What's happening here?
“The man has always spoken truth to power... He has the backs of veterans and working people... I’m fired up and ready to go.”
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Big crowds for Bernie.
"More than 3,000 came to a Sanders speech in Minneapolis in May; 700 attended his speech at Drake University here Friday night, about the same number who went to a Hillary Clinton event on Sunday that featured a buffet table and a live band. More than 3,000 people have RSVP’d for a Sanders rally in Denver on Saturday, the campaign says...."
What's happening here?
What's happening here?
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203 पैकी 1 – 200 नवीन› नवीनतम»If you don't want Hillary there's nowhere else to go.
The Democrats' Rand Paul.
@Hagar
No, Ron Paul.
The progs need a summer fling before dutifully participating in their arranged marriage with Mrs. Clinton next year.
I feel a lot better about Bernie Sanders since I heard he only wants to ask the rich to pay their "fair share," not demand it by, you know, having the Government threaten to put them in jail or seize their bank accounts.
In 2000 it was Bill Bradley, today it's Bernie the Red. Neither was in it to win it.
We as a civilization (and the USA is part of the tip of the spear) have passed a point where automation, which used to create real wealth, is now concentrating power into capital in an unprecedented way. Free trade used to be not just a way but the only way to create jobs. Now, Wall Street is booming by organizing the employment of fewer people. Socialism was an idea too ahead of its time. People have no reason to accept being born into a station in life and have little hope of seeing the system correct itself. The means of production, gifted to the few through inheritance and privilege, must and will be seized.
The means of production, gifted to the few through inheritance and privilege, must and will be seized.
How's that working out in Venezuela?
My Facebook friends who spent the last 6 years talking about "war on women" and how extreme Republicans have become are lining up for Bernie.
I already said socialism was ahead of its time. In practice it is kleptocracy. Have you heard of the basic income idea, though?
My Facebook friends who spent the last 6 years talking about "war on women" and how extreme Republicans have become are lining up for Bernie
Did anybody expect them to swallow the rape enabling Hillary's "nuts and sluts" defense for enabling a man with multiple accusations of sexual coercion, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape?
Seriously? The "Mattress Girl" left is going to go for Hillary?
I think the simplest thing to say about Bernie Sanders is he knows his business, which is politics, but unfortunately doesn't know that other business called governance, and so what happens is he's a man who can come up with great one-liners and stark contrasts and really rally the faithful but in terms of a direct conversation with him where you start asking something about well what do you think about two kinds of errors or marginal costs, anything which involves sort of the standard academic apparatus by which you're used to evaluate various kinds of proposals, he's blissfully ignorant of all of that stuff and proud of it. He is a man of strong intuitions but of little formal learning and of complete distaste for whatever formal learning anyone else brings to the topic.
- Richard Epstein, Law Talk 72.
Socialism is intoxicating to the easily led.
I already said socialism was ahead of its time. In practice it is kleptocracy. Have you heard of the basic income idea, though?
Well, I am not sure how you are going to get the productive workers to work for free. Since they could just collect a check.
There was a guy who lived in the former Czechoslovakia, under the communists there. He had a show on NPR called "Exquisite Corpse" and he explained how socialism squanders intellectual capital, perhaps he didn't even realize what he was doing.
Basically he said that he and his "intellectual friends" took jobs as street sweeper since they paid the same as any other job and made no intellectual demands and in fact allowed them to think all day. Then at night they met at cafes and discussed art and literature. The thing about smart people is that they can make a good life out of just about anything. But it is hard for a socialist regime to feed, clothe, house, and medically care for people based on words echoed about a cafe at night, or hand written literature that couldn't be published in any case on account of it was probably subversive to the socialist state.
It is "from each according to his abilities" where socialism fails now and will always fail.
#FeelTheBern
Tim, but robots.
There are very large numbers of Democrats who are unhappy with the choice of Hillary, and very unhappy with the idea of her getting the nomination without having to lift a finger--I can sympathize with that. They're going to vent their frustration by directing enthusiasm towards any credibly left-leaning challenger, and Bernie of course fits the bill--a pretty down-the-line leftist, with none of Hillary's triangulation (and if he has any scandals, they're not public).
The question for Hillary's team is not whether she can beat Bernie but whether she can get his disappointed fans behind her.
The ignorance of the American electorate is astounding.
"My Facebook friends who spent the last 6 years talking about "war on women" and how extreme Republicans have become are lining up for Bernie."
I can understand that--from a leftist perspective, which candidate is better for women? The straight arrow leftist Senator, or a woman who carries the baggage of protecting a longtime sexual offender and led the teardown of any woman who dared accuse him of what turned out to be actual offenses? At least with Sanders they don't need to hem and haw and look ridiculous making excuses for Hillary.
Tim, but robots
The more sophisticated the technology, the more it depends on the very smart people that socialism can't force to work. You can't force smart people to work when nobody else has to. You can't force intellectual creativity at the point of a gun.
I agree we have an economic problem, but "seizing the means of production" is a road to hell.
Like Ron Paul, he's asking us to vote for him based on his proven inability to govern.
Anything a man can do a computer can (in principle) be made to do. Robots can steal our jobs so they will. Whether that job is farming or surgery and eventually the practice and teaching of law as well as the design, manufacturing and maintenance of robots. We are at a certain point on that march now. With basic income, the robots work for us. The people who own the robots will happily pay taxes so that their products will have buyers. Without basic income, robot butlers serve the rich and robot soliders keep the poors off private property.
You can't force smart people to work when nobody else has to. You can't force intellectual creativity at the point of a gun.
We can (and will) pay them to do so, though. At a certain point no human labor of any kind will be necessary for our rising standard of living. Before that point, the last laborers will be paid heaps and heaps of money out of the profits of their innovations.
Next stop for Bernie, Fort Marcy Park.
Anything a man can do a computer can (in principle) be made to do.
Sigh... When the day comes that computers and robots are designing themselves, get back to me. Right now, all I have to work with to evaluate your idea is Venezuela.
Louis said,
"The means of production, gifted to the few through inheritance and privilege, must and will be seized. "
But Louis. You don't know how to do anything.
Robots can steal our jobs so they will.
You really haven't thought this through.
Before that point, the last laborers will be paid heaps and heaps of money out of the profits of their innovations.
The 1%? Ha ha ha! My bet is they will be lined up against the garden wall and shot through the head, the way Che liked to do to his enemies.
Why sigh? Do you doubt Turing's work?
The 1% are not the electrical engineers and computer science theorists who will be needed.
But Louis. You don't know how to do anything.
It's like he doesn't know that if you want to take money from productive people who know how to earn it, all you have to do is become a lawyer.
The 1% are not the electrical engineers and computer science theorists who will be needed.
Really? How do you know this? Come on, this is fantasy stuff and I am done playing.
He'll be way too busy figuring out how many different deodorants is the right number and choosing who should provide them to actually have the backs of working people and veterans. If Bernie Sanders gets in I confidently predict that the VA will be an even worse hellhole for its customers than it is already.
I think you lack understanding of the world. Computers are real. They are not a fad. And bankers did not invent them. Bankers have access to money and so it is not surprising they claim to earn large gobs of it.
What is there to know? Its not a controversial thing that bankers handle money and engineers build things.
I think you lack understanding of the world. Computers are real.
Not the ones you describe.
Louis said...
Robots can steal our jobs so they will.
6/16/15, 10:35 AM
Unless you own the company, it was never YOUR job. It was a job the company owner agreed to have you do as long as it made economic sense to do so. You agreed to do that job for the same reasons.
If the economic situation changes (or the legal, or technological) such that it no longer makes sense for him to have you do it or for you to do it for him, the deal is off.
Why is this so difficult for so many people to understand?
