"The answer: Often, they don’t. In Trump Country, people have learned to take a wait-and-see approach to the president’s extreme and categorical statements... I believe this explains the low-key response so far to the threat of a trade war with China among the farmers who stand to lose the most.... This distinction between the president’s words and his deeds might seem to cut against the Midwestern mythos of straight-talking folks who say what they mean and mean what they say. But there is another kind of mythical Midwesterner, the sort that Meredith Willson celebrated in 'The Music Man,' whose flinty exteriors cloak a soft spot for fast-talking flim-flammers. Trump entertains them and, besides, they never really expected a marching band."
Writes David Von Drehle in "Folks in the Midwest have Trump all figured out" (WaPo). I guess David Von Drehle has "folks" in the Midwest all figured out. He seems to live in the Midwest. Me too, but only on the island of Madison, so I know basically nothing about the Midwest Midwest, except from the viewpoint of people who are horrified to be surrounded by it. And last I looked "Music Man" was a Broadway musical, but it was written by a man who grew up in Iowa (albeit more than 100 years ago).
That said, I have something of the midwestern attitude toward Trump that Von Drehle described. Settle down, give the man a chance. See what he actually does. And, good lord, isn't he entertaining! Let's be kind to our guest, even if he's rough and weird.
And I can't help connecting this to the previous post, the notion that the whole truth must be told at a slant. By the way, I have always seen the feminine in Donald Trump.
The funny thing is, Trump seems to be delivering clear speech and stating the harsh truth straight on. That flummoxes some people when much of what he says turns out to be wrong.
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464 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 464 Newer› Newest»Trump voters take him seriously but not literally. Media takes him literally but not seriously. The former group sleeps better than the latter.
Going to be a long hot summer. The DNC, Hillary, Obama were all colluding with Russia in 2016 and spying on political opponents.
They will be running from the school shooting issue soon enough as real heroes come out and it is clear the public doesn't like their little Red Guards.
Catch and release at the border is over. Looks like Trump is going to follow through.
It will be awesome watching the dems run on a platform of Repealing the second amendment, raising taxes on americans, war in syria, open borders and unfiltered illegal immigration.
Gilbar, I'd say he fell in love with Marian first. And then River City and Iowa.
Balzac!
Tom said ... " I expect him to be effective at addressing a corrupt government that feeds off my hard work."
Amen.
I don't need to personally like the POTUS. When young and stupid, I voted for Carter because I liked the guy.
When older and presumably less stupid I voted for and contributed to the two Bushes because I personally liked them. They disappointed me, but were not as destructive as Carter.
I figured Bill Clinton and his wife were sociopaths about five minutes into their 60 Minutes interview.
Coming from Chicago, I knew that Obama was a lightweight phony when he ran for state senator.
I would have voted for Obama and Clinton if I thought they were the least bit interested in dealing with a corrupt government. Their interest was in perpetuating the corruption.
watching the dems run on a platform of Repealing the second amendment, raising taxes on americans, war in syria, open borders and unfiltered illegal immigration
Color diversity, political congruence, keep the abortion chambers open, and Planned Cannibalism funded and stocked.
But, yeah, CAIR should be a concern to every native population, especially in Africa where progress has run amuck and left populations starving and destitute for nearly a century, most recently in Libya, and Egypt, where the people resisted.
Wow! Squeamish is really of xer meds tonight isn't zhe?
John Henry
I am consistent and my points are based on reality.
His facts go unchecked, his assertions are unevidenced, and he looks in the mirror while jerking off.
When are you people going to get it? The Toothless State-fellator only likes it when Big Brother kills kids.* Then he gets (using a variation on his own terminology) a statism hard-on.
*And not just kids, of course, but adults: an estimated 150,000,000 to 350,000,000 in the 20th century alone, not counting war casualties. But reining in his beloved Big Brother is definitely not the kind of gun control TTS is interested in.
Achilles, you may want to engage with angry lefty trolls but life is too short.
Michael K thinks that opioids are good for chronic pain and finally figured out in 2018 that molecular biology was a promising technology.
He has much to offer anyone seeking a semi-informed conversation. Or an opioid overdose epidemic.
When are you people going to get it? The Toothless State-fellator only likes it when Big Brother kills kids.* Then he gets (using a variation on his own terminology) a statism hard-on.
*And not just kids, of course, but adults: an estimated 150,000,000 to 350,000,000 in the 20th century alone, not counting war casualties. But reining in his beloved Big Brother is definitely not the kind of gun control TTS is interested in.
How many communists did Republicans kill?
How much warfare do the warfare state Republicans promote?
If you want to go beat up an MSD student and tell them that menacing and massacring them helps make you feel free then go do that.
Say good night Ritmo.
And please take your meds.
TTR: "As it is a joke to continue putting nation over planet and warming the globe with carbon."
I expect a bit more from TTR than this drivel. He is in fact much better than that.
I'm inclined to give him a mulligan on that and chalk it up to perhaps a bit of early Saturday Night inebriation.
To do that you'd have to reinvent the scientific method and subject it to editorial controls at State TV propaganda outlets FOX News, Breitbart, and InfoWars dot com but what sane and normal person wants to do that? No one. Just a Republican on a Saturday night. Over to you, Sean.
Say good night Ritmo.
And please take your meds.
Taking a big chunk out of Francisco Doucheweasel is the best medication there is.
I'll bite your fucking head off.
There it is everyone. Putin wants global warming and that is why he supported Trump in 2016.
You can't make this shit up. You are just really stupid.
There it is everyone. Roid rager Achilles says Putin has no interest in a warm water seaport and wants to have its navy landlocked or subjected to Turkish (NATO ally) blockades.
You can't make this shit up. Achilles really is stupid enough to believe that.
At least Trump knows the earth is round.
Which is more than we can say about some of our high schoolers.
And you wonder why the dems want them to vote.
Yet certain prominent Russian scientists have said global warming is BS.
Prominent Russian scientists? You mean like, Achilles?
I'd say Achilles has as much respect for the scientific process as the Lysenkoists.
What a surprise. FullNoob not only can't recognize a good parody of himself, he reposts one.
TTR: "To do that you'd have to reinvent the scientific method..."
LOL
The scientific method is not gathering alot of data improperly, fudge that data with no explanation for the fudging, plug the BS fudged data into incomplete models with no sharing of the models in order to avoid scrutiny, then publish supposedly unfalsifiable "results".
Lysenkoism is not a good look, but it looks good on you I guess.
TTR: "How many communists did Republicans kill?"
Many.
And they were all bad....
The scientific method is not gathering alot of data improperly, fudge that data with no explanation for the fudging, plug the BS fudged data into incomplete models with no sharing of the models in order to avoid scrutiny, then publish supposedly unfalsifiable "results".
What "model" did you go to for your competing, Exxon-financed contention that CO2 doesn't retain heat or that there is any such thing in astronomy as a planet or moon with a climate that exists absent an atmosphere?
A pretty retarded one that you pulled out of your ass, apparently.
I'm curious to know when the last paper was published that self-appointed referee of all science Drago reviewed.
Probably when that kid made a volcano with baking soda in the 7th grade.
TTR: "How many communists did Republicans kill?"
No matter the number, one too few.
OMG. Knees, everybody! How unbelievable!
Only FULLDOUCHE has SEX. AFTER HE GETS HER TO ROLL HER EYES AT HIM!!!!
It's the Fulldouche mating ritual.
AND SHE NEVER TOUCHES HIS KNEES! THEY ARE OFF-LIMITS!
The things this Carnac who never graduated high school can glean from online pseudonyms 3,000 miles away.
Pretty soon he will be giving us the skinny on exactly what didn't happen between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, too. He was there. He knows. Thomas Jefferson SO didn't fuck that slave!!!
You ever try getting an interest in anyone else's sex life, or your own, even? Have you told your wife about your homosexual interests?
No one with a million dollars to put down is posting here tonight. Not a single one. Michael would do it during the day (he's old and needs naps) and Bags is too cool and has better things to do.
Just FullNoob. That's what pseudonymous internet posters do. They talk about buying million dollar properties and then bitch about how they were made fun of the wrong way when talking about how little cash and credit they have - other than through their beard-wives. Who roll their eyes at him.
I will bet a million dollars that FullNoob will be here all night.
How much of that do you think I could do as a cash advance?
FullNoob has all his in small bills at the bank because, you know, none of it's invested. To do that would require his eye-rolling wife to co-sign or something.
Haha!
Toothless is a loser. No women. Goes on coffee dates, women leaves for restroom, never comes back.
Single, over fifty, unattractive, squeaky voice abrasive personality, cheap.
LOSER.
LOL!
Ok, so now that you told us what you don't like in your male dates how about the pervy cam-cording you did that gave you so many details about me and what it is that you won't allow me to do. I know you think my penis belongs solely to you or something but you should really check with your wife on this male-on-male stalking and control behavior that gets you going so strongly.
