Wow, this new tax law is gonna save us like $4K next year. CA-CHING

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:

Warszawa wrote:Wikileaks dude arrrested for....sex crimes?

*Picture of Asange looking asangish*

seems somewhat trumped but who knows, the supposed story is that once the two women found out about each other they pressed charges

Score one for transparency!

I hope we planted really good evidence and he goes to jail for forever.

Werthless wrote:

dajafi wrote:Maybe I'm missing a subtle yet important distinction between "conservatives" and Republicans. But the main consequence and, it seems, intention of Republican policies has been to make the largest slice of the pie that much bigger even as the size of the pie itself holds steady or shrinks a bit. And the public means by which we generally find the pie grows--investment in R&D and various human capital systems--these days get much more support from Democrats than Republicans, who seem to view war as the only thing government can be trusted to do. Meanwhile, competing pies--China's, say, or India's--are growing, as they do make those investments.

I honestly don't think it's generally understood how the US became the most successful civilization in human history. Laissez-faire economics wasn't it, though it's surely contributing to the growing risk of decline.

How the US became awesome, in no particular order:
1. Luck
2. Natural resources (ie. metals) reserves
3. Free markets
4. Good institutions
5. Huge productivity gains stemming from 1,2,3,4
6. Relative openness to new ideas and immigration

And I was going to put something how many elected leaders are idiots and should not be listened to, but I didnt feel the need to say that. It's implied in every post in this thread.

no no your ranking is pretty good, tho you left a zero off the the rank number of item in position# 3, and the fall off from item 1 to 2, 3, etc is logarithmic

Werthless wrote:

dajafi wrote:I honestly don't think it's generally understood how the US became the most successful civilization in human history. Laissez-faire economics wasn't it, though it's surely contributing to the growing risk of decline.

How the US became awesome, in no particular order:
1. Luck
2. Natural resources (ie. metals) reserves
3. Free markets
4. Good institutions
5. Huge productivity gains stemming from 1,2,3,4
6. Relative openness to new ideas and immigration

And I was going to put something how many elected leaders are idiots and should not be listened to, but I didnt feel the need to say that. It's implied in every post in this thread.

Both of you (and TV afterwards), doing a bang up job of ignoring fuck off amounts military might. And the fact that america was in the ascendency in the 50s when a significant chunk of the rest of the world was broke and rebuilding. And America was able to benefit from that by shaping the rebuilding, not least because the continued push for military might didn''t leave you short in the RnD department, which always helps when you need to sell cool things to other countries to buy (be they weapons or just other useful stuff). And that america's colonies (for want of a better phrase) were still growing, whilst the other significan't empires were sinking large amounts of time and money into holding onto theirs, or losing them whilst they were stoney broke.

I would also like to note that there's a shocking amount of unsubstantiated assertions about how great your various bits of america are. I'd find it a lot easier to agree or disagree if you actually supported your arguments with some measure of comparison with anywhere else in the world.

Feel free to bash the european now. Remember a) for the most part, I like you all fine, and b) fuck you, yankees.

Wizlah wrote:And the fact that america was in the ascendency in the 50s when a significant chunk of the rest of the world was broke and rebuilding.

Ahem:

I wrote:"Luck" certainly was a huge part of that, probably the biggest; those two oceans meant that we weren't flattened by WWII the way everyone else was.

And not sure what Werthless meant by "Luck," but I was responding to him, so he gets at least partial credit here...

In terms of "unsubstantiated assertions" about America's greatness, I just meant building a huge fucking middle class that enjoyed a good quality of life. Other countries did that too, of course, but none at the scale we did.

jerseyhoya wrote:I hope we planted really good evidence and he goes to jail for forever.

yea because he's the only guy on the planet who can make teh niternets work

China and the other peace prize deniers:

China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco

Iraq. really.

According to the Twitter, the President just had a hell of a press conference. Not in a bad way, though maybe not in a good way either.

Wizlah wrote:

Werthless wrote:

dajafi wrote:I honestly don't think it's generally understood how the US became the most successful civilization in human history. Laissez-faire economics wasn't it, though it's surely contributing to the growing risk of decline.

How the US became awesome, in no particular order:
1. Luck
2. Natural resources (ie. metals) reserves
3. Free markets
4. Good institutions
5. Huge productivity gains stemming from 1,2,3,4
6. Relative openness to new ideas and immigration

And I was going to put something how many elected leaders are idiots and should not be listened to, but I didnt feel the need to say that. It's implied in every post in this thread.

Both of you (and TV afterwards), doing a bang up job of ignoring #$&! off amounts military might. And the fact that america was in the ascendency in the 50s when a significant chunk of the rest of the world was broke and rebuilding. And America was able to benefit from that by shaping the rebuilding, not least because the continued push for military might didn''t leave you short in the RnD department, which always helps when you need to sell cool things to other countries to buy (be they weapons or just other useful stuff). And that america's colonies (for want of a better phrase) were still growing, whilst the other significan't empires were sinking large amounts of time and money into holding onto theirs, or losing them whilst they were stoney broke.

