’re the best saloon brawl in the West.
@123 And if he didn’t, you’d bash him for coddling terrorists. As far as I’m concerned, he can kill them all, especially ones hiding in Pakistan.* If our guys find American passports on their bodies,
send flowers to their last known U.S. address.
* Another campaign promise kept.
A SCOTUS ruling on Obamacare could come as early as Monday although most observers expect it to be delayed until the following week.
As I posted earlier this week, Barron’s magazine says the conventional wisdom on Wall Street and in the Bar Association is the law will be upheld.
But nobody really knows for sure, and partisans on both sides are nervously awaiting the decision. If it’s upheld, House Republicans plan to pass a repeal bill immediately — which, of course, will go nowhere.
@128
The Mandate is history pal.
This is an easy one.
Obama screwed up.
Without the mandate, you have a few items that might still be relevant, but ObamaCare is gutted.
Wanna bet on the mandate?
I think pudge MUST have written the soundtrack.
Gimme Mitt
“…he turned water to wine…”
“…gimme Mitt, He’ll carry us through…”
“……straightened out America, one firm at a time…”
[Warning: may cause projectile vomiting, or at least coffee snorting if you’re not careful.]
Can you say, “Arizona in play”?
Obama calls off threat of deportation for 800000 law-abiding immigrants who came here as children:
Maybe Iowa, too, and looks like ‘hot spots’ in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia…
Doing the right thing, and appealing to the fastest growing demographic group in the country…sucks to be a Republican bigot.
-Mittens Rmoney
Krugman demolishes Willard.
Treasury security yield curves, nominal and inflation-adjusted.
The US government can borrow money, not for free, but at a profit!
There is NO reason, other than treasonous Republican economic sabotage, that the US should not be borrowing heavily, putting millions of people to work building 21st century infrastructure, and making a direct profit doing so, not to mention all the long-term yields of having smart grids and clean energy and excellent schools and universal fiberoptic web connections and on and on and on…
Why are Republicans stupid?
Seems that US Treasury securities are the most valuable commodity on the planet – certainly better than oil or copper or coal or timber. More people seem to want to buy them than they want to by almost anything else.
Given that the US government can sell its debt for negative interest rates, rather than drill-baby-drill, shouldn’t we be chanting print-baby-print?
@ 131
That’s ‘pandering’ to the fastest-growing democratic group in the country.
Oh, really, serialbob? Doing the right thing is ‘pandering’? Only in Republican/racist/anti-immigrant fever dreams.
@ 133, 134
Er, the reason that heavy borrowing and printing money should be approached cautiously is that eventually, there will be serious inflation as a result of all that ‘free’ money being dumped into the system.
Did you morph into RR overnight? That was a seriously stupid pair of postings. Nothing is ‘free’ and regimes that stoop to printing money to paper over their woes end up fucking up their economies beyond repair. Look at post-WWI Germany and recent-day Zimbabwe as examples.
Really, Lib Sci. Those were fucking stupid things to say.
It’s not enough to dump money into the system. The money has to be spent wisely. What went wrong with the ARRA stimulus is that the handouts of checks were banked and not spent, and the money that was put into ‘shovel-ready’ projects was more or less wasted on things that were nowhere near shovel-ready, on handouts to states resulting in states ignoring their own problems due to free money from the feds, and large amounts of money flowing as payoffs to aspects of business and government that were by and large supportive of Obama when he was campaigning. If you are going to use stimulus as graft, it isn’t going to be successful.
It’s why another stimulus won’t be permitted by the GOP. We saw how Dems fucked it up the last time.
You’re either deceitfully conflating printing dollars per se and printing treasury securities, or are too dumb to tell the difference.
Because too much of it went to the ‘wrong’ people – tax cuts for wealthier people, and not enough to people who would spend it – food stamps, unemployment benefits and the like.
No it’s not, and we both know it – government spending that increased jobs, or supported people on the edge, or supported state governments (as we’ve done in the past) would bring unemployment down – and help Obama in political terms – and we know the Republicans’ #1 priority – not jobs, not poverty, not the environment, no – is denying Obama a second term. Period.
It’s becoming more and more transparent that Republicans are putting their narrow party interest ahead of the nation. Treasonous.
…revealing you inability or unwillingness to admit understanding. Neither of your examples is germane or an appropriate comparison/counterpoint.