Casanova Toothless compares woman;s vagina to fish taco.
Compares? It's a fucking slang reference, you douche-for-brains.
And besides, we weren't talking about your vagina. Just vaginas in general. Not the one you wish had been surgically constructed in your crotch.
I've never heard someone wish and plea for sex reassignment surgery as desperately as you do. What's next... you going to wear a pussy hat?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. What a fucking LOSER!
Hopefully Althouse will delete his semi-comatose raging spam tonight once again. That will be fun.
That's why he's put so much effort into holding tartus, murmansk will never be a warm water port.
Ten minutes in and "Revolutionary" appeals to Althouse for help. Did the same thing last week. Before that, he appealed to Inga for help.
What a Revolutionary!
Haha!
Well, I have quite a bit more than a million in real estate. So TTR means everybody except me.
Toothless believes housing crash caused by people charging homes on their credit cards.
Can't make this up. The intellectual has no real world experience. No idea how credit works. Closet thing to credit card is Amazon gift card from mom and dad.
Ok I get it. So you never watched The Big Short and all your credit cards have no cash advance options.
Anyway, how did the housing crash happen, genius? Explain it, with citations.
This should be fun. Apparently he knows all about the financial situations of the lower-middle class. I don't doubt that, but I do doubt that he knows a fucking thing about the big short.
Ten minutes in and "Revolutionary" appeals to Althouse for help. Did the same thing last week. Before that, he appealed to Inga for help.
What a Revolutionary!
Haha!
Why do you hate women so much?
Oh, I get it. They have vaginas and you just wish you had a vagina.
Now go monitor all those guys in the Castro and tell them to stop having sex without YOUR permission, big guy!
LOL!
TTR,
Gay innuendo is perhaps the saddest online shit talking. Do better.
Haha! Toothless makes up childish replies while I use his own history to show his stupidity.
So easy! Look at him froth at the mouth. What a loser.
You put names in quotes.
Easily excitable, aren't you? Jumping up and down like a fucking banshee.
Let's meet in real life so I can take that sledgehammer to your balls that you want so much.
It will expedite your reassignment surgery by quite a bit. Just think how much closer you'll be to getting your very own fish taco.
LOL!
AND - you can stop being called pervy when you fixate on other men's sex lives and how to control them.
The big short relies on eiseman perspective and he was tutored by wade radke the acorn scammer that made the subprime fooferaw possible.
TTR,
Gay innuendo is perhaps the saddest online shit talking. Do better.
It's impossible with a closeted wacko as monomaniacal as FullNoob.
First of all, he talks all the time about how he's some kind of right-wing feminist and how others are mean to his sisters.
Then he says he speaks for all the women and how he knows who they're having sex with.
His wife rolls her eyes at him and he depends on her for all the money and financial decisions.
And he got offended over and over again (actually, everything he does is repetitive; he's got massive ADHD) with a reference to "fish tacos."
Oh, and he also reposted dozens of quotes about breast size and shape because, yeah - well, I guess he's a straight male and that sort of thing really bothers him.
LOLOLOLOLOL! roflmao. He's a closet case of the highest order.
It really is grand that Leftist Collectivists are able to forgive the greed of government. One hopes that forgiveness extends to people outside government.
Hopes. In. Vain.
Every thread he comments on eventually revolves around anal, sucking dick, hating women.
Ladies and Gentlemen -
I refer you to the first guy who went on and on and on and on and first brought up something called "ATM" - probably in Althouse blog history.
Who was it?
FullMoon (aka FullNoob).
Now, go GOOGLE "ATM" in a sexual context and see what you come up with.
Yes, go do it.
Remember, this is something that FULLMOON brought up - for no reason, just because. And then he went on and on and on and on and on with it.
Ask yourself why an actual straight male who has something he wishes he were doing OTHER than "anal, sucking dick, and hating women" would do that.
You can't? Yeah, me neither.
That's the kind of wackjob we're dealing with here.
TTR,
Prepare your violence against me.
I am patiently waiting.
LOL, Toothless is Useless. Make up seventh grade insults. What a maroon.
No degree college dropout. No property. Never married. No long term relationship. Just bullshit all the time. Poor little guy !
OK, gotta run baby boy.
I expect you have a date tonight, with Vaselina.
Haha! Toothless couldn't lift a sledgehammer much less swing one.
Well, I know you have your doubts. The last guy you asked to take a sledgehammer to your tiny nuts disappointed you so much. And you were already all dressed up in your black vinyl gimp outfit and everything.
What a letdown!
Does TTR mean that ATM Stormy Daniels should not be called ATM Stormy Daniels?
The best part of these little toothless meltdowns is that he envisions himself as caring for the little guy and fighting the man, but deep down he knows that he is a cog in the wheel.
Nobody believes in Global warming anymore. Nobody believes in Trump Russia collusion anymore. Nobody believes in open borders, democrat wars, taxes on US businesses and free trade with globalist businesses.
The thing that makes the little Brown Shirts the angriest is they know they are powerless to take our freedom.
The drooling rage muppet routine entertains us.
TTR,
Prepare your violence against me.
I am patiently waiting.
Lol. You're as unhinged as your buddy full noob.
Nope, I have no interest in you (or him, either - OBVIOUSLY!)
I just like to joke with how he runs around and around and around like a schizophrenic begging for attention and without having the balls to take anything up with someone like a man.
At least when you say something Birkel you mean it. Usually.
FullNoob doesn't even know what he's typing half the time.
You don't either, but at least you don't want to look like a 5-year old jackass.
FullNoob does.
But hey - you're both paper millionaires, right? Lol. Ok, sure.
She wasn't called that, Birkel.
Now you're just making shit up.
Paper. Plastic. Cash. You have your pick.
I wish you well when you come to collect guns from your neighbors. I think you will do well. Congrats in advance.
TTR,
If you wish to defend ATM Stormy Daniels, please do so.
It's just a darn shame that Teddy K didn't have access to a Global Warming excuse in '69 for "vehicular manslaughtering" Mary Jo.
A real missed opportunity there.
The best part of these little toothless meltdowns is that he envisions himself as caring for the little guy and fighting the man, but deep down he knows that he is a cog in the wheel.
Nobody believes in Global warming anymore.
Dude, they actually do. And belief is irrelevant to reality and facts.
They didn't believe Pasteur, either. How could GERMS cause disease!
They didn't believe Galileo.
And you, despite the fact that you can't show a model where CO2 doesn't retain heat or where a planet or moon has a climate WITHOUT an atmosphere, don't even know what causes climate to exist. But you know what the swamp billionaires told you to believe. While millions in Bangladesh and soon elsewhere get flooded out of a stable home.
I wish you well when you come to collect guns from your neighbors. I think you will do well. Congrats in advance.
Just stop with the violence, Birkel. I know it's most of what you live for, but it's getting stupid.
If you want to stop me from voting how I want then go follow me into that voting precinct and that voting booth with your gun and hold it to my head as I pull the lever. I highly encourage it.
Once you admit that that's what you want to do I will be glad to hold that up as evidence as your trial. I heard they don't allow you to carry and bear arms in prison cells any more, is that true?
I guess you'll have to find out and let us know. Good luck!
Wow, TTR is sad for the ocean rising that hasn't happened. TTR is stupid. That makes me sad. TTR is sad.
It's just a darn shame that Teddy K didn't have access to a Global Warming excuse in '69 for "vehicular manslaughtering" Mary Jo.
Well, that was almost 50 years ago and both parties to it are now long dead but I'm sure you'll think it was awesome that Trump cited a "Global Warming excuse" when seeking flood protections against his properties and golf courses in Scotland.
What's it like to not know whether to believe something unless someone rich and powerful and only interested in himself told you to believe it? THat's got to be a pretty weird way to structure your reality, wouldn't you say?
Wow. TTR thinks there would be violence as he collects guns. That is odd. I wish him luck as he collects guns.
Wow, TTR is sad for the ocean rising that hasn't happened.
The ocean's been rising for a century or more.
Have you ever been to the coast?
Do you know what erosion is?
What's the water situation in Miami Beach? What was it 20 years ago?
Again, facts, questions, evidence, reasoning and rational conclusions. Things you don't know how to do.
Achilles said...
“Going to be a long hot summer. The DNC, Hillary, Obama were all colluding with Russia in 2016 and spying on political opponents.”
I think that things are getting ready to break wide open, as evidenced by the FBI providing Congress with the entire, unredacted, FISA applications. Which may indicate that the IG and the Utah USA are mostly done with their investigations.
Wow. TTR thinks there would be violence as he collects guns. That is odd. I wish him luck as he collects guns.
I'm not paid to be a cop but I'll vote for anyone who'll order them to take any gun away from you. Just to piss you off.
