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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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W

Wilsongt

Member
Dax01 said:
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Dat baby boom

It's good to know our population is evening out and it's not as skewed towards one age group right now. Before long, the baby boomers will go the fuck away and maybe this country can get back on course.

B-Dubs said:
Does anyone watch the goddamn news anymore?
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It's not so much watching news anymore as it is watching sensationalistic bullshit.
 
T

TacticalFox88

Banned
Wilsongt said:
Dat baby boom

It's good to know our population is evening out and it's not as skewed towards one age group right now. Before long, the baby boomers will go the fuck away and maybe this country can get back on course.



It's not so much watching news anymore as it is watching sensationalistic bullshit.
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I still wonder how far we'd be as a country if Teddy and FDR were successful in making the US a COMPLETE Welfare state to the point where Reagan would've been scared shitless to do what the fuck he did to screw us over long term..

Goddammit, a man can dream.
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
I posted this in the choo choo thread, but I think its relevant to Obama's America.



There is a belief within American media that a successful person can succeed at anything. He (and it’s invariably he) is omnicompetent, and people who question him and laugh at his outlandish ideas will invariably fail and end up working for him. If he cares about something, it’s important; if he says something can be done, it can. The people who are already doing the same thing are peons and their opinions are to be discounted, since they are biased and he never is. He doesn’t need to provide references or evidence – even supposedly scientific science fiction falls into this trope, in which the hero gets ideas from his gut, is always right, and never needs to do experiments.

...

I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. A sufficiently rich person is surrounded by sycophants and stenographers who won’t check his numbers against anything.

I have not seen a single defense of the technical details of the proposal except for one Facebook comment that claims, doubly erroneously, that the high lateral acceleration is no problem because the tubes can be canted. Everyone, including the Facebook comment, instead gushes about Musk personally. The thinking is that he’s rich, so he must always have something interesting to say; he can’t be a huckster when venturing outside his field. It would be unthinkable to treat people as professionals in their own fields, who take years to make a successful sideways move and who need to be extremely careful not to make elementary mistakes. The superheros of American media coverage would instantly collapse, relegated to a specialized role while mere mortals take over most functions.

This culture of superstars is a major obstacle frustrating any attempt to improve existing technology. It more or less works for commercial websites, where the startup capital requirements are low, profits per employee are vast, and employee turnover is such that corporate culture is impossible. People get extremely rich for doing something first, even if in their absence their competitors would’ve done the same six months later. Valve, a video game company that recognizes this, oriented its entire structure around having no formal management at all, but for the most part what this leads to is extremely rich people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who get treated like superstars and think they can do anything.
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http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/
 
F

Fox318

Member
Shadow Hog said:
Well, we have it on DVD, so it's something I can attempt whenever I'm not juggling work and figuring out all the logistics of purchasing and moving into a condo.

Was I supposed to? I don't recall hearing of any special elections in MD.
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NJ senate primary is today.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Oh for the love of fuck, Rubio.


WASHINGTON (AP) — Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that if Congress doesn't pass immigration overhaul legislation, President Barack Obama may act on his own to legalize the 11 million immigrants already in the U.S. illegally.

Rubio, a potential presidential candidate and an author of the sweeping immigration bill that passed the Senate in June but stalled in the House, noted that the Obama administration took action a year ago to give legal status to many immigrants brought here illegally as children. He said without congressional action, the president might well be tempted to do the same for everyone else here illegally, too.

"I believe that this president will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress, he will be tempted to issue an executive order like he did for the DREAM Act kids a year ago where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen," Rubio said on "The Morning Show with Preston Scott" on Tallahassee radio station WFLA.

Rubio said the possibility highlighted the need for congressional action because the alternative would be legalization without benefits like border security and an E-Verify system to require employers to check their workers' legal status.

"We can't leave it, in my mind, the way it is because I think a year from now we could find ourselves with all 11 million people here legally under an executive order from the president, but no E-Verify, no more border security, no more border agents — none of the other reforms that we desperately need," Rubio said.