Nobody makes bankers richer than Obama doubling the national debt and letting Wall Street and the bankers take their "crumbs" from the massive slices of cake being passed around. Printing trillions that have no place to go but to the Dow since productive work like building pipelines is out.
I like his chicken............
Todd, I have no problem with robots stealing jobs. I think it has historically been a good thing right up to the point that wages are depressed because whole job categories are being wiped out in the space of decades.
Tim, it is necessary to attempt to foresee and plan in order to operate successfully in the world. Some factories are entirely automated now. That's not some nightmare you had, it is real. It will only increase because of the reasons Todd articluates.
I do not have a problem with anyone anywhere making money. Lawyers, bankers, robots, it is all good.
Are you aware of any theorists who propose that automation is basically a fad that will burn out?
My stomach is churning over the rise in communist ideology in this nation. I spent a lot of years of my life being ready to fight comunists, and we "won" that struggle. The result has been the loss of stigma for being communist.
I almost wish the cold war were still on because apparently it only took a dozen years for people to forget how bad it was. First Pelosi, a closet socialist party member, then Obama who said communists are his greatest influences, and now people are flocking to an openly communist Bernie Sanders.
It's just sad.
Lois, I was with you in your first comment right up until you came up with the "seize the means of production" bit.
Maybe one day. But we are nowhere near such a point, and absent some unforeseen (by people with the ability to actually foresee, not sci fi fanboys and their bong dreams) breakthrough, not in our lifetime thing. Moore's law is not actually a "law," it's a goal. And we are running out of ability to make computers faster with current technology.
Since the brain was not actually "designed," and since evolution can tolerate massive levels of waste trying bad ideas, and has infinite patience, there is no reason to think that humans will ever be able to understand our own brains. Sure, some people profess faith that it can be done, but that is because if they didn't believe it, they would never try, and if you don't try, well you are sure to fail.
Tim,
Re my first comment, thank you. As a matter of policy I am entirely against the actual loss of our private property rights. It was a rhetotical flair to get the foot in the door for basic income.
Re Moore's law it is too soon to know what it is. Some believe that it is not a law itself but the manifestation of a deeper law of nature called the law of accelerating returns. It could be that our IT is a local manifestation of the same process that took an ocean of electrons and made a trillion galaxies.
Re our brains, I agree that we will never understand them. However. We do not need to understand them to reproduce them and their functions. As our scanning and emulation tech gets better, we will be able to "run" brains as programs.
"Seriously? The "Mattress Girl" left is going to go for Hillary?"
Yes, they wouldn't be the "Mattress Girl" Left if they didn't have a boundless capacity for cognitive dissonance.
It's the tribal in him...Cherokee maybe. It attracts youyr tribe to trust in you.
Hillary's tribe is dollars all line up in a row.
"Did anybody expect them to swallow the rape enabling Hillary's "nuts and sluts" defense for enabling a man with multiple accusations of sexual coercion, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape?"
Well, since they actively and vocally supported the actual "man with multiple accusations of sexual coercion, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape" I'd say "Yes".
I feel a lot better about Bernie Sanders since I heard he only wants to ask the rich to pay their "fair share," not demand it by, you know, having the Government threaten to put them in jail or seize their bank accounts.
I dunno, I think I'm kind of OK with the government seizing Donald Trump's assets....
Well, not really, but good goddamn, the man's a walking advertisement for Robert Cook's mindless brand of preening socialism.
There is a huge opening for a Democrat to take the nomination away from Hillary, but most of those that could take advantage of it have been intimidated enough to stay out of the race. I don't think Sanders can beat Herself, but I could well be wrong. Caucuses play a big role in the nomination process, and Clinton underestimated their importance in 2008, and it cost her the nomination then.
The Dems have found the perfect candidate, an old angry socialist geezer from the sixties!
"Yes, they wouldn't be the "Mattress Girl" Left if they didn't have a boundless capacity for cognitive dissonance."
I could respect if not agree with a leftist who backed a candidate who espoused their politics--unrestricted abortion, federally funded birth control, increased workplace protections against gender discrimination, higher minimum wages, stricter sexual harassment laws--just as a libertarian would back a candidate who favored increased civil liberties and fewer restrictions on economic freedom. But the minute a self-professed "feminist" (or a "99 percenter") backs someone like Hillary Clinton they shot all their credibility to hell and stand for a dark, nihilist future.
Besides, a savvy leftist would recognize that any part of the leftist agenda that will go anywhere would need to be championed by someone with the ability to work with a conservative contingent that is not going away (as a savvy rightist would also recognize in terms of getting a right-leaning agenda passed). Someone like Hillary--long-polarizing and now openly promising nothing but "battle"--offers none of that. Even Obama at least made a pretense towards working with the other side, and when it became clear he couldn't work out deals with the GOP his agenda hit a roadblock. Why would Hillary do better?
"There is a huge opening for a Democrat to take the nomination away from Hillary, but most of those that could take advantage of it have been intimidated enough to stay out of the race."
I figured Cory Booker would have been well suited for the race--he had a lot of good press for a while. I'm not sure why he is sitting this one out.
People like Louis, on the other hand, make me root for the day when that preposterous scene from Continuum comes true and the evil corporations set up debtor gulags full of bankrupt, zombie-chipped Louises assembling technical doo-dads for the betterment of society and the holy bottom line.
"What's happening here?"
Hillary gives lots of people the creeps. Even Democrats.
Mitch, because I said bankers should make money? Or because I favor a universal basic income?
The means of production, gifted to the few through inheritance and privilege, must and will be seized.
You do realize the communists lost the Cold war ...right?
Not even the Chinese believe that shit anymore.
Gahrie: "You do realize the communists lost the Cold war ...right?"
They only lost the "hot" cold war.
With help from our "enlightened" western left, they are well on their way to winning the "cold" cold war.
"At a certain point no human labor of any kind will be necessary for our rising standard of living."
Your comments demonstrate you have no idea where a rising standard of living comes from.
Why are people in general so nasty? When the machines rise up we will have earned our extinction.
Wall Street is booming by organizing the employment of fewer people.
There's a word for this. It's called productivity. It is how societies generate wealth.
If you don't generate wealth, you don't have the money to guarantee the basic income you talk about.
I think it has historically been a good thing right up to the point that wages are depressed because whole job categories are being wiped out in the space of decades.
You don't need robots for your nightmare scenario. The internal combustion engine did the same thing. Bam. In a decade, no more buggy-whip makers.
That said, this is your stronger point. The end result of more productivity is not fewer jobs, but different jobs. Robot repairmen, for example. Yet arguably a faster pace of change creates greater disruptions of the labor market which creates pockets (geographic and temporal) of under employment and the depreciation of skill.
But again, this is nothing new. I remain unconvinced that it's worse to be a stocking clerk in 2015 than a sharecropper in 1872. The history of the second industrial revolution is pertinent.
"The ignorance of the American electorate is astounding."
It is an ignorance our owners have long desired and have worked diligently for decades to achieve. Imagine anyone thinking either Obama or Hillary Clinton have the people's interest at heart! Or that crumbs fall from the tables of the rich to nourish the rest of us heartily! Hahahaha! Now it doesn't matter which party is "in power," as it is they whom the Dems and Republicans both work for who call the shots.
"My stomach is churning over the rise in communist ideology in this nation."
Oh? You mean the rising anger of desperate, jobless (or barely jobbed) people seeing the few and the parasitic growing ever richer and more privileged, befatting themselves off the more and more people worldwide, and being thereby plunged into poverty, environmental ruin, (no one seems to be paying any attention to the continuing vomiting forth into our air and sea of radiation at the melting down Fukishima)and utter powerlessness?
Yeah...it's a puzzling mystery, enigmatic beyond all Holmseian sleuthing to explain.