Cause you're a douchebag and a dumbass and you annoy me with the way you avoid the point. Every time.
I think a chickenhawk who sends people to fight for his positions is half a man.
TTR, you are half a man.
I'll believe the lefties believe in global warming when they begin to move away from the coasts.
Which they haven't.
Which tells you everything you need to know about what the lefties really believe.
I guess we are lucky that Ritmo has chosen this website to act out his mania.
He could be otherwise doing real damage.
I am not concerned about people feeding into the manic troll. He is what he is.
I think a chickenhawk who sends people to fight for his positions is half a man.
TTR, you are half a man.
So now you think cops shouldn't have jobs. You are a one-man all-America police force, Birkel.
You're just ridiculous. Municipalities are empowered by their residents to collect trash, fund schools, keep a police force - all sorts of things that civilization can do now that we don't live like Neanderthals in frozen caves in Europe 30,000 years ago.
Remember the SNL skit Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer? Now we have Unfrozen Cavegoon Birkel.
He doesn't understand our modern world. It's complex and frightening.
Ok, I think I'm done talking to a flat-out reality denier for the night. Enjoy your simulated reality, Apocalypse Birkel.
I mean, there was Teddy K, just giving a nice girl a simple ride home, when all of a sudden that darned Global Warming reared its ugly head and pounced on Teddy's Oldsmobile, forcing Mary Jo into the back seat and sweeping Teddy all the way out to sea until the water pushed Teddy right into his comfortable hotel room in Edgartown.
Darn those republicans!
Why shouldn't the republicans be indicted over Mary Jo's death? Why shouldn't the NRA be indicted over lefties and islamists whacking folks? Why shouldn't the Oil companies be indicted over global warming?!!
I'll bet Mao and Che wouldn't have hesitated. Not for a moment.
Well, all I can say is that the next time I run into a "Brother are you saved through the love of Jesus Christ" evangelical Republican who tries to tell me that we are manifestly not descended from apes, I intend to show him the posts from Toothless, and he will be forced to concede that evolution must be real.
TTR,
I think the righteousness of your cause demands personal involvement. I support your gun confiscation efforts. Good luck.
I'll believe the lefties believe in global warming when they begin to move away from the coasts.
Which they haven't.
Which tells you everything you need to know about what the lefties really believe.
Why do you care what ANYONE believes? People are attached to homes and tend to stay no matter how bad situations get, or are forecast to get. Or they put off acting. Happens all the time. To respond with this shit is as crazy as saying that you'll believe the Indians thought the white men were a threat when they willingly decided to flee without a fight. You're substituting a discussion of science with a red herring that acts as a denial of human nature.
You don't even know who to ask. Institutions with a purely objective stake are responding. Insurance agencies and the DOD.
All right I'm done responding to Broken Birkel's broken record of how to get me to agree to do what the cops that his municipality lacks get paid perfectly well to do anywhere else and how he thinks they should all get shot up for it. Guess he lost that discussion. He wants to convince me that gun nuts are violent and don't respect the law or the needs of a functioning society? Yes, I realize that. Next question.
As for BM, yes, I did evolve from apes. Actually, as a human, I technically am an ape. So would be you. We have less hair, bigger glutes, sweat more, run faster, communicate more complexly and other things. No big deal.
People are attached to homes and tend to stay no matter how bad situations get, or are forecast to get.
We are a nation of immigrants.
Man, I love you, TTR, but I am embarrssed just reading the stuff you put up on Althouse.
The only party alleging violence is you, TTR.
I am happy to indulge your fantasy of disarming your fellow apes. I assume you will manage the task you have set yourself with little effort. I wish to great success, as always
TTR: "Why do you care what ANYONE believes?"
I care if lefties believe their own spiel.
And of course, they don't.
Which is funny.
TTR: "People are attached to homes and tend to stay no matter how bad situations get, or are forecast to get."
Todays Forecast: Your home remains underwater in TTR Global Warming Future.
Lefty Resident: We ain't movin'!
TTR,
What success have you wished me? And yet I wish you great success disarming your fellow citizen-apes. You are an odd duck.
The hipocrisy of the global warming zealots is really amazing -- Al Gore, Leonardo DiCario, and Thos. Friedman (among many, many others) are responsible for burning more carbon in a week than my humble self burns in a year. They say that they buy carbon credits to offset their energy use, but even if true, just imagine how much better the world would be if they didn't burn so much carbon. The only conclusion I can come to is that they really don't care. They beieve that my use of fossil fuels must be regulated to save the planet, but not their use of fossil fuel.
Do they drive a hard bargain when they buy carbon offsets? Do they seek discounts or buy them on the cheap? It's a frikkin' joke. They don't believe in 'global warming' anymore than Trump believes in 'global warming.'
Engaging Ritmo, even as recreation, just creates these long threads. that go nowhere.
Good night.
Ritmo is not quite as sick as trumpit but the pool is which w=one will go on a shooting rampage first.
re: Gary Indiana - it's amazing how much of what you remember is wrong. I did a BBB once with the darned thing in there and trusted that that was the way it was supposed to be. You are absolutely right. Can't be age...
I am a skeptic/doubter/denier and have no shame about it. But perhaps that is because I've looked at the science. Perhaps it is because I have some experience and know something about how difficult it is to measure temperature even in a relatively small volumemuch less an entire planet. Perhaps because I have looked at where the temperature data that supposedly "proves" global warming comes from. At least insofar as that is even possible since it is an example of "hidden science" that President Trump has done away with. At least for govt purposes.
I've looked at the predictions of all the horrors that we were to expect. THE ARCTIC ICE WILL BE COMPLETELY GONE BY 1992!!! Oopsie, 2003. No? Would you believe 2016? (Squeamish did) Now it is scheduled for 2020 or some such. Has the IPCC gotten ANY prediction correct, Squeamish? Can you tell me an example or two?
How much temperature rise has there been since 1900? Or whatever year in between 1900 and 1950 you care to pick? Do you have any idea?
How much temperature rise has there been since 1998?
Do you know how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere? Currently about 0.037% So little that they express it in PPM to scare the rubes like Squeamish who don't know better. (370ppm CO2, @780,000ppmN2)
Fuck off, Squeamish, with this global climate change bullshit. It is old and tired.
Sea level rise? My son and I own an acre of beachfront in Fajardo. Average elevation is about 2-3' above high tide. Not worried about it getting drowned. Much more worried in getting buried in progfa bullshit about how the world is going to end.
John Henry
I did field service for computers in South Chicago & Indiana twenty years ago, in the pre-PC age . . . no wait, that was thirty years ago. Jeez I am getting old. Anyway, I once thought I would save some tolls & some miles if I took a short cut through Gary. What a frikkin' hellhole. I drove down the main street, Broadway. There were hulks of broken cars on the side of the road, and every block seemed to have its resident wino sitting on the curb and drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Those were the only visible human beings I saw.
"How many communists did Republicans kill?"
Not enough. But there is always tomorrow.
I was checking out 4chan like I normally do, seeing what crazy shit people are up to, and people are popping insults like it's 80s 'Street Fighter' and they're all trying to land the Shoryuken move. You know, the one where you move the stick forward, down, and then down-forward -- it's that one.
So after awhile I come back to Althouse, because it's night-time, and that's when things can go batshit here, too. I don't know, I just find it funny when smart people get angry, because they usually don't do angry right. They use a lot of big words and all, but you know someone like Charles Bronson wouldn't bother to use a lot of big words, he'd just go straight to skull-fucking you, he didn't need a thesaurus and shit.
And at 4chan you can use pictures to get your point across. Like, some guy is getting on your nerves, so you just post a picture of some skanky porn chick's prolapsed rectum, and you don't really have to spend a lot of time typing and shit, everyone gets the idea.
People on 4chan have been posting a lot of porn stars with prolapsed rectums lately; I don't know, I guess it's a thing now. But it must suck to be a porn star who has done so much gang-bang double-anal that you now have a prolapsed rectum, I don't even want to know how doctors fix that shit.
But anyway, here at night on Althouse a lot of people seem angry, but they try to be insulting without being politically incorrect, and that's funny, too. Because you know some of these guys are aching to just say 'You're a fag, dude' but you can't say that shit around smart people, so they have to tap-dance their anger and be all self-conscious, which is pretty sad, really.
Like, chicks do this too, but that only makes it sadder when a dude does it, because now he's all being like a punk-ass whiny chick. So it's funny and it's sad, like when you're on 4chan and you see pictures of some fat chick spreading her ass cheeks and showing her asshole. And I don't mean any offense to fat chicks, it's just you shouldn't be doing that shit, okay?
But about being angry: being angry has collateral damage, people -- if you can't accept that, then just don't go there. Because your anger is fucking you up, and face it, you ain't Ice Cube.
So you are saying Toothless is a prolapsed rectum?
I don't think that is quite right.