The US presently has one of the most valuable things on the planet right now – something neither Weimar nor Zimbabwe could dream of – and that’s the full faith and credit of the USofA. I’m not – obvious to anyone with half a brain -suggesting printing dollars (though that’s not an completely unreasonable approach – we’ve already done it – just given it to the wrong people – rich bankers. If one were to do that, far better to just drop the $$$ from helicopters…but that’s another story) without backing – as your faulty comparison with Weimar suggests. Oh, no – the US can borrow at unbelievably low – even negative! – rates. This is an unprecedented opportunity.
It’s unfortunate that you and your fellow right-tards are so dedicated to the failure of the US.
Why do Republicans hate America?
@140 Because they resent being born.
@137 “Did you morph into RR overnight? That was a seriously stupid pair of postings.”
And this is a seriously stupid posting because you haven’t a fucking clue what I’ve posted about money printing, quantitative easing, zero interest rates, etc.
It’s also seriously stupid because the inflation risk is ZERO. Bernanke is struggling to create inflation. Do you even know what his target inflation rate is? No, I didn’t think so. It’s 2 percent. That’s hardly a worrisome level of inflation. He thinks the risk facing our economy is deflation, not inflation, and a lot of economists agree with him.
If they’re right, austerity is the dumbest and most dangerous thing we could do, because it causes the economy to contract even more. How’s austerity working out for Europe so far?
“The money has to be spent wisely.”
Bullshit. Money doesn’t care how it’s spent. The only thing that matters is whether it’s spent, because money is useless unless it’s in circulation. Everything else is merely a value judgment exercise that has no bearing on the economy’s functioning.
Case in point: The Columbia River dams were built to provide jobs during the Depression. Nobody knew what to do with the electricity and water, so they gave it to farmers for almost nothing. By an accident of history, the U.S. was sitting on a massive supply of superfluous electricity when it suddenly needed electricity to win World War 2 — one of the all-time luckiest breaks in human history.
Fear causes people to hoard money instead of spending it. Taking money out of circulation causes the economy to contract. In the U.S., the size of this problem after 2007 was roughly three trillion dollars; the Fed, by comparison, put about $1.3 trillion into the economy via its initial quantitative easing, a rather modest response.
Today, five years after the 2007 credit seizure, corporations have hoarded roughly two trillion dollars. Why aren’t they using that money to hire workers? Two reasons. One, they don’t need workers because demand isn’t there. Two, they’ve accumulated cash reserves to reduce their dependence on credit markets in case of another credit freeze-up. Households aren’t spending for different reasons — job losses, cuts in hours and wages, debt repayment, fear of the future, etc.
Current Federal Reserve policy is geared toward getting money circulating again. So was Obama’s stimulus. Most economists criticized his stimulus for being too small — it didn’t put enough money in circulation.
The austerity approach advocated by conservatives worldwide is a nonsensical response to a shrinking economy. Austerity aggravates and accelerates deflation. Deflation discourages spending by making debts more burdensome and creating an expectation of lower prices in the future, which causes people to defer purchases. It’s the worst thing you can do when an economy is crawling out of a recession and struggling to reflate. Conservatives have their heads up their asses on this.
@ 139
Completely lost on you is the fact that the Full Faith blah blah blah is already diminished from what it formerly was when our national debt was downgraded. Remember that? It was less than a year ago. Why? Excessive debt.
You apparently want to take whatever is left of our creditworthiness and diminish it further by wild spending, because we still have creditworthiness.
Do you understand the idiocy of what you have said?
“We still have the best credit so let’s go out and fucking blow it by doing the same stupid shit that didn’t work the first time.” That’s the liberal approach to financial management. Last guy holding a valid credit card wins.
The Street.com estimates that Mitt Romney pocketed $20,000 for every worker he laid off.
And yes, let’s look all four years of Romney’s jobs record as Massachusetts governor:
“Romney proudly attempts to tout his success at creating jobs in Massachusetts, but the facts may not support him. According to MarketWatch, Massachusetts ranked 50th out of the 50 states in job growth during Romney’s first year in office, and things improved very little thereafter. By the end of his term, Massachusetts was still 47th, ranking above only rustbelt states Michigan and Ohio and Hurricane Katrina-wracked Louisiana. While jobs were growing nationwide at more than 5%, Massachusetts limped along at a bare 0.9% growth rate. So yes, some jobs were created in Massachusetts during Romney’s tenure, but not at a rate that unemployed American voters are likely to find reassuring. [Emphasis added.]
http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....-laid-off/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Look, let’s get real, this guy is an asset-stripper and profit-skimmer, not a builder of businesses or a creator of jobs. He was good at what he did, but that isn’t what a job-hungry economy needs. Obama obviously hasn’t found a silver bullet to reinvigorate the economy. You can be sure it’s not for want of trying. It’s because there isn’t one, and Romney doesn’t have a silver bullet, either.