The White House disputed Rubio's comments.

Asked whether Obama would be "tempted" to issue executive orders as Rubio suggested, White House spokesman Bobby Whithorne said, "No. The only solution to this problem is for Congress to fix the broken immigration system by passing comprehensive reform."

Rubio's comments came with lawmakers back home in their districts for Congress' five-week summer recess, which activists on both sides of the immigration issue are trying to use to make their case for or against action in the GOP-controlled House.

Under pressure from advocates for reform, several House Republicans have already indicated qualified support for a path to citizenship for the immigrants already here illegally, something that's part of the Senate bill but opposed by many conservatives. Meanwhile those opposed to reform struggled to draw a crowd to a "Stop Amnesty Tour" event in Richmond, Va., Monday night.

But it remains unclear whether one side will clearly prevail come time for lawmakers to return to Washington in September, or what will happen then. GOP House leaders have said they plan to proceed with the immigration issue with single-issue bills, beginning with border security, so it remains to be seen whether they'll get to the point of entering negotiations with the Senate on a package that could reach Obama's desk.

Rubio's comments Tuesday tracked with speculation sometimes heard from immigration activists on the left about how to move forward if Congress never sends Obama a bill. The possibility of pressuring Obama to take additional executive actions has been discussed, though most advocates with ties to the White House say it's premature to focus on that idea.
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But but but... If we don't pass immigration reform then Obama will do it and get all the credit! See?! We love latinos! We wanna make them legal. Let us make them legal, not the evil kenyan in the white house!
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
B-Dubs said:
Pretty much.
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Black Mamba said:
yes. "buying debt" means you own a promissory note that says someone owes you money by x terms.
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See, I understood how bonds work, it was just that in my mind "buying debt" sounded way more confusing than "buying bonds", even if they were the same thing. That's where the confusion was.

I sort of get what you are trying to be specific about, I think you're refering to people buying established debt. For example, buying mortgage backed securities. And people buy gov't bonds on the secondary market all the time.

The process is the same, though. Whether you are the initial loaner or buying it off someone else doesn't change anything. At least with normal debt. When they package debt like in derivatives, there may be a loss of information (or falsification) as what happened in the subprime bust.
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empty vessel said:
Governments with modern fiat currencies are special entities. When you buy a bond, you aren't really loaning the government money, because (1) the government doesn't need to borrow money and (2) there is no risk of losing your money. All you are doing is using the government as a savings account. And, conversely, all the government is doing is operating as a bank for your benefit. This is why the government's decision to sell bonds is really nothing more than a benefits program for people with discretionary income to save.

The reason you would buy non-government debt is for an income stream and eventual profit (receiving more in payment than you paid to purchase the debt). But there is risk that you will lose money. The reason mortgage debt was being split up, packaged together with other mortgage debts, and sold as a unit was allegedly to minimize the risk from default on any individual debt. Then places like AIG started offering insurance on those debt packages to those who purchased them. In AIG's case, they offered more insurance than they could ever hope to pay out in the case of massive defaults (i.e., it committed fraud). And then there were massive defaults resulting in the bankruptcy of AIG.
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The mortgage stuff was somewhat confusing to me as well. If you buy a bond, you get the promise of interest being paid to you. If someone buys somebody's mortgage, what do they get?
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Oblivion said:
See, I understood how bonds work, it was just that in my mind "buying debt" sounded way more confusing than "buying bonds", even if they were the same thing. That's where the confusion was.





The mortgage stuff was somewhat confusing to me as well. If you buy a bond, you get the promise of interest being paid to you. If someone buys somebody's mortgage, what do they get?
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Lets say you take out a loan with EV. Then EV sells me the mortgage because he's low on cash and needs the money now. So I buy it from him and from now on any payments you make on your mortgage go to me instead of EV.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
B-Dubs said:
Lets say you take out a loan with EV. Then EV sells me the mortgage because he's low on cash and needs the money now. So I buy it from him and from now on any payments you make on your mortgage go to me instead of EV.
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Ah, I see. Okay, I think I'm good now. Thanks!
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Oblivion said:
See, I understood how bonds work, it was just that in my mind "buying debt" sounded way more confusing than "buying bonds", even if they were the same thing. That's where the confusion was.