He has retained his amateur status.
Ritmo is not quite as sick as trumpit but the pool is which w=one will go on a shooting rampage first.
Because shooting rampages are obviously things you identify with and like to encourage. Like I said, they make you feel "free."
But the thought never did and never would enter my mind, of course. Wonder what it is about you Republican types that makes you so fond of thinking of stuff like this?
I am happy to indulge your fantasy of disarming your fellow apes.
Every time you write this you admit to your fantasy of seeing a bloodbath and a mass killing of law enforcement officers.
And that is because you are immoral and violent and an asshole. But you don't realize it, of course.
Make sure you tidy up in that basement. I realize you never leave it, and it's all you've got.
“What "model" did you go to for your competing, Exxon-financed contention that CO2 doesn't retain heat or that there is any such thing in astronomy as a planet or moon with a climate that exists absent an atmosphere?”
That skinny-ass little CO2 molecule is a lot less heat retentive than the lowly water molecule. CO2 even executes more contortions: 3n-5 vs 3n-6. Mole per mole, water vapor sucks and holds more heat than CO2 does. That’s a fact, Jack.
The gas phase IR absorption spectra are the tell: Water has a big fat ro-vibrational fingerprint spanning many wave numbers vs. CO2’s anemic Fermi-coupled sharp bands.
Bottom line: Clouds are hotter than car exhaust.
Even if people are heatin’ up the world with their infernal combustion, they’re makin’ clouds to radiate heat backwards into space.
I care if lefties believe their own spiel.
They believe what the science says. They're not so arrogant as to make up their own facts and pretend it's not real. Or that corporate-funded propaganda is the same as science. Why would they not believe science over a paid and intensely lobbied interest?
And you still haven't answered me on what experiments you did to prove that CO2 or methane does not retain heat. You still haven't told me why atmosphere is an irrelevant factor in climate, given that no planet has one without the other.
So you are basically being an irrational child obsessed with notions of piety and social example when the fact is that people like what they like and get attached to things and don't have to answer to you or anyone else when you demand yet another ludicrous bar be met that involves asking civilization to just pick up and walk away from the very coasts along which its always developed. Or the homes in them.
How arrogant.
That skinny-ass little CO2 molecule is a lot less heat retentive than the lowly water molecule. CO2 even executes more contortions: 3n-5 vs 3n-6. Mole per mole, water vapor sucks and holds more heat than CO2 does. That’s a fact, Jack.
So what? Are you dense? The concentration is still increasing. And if you love water's heat retention capacity, obviously a hotter planet evaporates more of it to retain it in the more humid air. That's exactly what's happening now with all these record snows on the east. Why is it so hard for you to put two and two together?
Even if people are heatin’ up the world with their infernal combustion, they’re makin’ clouds to radiate heat backwards into space.
You have no data to support that, and even from a theoretical standpoint are being irrational. Clouds are aerosols comprised of water droplets. A hotter atmosphere however can push more of that aerosol into the vapor state where it doesn't have to be a cloud. Jesus Christ did you actually ever even take a physical chemistry course? Just stop fighting the science; obviously you haven't thought this through very well at all.
Clouds’ gathering dwarff the increase in CO2; Clouds cover for CO2’s increase. It’s quite natural.
. . . and even from a theoretical standpoint are being irrational.
TTR is really yanking our leg now. Like he is a serious science guy. Come on, dude, you are a phlebotomist!
"Even from a theoretical standpoint are being irrational." This is hilarity!
Water droplets are even better heat holders and reflectors than CO2 is. I agree that when you omit clouds from your calculations, everything looks EXXON driven.
Clouds’ gathering dwarff the increase in CO2
Where's the data?
TTR is really yanking our leg now. Like he is a serious science guy.
Shhhhh! Adults are talking. Go watch Kidbits and come back when the adults have gone to sleep.
Water droplets are even better heat holders and reflectors than CO2 is. I agree that when you omit clouds from your calculations, everything looks EXXON driven.
Then you admit that you have no rational or empiric basis to proclaim that cloud reflection overcomes the extra heat retained in that many more droplets.
You are getting abstruse and recondite as hell. You are inserting variables as somehow dispositive in order to pretend that the primary variable is irrelevant.
The science is comprehensive. I'm confident others have thought this through to a much greater extent than mr chickelet's oh look what I just came up with! declarations.
The historical data all ties climate changes quite closely to CO2.
There were even now covered coastlines that were human foot-migration paths long ago when the CO2 level was lower and climate colder.
The earth has seen it. It knows what's what. You are just being skeptical for the hell of it and to be argumentative. Hey, we don't know for certain that a lethal dose of arsenic will kill you either but I sure as hell wouldn't advise it. Variables. Some people survive 7-story jumps. I guess we should encourage that too on the off chance that some variable will keep the jumper alive.
You are asking to make policy on a basis of irrationality that involve the very things that led to and sustain civilization in the first place. I guess you're just not a very big fan of civilization.
Fortunately, our Earth is moist and wet compared to her sister planet Venus. Why is Venus so bone dry? Mars is pretty dry as well.
Fortunately, our Earth is moist and wet compared to her sister planet Venus. Why is Venus so bone dry? Mars is pretty dry as well.
Cause things can only get so wet before they boil away, Mr. Neil degrasse Tyson wanna-be.
Seriously. Let's not listen to Stephen Hawking. Let's listen to an anonymous chemical industry shill.
Hot not wet*
Let's be skeptical of man's capacity for destruction. When has a large-scale human economic activity ever led to catastrophe?
Oh right. All the time.
When has short term profit motive ever put at risk long-term survival?
Ask AIG.
Clouds
I listen to that song and think: How could such a young woman have had so much wisdom?
@TTR: Seriously, if Venus is an old dried-up hag and thus a cautionary tale for Earth, shouldn't we be able to gauge how fast she's losing water? Losing water either as H2O or component H2 or O2? I can envision the oxygen staying behind has electron-richer oxide; there is plenty of iron about to bind oxygen as rust. But how fast is H2 leaving and should we worry? Venus has residual deuterium which indicates that there was once oceans of water. Is that something we need to worry about on an Al Gore time scale?
Goddamn. It's not electrochemistry. It's just basic chemistry. The bonds aren't the issue. The redox isn't the issue. The isotopes aren't the issue. The issue is whether you like and would prefer to preserve life on this planet as it is or not. There are endless variables and reasons upon reasons upon reasons upon reasons but at the end of the day this is happening now in real time and we'll probably only have a few decades left before we can't stave off a worse scenario. It really is possible for people to ruin their circumstances. The conservatives you love so much keep talking about how people can make bad individual choices and exercise a lapse in responsibility. This is just a collective version of it. Even a bacterial colony will kill itself off if it has enough food to breed uncontrollably and exhaust itself. We're doing the same. Countless other primitive societies also failed to cope and adapt to how they exhausted a resource or failed to deal with its side effects and experience suggests that this is just another episode in that. A bigger and sadder and more catastrophic one but one that apparently humans are just destined to do. Not in the other 180+ signatories of the Paris Protocol but definitely in this one. People actually can make the choice to end their existence or at least drastically undermine it. Believe it. To believe the alternative - that it's impossible for them to destroy themselves - is an irrational and unevidenced belief.
TTR had a sad. TTR wants to take guns but thinks people who want to keep them want a bloodbath.
TTR thinks glowball warmening will kill us all, unless we give power to his preferred political party.
TTR thinks short term motivations only affect private business but somehow magically disappear when government is involved.
TTR claims the self-proclaimed party of science cares about science more than party politics. IOW, TTR thinks a political party cares about something besides politics as a primary focus.
Internally consistent thinking has lost the battle for TTR brain space. The feelz won.
Many in the midwest wonder how voters could believe anything a professional governmentist says.
Seeing red @ 8:54
This is based on the fact that the sun is in its cyclic minimum. Simply not giving out as much heat and that there has been no appreciable warming in the last 20 years.
We shall see.
Did you notice how, when confronted with the reality of his beloved State's tendency to mass murder, Toothless could only retort with a lame "tu quoque"? And the Tu Quoque is probably the lamest of fallacious arguments to begin with.
And yet he'll probably go back to the homeless shelter, tell the other crazies about his adventures on the internet, and they'll say, "You really told them off, Toothless!" Grubby hands will be lifted in a round of high fives.
TTR said: "The historical data all ties climate changes quite closely to CO2."
Out of the hundreds of factors that affect climate, CO2 is the only one that matters and is the source of all weather related evil in the world? How nuanced.
TTR said: "The earth has seen it. It knows what's what."
Do you have daily conversations with Gaia? How scientific.
TTR said: "I guess you're just not a very big fan of civilization."
Like Gandhi, I think it would be a very good idea.
I see I didn't miss anything last night.
Lower taxes on Americans. Higher taxes on imports. Fewer/no illegal immigration.