We’re going through a deleveraging cycle and there’s no way spending doesn’t contract when everybody is deleveraging. Like the common cold, the cure is to let it run its course. The patient eventually will get better.
My issue with Bernanke is that monetary tinkering, as essential as it was at the beginning of this crisis, at this point is doing little if any good and probably is causing harm by creating a new set of market distortions. The economy is breathing on its own now, so the doctor should stop CPR before breaking more ribs. Maybe the metaphor is imperfect but hopefully it’s clear enough that even the stupid poster @137 can comprehend what I’m saying. Even puddy agrees with me on this.
@ 142
You left out an extremely important additional reason that money is being withheld rather than being invested.
Companies are afraid of the next set of regulations and restrictions to come down from the House of Obama. Cash is safe and if a company is going to be pilloried by the president for investing in order to turn a profit, because it has been profitable in the past, why take the risk?
I agree with you on one point: Fear causes hoarding. Companies fear the next move Obama will make and how it might harm them. So they’re eliminating risk however they can. This includes holding on to cash instead of investing. They use cash to buy back stock, or they raise dividends, rather than investing in themselves by innovating and developing.
I don’t blame them one bit.
@143 “the Full Faith blah blah blah is already diminished from what it formerly was when our national debt was downgraded.”
Bullshit. You’re a financial ignoramus. Don’t you ever read news? Money is pouring into U.S. Treasuries from all over the world because everyone else’s full-faith-blah-blah-blah is worse than ours. That’s why Treasury yields are at all-time lows. Our shirt may be soiled, but as Wall Street puts it, it’s the least-dirty shirt so it’s the one everyone wants to wear. Everything is relative in this world.
@ 144
Your quote from the link, although you quoted accurately, is incorrect. Over the four years of Romney’s term as governor, MA was 47th. Romney does not dispute this.
By the end of his term, however, MA was 32nd. 47th is an AVERAGE over his four years. His first year he was 50th – not his fault but what he inherited.
I have posted about this twice before. MA was at the bottom – 50th – when Romney became governor and four years later it was 32nd.
IOW Romney brought his state up 18 spots in less than four years.
Not such a helpful message, is it?
146:
We have to pay it back. It’s not free money. We wasted much of the $800+B spent on ARRA and wasting even more for similar outcome is not an option.
We have to pay it back. Or, more accurately, Lib Sci’s 16 year old has to pay it back because you are retired and are sheltered from the eventual burden by a lower tax rate and by your demise before the real bill becomes due.
We have to pay it back. We have not demonstrated that we are capable of doing so.
We have to pay it back.
Guys like the dolt @137 and @143 remind me of what attracted me to conservative ideology back in the Goldwater days when I was still an ignorant teenager oblivious to the ways of the world.
It all looked so perfectly logical on paper. If only we could impose it on society, we would live in a neat and orderly world whose problems would go away.
Hah.
The disagreeable reality is this is a disorderly and illogical world populated by imperfect human beings who do stupid things. In such a world, relentlessly seeking perfect prevents achieving attainable good, and paper theories have a way of falling apart. “The best-laid plans of mice and men,” etc. …
If you want to live on a perfect planet where everything works perfectly according to blueprint, go find another planet to experiment on. Astronomers tell us there’s lots of them in our own galaxy. Things are already fucked up enough on this one that we don’t need some backyard mechanic coming along with a tool box and another set of plans.
I dropped the conservative ideology and became a Democrat very early in my adulthood because I quickly learned their schemes, like so many things that look good on paper, don’t actually fly. See, e.g.,
http://www.centennialofflight......r/DI37.htm
Finding myself in a situation where I didn’t eat except when things work, I realized that I couldn’t afford their economic experiments. And that’s even before you get to the part where conservatives are corrupt and drown their own ideology in their greed. (See, e.g., corporate welfare, bought politicians, and the massive corruption of the Harding and Bush administrations.)