The mortgage stuff was somewhat confusing to me as well. If you buy a bond, you get the promise of interest being paid to you. If someone buys somebody's mortgage, what do they get?
Click to expand...

Think of debt as just a contract to pay you a certain amount of money over a certain amount of time. That contract can be bought and sold to anyone you want, as long as the terms inside the contract remain the same.

Why do you do that? Well you always want your money to be making money. If you are worried that the stock market and commodities are about to make everyone lose money, you want to buy a bond or mortgage contract that has guaranteed interest. If someone has a bond or mortgage contract, but think there's more money to be made in stock markets and commodities, he's going to want to get cash right now to put into that instead of waiting for the contract to finish up, so he's going to sell it.

And so that's how supply and demand gets built for these contracts. As the demand for these contracts go up, the price of the selling of that contract from one investor to the next is going to go up, and if demand goes down the price for the contract goes down. And just like everything else this can lead to speculation and people trying to buy the contracts low and selling them high.

Just remember that throughout all of this, the contract itself does not change at all, the same mortgage payments still have to be paid at the same rates. Only the perceived value of owning that contract has changed.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Oblivion said:
See, I understood how bonds work, it was just that in my mind "buying debt" sounded way more confusing than "buying bonds", even if they were the same thing. That's where the confusion was.


The mortgage stuff was somewhat confusing to me as well. If you buy a bond, you get the promise of interest being paid to you. If someone buys somebody's mortgage, what do they get?
Click to expand...

The mortgage payments, which is another method of interest over long time periods.

Wilsongt said:
Oh for the love of fuck, Rubio.

But but but... If we don't pass immigration reform then Obama will do it and get all the credit! See?! We love latinos! We wanna make them legal. Let us make them legal, not the evil kenyan in the white house!
Click to expand...

I actually like this tactic by Rubio. He's basically trying to trick the super-conservatives into thinking if they don't pass immigration reform, Obama will just declare Amnesty. Reform is their only chance to putting in hard things to meet, border security, etc.

For once, Rubio is tricking his base for the betterment of everyone rather than the opposite.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Wilsongt said:
Oh for the love of fuck, Rubio.




But but but... If we don't pass immigration reform then Obama will do it and get all the credit! See?! We love latinos! We wanna make them legal. Let us make them legal, not the evil kenyan in the white house!
Click to expand...

That's an interesting way to guilt republicans to support immigration reform.

Doesn't matter, immigration reform is pretty much dead.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Arizona acting up again.

Arizona Republicans Already Working On 2020 Gerrymander Plan

Unhappy that an independent redistricting commission devised maps it deemed too independent for the 2012 elections, Arizona Republicans are already scheming to rig the redistricting process after the 2020 elections to be more favorable to their party.

Under Article I, Section 2 of the the U.S. Constitution, states determine how to divide their U.S. House districts after a federal census held every decade. While many states let their state legislatures decide on their redistricting maps, Arizona voters opted in 2000 to entrust the process to an independent redistricting panel. By design, the commission consists of two Democrats, two Republicans, and one independent. Its maps must include districts, drawn from scratch, that are “roughly equal in population.” They are encouraged to also make districts as compact as possible, respectful of the federal Voting Rights Act, respectful of communities of interest, and — if possible — politically competitive.

Though the Congressional maps approved by the commission in 2012 did just that, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) and her Republican legislative majorities attempted to remove the independent chairwoman because they found the map too competitive; the state Supreme Court rejected this power grab as illegal.