There's a word for this. It's called productivity. It is how societies generate wealth.
Yes, I was describing the way the world works, not condemning it. I am glad you agree.
The internal combustion engine did the same thing. Bam. In a decade, no more buggy-whip makers.
Whip-making isn't a job category, it is a job. The creative destruction of jobs has historically been a good thing. No more whip-makers, but whatever jobs they find in replacement they will be more efficient at because of better transportation costs and the like. A better example is the clichéd observation about how few people work on farms anymore. There are robots today capable of forming scientific hupotheses, testing them and discovering new knowledge. There are robots that can build houses. As these get cheaper (fast!) categories of employment (farming, science) become squeezed. At a certain point (1989?), the gains in efficiency stop benefitting the typical worker.
What is new is that we can see that automation has been good for lifting billions from poverty but people's standard of living (in the developed, post-industrial world) has stagnated. That's my answer to the professor's question of why people are interested in a socialist.
I'm afraid Bernie Sanders is going to be our next president. Maybe the Clintons can dig up some dirt on him before it's too late.
When I visited Vietnam in 2011, our tour guide said an interesting thing. "Following Reunification, Vietnam was a socialist country. Do you know what socialism is? It's where if I work hard and you don't, we both get the same thing. So no one worked hard. Years ago, the government changed the rules. Now, if you work hard, you can prosper. Things are much better now."
American socialists love to talk about the theoretically pure form of socialism but have no experience with its reality. Human nature is incompatible with socialist idealism or theory. The ability to learn from experience is one of the key facets of intelligence. By that measure, socialists are idiots. However, many of them probably like the idea of getting the same as people who work hard, letting them be lazy and still live as well (or more accurately, as poorly) as everyone else. Meanwhile, in the society where everyone is equal, the leaders end up doing quite well for themselves with special stores, special privileges, and special treatment. Because while all animals are equal, some will always be more equal than others.
People are interested in a socialist because they do not believe hard work will benefit them. Wrong or right. I don't think it is controversial to say that hard work certainly will not benefit them as well as if they had had the common sense to be born a Clinton or Bush.
'People like Louis, on the other hand, make me root for the day when that preposterous scene from Continuum comes true and the evil corporations set up debtor gulags full of bankrupt, zombie-chipped Louises assembling technical doo-dads for the betterment of society and the holy bottom line."
That's already happening. Much work for private companies is performed by our incarcerated citizens...while our unincarcerated citizens increasingly languish in un- or under-employment.
"I'm afraid Bernie Sanders is going to be our next president."
Puh-leeze. That'll never happen.
What's happening here?
He's different. Plus the media needs a story. "Look, a socialist, how cute."
I have been (mistakenly) predicting a significant third party candidate for a while. I still think the environment is there for one. People are tired of the bullshit, and tired of the lack of results. So his difference and his media cuteness play into this dissatisfaction. It probably has something to do with Clinton, but more to due with the festering dissatisfaction.
Plus this happened in Minnesota, where they elect washed up comics, pro wrestlers and rich and clueless department store heirs to high office. Once the elected the likes of Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy and Rudy Boschwitz. No more.
"I'm not sure why [Cory Booker] is sitting this one out."
He wants to keep on breathing.
It's not a question between free market economies and full socialism--our country has long been a hybrid, with a free market tempered by government regulation and social safety nets. I doubt the most extreme libertarian GOP candidate (say Rand Paul) wishes to dismantle every "socialist" aspect of our government any more than the most socialist Dem candidate (say Bernie Sanders) wishes to take us to the full Stalinist path. The argument is within a narrower middle ground--should we embrace single payer health care, expanded SS, higher minimum wages, etc., or reduce regulations, reduce taxes, and trim back the social safety nets.
In the heat of the campaign a lot of people will talk about this as though this was a Hugo Chavez vs. William McKinley election, but it just won't turn out that way. Any Democrat is going to have to work with the congressional GOP to get anything done, and the GOP is unlikely to have enough of a majority to steamroll the Dems. Either some form of compromise will be reached, or we'll have gridlock--but those are pretty much our choices.
Robert Cook gets something right. Hurray!
Sanders speaks "truth to power"? What power? Certainly not to Der Staat. Ge's got the Mailed Fist of the State so far up his butt he can taste Rustoleum.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need..."
That doesn't lead to the death of millions...
Yeah, right.
"He wants to keep on breathing."
I wonder--maybe I missed something in the news that would explain why he's not even being talked about as a candidate, particularly when many Dems seem desperate for some other choice. I'd like to see some reporter dig into this--is he being hushed?
Plus this happened in Minnesota, where they elect washed up comics, pro wrestlers and rich and clueless department store heirs to high office.
And Minnesota has huge surpluses they are plowing back into education, while Wisconsin has a 2.2 billion deficit and cutting hundreds of millions from education. One of these things is not like the other.
Cory Booker is smart and sane enough to not want to be President. It is a kind of mental illness that drives people to the worst job in the country.
"People are interested in a socialist because they do not believe hard work will benefit them."
Or they find there is no paying work for them to do.
This is more and more the reality...and it's because those who benefit by hard work--the hard work of others--are successful in having implemented by Washington policies that will ensure the (increasingly foreign--or incarcerated) workers--or robots--work while they (the owners) play...and get richer!
Now it doesn't matter which party is "in power," as it is they whom the Dems and Republicans both work for who call the shots.
That's starting to change. The TPP went down in flames from Democrats in the House.
"The TPP went down in flames from Democrats in the House."
This is certainly a welcome...reprieve.
I am not confident this is the end of that particular attempt by the powerful and wealthy global elites to usurp national sovereignty and enslave the rest of the human race for their enrichment.
"Ge's got the Mailed Fist of the State so far up his butt he can taste Rustoleum."
Erratum: I mean "He's" not "Ge's." The "He" is Bernie Sanders, not garage mahal or Robert Cook, although this, of course, could apply equally to them.
I am not confident this is the end of that particular attempt by the powerful and wealthy global elites to usurp national sovereignty and enslave the rest of the human race for their enrichment.
Were you sitting at attention when you typed this?
Now it doesn't matter which party is "in power," as it is they whom the Dems and Republicans both work for who call the shots.
Pop quiz:
Who prosecuted more wall Street criminals...Obama or Bush?
I am confident the TPP will not pass from this Congress. Democrats believe that we have passed the margin of diminishing returns for not protecting our own trade interests. If I were in the Senate I would be filing new legislation saying that even the negotiation of trade agreemts ought to require discussion participants to progress the eradication of human trafficking. The U.S. And Britain ought to bilaterally agree to not trade with countries that use slave labor measurably.
The giveaway that TPP is doomed is Boehner is for it. He is the George Costanza of the scene, his every impulse is wrong. TPP is dead and everyone but 44 knows it. Bernie should drag her to the left and prompt her to say that she would be willing to take up negotiating on even slightly different terms. She would bury it until 2017 that way.
Robert Cook said...
Oh? You mean the rising anger of desperate, jobless (or barely jobbed) people seeing the few and the parasitic growing ever richer and more privileged, befatting themselves off the more and more people worldwide, and being thereby plunged into poverty, environmental ruin, (no one seems to be paying any attention to the continuing vomiting forth into our air and sea of radiation at the melting down Fukishima)and utter powerlessness?
Yeah...it's a puzzling mystery, enigmatic beyond all Holmseian sleuthing to explain.
6/16/15, 11:59 AM
Robert Cook said...
Or they find there is no paying work for them to do.
This is more and more the reality...and it's because those who benefit by hard work--the hard work of others--are successful in having implemented by Washington policies that will ensure the (increasingly foreign--or incarcerated) workers--or robots--work while they (the owners) play...and get richer!