This thing may not be the prettiest construction by man, but it flies:
http://www.ohtm.org/lbleriot.html
Ah, hell, it’s useless; you can’t explain anything to these conservative dunderheads.
@148 “We have to pay it back.”
Bullshit. Government debt never has to be paid back. We can roll it over forever. In fact, paying off the national debt is a bad idea, because Treasuries serve a very useful function in our economy.
@148 “Lib Sci’s 16 year old has to pay it back …”
I’ll bet you $10 against $1 that Lib Sci’s 16 year old won’t pay it back.
@148 (continued) “We have to pay it back.”
Repeating the same bullshit four times in four paragraphs doesn’t make it come true.
Douchbag, I thought it was you people who worshipped the ‘invisible hand of the free market’? My argument is based on the market – the price/yield curve for auctioned US Treasury securities.
EVERYBODY seems to want them, because the yield is effectively negative – people want to pay the US Treasury to hold their money!!!
What don’t you understand? Or, more likely, it’s in your interest to appear obtuse, because it makes shilling for right-wingers easier to pull off.
Horseshit, Republican boilerplate. Companies aren’t ‘afraid’ like pearl-clutching Republicans! If the government floated 2-3 Trillion in bonds and started building smart grids and wind farms and schools, and repaired all the roads and bridges, those companies would be lining up like pigs at the trough to get theirs!! Which would be fine, because they would have to hire people to do the actual work, and those wages would be injected into the economy, and on and on…RECOVERY!!
God you’re dense.
blah, blah indeed.. Downgraded by who? The same dolts who gave AAA to toxic financial waste??
Excessive debt??? Hardly.. Excessive idiocy from politicians especially RIGHT WING politicians who refuse to raise revenues from generational lows in relation to GDP.
As for debt:
2 wars not paid for, tax cuts that benefited already rich people the most not paid for, an expensive new entitlement benefit for seniors not paid for…
Doltishness aside how does this raise the confidence that the same idiots who did this some years back can do any better today?
@147 “MA was at the bottom – 50th – when Romney became governor and four years later it was 32nd.”
FactCheck.org says 28th: “The ad states that job creation in Massachusetts ‘fell’ to 47th under Romney. That’s a bit misleading. Massachusetts’ state ranking for job growth went from 50th the year before he took office, to 28th in his final year. It was 47th for the whole of his four-year tenure, but it was improving, not declining, when he left.”
Nitpicking the details of an Obama attack ad is good campaign fodder and great fun, but does nothing to solve our economic problems. The issue for voters is whether Romney can do more than Obama to speed recovery. There’s a broad consensus among economists that policy can’t do much; as I said above, there’s no silver bullet.
“Not such a helpful message, is it?”
Helpful for who? Bringing his state from dead last to average isn’t failure, but it’s not much more than mean reversion. This election is really about fundamental philosophy: Regulating private economic activity to prevent excesses that cause crashes vs. let-the-market-sort-it-out laissez fairism of the kind that got us into this mess. Most people’s minds are already made up about this one way or the other. The campaign messaging will target low-information voters who don’t understand this stuff and are receptive to whatever sounds good in terms of relieving their current distress. Romney may well win the impatience vote, or a substantial part of it, among this demographic. Whether that’s enough to win the election is doubtful based on what polls are telling us. If he does win, and doesn’t deliver, he’ll be out on his ass in four years. If Obama succeeds in portraying him as a job destroyer, he’s toast.
Is liberal lab tech a job creator?
@156 It’s hard to see how any debt on which you pay no interest and don’t have to repay the principal can be “excessive.” Send such debt my way and I’ll take all you’re willing to give me — and
I’ll invest it in stocks paying 3% to 4% dividend yields. I keep the dividends, you get no interest, and I don’t pay you back. I’d rather
be the borrower in that deal.
@ 155
No, if $2-3T were dumped into the economy it would be to expand unions and to pay off favored donors at other levels, as well as to give states money so that states don’t have to continue to maximize efficiency and control costs, and can go back to doing 35% biennial spending increases like Gregoire did right after her initial election.
This isn’t money that will be spent wisely. It’s good money after bad.