No sane person would disagree with any of those.
And I will wait for any of the "free traders" out there to tell us why we should tax ourselves instead of imports.
OK, I'll bite. You do realize, I hope, that almost all trained economists (like me, they have PhD's in the subject) disagree with taxes on imports and overly restrictive immigration.
As a preliminary, you should know that the federal government collected $3.27 trillion in taxes in 2016, while total imported goods from China that year were $463 billion. If you taxed imports from China at 100 percent you could only replace one-eighth of current taxes that way. Of course, if you actually did tax imports at 100 percent, they would drop drastically and you probably couldn't raise even $100 billion that way.
Taxes on imports are paid by the people who buy imported stuff. In this day and age where most TV's, computers, phones, and other electronic equipment, most clothing and a substantial part of the automobile market are all imported, that means you and me. The only entities that buy American exclusively are those forced to by law, like many local governments and national security bodies. One of the many reasons why their costs are so high.
But higher prices on imports are not the only cost consumers would pay. I'm 60, and I well remember how crappy the automobiles produced by Detroit in the days before Toyota were. In the Chicago suburbs where I grew up, even cars that were kept in garages rusted out by 70 or 80 thousand miles. That is, if the engine or transmission didn't die first. Cars today often last 200 thousand miles or more, and if you think that would have happened without the competition from Japanese imports, you are frightfully naive. It's been shown time and again in studies from countries around the world that limiting the competition from imports leads domestic producers to pay less attention to quality.
I do agree with you that taxes should be kept as low as possible. But to do that without restraining government spending (and Trump is not doing that at all) means huge deficits financed by selling Treasuries to, guess who, the Chinese. Foreigners cannot finance our deficits without first obtaining dollars to buy the debt, and the only way they can get those dollars is by selling more stuff to us than they buy from us. The huge government deficits are the real cause of the trade deficits, and no amount of higher taxes on people who buy imports will change that.
As for immigration, everyone can agree that we don't want to import criminals, and most people, including most economists, would agree with limiting government-provided benefits like welfare and health care (but not education through high school) to citizens and those non-citizens who've been here a long time. Nobody but the most partisan Democrats want people to immigrate here just to leech off the taxpayers. But people who come here to work, and do so, what's the problem? There is very little evidence that immigrants hold down native wages, and it's been shown several times that immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in services.
I see I didn't miss anything last night.
I was hoping for more discussion on Music Man TBH.
PhD Jeff, the economist and humblebragger:
Great. Now make the argument that China is hurting itself with its restrictive trade policies while stealing intellectual property from its trading partners.
If your analysis is correct, China should easily be shown hurting itself.
I hope, that almost all trained economists (like me, they have PhD's in the subject)
Yet you don't know the difference between a plural and a possessive.
Yrs,
MadisonMan, PhD.
I'm 60, and I well remember how crappy the automobiles produced by Detroit in the days before Toyota were.
Jeff, I'm sure you remember how Reagan taxed Japanese imports and they built plants in the US that build those cars now,
There is very little evidence that immigrants hold down native wages, and it's been shown several times that immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in services.
Jeff, have you read much about US IT workers being laid off and required to train their H1B visa replacements ?
Maybe this will refresh memories.
Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.
Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”
I have another dozen examples, if you would like to see them.
Tomorrow! Tommorrow! Dead Commies, Tommorrow! You're only, a helicopter, Aaaaaaa-waaaaaaaaay!
Let no one say you cannot find inspiration in broadway shows.
@Jeff
I appreciate the effort. But you fell into some of the straw man teqniques that plague this debate.
First I am married to a naturalized citizen. I am in MS comp sci courses with dozens of very smart people who want to stay here and would add greatly to our country. I want all of those people to stay. The president is married to a naturalized citizen. Immigration is awesome. But what is happening at the Mexican border is insanity.
Second.
Company A produces a product here in the United States. It pays Americans to build it and pays taxes to support our infrastructure.
Company B produces the same product in China. It pays Chinese workers by the week and supports their infrastructure through bribes then ships the product here.
We need to tax something. Taxing the US company at 21% and engaging in “free” trade with the Chinese company is Stupid. Capital S stupid.
Anyone who says 'we can't afford a Wall', while defending not cutting a single dime from Medicare, Medicaid, or the Welfare state, probably wouldn't support the Wall being built even if it was free!
To wit: even at 70 BILLION, that is still less than 4% of our total Omnibus bill...and all the money doesn't need to be paid at once.
So even as 10 years of payments, it's a negligible amount of money.
Jeff reminds me that Economics is a science like Sociology is a science
Achilles,
You're leaving out two things. The first is Company B's customers. Company B wouldn't have moved production to China unless it was cheaper than keeping the production in the US like Company A does. So Company B sells the product for less than Company A does, which benefits Company B's customers directly.
The second is that Company B has to do something with those dollars it obtained by selling its product in the US. The possibilities are numerous.
1. Some of the dollars are used to buy Chinese yuan so B can pay its Chinese employees. In doing so, it increases the demand for Chinese yuan relative to the demand for dollars, so the yuan/dollar exhange rate goes up a tiny bit. That appreciation of the yuan makes US exports to China slightly more competitive and Chinese exports slightly less competitive.
2. Not only that, some of the Chinese employees will spend some of their wages buying American exports like beef, pharmaceuticals, movies, etc. Or maybe they buy a Korean-made car and the Korean workers buy some grain exported from Canada, and the Canadians buy a few more Toyotas manufactured in Kentucky. The point here is that looking only at the bilateral US - China trade numbers misses a lot.
3. Company B may still have a few dollars left after paying for all of it's Chinese factors of production, so it puts them in a dollar-denominated bank account somewhere. That tends to lower the interest rate on dollar-denominated investments, which leads to more investment in the United States.
Is the net effect of letting Company B do it's thing positive or negative? How do you know? I don't think you can come up with measurements that will tell you, one way or the other. But what I do know is that trade restrictions are interfering with voluntary transactions made by consenting adults, and you should have a really good reason before you do that. Rational people don't voluntarily enter into transactions unless they think that doing so is to their benefit. To justify disallowing them from doing that, you should have to prove that you know better than they do what's in their best interest. Are you sure you want to go down that route?
We do need to tax something, but even most liberal economists think it's much better to tax consumption rather than investment. A national sales tax that replaced both the corporate and personal income tax would do that. I could even get behind a tax on imported oil that would lower the world price for oil while raising what US consumers pay because the lower world price would reduce the funds available to the Russians and various Middle Eastern states who actively work against our interests. But not a general tax on imports.
In space, nobody can hear you scream.
On the internet, everybody has a PhD.
Some of us have two terminal degrees.
I want somebody, anybody, to make the argument that China is hurting itself with its trade restrictions. Put numbers to the thing. Do not make theoretical arguments. Show your work.
Quit pretending this equation is one-sided.
Out of the hundreds of factors that affect climate, CO2 is the only one that matters and is the source of all weather related evil in the world? How nuanced.
It's not a fucking artwork, you dildo. What you said was as stupid as saying that it's a great idea to put your hand on a hot stove because, hey - there are hundreds of variables like a piece of ice on your hand or you might have just placed it into an icebox or were frostbitten or are in a room that's kept at -100 degrees or whatever the fuck else you want to invent as if it were a relevant factor.
Do you have daily conversations with Gaia? How scientific.
Well, I pay attention to the facts, rather than just the forms. Like Machiavelli said the vast majority of degenerate men care more for appearances than realities and it's safe to say that you're one of them. You must have been one hell of an underwater basket weaver in college. I take it any job where you might have been paid to implement a solution according to the best evidence was not one you were able to get.
TTR said: "I guess you're just not a very big fan of civilization."
Like Gandhi, I think it would be a very good idea.
Well if you think civilization isn't a present reality then admit your ulterior motive, return to the woods with your other blue-face painted Celtic warriors, dance naked around a fire and concede the worthlessness of any contribution you could possibly make to it - including the meager desire to simply maintain it. Obviously no one serious in their right mind could have a conversation about sustaining the earth's systems with a lunatic who wants to see them destroyed. What an evil person you are - not much better than a simple arsonist, really.
Michael K,
I wouldn't go that far. Economics at least gives you some ways to think about social problems, and as such there are some things just about all economists agree on. Price controls (including rent controls) are universally condemned by economists, and most think that applies to minimum wages as well. But even economists who don't agree on some issues at least have ways to have intelligent discussions on those issues, because they share the economics way of thinking about such things. Sociology, not so much.
Put it another way: economists can at least occasionally agree that some proposition or the other is false. Sociologists can't.
Of all the social sciences, Economics explains the most about how societies actually work.
I do agree with you that taxes should be kept as low as possible. But to do that without restraining government spending (and Trump is not doing that at all) means huge deficits financed by selling Treasuries to, guess who, the Chinese.