6/16/15, 12:33 PM
Well, for most of them, they are just getting the society that they voted for. They wanted "hope and change" and they want free this and free that. If you are too afraid to make your own way and too afraid to be responsible for your own choices, why are you surprised when you wind up in a cage being fed scraps? These are the people that as a group denigrate education, care more about feeling than facts, only trust science when they can use to to their advantage (and politicize the hell out of it when they can't), can't understand why a $120K liberal arts degree isn't a sound investment, and believe that Democrats want to help them but Republicans want to see them in chains. Can't afford to live on their own but think a $6 Starbucks coffee is a good deal.
The 60s radicals took over the place years ago and have been trying to turn it to shit ever since. They have been attacking all of the pillars of society with a vengeance and now that the place is crumbling down act all surprised and shocked (shocked I say!) that everything is not peachy perfect. What are their solutions to fix it? Why more of the same and / or ignore it and let someone else try to fix it. That way they can attack the solution without having to have one of their own that might actually have to work. Look what was done to Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago. Look what is happening in CA. Eventually you run out of other people's money because either you are well off enough that you can [and do] move or you are rich enough that you can afford to stay and protect your money.
You can spout off of your socialist / communist clap-trap all you want about how "the man" owns everyone and everything but it is only because a majority walks into those cages willingly and your way is just more of the same. More government, more control, more "make them pay". Well "them" is us. So those of "us" that can will just hunker down harder, pull in the exposed parts and try to ride out the storm.
Paul Ryan and Obama, who golfs with bankers, are pushing hard for a neoliberal trade authority that hands sovereignty over to multi-national corporations. But righties think Obama is a communist. That just never becomes not funny.
C. Monty Burns' communist step brother.
"Paul Ryan and Obama, who golfs with bankers, are pushing hard for a neoliberal trade authority that hands sovereignty over to multi-national corporations. But righties think Obama is a communist. That just never becomes not funny. "
We must attend different comedy clubs. First, fast track trade authority gives no power to any non-governmental entity--it simply enables the president to negotiate trade deals with other countries while preserving the Senate's right to approve or reject it (only that they cannot add new amendments to it, which would render the negotiations pointless). Now if you oppose free trade, I suppose it's all fine to oppose anything that might lead to more of it--but at least be honest with what you're trying to do.
I agree that Obama is not a communist. His economic policies are better defined as neo-corporatist.
"The 60s radicals took over the place years ago and have been trying to turn it to shit ever since."
You're insanely mistaken. The 60s radicals may have had some slight influence on shortening the course of the Vietnam war--at least so Nixon supposedly said privately--but that's about the sum of their accomplishments. From the time Reagan took office in 1980, the ever-present (and ever-expanding) military/intelligence/industrial/financial (MIIF) complex has never stopped working to reassert its complete control over all. It has succeeded to spectacularly disastrous and rotten degree, but they're not satisfied and will continue their usurpation of all that remains of our global natural resources and of our individual sovereignty as citizens. (In this latter they have not much farther to go before they will have erased such a state of being or even the notion of it.)
"Look what was done to Baltimore, Detroit.... Look what is happening in CA."
Yep...the MIIF Complex parasites have left the husks of these places after having sucked up all they could from them. This is the work of your gods in action. (I excluded Chicago from your enumeration of desolated places as I'm not aware that Chicago has fallen into bankrupted ruin...yet.)
"t is "from each according to his abilities" where socialism fails now and will always fail."
It fails to generate wealth, but it doesn't necessarily fail to generate equality (except the Nomenklatura who, like Al Gore, are exempt).
Are you better off where practically everyone is poor (but equally so) or where even the poorest is not quite that poor (but many are far better off than that)?
It would not surprise me if Bernie Sanders preferred the first. The question is, do those who support him realize that? Or do they think "Socialism" means they can have lots of free stuff (without working for it), and everything else will be pretty much the same?
It would not surprise me if Bernie Sanders preferred the first. The question is, do those who support him realize that? Or do they think "Socialism" means they can have lots of free stuff (without working for it), and everything else will be pretty much the same?
Is the question related to the question of how dumb people are? People are perfectly dumb. But. They can be structured into productive modes.
Bernie could win Iowa and NH...and wouldn't that turn conventional wisdom on its head
Would Hillary be his Veep?
Or maybe Kamala Harris. But at that point I am trolling. Can you even imagine? A Left Palin or Anti-Palin depending on your perspective. And four more years? Check, please.
Remember, the GOP is the party that has the old white folks running for office.
Let's remember one thing: Bernie has all of Hillary's problems. He's quite unlikeable. A God awful speaker. Hasn't actually done shit for his decades in public service.
The only thing that differentiates him is that he has a penis. Sort of.
I'd like to see Bernie get nominated for a few reasons:
1) He is the embodiment of where the Democrats are politically these days. It's moved away from the centrist triangulation that even Obama espoused in his campaigns, and the heart and soul of the party is in the Warren wing. It's going populist, and Sanders is a natural fit for that. They may as well nominate someone who says what they are thinking.
2) It would be nice for one of the parties to nominate a candidate who is not favoring more military interventions. I'd like to see someone who can argue for only intervening militarily where (a) we have a realistic strategy for winning what we are trying to win; and (b) we have clearly defined and justified goals, making it worth the risks and sacrifices. Hillary is as warlike as any Republican and she should be brought to task for screwing up Libya and trying to get us into Syria. If she's nominated, that issue becomes a wash.
3) Defeating Hillary would be a way for voters to say that at a certain point corruption, incompetence and divisiveness is simply too much for this country to bear. All the Clintons' influence-buyers would see their investments go belly-up.
4) Sanders' politics may be wrong, but if this country elected him, we couldn't say we were fooled--he's open about what he stands for.
5) Even if somehow elected, Sanders isn't going to be able to enact any far-left agenda.
Of course, the GOP side of things is unpredictable, so it's hard to say what a Sanders matchup would result in. I doubt anyone that openly left wing could get elected president, but he gets points for bluntness.
garage: "....neoliberal trade authority that hands sovereignty over to multi-national corporations."
LOL. Do you have a box of words that you reach into and try to make sentences with? Do you share it with Cook or does he lend you his?
Dude, the old days are not coming back. Period. Unless, of course, we have another world war and the US is able to demolish all the manufacturing capacity of the rest of the world. Then we can have the lovely factories of your fantasy, all paying the big fat guaranteed wages of your dreams.
But here is the really bad news. Even if the good old days came back after we wiped out the competition, the new factories building all the nice products would be build with money raised by the evil bankers. They would raise the equity. They would secure the debt. How do you think these things get where they are? How do you think capital is assembled?
You don't think
"garage mahal said...
And Minnesota has huge surpluses they are plowing back into education, while Wisconsin has a 2.2 billion deficit and cutting hundreds of millions from education. One of these things is not like the other."
LOL Minnesota raised taxes by billions. No thanks.
Feel the...excitement?
"Dude, the old days are not coming back. Period. Unless, of course, we have another world war and the US is able to demolish all the manufacturing capacity of the rest of the world. Then we can have the lovely factories of your fantasy, all paying the big fat guaranteed wages of your dreams."
Not just that, but what is really "killing jobs" is increased productivity. Factories and businesses (everything from no longer needing steno pools and law librarians to numbers of line workers on the floor) can produce the same output as even twenty years ago with a fraction of the workers. Yes, this shifts more money to capital and weakens the labor market, but we really can't "unring the bell" and uninvent automation or productivity improving practices.
Blaming it on trade or immigrants is missing the big picture and giving us convenient scapegoats--but even if we walled this country off and allowed no imports (of people, goods or services) we're still not going to bring back the 1950s.