I would also like to note that there's a shocking amount of unsubstantiated assertions about how great your various bits of america are. I'd find it a lot easier to agree or disagree if you actually supported your arguments with some measure of comparison with anywhere else in the world.

Feel free to bash the european now. Remember a) for the most part, I like you all fine, and b) #$&! you, yankees.

We became an economic power long before the 1950s. We had the world's largest economy by around 1900. We went from a bunch of pilgrims to world superpower in a pretty small amount of time, which I attributed to the list.

Institutions refers to all the groups, governments, non-profits, customs, traditions, etc that have contributed to America. Our legal system is a huge aspect of our institutional strength.

My reading of economic history was that the US reserves of basically every mineral contributed to our economic growth. 100 and 200 years ago, markets weren't as efficient, metals were shipped in a matter of weeks/months and not days, so having a large source of naturally occurring metals aided our manufacturing. We didn't need to import copper from across the globe. Now, you're right TV, it's known to not contribute to economic strength in most instances.

PS. If you want a works cited list, you should have asked me last year, when I happily wasted hours per day posting crap about political theory.

[url=http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/06/news/economy/everyone_hates_the_fed/index.htm?iid=EAL]Everyone hates the Fed!
[/url]

Last week's release of previously undisclosed details of the Fed's help for major banks and Wall Street firms, as well as the nation's largest corporations, brought a stinging attack on the Fed from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent and self-described socialist who caucuses with the Democrats.

Sanders, who was one of the authors of the provision that required the Fed to release the data to the public, charged revelations of the trillions of dollars the Fed loaned to major banks and firms during the height of the crisis showed that it wasn't doing enough to help average Americans.

"What I'm saying is not that the Fed's power should be curtailed but that it should be redirected," he said. "I want the Fed to work for the needs of small businesses and ordinary Americans."

And he promised greater Congressional scrutiny of the Fed going forward.

"I intend to investigate whether these secret Fed loans turned out to be direct corporate welfare," said Sanders.

It's good to see this socialist take a hard stance against welfare, especially the kind of welfare that saves jobs.

Olbermann and Maddow both had tremendous commentaries on the President's presser today. Both saying that he was easily irritated and testy, especially at his liberal critics.

What's another word for easily irritated and testy? Petulant? Maybe smooth should write to Keith and Rachel about their improper characterization. Perhaps insinuate that they're both racists.

Those that read this thread will enjoy reading this interview with Luke Scott.

Link to the ranting

Give changed my mind...this sucked.

Bloomberg throws down the gauntlet

I was there. Really good coffee and sausage, decent fresh fruit.

dajafi wrote:Bloomberg throws down the gauntlet

I was there. Really good coffee and sausage, decent fresh fruit.

Federal spending to stimulate the economy had a temporary, positive impact – but we are two years past the economic meltdown of 2008, and unemployment is still too high, the underlying economy is still too weak and the federal deficit is still rising too fast.

I hope it was out of parsimony of words that he didn't see it pertinent to explain why the stimulus wasn't an unequivocal success.

What is the end game for House and Senate Dems on this tax cut stuff? Are they just having a little tantrum before giving Obama the votes he needs, or do they think they'll actually change anything? There really only appear to be two options here, either the deal Obama and the GOP worked out passes or the tax cuts expire. Republicans have absolutely no incentive to give anything more than they did to get Obama on board. Is there an Option C that I'm dismissing too easily here? How do the Dems get to 60 in the Senate for something else?

I think you're spot on. The "tantrum" is a reaction to the perceived lay down by the President. If this is the deal they got at the end of the month, I don't think we'd be hearing too much opposition. Sometimes you have to fight, if for no other reason than to set the tone, and they don't feel he did. It didn't help that the President decided to use his pulpit to lecture his base yesterday for their being "sanctimonious" in wanting to fight.

"This President negotiates down from a position of strength better than any politician in recent history."

<embed src='http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:367651' width='360' height='301' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='window' allowFullscreen='true' flashvars='autoPlay=false' allowscriptaccess='always' allownetworking='all' bgcolor='#000000'></embed>

jerseyhoya wrote:What is the end game for House and Senate Dems on this tax cut stuff? Are they just having a little tantrum before giving Obama the votes he needs, or do they think they'll actually change anything? There really only appear to be two options here, either the deal Obama and the GOP worked out passes or the tax cuts expire. Republicans have absolutely no incentive to give anything more than they did to get Obama on board. Is there an Option C that I'm dismissing too easily here? How do the Dems get to 60 in the Senate for something else?

i think its better.policy to properly fund the government, so at thus point i'd let them expire. Uc is something we can add to the deficit because of its proven effects, but tax cuts? They dont do shit