Bingo!
Trying to inform Achilles is like trying to illuminate a black hole. All the light is either far enough to deflect away from its strong gravitational pull or gets sucked into it to be shredded and lost forever. Some minds are like sponges. His is like a black hole. With a giant "TRUMP" marquee on it.
Economics at least gives you some ways to think about social problems, and as such there are some things just about all economists agree on.
Well there are definitely people out there who prefer no facts to some and Michael K is one of them.
It's like Sam Harris said - economists could have debated the best response to the 2008 recession but it's almost certain that we at least know that burning down all the banks was probably a very wrong one.
Science tests falsifiable hypotheses.
I am open to learning how economics is a science.
Can you enlighten me, Jeff?
Rational people don't voluntarily enter into transactions unless they think that doing so is to their benefit. To justify disallowing them from doing that, you should have to prove that you know better than they do what's in their best interest. Are you sure you want to go down that route?
They're not sure what the hell they want to do, honestly. They just want policies that appeal to them emotionally, the same way Trump's tweets are outbursts intended to satisfy his unstable feelings in the moment and in no way to advance rational discourse.
Come on, Jeff.
Show how China is hurting itself by avoiding free trade. Argue the opposite side. After all, economics might explain why those Chinese are acting so foolishly and against their own best intereats.
Can you enlighten me, Jeff?
Can you fit a camel through the eye of a needle?
Birkel,
According to this story, the wholesale price of beef in China is double what it costs in the US. Most Chinese would like to eat a lot more beef, but they can't afford to.
Do I have specific numbers for every single consumer good in China? Of course not. But again, as in my reply to Achilles, I maintain that the burden of proof should be on those who want to disallow rational adults, including Chinese adults, from engaging in voluntary transactions. The very fact that the Chinese government does so is a big strike against them.
I'm sure Jeff is smart enough to ignore you, Birkel. The recidivism rate of your knee-jerk resort to the same malignant straw men over and over again is higher than that of pedophilia. You are obtuse and beyond correction.
Don't Republicans believe that the People's Republic of China is a model society?
Jeff,
You're leaving out two things. The first is Company B's customers. Company B wouldn't have moved production to China unless it was cheaper than keeping the production in the US like Company A does. So Company B sells the product for less than Company A does, which benefits Company B's customers directly.
This ain't necessarily so. I very rarely ever see the price of anything fall, with the possible exception of semiconductors. Generally speaking why won't Company B just keep the sale price equal to A's, manufacture at the lower cost, and make higher profits per widget? That is very easy and safe and does not involve a whole lot of work and risk.
I asked specifically about stealing technology and Jeff responds with beef prices.
BZZZT!
Try again, Mr PhD (only one, ha!) internet guy.
TTR,
No. You are confusing NYT columnist Tom Friedman with conservatives.
Jeff, you have way more patience than me. The amount of ego-massaging buttering up you have to do with these fascists just to convince them that the facts and reason are not out to destroy their fragile psyches is immense. A fact is a fact and it doesn't care for a how a person handles it, but they don't know that. I really think that they have this emotional and crude idea of how to order/structure society and assume that any deviation from it will interfere with some sense of control that they feel they either need to have over others lest everyone else wield it over them. It really does come down to a 3-year old saying, but why not? But why not? Why can't I have that? Why? Why? Why? And just never accepting an actual answer.
By the way everybody is so confused about what China is doing. There's a good old simple word for it. Mercantilism.
Trade wars involve so many variables in an interconnected global economy that go through them tit for tat in the unthought ad hoc way that Trump is disposed to will surely backfire. Case in point - he actually went after Chinese auto manufacturers as if anyone in America has ever seen - let alone bought - a Chinese auto. IN the meantime, the Chinese were smart enough to appeal directly to farmers in the states that sell them soy, etc., and rile up a reaction on just how dumb this was and destructive to them.
I think that's what our resident conservatives are saying when they espouse a disbelief in economics as a rational field of study. It gets in the way of accounting for the self-destructiveness.
Francisco D,
For some economics questions experiments are actually possible.
Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of issues in economics where experimentation is not possible. What we can do sometimes is fit an atheoretical statistical model (such as a vector autoregression) to the available data and recast the hypothesis as restrictions on the statistical model. Statistical reasoning can then tell us whether or not the available data make it appear that those restrictions are very unlikely or not. If they are, we reject the hypothesis.
This is not so different from some other fields, like medicine. Sometimes, you can actually test a drug or other intervention experimentally, and the double-blinded placebo-controlled study is the gold standard when it can be done. But epidemiologists can't experiment, they can only look for associations in pre-existing data, and they face many of the same problems that econometricians do when trying to make inferences from economic data.
Let me be frank:
China is stealing tech. This makes sense to the Chinese because they free ride off others' works. And America would really like them to stop. But they won't.
Unless America can convince the Chinese that the payout matrix China faces has changed, China will not change behavior. What options does America have for changing the matrix of coats and benefits to China?
Surely Jeff, PhD and righteous dude, has a policy tool bag that would allow him to correct Chinese industrial espionage.
Jeff said...
Achilles,
You're leaving out two things. The first is Company B's customers. Company B wouldn't have moved production to China unless it was cheaper than keeping the production in the US like Company A does. So Company B sells the product for less than Company A does, which benefits Company B's customers directly.
The point isn't to punish company B.
The point is to stop giving Company B a massive advantage over company A.
Until you grok that basic concept the rest of this discussion is pointless.
Check it out! Birkel's coming to the defense of Silicon Valley! In all it's overly litigious patent-mania!
California thanks you, Birkel. You did owe the state some favors, after all.
Birkel's a righteous dude.
David van Drehle has put forth a large amount or written material and I still can't "figure him out" beyond some very gross formulations. I have put next to nothing in the public domain but he thinks he can figure ME out at a deep and subconscious level?
I don't think so, and the fact that there appears to be a(n elite) market for this crapola is both telling and worrisome.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
It really does come down to a 3-year old saying, but why not? But why not? Why can't I have that? Why? Why? Why? And just never accepting an actual answer.
It is fun watching you project your own pathologies on to your enemies.
You are really just an idiot only worthy of mockery. Go find some global warming. It might be on Al Gore's private jet.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Check it out! Birkel's coming to the defense of Silicon Valley! In all it's overly litigious patent-mania!
California thanks you, Birkel. You did owe the state some favors, after all.
Shush now.
Adults are talking.
Birkel said...
Let me be frank:
Hi Frank! It's nice to see ya!
Better than this liar "Birkel" we've been having to deal with for ages.
Check it out, TTR supports the communist thieves in China.
Let's see, hmm, do I support Americans over foreigners who are stealing from the Amwricans? I guess I do. That makes me pro-American.
TTR is on the other side.
Birkel,
Generally speaking why won't Company B just keep the sale price equal to A's, manufacture at the lower cost, and make higher profits per widget? That is very easy and safe and does not involve a whole lot of work and risk.
First, they have to offer the customer a better value than A if they want A's customers. And second, what happens when Company C sees how much money B is making and sets up another factory in China? Competition is what drives prices down, whether it's foreign or domestic.
Also, I did not see you asking me anything about intellectual property protections. Did I miss something?
Jeff,
You have me confused with Achilles. Would you like to respond to my question about Chinese industrial espionage?
Jeff said...
The second is that Company B has to do something with those dollars it obtained by selling its product in the US. The possibilities are numerous.
Choice 1: Produce things in the US while dealing with massive regulations and a 21% corporate tax rate. That used to be 35% by the way.
Choice 2: Produce things in China and sell it in the US with no US taxes because "free" trade.
Tough one.
Two hours ago and ever since, quoting myself:
PhD Jeff, the economist and humblebragger:
Great. Now make the argument that China is hurting itself with its restrictive trade policies while stealing intellectual property from its trading partners.
If your analysis is correct, China should easily be shown hurting itself.
4/8/18, 10:06 AM
Bad Lieutenant,
Mercantilism was discredited by people like Adam Smith and David Ricardo in the eighteenth century. Nothing has happened since then to make it any more respectable.
I'm not aware that the Chinese are actually all that mercantilist, anyway. I know that Trump, relying on outdated data during the 2016 campaign, accused the Chinese of artificially depreciating their currency. But at the very time he was making that claim, the official yuan exchange rate was higher than the market rate, indicating that in fact the Chinese were doing the opposite of what Trump accused them of. Only a few of his Republican opponents in the primaries called him on it, because protectionism is popular among the people most likely to turn out for a Republican primary vote.
TTR, I'm not really your ally. I voted for Trump and would do so again today. I disagree with him on trade and immigration, but I love the job Scott Pruitt is doing, and I think Mattis and Gorsuch are great, and that the FBI looks far more criminal than Trump does. As bad as Trump is on some things, Hillary would have been much worse.