Plus, another reason the job market seemed so much better back then? Blacks and women were effectively shut out of much of it. It's a little easier to compete when over 50% of the work force is not being considered for your job.
Dude, the old days are not coming back. Period. Unless, of course, we have another world war and the US is able to demolish all the manufacturing capacity of the rest of the world. Then we can have the lovely factories of your fantasy, all paying the big fat guaranteed wages of your dreams.?
Maybe. But my Comrades (namely poor black people) can take down the entire financial system anytime we want. Remember 2008? We can do it again. Just trick poor bankers into giving loans to people who can't afford it. Deviously simple. And bankers (smartest people in the room) are just too fucking stupid to figure it out. Bwahahaha.
Louis@10:12 - Fuck you, plebe. Can't take the heat, then get out of the kitchen. You're a world class moron and a similarly renowned loser. Suck it.
Hahaha
Bernie!
It's all true
"Maybe. But my Comrades (namely poor black people) can take down the entire financial system anytime we want. Remember 2008? We can do it again. Just trick poor bankers into giving loans to people who can't afford it. Deviously simple. And bankers (smartest people in the room) are just too fucking stupid to figure it out. Bwahahaha."
Please--a few more "victories" like that and you're be ruined.
That's starting to change. The TPP went down in flames from Democrats in the House.
This is true because a.)Obama has contracted early onset lame duck status and b.) new elections are coming next year and many will want to distance themselves from Obama's failure. If this vote had been last year or even early this year, Democrats would've fallen over themselves to back it.
I think Bernie can promise more free stuff than Hillary. He's my Dem choice.
What type of person actually goes to see some dopey politician make a speech?
Garage
And you and your comrades could not build a factory if you were given the plans and the materials and a thousand years to finish the job. You might be able to tear something down (if it didn't take too much effort and organization to do) but I seriously doubt it.
And BTW, if you and your comrades were smart enough to pull off your sly trick again and "take down the entire financial system" why were you not smart enough to profit from that "take down?" It was a huge windfall for me. You did buy on the collapse didn't you?
I'll add another benefit to Sanders being nominated--if he loses big in the general (which he absolutely ought to) it'll be a stark rebuke of leftist populism and maybe steer the Dems towards the middle. If Hillary loses the general, the leftist populists could still say she wasn't authentic and was a representative of triangulation trying to fake at being a populist (which is true).
"And BTW, if you and your comrades were smart enough to pull off your sly trick again and "take down the entire financial system" why were you not smart enough to profit from that "take down?" It was a huge windfall for me. You did buy on the collapse didn't you?"
Garage and his proletarian army cares not for money! Their revolution is about keeping it real. That's why they changed things, and the country is no longer run by corrupt plutocrats!
We're in year 7 of a mostly female/beta-male Administration. How's that working out? More, please?
'Yes', say the Dem's, putting up (so far): A female and a beta-male.
Wonderful!
You might be able to tear something down (if it didn't take too much effort and organization to do) but I seriously doubt it.
Either the poor tanked Wall St and our economy, [as suggested by most right wing commenters], or bankers aren't very bright. Which is it, do you think?
Garage
Why the bankers tanked the economy after they went liquid. We then bought cheap and have had huge, huge, gains since then. I personally put dibs in on money that could have been yours. It wasn't much, of course, but it was a little extra. Sort of the cherry.
Garage:
"Either the poor tanked Wall St and our economy, [as suggested by most right wing commenters],"
Link to a single right wing commenter who blamed the collapse of the economy on the poor. Should be easy since "most" claimed that.
Bernie reminds me of a red-diaper baby from the 30s and 40s, who hated the class/race injustice of America, thought of the Soviet Union as a workers paradise, but couldn't even bother to comprehend the Ukranian famine/massacre that Stalin engineered in 1937, nor the Gulags.
Bernie really does believe in the forced redistribution of wealth. He really does not see the engine of American progress since 1945. He is a authentic, but, in my opinion, misguided to the extreme.
So, here's how we want it to play out.
1. Bernie makes a strong NH showing against Hillary;
2. This momentarily puts Hillary on the defensive. She and the establish Dems overreact, and squash Bernie, just like the Dems squashed Howard Dean in 2004;
3. Bernie threatens to run as a 3rd party - against the corporate greed of both parties a la Ralph Nader;
4. Then, of course, the Empire strikes back -- Hillary and the Dems promise him the world if he drops a 3rd Party bid (Sec of Labor, Sec of HUD, Ambassador to France, $20 Mill to run for Vermont governor, anything he wants short of the VP);
5. Bernie resists --- and runs 3rd party a la Nader -- and siphons off votes from Hillary;
6. This enables Walker or Rubio to squeak by for the win, kinda like Nixon in '68 or Clinton' in '92.
I can dream, can't I?
"I don't think it is controversial to say that hard work certainly will not benefit them as well as if they had had the common sense to be born a Clinton or Bush."
You're conflating being a heredity millionaire with being moderately successful and off the dole. It doesn't really take that much effort to "make it." Honestly.
Look at my niece. Registered nurse. Makes enough money to buy a decent home all by herself. However, still (at 31) lives with mom in her house with 3 kids by 2 guys, neither of which have held a real job. I believe she has used WIC and other assistance programs. She's made shitty life choices and is only responsible enough to hold down her job.
Either the poor tanked Wall St and our economy, [as suggested by most right wing commenters], or bankers aren't very bright. Which is it, do you think?
I don't know any right wing commenters who have blamed exclusively the bankers or the poor, but you're forgetting (purposely?) the third, and most logical, choice. The government tanked our economy by forcing banks to make questionable loans and then welching on their promise to back them.
The only stupid thing was banks taking Tony Soprano's promises at their word. Credit Unions (and some banks) were never affected by that mess.
The banks and financial institutions tanked the economy through their unfettered greed and hubris. We did not have such catastrophic collapses between the end of the depression until more recent years, because of the laws passed in the wake of the depression to restrict the behaviors of banks. As those laws have been repealed, revised, or ignored, and as the banks and financial institutions have resumed their reckless behavior (such as was common pre-depression), the same catastrophic conditions arose and the inevitable happened: collapse.
As long as the powers that be felt they could continue their rampages of crime successfully, why would they stop? As they have resumed their criminality post-collapse/bailout, inevitably, another collapse will occur.
EMD
Your sister is a Sanders supporter?
*niece
Michael
I could link to hundreds of those comments right from this blog. It's usually blamed on the CRA - the government - that "forced" banks to make bad loans to poor people who couldn't afford the mortgages. That's Republican dogma.....you can't blame rich people for anything of course. They are the victims.
Marxism is the opiate of the masses.
I always enjoy Robert Cook decrying government corruption while insisting that government play an ever-larger role in people's lives.
Garage
No, you are quite on top of it. Rich people conspired to tank the economy to take money from the poor, because that is where the money is.
And the banks were not at all compelled by law and coercion to expand lending to the credit challenged. Banks are notorious for having no credit departments.
Garage Mahal wrote:
"I could link to hundreds of those comments right from this blog."
But you don't, Garage.
And then you try to change your argument:
"It's usually blamed on the CRA - the government - that "forced" banks to make bad loans to poor people who couldn't afford the mortgages."
The government tanked our economy by forcing banks to make questionable loans and then welching on their promise to back them.
No, it didn't foorce banks to make bad loans and it didn't welch on the loans it backed, but there were other loans backed by the value of houses.
The real problem was in appraisals treating housing prices like a bubble was not possible. It turned out prices could drop if there were enough foreclosures.
It's usually blamed on the CRA - the government - that "forced" banks to make bad loans to poor people who couldn't afford the mortgages. That's Republican dogma.....you can't blame rich people for anything of course. They are the victims.
How is blaming an ill-conceived government policy "blaming the poor"?