Determined not to suffer the same fate next time, Roll Call reported Monday, Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham has formed a new committee of GOP election experts to monitor the 2020 redistricting process. And one party strategist told the publication that effort includes attempting to rig the process by finding an independent who will vote with Republicans: “The key to Arizona redistricting is that you need to find an independent who is on your side,” the unnamed consultant said.
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J

JesseEwiak

Member
TacticalFox88 said:
Fuck these assholes straight to hell.
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I'm on a somewhat sane right-leaning message board that'd focused on electoral politics instead of policy, and the Arizona redistricting drove them fucking nuts. The idea a independent could actually side with the Democrat's made them so ungodly upset they want a new plan where it's 3 R's and 3 D's, but you need the support of at least 2 of each party for any plan to pass. It's hilarious.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Who here said Santorum would be okay if not for social issues like abortion?

Yeah, about that...

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) discouraged Iowa Republicans from using the term "middle class" on Thursday, lambasting the term as "Marxism talk" used by liberals and claiming that the United States has no social classes.

While speaking at a GOP fundraiser in Rock Rapids, the former Republican presidential candidate said the concept of class is used by Democrats to their advantage.

"Don't use the term the other side uses. What does Barack Obama talk about all the time? The middle class," he said at a fundraiser hosted by the Lyon County GOP. "Since when in America do we have classes? Since when in America are people stuck in areas or defined places called a class? That's Marxism talk."

He continued, "When Republicans get up and talk about middle class, we're buying into their rhetoric of dividing America. Stop it. There's no class in America. Call them on it."

Watch Santorum's remarks above.

Santorum has previously urged conservatives to avoid the term. During a Republican debate in New Hampshire in January 2012, Santorum chided then-rival Mitt Romney for using the phrase.

"The governor used the term earlier that I shrink from," Santorum said. "It's one I don't think we should be using as Republicans. Middle class. There are no classes in America. We are a country that doesn't allow for titles. We don't put people in classes. Maybe middle-income people."

However, as The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel pointed out, Santorum has repeatedly used the term himself, including in his 2012 campaign literature.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/rick-santorum-middle-class_n_3745283.html

Come on GOP, run with this one. Go tell poor and the middle class there's no class. It will work wonders.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Black Mamba said:
Who here said Santorum would be okay if not for social issues like abortion?

Yeah, about that...


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/rick-santorum-middle-class_n_3745283.html

Come on GOP, run with this one. Go tell poor and the middle class there's no class. It will work wonders.
Click to expand...

Santorum has no class.

Edit:

It seems like the NC Governor signed a law he might not even understand.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/does-gov-mccrory-understand-election-223152321.html

Lovely.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
The funny thing about that is that Santorum was the only republican candidate in 2012 talking to the middle class. I still like his manufacturing tax rate cut idea, even if I disagree with the rates. I attended one his rallies (don't ask) and was surprised at the somewhat populist rhetoric he was using. Romney couldn't talk to those people but I felt like Santorum could, especially with the bit about his grandad's grizzled miner hands.

The problem with Santorum is that he's such a true believer that he turns the true believer's off. They love talking about the silent majority but I think most realize that America would reject the crazy. That's why they gravitate towards charismatic candidates with mainstream appeal who aren't that religious - see: Reagan, W Bush - over the truest of believers (see: Carter, Buchanan, Santorum). Santorum seethes with hatred. Everybody can see it, and it's not pretty.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Wilsongt said:
Santorum has no class.

Edit:

It seems like the NC Governor signed a law he might not even understand.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/does-gov-mccrory-understand-election-223152321.html

Lovely.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't be the first time someone did that.

PhoenixPause said:
The funny thing about that is that Santorum was the only republican candidate in 2012 talking to the middle class. I still like his manufacturing tax rate cut idea, even if I disagree with the rates. I attended one his rallies (don't ask) and was surprised at the somewhat populist rhetoric he was using. Romney couldn't talk to those people but I felt like Santorum could, especially with the bit about his grandad's grizzled miner hands.

The problem with Santorum is that he's such a true believer that he turns the true believer's off. They love talking about the silent majority but I think most realize that America would reject the crazy. That's why they gravitate towards charismatic candidates with mainstream appeal who aren't that religious - see: Reagan, W Bush - over the truest of believers (see: Carter, Buchanan, Santorum). Santorum seethes with hatred. Everybody can see it, and it's not pretty.
Click to expand...