Just because we CAN borrow cheaply does not mean we should, if the end result is:
1. Poor use of the funds.
2. Higher interest rates down the line.
3. Greater long-term fiscal debt.
Dems had their opportunity and largely wasted it. GOP isn’t going to let them triple it the next time around and do the same dumbfuck things, sorry.
@160 “GOP isn’t going to let them triple it the next time around”
Like you guys did?
@158 Every time he goes through a supermarket checkout line.
@160 “No, if $2-3T were dumped into the economy it would be to expand unions …”
We still can’t convince you that lowering wages doesn’t expand a consumer-based economy, eh?
@ 163
How ’bout we just mail all union members a tax-free check from the federal treasury for about $15K each, save ourselves the charade of ‘shovel-ready’ projects, and just beg them to spend it on something that might keep another union member employed.
It would at least save time.
True, but he’s getting at my question to serialbob, which he has ignored.
It’s not germane for me to answer – my side doesn’t laud the greedy wealthy as ‘job creators’, and my dig at serialbub was to ask him if he was – or is he just a shill for his masters.
As for me, I own my own business and employ several people – so yes, I am, in that sense. so you can fuck off, Maxie.
“Efficiency” in Republican-speak means devastating health care for the vulnerable, housing, schools, first responders – this crisis is being used to implement the neofeudal dystopia that asholes like serialbob long for.
OK by me.
It’s clear that serialbub is just another hater – a hater of people who work for a living and who have the spine to stand up and say they won’t be exploited by some rich free-labor-loving fuck – the kind of inherited-wealth asshole that pays serialbub per word to spew here.
@164
Wasn’t Bush and Co’s. first response to the recession to mail everyone a check and ask them to spend it? And didn’t that not do much? You want to help fix up America and create jobs, spend some money fixing up our freight rail lines.
Given what Serial “Ridicule the looks of the president’s daughter” Conservative rails against, He seems to hate the idea of workers or government being able to have any influence over corporations. I cannot imagine the distopia that would manifest if he got his wish.
Unions tend to cause wages and benefits to go higher because companies increase wages and benefits for non union workers to match the union and or keep their workers from unionizing. So why would we want to destroy unions when it helps all of us?
Because greedy, imbecilic motherfuckers like serialbub cannot fathom that.
Sure you can, just think of the Washington State Ferries getting turned into modern day Sultana’s.
And bring back the worst of the exploitation of the gilded age.
Unprofessional
“President Barack Obama introduced his administration’s new policy … interrupted by the heckling of a conservative reporter.”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....ement?lite
Nuff said.
@164 “How ’bout we just mail all union members a tax-free check from the federal treasury …”
How ’bout we just create jobs by building things we need and pay them a fair wage for their work, asshole?
I seriously thought that was going to be about online porn.
Ya, think?
Widows And Orphans Dep’t
Lump sum pension payments for vets are big business …. Tales of retired or injured vets getting 30 to 40 cents on the dollar are easy to find … terms are oppressive … essentially a loan at 30 percent interest.”
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_.....ain=usnews
Roger Rabbit Commentary: When Republicans talk about “freedom” and object to regulating predatory businesses, this is who they’re protecting.
@177, 175
Germane to this…I did a back of the envelope calculation way back in the early years of the Iraq war, when we had only spent 3-400 Billion bucks.
Large-scale wind power generators are about $1-1.2 million per megawatt installed.
The US has about 820 Gigawatts installed capacity fired by fossil fuels.
Therefore, for what we’ve poured down the toilet in Iraq, now over $1 Trillion, we could have replace all our fossil fuel generators.
Obviously there are other complexities to the situation, but this underscores the tremendous costs and missed opportunities that Republicans have foisted on the country. And they continue to insist on similar destructive policies.
Assholes.
@ 179
What do you do when the wind doesn’t blow? What do you do during the winter months when there is not enough sun to generate substantial energy via solar?
There will always, in our lifetimes, be a very large need for carbon-fuel energy.
Wind is turning out to be very expensive and very inconsistent. More solar would be better. Been looking at this for three years. I’m about to do a commercial solar install.
How does a reporter get to ask the president a question?
Today’s event was a ‘no questions’ event. Why were all those reporters in attendance?
The last time The One gave a press conference, he took three questions. Three.
A Towson professor studied Obama’s aversion to his press corps in February and found that he had held only 17 solo press conferences by then, fewer at that point than Bill Clinton (31), George H.W. Bush (56) and Ronald Reagan (21), though more than George W. Bush (11).