As for the rich, they had guilt to go around but the President you support didn't see fit to punish anybody and, instead, helped insure that these banks are even MORE powerful than they were before.
Note: When Enron collapsed, the CEO, CFO, and President were all indicted and tried. After the bank meltdown, was ANYBODY indicted or tried?
Banks lose trillions and the working people bail them out. It's simply amazing. Thanks, liberal media.
George Will in National Review says Bernard Sanders actually isn't a Socialist (any more than he is an Independent) :
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419266/bernie-sanders-socialist-charade
And that Republicans are about as Socialist as he is, because Bernard Sander's socialism has degraded down into mostly 1) heavy government regulation of commercial activities, 2) government provision of a “social safety net,” and 3) redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation and entitlement programs.
Well, a lot of "planning" also.
Well, the thing is he didn't get money from the DNC for his campaigns.
Donald Trump could attract a crowd of 3000 in Minneapolis. Neither is going to the big dance.
two kinds of errors
That's kind of technical language.
The two kinds of errors are:
1) Not identifying somebody as a terrrorist, or not stopping a terrorist plot.
AND
2) Calling somebody a terorists who isn't or calling something a terrorist plot that wasn't.
To a considerable extent I think the same types of people make BOTH types of errors at the same time. Making a lot of one doesn't mean you are not making the other. They can go together.
Robert Cook: "The banks and financial institutions tanked the economy through their unfettered greed and hubris. We did not have such catastrophic collapses between the end of the depression until more recent years, because of the laws passed in the wake of the depression to restrict the behaviors of banks. As those laws have been repealed, revised, or ignored, and as the banks and financial institutions have resumed their reckless behavior (such as was common pre-depression), the same catastrophic conditions arose and the inevitable happened: collapse.
As long as the powers that be felt they could continue their rampages of crime successfully, why would they stop? As they have resumed their criminality post-collapse/bailout, inevitably, another collapse will occur."
This comment, and all of garages, are indistinguishable in tone and substance from the public pronouncements of Greeces ruling Syriza party regarding the lefts profligate spending which the lefties now, inevitably, blame on others.
It almost goes without saying that Syriza is your run-of-the-mill group of marxist-leninists commie "good guys" who only are looking out for the little guys.
"Note: When Enron collapsed, the CEO, CFO, and President were all indicted and tried. After the bank meltdown, was ANYBODY indicted or tried?"
The only difference is that Enron didn't own Washington, and the banks and financial institutions, well....
Banks lose trillions and the working people bail them out. It's simply amazing. Thanks, liberal media.
Don't thank the media, they just covered the deal up. It was your Messiah, the won, who bailed out the banks with taxpayer money.
The government tanked our economy by forcing banks to make questionable loans and then welching on their promise to back them.
Close.
Franks and Dodd, Democrats, forced our government to force banks to make questionable loans and then welching on their promise to back them.
I'm always entertained how enthusiastically many of the commenters with no substantial income to tax fight for those with the actual income that would be taxed, if we are to support all the bloat of their military industrial complex etc.
I think they have daddy issues. They see the rich as their Daddy Warbuckses, and feel a need to defend what people of substantially greater means than they are perfectly capable of defending on their own already.
Make your own pot of gold, low-info/low-achievement Republicans, and then weigh in on upper bracket tax debates. There really is nothing more pathetic than watching a bunch of ants feverishly defend their queen against the prospect of a trampled anthill.
"I always enjoy Robert Cook decrying government corruption while insisting that government play an ever-larger role in people's lives."
I don't insist that government "play an ever-larger role in people's lives." I insist that government fulfill it's purported purpose to represent the people, to be answerable to the people, and to use the pooled resources of the people, (our taxes), for the benefit of the people.
Moreover, one can decry government "corruption" while still believing that government has a legitimate role and that it can and has fulfilled that role successfully in the past. I do not think corruption makes government qua government illegitimate or, by definition, the enemy. The corruption can only be rooted out--and prevented from taking root--by the people's conviction that the government is a valid instrument, but that it should serve us, and not the kleptocrats, therefore compelling us to make government answerable, criminally where called for, to we, the people.
"Marxism is the opiate of the masses."
No, television, salty/fatty/sugary snacks, Big Gulps, beer, and the Church of the Mythical Free Market are the true opiates of the masses.
Rich people conspired to tank the economy to take money from the poor, because that is where the money is.
Rich people very early made out much better through the recovery than anyone else and as anyone intelligent knows, all wealth is relative, anyway. They're not complaining about what their i-banks allowed them to get away with and would gladly do whatever they can get away with to repeat the experience if they could.
Your abstractions don't change the fact that what you view as the responsibilities of government can only be accomplished by giving government more power.
I get that you're sincerely against corruption, but you never quite seem to get the fact that power corrupts, and that more power automatically means more kleptocrats, and less accountability.
Rhythm and Balls: "I'm always entertained how enthusiastically many of the commenters with no substantial income to tax fight for those with the actual income that would be taxed, if we are to support all the bloat of their military industrial complex etc."
LOL
R&B's time would be better spent continuing his web-based OB-GYN "practice".
No, television, salty/fatty/sugary snacks, Big Gulps, beer, and the Church of the Mythical Free Market are the true opiates of the masses.
Where does the Church of the Mythical Powerful-but-Accountable Government factor in? Because imperfect, sorta-free markets have done infinitely more to alleviate suffering than centralized governments.
Pookie Number 2: "I get that you're sincerely against corruption, but you never quite seem to get the fact that power corrupts, and that more power automatically means more kleptocrats, and less accountability."
Oh, he "gets" it alright.
You can "take that to the bank".
And BTW, if you and your comrades were smart enough to pull off your sly trick again and "take down the entire financial system" why were you not smart enough to profit from that "take down?" It was a huge windfall for me. You did buy on the collapse didn't you?
I agree and actually enjoy it when Michael's occasionally capable of putting his cynicism to honest good use, like this. My assets have done really well, as well. That's what you do, buy low sell high. Everyone knows this. We're not even a few years out of a year when the Dow increased 25%.
The problem is, Michael's admitting here that post-crash situations are a boon. That's fine on an individual investor basis, but it questions what he thinks of welcoming that as an overall policy. I'm sure a post-apocalyptic society might be a tribal paradise, as well. But to advocate armageddon to achieve it is something only the likes of Michael would stoop to. Besides, a generation of Mad Max movies tells us that the rapists and pillagers will still have enough industrial equipment around to make it a hell for anyone left with any morals.
"Banks lose trillions and the working people bail them out. It's simply amazing. Thanks, liberal media."
-Garage Mahal
“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”
_Ronald Reagan
Obama voted for TARP I and he engineered TARP II.
TARP 1 (H.R.1424 - Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008)
Yes: Democrats 171, Republicans 91
No: Democrats 63, Republicans 108
TARP II (H.R. 384 (111th): TARP Reform and Accountability Act of 2009)
Yes: Democrats 241, Republicans 19
No: Democrats 10, Republicans 126
Perhaps if they actually mentioned these vote tallies on TPM, Kos, or MSNBC, our liberal friends would suffer less confusion.
Dragola's hysteria led him to link to the Pentagon budget we've finally achieved, instead of the Pentagon budget he and his shit-head friends have a hard-on to re-institute the moment all his professional chicken hawk friends ever get back into office.
Making fun of gynecology gets old for most people, but that's because he's more of an amateur proctologist/urologist himself - and sees the former orientation as "competition".
I didn't read all the comments. Sorry if I repeat someone's line but Iowa Democrats are very left wing just as Iowa Republicans tend to be social conservatives.
And of course, the big question is whether or not it's still greater than the defense spending of the next ten countries combined. But that's ok if you're anti-alliance - as most Republicans are.