That was a great bit. I mean it. Whoever wrote it, be it Santorum or his speechwriters, should be really proud of that bit. It was a very good piece of writing.
 
S

Sirpopopop

Member
worldrunover said:
All 50 states should have independent redistricting panels. The fact that they don't is undemocratic.
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To quote my conservative friends:

"An independent redistricting panel means a liberal redistricting panel."

I actually agree with them on that point. Mainly because the present Republican Party is bonkers.
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
PPP has more from their polling on North Carolina. Remember, Kay Hagan is almost certain to lose next year.
The upshot of all this is that 50% of voters in the state think the General Assembly is causing North Carolina national embarrassment to 34% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 35% approve of the job Republicans are doing overall of running state government to 56% who give them poor marks, and 51% in the state think Republican control has been a bad thing for North Carolina to just 38% that consider it a positive.

Voters now say that if there was an election for the legislature today they would vote Democratic by a 50/41 margin, matching the largest lead we've ever found for the party on this measure.​
That embarrassment statistic is up from the last time they polled the state – it was around 39%, IIRC.

Also, Noam Scheiber has a pretty damning article about Cory Booker.
No less an expert than Booker himself has suggested that agitprop will be his preferred mode of discourse, approvingly citing Ted Cruz and Rand Paul as his senatorial role models.

You might be inclined to conclude from this that Booker intends to be the Senate’s liberal conscience—someone who can channel the progressive id from a perch inside Washington, in the same way that Cruz and Paul function as voices of the Tea Party from deep within the capital. Booker is, after all, an inner-city Democrat from a solidly blue state, whose predecessor was a reliably liberal vote. Who better than him to swing for the fences? But, if you happened to conclude this, you’d be way off the mark. What Booker has in mind when he alludes to being an agitator is agitating for the cause of himself.

I can demonstrate this with almost mathematical precision. After all, as Alex Pareene of Salon has pointed out, Booker shares a worldview with the financial elites who fund his campaigns. If one can deduce from his record and his public statements, he believes the economy functions best when wealthy people are allowed to deploy their capital freely, and that progress ensues when they train some of their gains on society's ills—“the charity of the benevolent elite,” as Pareene labels it. This is why Booker was so affronted by the Obama campaign’s denunciations of the private equity industry back in 2012.​
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Here are the 30 questions the White House doesn’t seem to want to answer
The White House launched the We The People petition site in 2011 as a way for Americans to get their government to respond to their calls for action. On the digital platform, people can create and sign petitions seeking specific action on an issue from the federal government. In theory, once a petition has garnered a certain number of signatures within a certain time frame, it is reviewed by White House staff and receives an official response.

But that’s not always what happens.

Now a new site, www.whpetitions.info, takes its own tally and highlights petitions that have received enough signatures but have not received responses. By its count, the White House has responded to 87 percent of petitions that have met their signature thresholds with an average response time of 61 days. But the average waiting time so far for the 30 unanswered petitions is 240 days. And six of them have been waiting for over a year.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...stions-the-white-house-doesnt-want-to-answer/

More secrets from obummer
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Cyan said:
Yeah, most of those are ridiculous or things the WH can't do anything about anyway. The few somewhat reasonable ones were mentioned by the WaPo article: e-cigarettes, accountability re: the Aaron Swartz case, and the issue of non-religious military service members. It's possible the premium cigar question is also reasonable; I don't know much about that issue.
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The cigar thing is about having cigarette regulations not apply to cigars, which is apparently being considered.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
Anyone have that comic with the guy doing crazy trend line projections in crayon handy? Google is refusing to produce it for me. :/
 
F

FLEABttn

Banned
Cyan said:
The few somewhat reasonable ones were mentioned by the WaPo article: e-cigarettes
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And even that's only half reasonable. I don't think the FDA needs to ban them, but that it shouldn't regulate them either? C'mon, it's a nicotine filled inhaler we're talking about here.
 
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