And at impromptu encounters with the press pool, Obama took questions just 94 times — a puny number compared with Bush Jr. (307), Clinton (493), Bush Sr. (263) and Reagan (120).
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....questions/
How does one get access to one’s government when the president shuns as much press contact as possible?
Guy deserves to have a round of beers bought for him. He gave everyone else a story and was able to ask the only question of the day.
@180
Solar thermal for heat and hot water’s pretty awesome. We could provide most of the heat and hot water the Puget Sound regions homes need with solar thermal for 10 months out the year. The remaining need gets met with electric and natural gas.
The wind’s always blowing somewhere and with a modern power grid we can send it where it needs to go. But, wind energy isn’t going to measure up to its boosters claims. For starters it takes a lot of rare earth materials and tons of energy to make the generators.
@182, 180
My point was, radical good change – the elimination of fossil fuel electricity – or at least taking a huge bite out of it – is well within our means. For what we wasted on Republican wars, particularly Iraq, we could have bought ourselves a tremendous amount of good stuff that would have paid massive dividends for a generation or more.
Serialbob of course is here to tell us that it can’t be done.
Of course he is, his livlihood depends on felating those that benefit from the status quo.
@ 182
More problems with wind:
Those things aren’t stable. They break down a lot and they’re a royal pain to fix. For starters, they’re out in the middle of nowhere.
They’re always ugly, always intrusive.
Solar, at least, is usually tightly apposed to the roof (solar farms aside).
It’s killing me to do the solar thing. But, I already have a Prius. And I’m paid to do the solar install, essentially.
Solar’s a waste of money IMHO. Feds cover 30% of it and the costs get pushed higher because the subsidy covers it. Have met with five solar firms (three on-site, two others at fairs). Three were run by either idiots or a lazy slob. Other two were good.
Payoff is around year 6 or year 7. But it’s because of all the subsidies – Fed, State-mandated PUD fund, no sales tax. Without those, payoff is, essentially, never. And our taxes and our add-on utility fees go to subsidize the too-high costs for solar.
Would be better if that money were redirected to give everyone that bought a Prius, Insight, Escape, or other hybrid a $2K rebate or tax credit. Less gasoline used would be far better than less electricity used for most locales, per dollar subsidy, methinks.
Absolutely.
The days of cheap oil are over and we’ll never, ever, have a heathy economy again until we adjust to living in an expensive oil world. That means, for starters, a really big chunk of our population needs to be able to do most of their getting around on foot, bike, and transit. That also means we need to start getting a lot more of our food from closer to home and we need to put more people to work in agriculture.
While I don’t think wind energy is going to live up to all its backers claims we do need to take it as far as it will go. I didn’t mean to sound anti-wind @182.
@ 185
“we do need to take it as far as it will go”
I think we have. Some ideas just don’t pencil out in practice. This is one of them.
My preference would be to have far more cars on the road using ultra-efficient locomotion.
Waiting for that hybrid TDI. Heh.
Oil refineries are pretty? Not a blight on the landscape? Easy and cheap to maintain?
Coal mines are safe and clean?
Carbon dioxide isn’t an issue?
Prince Rupert Sound? Acid rain? Moutaintop removal? Coal terminals to export to China?
This stuff is pretty? Unintrusive? Environmentally benign? Cheap?
Please.
The problem you run into with that is that we mostly pay for road building and maintaince with federal, state, and local, gas taxes. The higher fuel efficiency goes the less money there’s available for road maintenance and we don’t have other places to go to get the funding for roads. Fewer road users means less gas tax revenue, but it also means less wear and tear on the roads and if you’re not dropping 9-12K a year into car related payments more money available to keep the roads up.
We really are in a bit of pickle when it comes to paying for road maintaince and I don’t see either political party doing much about it.
Serial “Ridicule the looks of the president’s daughter” Conservative said:
“Those things aren’t stable. They break down a lot and they’re a royal pain to fix. For starters, they’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
So were the first Model Ts. And over time, they got a lot better. Soon they will be “ultra-efficient”. Luddite.
Why does the HA crazed databaze moron who won’t call Obummer Mr President hate American seniors?
Oh and it was on Obummer’s watch our debt was downgraded.
Stupid arschloch!
Yeah Michael you proved my point long ago. Libtardo is a mental disorder!