The F-35 must not have been included in that, either. Now that's an investment well spent!
I have read a few since getting home today.
"No, it didn't foorce banks to make bad loans and it didn't welch on the loans it backed, but there were other loans backed by the value of houses.
The real problem was in appraisals treating housing prices like a bubble was not possible. It turned out prices could drop if there were enough foreclosures."
Not true. The CRA was a Carter era law and was expanded by Clinton, then by Franks and Maxine Waters after 2006 when the Dims got Congress back. Read After the Fall by Nicole Gelinas
If you don't have time, you could even read my review on Amazon.
"And of course, the big question is whether or not it's still greater than the defense spending of the next ten countries combined. But that's ok if you're anti-alliance - as most Republicans are."
There seems to be few nations out there willing to spend the money to make an alliance worthwhile.
But R&B is following the usual liberal playbook, here. He doesn't want the federal government to do those things mandated by the constitution, but he has a whole laundry list of things for the federal government to do that aren't mandated by the constitution.
I notice that Republicans prefer uni-causal explanations to multi-causal explanations - as if every phenomenon on Planet Earth had only one input.
The CRA fueled the crisis. Why are Republicans so afraid to ask about the role played by repealing Glass-Steagall? They seem to want to believe it was only one thing or the other - or at least to focus only on the CRA. They really want us to forget the bit-by-bit dismantling of all the post-Depression regulation that was chipped away at starting in the Reagan administration and continued all the way up through 2008.
Not everyone is so inarticulate to believe that - or to push for it as a sole policy. I think that's why they hate Elizabeth Warren so strongly and can find the only angle through which to attack her to be a meaningless Native American ancestry college admissions claim.
It shows that there's some actual fear behind that desperation.
Ok Terry. I'll go back and read that part of the constitution where it outlaws alliances (especially with pre-revolutionary France) and castigates them for pushing us away from an otherwise very intelligent policy of spending our military reach into an oblivion.
Do you really find the idea of being Global Supercop to be all that attractive and necessary? George Bush campaigned against this very thing in 2000.
Do you really think that it's our job to make Arab societies strong and civilized enough to give ISIS a more "moderate" Islamic theology?
Maybe we should appoint a White House czar of Islamic theology through which ISIS and its competitors should be forced to seek approval, too.
And of course, the big question is whether or not it's still greater than the defense spending of the next ten countries combined.
The reason why our defense spending is so high is that we are defending the entire free world while our allies free ride on our coattails in order to fund their socialist economies with other people's money...our money that we spend defending them.
Do you know what's great about ISIS?
They're not our problem.
Travel the world first before you go around looking to make intervention zones out of every place that's reported upon.
The reason why our defense spending is so high is that we are defending the entire free world while our allies free ride on our coattails in order to fund their socialist economies with other people's money...our money that we spend defending them.
If that's what you want to spend on, then feel free to join me in repealing all imperialistic military "defense" spending and turning it into an optional place on the 1040 where you can choose to provide it in the form of a charitable donation.
I think they have daddy issues.
The people who want to shrink government, and don't rely on a monthly check from the government are the ones with Daddy issues?
Do you know what's great about ISIS?
They're not our problem.
Yeah! Who gives a shit about the torture, rape, enslavement and murder of a bunch of Christians?
Who cares about an army sworn to destroy Western Civilization.
If that's what you want to spend on
I want our allies to increase their defense spending and start defending themselves.
I would rather protect the free world rather than see it dominated by either Putin, China or Iran.
The people who want to shrink government, and don't rely on a monthly check from the government are the ones with Daddy issues?
If they choose to worship and defend the likes of the very paternalistic Kochs and Waltons and other inherited wealth dynasties, then yes. I think it's fair to say they've made personal heroes out of people who simply have the means to seem like "providers". Even if it's just in the form of adulation and political rallying rather than in the form of any kind of more tangible petitioning.
I want our allies to increase their defense spending and start defending themselves.
I would rather protect the free world rather than see it dominated by either Putin, China or Iran.
Your hatred of agitators does not equal a request by allies for additional defense. Where did they once ask us for whatever the hell we're doing with our "defense" these days? Show me.
I don't think they did. I think you're so whipped up about your little Triple Axis in the end that you imagined it to equal a "need", let alone a request, on any ally's part for additional defense.
If they choose to worship and defend the likes of the very paternalistic Kochs and Waltons and other inherited wealth dynasties
You mean like the Kennedys?
I prefer inherited wealth than corrupt wealth like Reid, Pelosi, and the Clintons.
You mean like the Kennedys?
The Kennedy's aren't asking to maintain majority control over the economy in exchange for very little contribution to it.
I prefer inherited wealth than corrupt wealth like Reid, Pelosi, and the Clintons.
You have a very selective and opportunistic definition of "corrupt".
What Clinton alone has done in Africa is more humanitarian and helpful than anything your heroes have done, anywhere - and nowhere near as destructive of what they do to America.
You also raise questions about your ability to reason mathematically if you put any wealth by the two legislators in even the same league as Koch/Walton/Generic Republican Stash-hoarder-Election buyer.
R&B, I am not sure how you get this:
"Ok Terry. I'll go back and read that part of the constitution where it outlaws alliances (especially with pre-revolutionary France) and castigates them for pushing us away from an otherwise very intelligent policy of spending our military reach into an oblivion."
Out of this:
"There seems to be few nations out there willing to spend the money to make an alliance worthwhile."
Well, if your point was that no one else in the world has the military "strength" to make an alliance worthwhile, then I appreciate your clarification. I'm not sure I have a good reason to agree with it, though, and to make it into an outright presumption sounds dangerous. You really should think about the implications of claiming that no one in the world, even if on a practical basis alone, is worth allying with. Where is the history of a presumption like that ever working out, anywhere? If it's really the case, I'd encourage you to re-think the conclusion that, therefore, we should make war or warlike postures with whomever makes us feel the least bit threatened, whenever we claim to feel it.
Michael K's review is pretty good, BTW.
What Clinton alone has done in Africa is more humanitarian and helpful than anything your heroes have done,
Tell that to Bono.
15%. They spend 85% of the money on themselves and their minions.
Only a tool would even try and defend the Clintons.
Did either the Kochs or Waltons actually destroy a financial system and hurt people economically for personal gain?
Soros did.
Bigger crowd than Drake draws for its men's basketball games.
Actually, my point was that military alliances are not always easy to make. Alliances depend on a unity of interests. Often these interests are narrowly defined. World War One was the result of alliances, not of a nation "going it alone."
The US is very wealthy country. We spend a little over 3.3% of our GDP on defense. Russia spends more than we do as a percent of GDP, as do Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iraq.
A lot of what we spend money on that other nations do not are force multipliers. We can kill more of them while putting fewer of our soldiers at risk.
Whatever makes you feel good and help to avoid the point, Gahrie.
I'd buy a Bernie Sanders/Robert Cook ticket for a dollar.
A lot of libs are really into Bernie, including one of my Facebook friends. Because they are socialists. Including My Facebook friend.
On one hand this is a good thing. If Bernie gets the nomination he's soooo left it will scare off a lot of people. He is after all a self professed self identified socialist, Only, maybe the dems have really drifted that far left.
At any rate, they are going to ding Hillary over and over. So that's a plus.
Do you think that Sanders is more like one of those German national socialists or like one of those Russian socialists?
American.
"If that's what you want to spend on, then feel free to join me in repealing all imperialistic military "defense" spending and turning it into an optional place on the 1040 where you can choose to provide it in the form of a charitable donation."
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view "defense" is one of those things that our government is constitutionally obligated by law to do for us. The scope of that obligation may be debateable but the execution isn't.
However I like your idea of making the support of the federal bureauocracy optional.
R&B wrote:
"American."