Interesting contrast between Jeff arguing his points rationally and Toothless screaming hysterically, insulting and using childish descriptors.
All the while attempting to enlist Jeff as a comrade in arms.
Fascinating..
Personally not well informed enough to argue in the trade discussion.
But, have studied the climate change arguments for over two hours and have reached obvious conclusion that the climate does change and man has minimal influence. For instance, it rained a lot for two days here, and now the sun is shining.
Is that caused by man, or is it a natural occurrence? Obviously natural.
Birkel,
I don't much care about Chinese industrial espionage. US law is just that, US law. It's not Chinese law. What the Chinese do in China is really none of my business. I see no reason why US taxpayers should help patent monopolies here extend their monopolies overseas.
Patents are government-granted monopolies. Many of them are illegitimate, like software patents, and silly drug patents that say "Now administer the drug-whose-patent-is-about-to-expire in a lower dose to children, or in combination with some other unpatented drug."
Most industrial products are protected by trade secrets, not patents, and trade secrets are just that. And don't even get me started on the ridiculous extensions of copyright terms that the movie moguls are trying to push onto other countries.
If someone is importing something to the US that infringes on a US patent, there are legal remedies for that already. The fact that we don't see very many of those suits should tell you a lot about what's really going on. If a foreign company is selling something in another country that would infringe on a US patent if it were sold here, too bad. Are you advocating for a world government?
Come on, Jeff. Take a run at how the U.S. can stop a nation-state from stealing technology under your free market principles. What leverage is there to stop such behavior?
@Jeff: Have you ever drafted a US patent and seen it through prosecution to issuance? Have you even seen a "colleague" steal IP and repatriate it to China?
So, what was the topic of the highest grossing thread?
Jeff said...
Patents are government-granted monopolies. Many of them are illegitimate, like software patents, and silly drug patents that say "Now administer the drug-whose-patent-is-about-to-expire in a lower dose to children, or in combination with some other unpatented drug."
So are you arguing that innovation should be incentivized by something other than market forces?
There is something really odd about the tendency of intellectuals to completely miss obvious things. Like how the world works...
Full Moon,
I think I agree with you about climate change. It appears that the temperature data from ocean buoys and ground stations has been adjusted so much that the warming trend it shows is not credible. The satellite data does not need adjustment, and it shows little or no warming. The trouble with the satellite data is that the record just isn't long enough to say much one way or the other about long-term trends. To remedy that, Michael Mann used a tree-ring data set that indicated that growing seasons had been getting longer for centuries. But where the modern temperature data overlapped with the tree ring data, they conflicted. The tree rings got smaller in recent years, indicating a cooling trend, while the temperature data showed the opposite. Rather than acknowledge that tree rings aren't really a good proxy for temperature, Mann just cut off the more recent tree ring data to "hide the decline".
So far as I know, there is no reliable measure of global temperatures that covers the centuries that would be needed to establish that global warming is actually going on. I don't care about the IPCC model predictions: a career as an econometrician has made me highly skeptical of estimated models with huge numbers of estimated and/or conjectured parameters. I think we just don't have enough data to be making the kinds of inferences that the climate alarmists make.
"I'm not aware that the Chinese are actually all that mercantilist, anyway. I know that Trump, relying on outdated data during the 2016 campaign, accused the Chinese of artificially depreciating their currency. But at the very time he was making that claim, the official yuan exchange rate was higher than the market rate, indicating that in fact the Chinese were doing the opposite of what Trump accused them of. Only a few of his Republican opponents in the primaries called him on it, because protectionism is popular among the people most likely to turn out for a Republican primary vote."
There is really no difinitve way to know that since China is a centralized economy and anything inside China dealing with the Chinese economy is a state secret.
Achilles,
In what sense is a government-granted monopoly a "market force"?
Rusty,
The exchange rate is not a secret.
Jeff said...
"Patents are government-granted monopolies. Many of them are illegitimate, like software patents, and silly drug patents that say "Now administer the drug-whose-patent-is-about-to-expire in a lower dose to children, or in combination with some other unpatented drug."
And without them where is my incentive to enter the marketplace?
My incentive to create new products is determined by my greed. Otherwise. Why bother.
" Jeff said...
Rusty,
The exchange rate is not a secret."
Didn't say it was.
Jeff,
There are so few suits because China doesn't give a shit about U.S. courts. And competent attorneys know that pursuing cases against Chinese companies is a fool's errand. I have personal knowledge of a winning suit. The injunction was honored, meaning the Chinese changed the letterhead and hung a different shingle.
It is odd to see a self-reported conservative care so little about property rights and excuse espionage by a global adversary.
But I do understand your hesitance in answering my questions.
@Chickelit,
I am not a patent lawyer. I did follow the IBM -- SCO Linux copyrights case pretty closely via Groklaw for several years, and it was kind of sickening to see how the intellectual property bar prostitutes itself making truly ridiculous claims. More recently we've seen that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, in the Google -- Oracle dispute over Java header files is just as bad.
I thought about going to law school and doing patent law once. I'm really glad I didn't.
@Birkel,
Why should I care what the Chinese do in China? You seem to think that a US patent or copyright applies worldwide. Where do you get off making laws that Chinese citizens living in China have to follow?
There was a large intellectual property component in the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty that Trump rejected. I was actually glad he did. Are you?
Jeff said...
Achilles,
In what sense is a government-granted monopoly a "market force"?
In the same sense that laws against theft, murder, and fraud are market forces.
A free market does not exist without basic liberty. The government exists to provide the free exercise and use of ones own property without fear of it being stolen, abused, or extorted from you.
Jeff said...
Why should I care what the Chinese do in China? You seem to think that a US patent or copyright applies worldwide. Where do you get off making laws that Chinese citizens living in China have to follow?
They don't have to follow them at all. But stealing IP and selling it to Chinese markets is completely unethical. Stealing intellectual property and then reselling the product back in the US hurting the people who developed it is egregious.
We should not trade with someone who does that. We especially should not be giving their corporations that steal from US companies additional advantages in our marketplace.
I appreciate the rational discussion and I have had to actually think twice so far. But this insistence that we give our economy away to China is very odd. Do you really think the US would be better off moving all of it's manufacturing and IP development to China?
Jeff,
Simply declaring your ignorance is enough. J will leave you to be.
I will take a position that I have taken many times before: there is no international law.
That does not mean the United States should not protect her citizens from theft. The basis of all law is the protection of property rights.
The Chinese understand these things and therefore steal the U.S. blind.
@Rusty,
Patent law is not my field, so my opinions in this area are not that strongly held. But I don't oppose all patents. I just think that they're granted too often, many times when they shouldn't be. I'm suspicious of all kinds of regulations. Far too often, the regulators serve the interests of those they regulate, rather than the public interest. Most conservatives can easily see this when it comes to environmental and safety regulations, but as soon as someone renames a patent as "property" and conflates "intellectual property" with actual property rights, many conservatives immediately spring to their defense without really considering how IP differs from conventional property.
If I steal your conventional property, I've deprived you of the use of it. But if I copy your software, you still have it. You are worse off only to the extent that you intended to sell it for a high price that reflected it's scarcity. All I did by copying it was reduce the scarcity. You're worse off by precisely the amount that your buyer is better off. It's a zero-sum game.
Now you can argue that you would not have gone to the trouble to write the software if you thought it was going to be copied. To that I answer "Linux". Linux is proof positive that high-quality software gets written even if it can't really be sold. If it's useful, someone will find a way to get it written. If it isn't all that useful, like Microsoft Word in a world where LibreOffice works about as well, then who cares?
Drugs are a harder question. It's extremely expensive to shepherd a drug through all the required FDA tests, and obviously someone has got to pay for that. At the same time, we see that hardly anyone does studies to find new uses for drugs that are out of patent, because there's no financial incentive to do so. I don't know what the answer here is. Some patents are probably necessary, but it would also seem that drug testing is way too expensive. And no one can really defend the way FDA regulations prevent competition among generic drug manufacturers so that we end up with obscenities like Martin Shkreli of Daraprim fame and the EpiPen ripoff.
Birkel said:
Let me be frank:
China is stealing tech. This makes sense to the Chinese because they free ride off others' works.
Birkel, you and I are both immensely better off than our great-great grandparents were. We have electricity, hot and cold running water, antibiotics, internal combustion engines, computers, nuclear power plants and Roku. Neither one of us invented any of these things. I don't know about your family history, but I'm pretty sure that my great-grandparents worked a lot harder than I do, and were at least as deserving as I am, if not more so.
But I'm much better off. I'm a free rider on the work of millions of other people, most of them long since dead, who built the civilization we are fortunate enough to live in.
Why are you so angry that the Chinese are finally starting to catch up to the West after centuries of poverty? Why do you think that's immoral when you turning on your hot water isn't?