@181 “How does a reporter get to ask the president a question?”
When it’s his turn. You raise your hand and wait to be called on. If you don’t get called on, you don’t butt in out of turn. Same as in grade school. Most of us learned this by second grade.
@191
Actually, what I proved is that you have no sense of humor.
@191 “Libtardo is a mental disorder!”
“If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights — you can thank liberals.
“If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable — you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family — you can thank liberals.
“If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn’t black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green — you can thank liberals.
“If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society — you can thank liberals.”
— Joe Conason, writer for Salon.com
According to puddy, if you want any of those things, you’re mentally diseased.
If a Nation reporter had done that during the bush presidency, the conservatives would have been livid. Come on, own your double standard.
Wisconsin Update
Democrats won a big victory on June 5 when they control of the state senate by beating a GOP incumbent.
In the days that followed, our resident trolls repeatedly reassured us this victor is meaningless because the Wisconsin senate won’t meet again before the election.
But guess what? The losing candidate doesn’t agree with our trolls. He’s asked for a recount.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/s.....95905.html
That’s his right, of course. He has to pay only $685 — $5 a ward — so it’s mostly taxpayer money he’s wasting. Which also is his right under Wisconsin election laws.
But his reasons for requesting the recount sound like pure bullshit of the kind we routinely expect from whiny GOP losers:
“Wanggaard filed paperwork with the state saying he was asking for a recount because he believes election officials did not properly acknowledge challenges by election officials, people were allowed to register to vote without proper poof of residence, people were given incentives to vote and people were campaigning at the polls. He offered no proof of any of those allegations.”
(N.B.: How do you provide “poof of residence”? A photo showing a bare foundation where your house used to be? And when a residence goes “poof” where does it go? A debris field orbiting the earth?)
Wisconsin Update (Continued)
I talked to a relative in Milwaukee this afternoon, and she enlightened me about what really happened in the recall election.
Public pensions are an issue in Wisconsin, because Milwaukee had a major pension scandal a few years ago. Involving elected officials, not the cubicle slaves who do the actual work, but voters tend to take out their frustration on everyone in the building.
Walker could have accomplished his legislative objectives and avoided a recall simply by acting like a human being. There’s something about his personal style that pisses people off. He has a long history of pissing people off. Maybe it’s because he didn’t finish college and so never learned people skills. He’s just not a good people person. It’s a personality thing.
She agreed, to some extent, with what I said here: That exit polls showed a large majority of Wisconsin voters feel recall should only be used for misconduct, not to remove someone over policy differences, and this recall outcome doesn’t mean Romney will win Wisconsin in November; Obama will get votes from people who voted against recalling Walker.
The game Republicans are playing, of course, is that people will remember their accusations of election fraud, but won’t notice when it’s reported the investigation found no fraud. By this means, they create an impression among low-information voters that election fraud is widespread — and voting suppression laws are necessary to prevent it.
Too bad we can’t pass a law against lying. If GOPers had to pay $20 for every lie they told the GOP would be broke within a month. When I was a wee bunny my parents charged me a dime per lie. That was a week’s allowance, so I had no choice but to get in the habit of never lying, because lying simply cost too much. It never occurred to me those fines violated my constitutional rights. It’s shameful how parents took advantage of their children’s ignorance of their legal rights back in those days.
Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers
http://abcnews.go.com/Technolo.....038;page=1
Own your kind puddy. Own them.
@ 196
How did you feel when Kloppenburg requested a recount, down 7,000?
Ever see a statewide 7,000 vote margin overcome in a recount?
@ 187
Good point about the refinery. Wife and I looked at a house and passed because we could see the refinery in Edmonds, or Shoreline, or Woodway, or whatever that area is.
@201 “How did you feel when Kloppenburg requested a recount, down 7,000?”
That was her right under Wisconsin law.
I thought right wingers were against giving people “free stuff”…
Two wars not paid for, a tax cut benefiting mainly rich people not paid for, an expensive new entitlement for seniors not paid for…
Did Barack Obama sign these into law?
Yeah Roger DUMB Wabbit, Republicans want dirty air, dirty water, hurricanses to hit DUMMOCRAPT led cities, throw grandma off the cliff, put children to work, because Obummer said so.
What a bunch of idiots y’all are.
Crickets still chirping!
I don’t stupid.. Why do you hate being a responsible adult?
Btw, which union is it?