You mean like Henry Wallace?
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1834600_1834604_1835417,00.html
Seriously, the problem with "American socialists" is that for years and years they were controlled by the Soviets. One of the interesting things that was revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union was that the CPUSA, which had always claimed that it was an organic, American political party, had been bankrolled by the Soviets right up to their end.
This thread seems to be turning into a ritmo monologue.
"I think that's why they hate Elizabeth Warren so strongly and can find the only angle through which to attack her to be a meaningless Native American ancestry college admissions claim."
No, she is just a fake of the most obvious type and you lefties are buying her whole package.
"What Clinton alone has done in Africa is more humanitarian and helpful than anything your heroes have done,"
OMG ! HAHAHAHA.
Africa is probably best left alone for a generation but the idea that the Clintons have done anything for anyone (Except maybe their partners in the WH Travel Office) is hilarious.
No, like FDR.
This thread seems to be turning into a ritmo monologue.
Well, Michael - other people are conversing with me and I said something neighborly about your Amazon comment earlier but I guess your hatred must be hard to shake off.
"No, like FDR."
Sanders will re-open Manzanar?! I don't think he should mention that until after he gets into the White House. Maybe Sanders could burn down a symbolically important government building and blame the fire on the AJA's. That's a socialist trick that has worked in the past.
Cool, go Bernie go. Now maybe Ralph Nader and Lyndon LaRouche can jump in. Yahoo!
R&B's: "What Clinton alone has done in Africa is more humanitarian and helpful than anything your heroes have done"
I guess an itemized list demonstrating this latest "received wisdom" is not in the offing.
Simply another faith-based assertion.
"What George W. Bush alone has done in Africa is more humanitarian and helpful than anything your heroes have done,"
FIFY.
What's going on, you ask? Bernie is the latest recipient of the "anybody but Hillary" mantle. There will be others.
Like Al Gore and Tennessee in 2000, Hillary is not even the favorite to carry her own state in November 2016 (New York or Arkansas either one).
R&B's: "What Clinton alone has done in Africa is more humanitarian and helpful than anything your heroes have done"
I wonder what a real activist who supports improvements in Africa thinks about Clinton vs Bush re: aid in Africa:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/may/28/disasterresponse.famine
Snip: "Bob Geldof astonished the aid community yesterday by using a return visit to Ethiopia to praise the Bush administration as one of Africa's best friends in its fight against hunger and Aids.
The musician-turned activist said Washington was providing major assistance, in contrast to the European Union's "pathetic and appalling" response to the continent's humanitarian crises.
"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian.
The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, he said. "You can get the weirdest politicians on your side."
Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all.""
Just as Clinton actually did "f*** all" in Africa, so those who claim falsely that Clinton did much in Africa know f*** all about it.
Probably because it doesn't involve Sarah Palins uterus.
Wait! Another aid activist continues:
Snip 2: "Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children's aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration.
"Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said."
Well, how can those 2 guys be right on this issue when we have pharmacologists who know darn well better? (btw, did you know that pharmacologists are the real medical geniuses? unlike those moron MD's...at least according to some posters on these boards....)
From what I can tell, Liberals come to understand what conservatives believe by hearing whatever Rush Limbaugh happened to say as taken out of context by Kos or Josh Marshall or David Brock. Brock's MMA has these weird endless click loops where they'll first write something snarky about what someone like Palin says, then when you click on the link that you think will take you to the source doc, so you can judge it for yourself, it goes instead to some other MMfA drone writing something snarky about Palin. Maddening. The misogyny displayed towards conservative women by people high in the liberal hierarchy is shocking. I once spent an afternoon trying to find the source of some quote by Michelle Bachmann that supposedly blamed Etheridge's breast cancer on her being a lesbian. I found the same quote, full of ellipses, bounced from lefty blog and opinion site like they were bumpers in pinball machine. None of them linked to the source, but only to other lefty web sites. When I finally found audio of the quote (no transcript existed outside of the reprinted quote), it was a quite innocent comment wishing Etheridge well in her cancer struggle and, in answer to a question, saying that she did not believe that a family headed by two women could provide as good and upbringing as a traditional family headed by a husband and wife.
Jon Stewart is often linked to by Kos, or Josh Marshall or David Brock. That one gets me. Do liberals understand that Stewart is a comedian? He is not paid to deliver the news, or journalism. He really isn't. Stewart is literally paid to make liberals laugh. That's it. It's like getting your news of the day from Louis CK, or Peewee Herman.
If he beats her in Iowa I'm going to laugh myself sick
I've been getting Bernie quotes for a year now via a friend on FB along w Pope Francis quotes via Bernie. It's been building. Didn't know who he was before that. Fuck it. I'd primary him at the very least. Sick of this shit.
Not quite ritmos thread.
What's happening here? It's ABC, Anyone But Clinton.
"Your abstractions don't change the fact that what you view as the responsibilities of government can only be accomplished by giving government more power."
No, the government already has all the power it needs to do anything it wants, even to crush us. Look at all the destruction it is wreaking world-wide. That's plenty powerful! What I'm for is, as was a common cliched phrase in the 60s, more power to the people.
In any society, government is necessary. In a nation as large as the United States, government is absolutely necessary, from local government on up to the federal level. So, the question is: will we have government that serves its citizens, is responsive and answerable to us, or government that aggrandizes itself, that serves the rich and powerful, and imposes its will on the people, heedless of our wishes or best interests?
What we have now is the latter; what we need is the former. Government can work, and it has worked. Fire, uncontrolled, is destructive; controlled, it is useful. Government is a tool of and for the people that is useful while our hands are on the controls, but is destructive when we stop paying attention and withdraw our control.
"I get that you're sincerely against corruption, but you never quite seem to get the fact that power corrupts, and that more power automatically means more kleptocrats, and less accountability."
I absolutely get that power corrupts...which is why it is essential that the people wield the power. We have to let go of infantile belief or trust in those we elect, this "my team" vs. "your team" nonsense that is what our political process, so-called, amounts to. We have to take the position that anyone we elect to serve in our government councils is potentially a scoundrel, worthy only of the trust they earn from day to day and week to week. We have to do the hard work of maintaining attention to the doings of those who serve us. We must demand that we be apprised of everything they are doing and that they ask for and receive our permission before they take any action. (This is why those who cheer on the NSA and the other intelligence agencies for their secret and lawless spying on all of us--"because it's to protect us" [no, it's not]--reveal themselves to be pitiful children, showing trust in those with the power to destroy us that shouldn't be handed even to someone we hire to mow our lawn.)
I'm more supportive of the libertarian fridge like Rand or Bernie, than of the authoritarian middle, like everyone else. Can you imagine an election where Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders offered a real debate on capitalism versus socialism - yet both agreed the survaillence state must be ended. Can you imagine that?
garage mahal said...
Maybe. But my Comrades (namely poor black people) can take down the entire financial system anytime we want. Remember 2008? We can do it again. Just trick poor bankers into giving loans to people who can't afford it. Deviously simple. And bankers (smartest people in the room) are just too fucking stupid to figure it out. Bwahahaha.
6/16/15, 2:16 PM
Finally, you almost said something right! It was your friend Clinton (the first black President I am told) that lead the charge with B Franks and other Dems pushing the banks to lend more to minorities and it was Obama and the other community organizers in the streets protesting that banks didn't lend to minorities enough. Who cares if their credit sucked? Who cares if they have no money? EVERYONE deserves to own a home! The government threatened banks with additional rules and reviews if they did not meet quotes for low income / minority loans and then said don’t worry, Freddy will buy them up! Some banks resisted but a lot went along cause it was easier. Yes there was some greed but if the government is going to hold a gun to your head and tell you to eat more cake or they will pull the trigger, is it your fault you like cake?
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