I voted for Trump and would do so again today. I disagree with him on trade and immigration, but I love the job Scott Pruitt is doing...
That's because you're a fucking moron as soon as you stray outside your field. Pruitt's job is not to transform the EPA into a dirty jobs program as if he might as well rename it the Environmental Destruction Agency. Before he got his graft gig he sued the EPA 14 times and lost every time. And now he's wondering how he got into hot water by accepting a $50/night DC condo lease from a lobbyist's wife. Stunning, eh? Integrity matters. Every scientist he's fired he's replaced with at least as many if not at least as expensive a payroll for hack political appointees. If that's your idea of doing a good job then I wouldn't hire you to run a hot dog stand - a job that requires minimal morals at best.
But that's fine that you know enough about econ and the right wing to be their emotionally/intellectually sensitive kindergarten teacher as you guide them through the disturbing realm of economic fact and reality. By all means, be my guest. But don't be a moron and pretend that there could even be such a thing as economics without human society and the nature and basic scientific principles upon which the resources that sustain it came into being, and remained well enough preserved to continue this long.
I will take a position that I have taken many times before: there is no international law.
Lol. That was the Nazi position before WWII forced them to reckon with a different opinion. Since then the post-WWII order depends on an outgrowth of the same international norms that originally formed the basis of treaties and other things that allow us to develop and live a life better than poverty level given all that time to devote to things like not dying in non-stop wars.
Every treaty the U.S. enters into becomes constitutional law. Deal.
I appreciate the rational discussion and I have had to actually think twice so far. But this insistence that we give our economy away to China is very odd.
Hey, well he thinks we should give the planet away to the economy so at least he's your "ally" on that!
Full Moon,
I think I agree with you about climate change. It appears that the temperature data from ocean buoys and ground stations has been adjusted so much that the warming trend it shows is not credible. The satellite data does not need adjustment, and it shows little or no warming. The trouble with the satellite data is that the record just isn't long enough to say much one way or the other about long-term trends.
Oh boy. Someone's playing amateur hour and having trouble figuring out basic data integrity/reliability.
Stick within your field Senator Jeff Cruz.
Jeff said...
Full Moon,
I think I agree with you about climate change.
Most rational people do. Even most of the alarmists change their opinion as evidence of false data and fraud continue to come out. Every new revelation regarding climate change supports the science that man has little if any impact .
There will always be those resistant to new information. Especially those whose entire being revolves around doom and gloom. Overpopulation, nuclear power, climate change, GMO. Always going to be something "in the future" to destroy mankind or earth or both.
@TTR,
That's OK. I don't think I'd want to work at your hot dog stand anyway. Probably violates a whole bunch of OSHA regulations. Not to speak of the probable FDA and FTC rules you'd be breaking. And has the EEOC taken a close look at your hiring practices? I'm a white male, you might want to be careful there. And I've heard that the EPA considers your sauerkraut a hazardous waste.
The hyperbole and profanity aren't helping you persuade anyone of anything. And if persuasion is not your goal, then why write here at all?
Jeff, the Bolivar is 49,600 per dollar today. I know th communist have destroyed Venezuela and am curious as to what the exchange rate was when Bolivar was first introduced? Was bolivar equal to a penny?
But, have studied the climate change arguments for over two hours and have reached obvious conclusion that the climate does change and man has minimal influence. For instance, it rained a lot for two days here, and now the sun is shining.
Wow. Two days. I think we have a real strong trend here, folks. Thousands of years of data don't compare to what Bob the Builder saw in two days while confusing weather with climate. No cherry picking at all. No confusion of basic concepts. He says that if any natural weather patterns or even simple phenomena exist (i.e. sunshine vs. cloud cover) then it's impossible for any other factor to matter.
Go tell that to the bacteria that created the Oxygen Revolution. The proposition that life cannot affect geophycial/geochemical phenomena is a farce of the highest order and reeks of magical Noah's Ark thinking. The consequent climate patterns would have never developed had it not been for that.
Wow.
Jeff,
Angry? Angry that China is stealing? No. That is not a close guess. This is not emotional and your injection of emotion is ridiculous.
You are free to dismiss property rights as you please. However America should protect the property rights of Americans.
@TTR,
In statistical modeling, the ultimate test is always out of sample predictions. If your model gets those wrong, there's really no reason to believe it.
So far, the IPCC models have failed to accurately predict out of sample, i.e. future, temperatures.
If you change the models in any way now, or refit their parameters, you are making use of information that has become known since they were first unveiled. Nothing wrong with that, except that you have to restart your out of sample predictions with next years data. It will be a couple of decades before you will be able to say whether or not the new models are any better than the old.
So let's table this for twenty years, at least.
Law cannot be said to exist without an enforcement mechanism. The United States has law because it can be enforced.
TTR thinks there is international law.
Tell me then, TTR, what the enforcement mechanism for international law is.
@TTR,
That's OK. I don't think I'd want to work at your hot dog stand anyway. Probably violates a whole bunch of OSHA regulations. Not to speak of the probable FDA and FTC rules you'd be breaking. And has the EEOC taken a close look at your hiring practices? I'm a white male, you might want to be careful there. And I've heard that the EPA considers your sauerkraut a hazardous waste.
The hyperbole and profanity aren't helping you persuade anyone of anything. And if persuasion is not your goal, then why write here at all?
Because history is littered with examples of ignoramuses attached to their superstitions and peddling them to disastrous effect. I'd like the historical record of this blog to reflect the fact that some people, rational enough to not fear human's capacity to shape their own destiny - including their impact on the very planet that hosts them - did in fact speak up and plead the case to the perpetually, destructively irrational of how they were wrong.
In any event, I'm glad to know that you're such a fan of hazardous waste and a detractor of laws, for which "regulation" is just a fancy name. Feel free to live in as close a state of physical and intimate proximity with any poison you like, just keep it away from everyone else. Pity for you that the technology for doing that is prohibitively expensive.
I'm sure my thoughts on FDA are more complex than you presume to know.
And why stop with OSHA? Before them there weren't laws protecting child labor, either. 12 hours in a coal mine for a 7-year old sounds like a great life and a great way to spread the benefits of development through society at large, right?
And before that, slavery. Nothing in economics that says that people shouldn't be property. It was pretty economically advantageous to the south - as long as you think that money is more important than basic human dignity and rights - which most of you do.
Adam Smith didn't, though. He wrote his Moral Theory of Sentiments before Wealth of Nations.
Other than that, have fun with your identity politics. Sounds like a hoot. I'm about as impressed with the perceived victimization of yourself as a white male as I would be a transgender lesbian firefighter. i.e., not very. But it's good to know that this is the kind of stuff that manages to rattle your incredibly loose chain. Fight the good fight there, White Warrior!
No record heat anywhere in the world today. Just sayin'
@TTR,
In statistical modeling, the ultimate test is always out of sample predictions. If your model gets those wrong, there's really no reason to believe it.
So far, the IPCC models have failed to accurately predict out of sample, i.e. future, temperatures.
If you change the models in any way now, or refit their parameters, you are making use of information that has become known since they were first unveiled. Nothing wrong with that, except that you have to restart your out of sample predictions with next years data. It will be a couple of decades before you will be able to say whether or not the new models are any better than the old.
So let's table this for twenty years, at least.
I don't know what "models" you're looking at and I frankly don't care. Usually the deniers get it wrong. In policy the precautionary principle should apply - esp. when it comes to the inputs of the climate systems that have allowed us agriculture, coastal habitation as the basis for urban civilization, and everything else. The DOD and insurance industries take it all seriously, and the basic science is sound. CO2 and carbon-containing gases do retain more heat and the historical cycles linking those things to climate are there. People denying the link between atmosphere and climate don't seem to understand that there is no such thing in astronomy as a celestial object that has one without the other - and the heat retainer in ours sure ain't O2 or N2. It's basic logic. Finally, to rely on an unavailable technology to reverse whatever further damage you'll apologize for putting us through in 20 more years of the same is like saying, "I know I stabbed you once, but you lived. Let me do it a few dozen more times before we agree that I should stop stabbing you." Completely ridiculous and immoral.
As far as models go, every poison probably has an LD50. There are doses that will kill half, then most, then probably all. No one who can claim membership in the human species as a moral equal then proposes that if you don't know the dose of arsenic that will kill this person or that (because hey, infinite molecular variables, right?) he gets to walk free off a murder 1 charge because of serendipity. What you're proposing is pretty much a civilizational equivalent of the same ludicrous reasoning.
History is replete with examples of tribes who exhausted themselves to extinction on account of the next shiny new economic good. If you think our modern political system and info-rich society is immune to that same kind of mass suicidal behavior, you're wrong.
That having been said, it's not as if human life will end. But adding up the mass balance of positive vs. negative consequences, messing with one of the most stable factors of the planet's climate system puts you outrageously on the negative side.
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