Politics
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- Khurram0
This thread is a great big mess.
- Yes, isn't it....glorious?TheBlueOne
- I love it. Lots of very good posts.DCDesigns
- hallelujah0
- I just got sickhallelujah
- The Penguin for President!locustsloth
- I was thinking the same thing!!! LOLDCDesigns
- LOL @ Penguin!Soler
- How do you spell "heh"? What a fucken old fart...he just likes perving at her boobs.BusterBoy
- hallelujah0
"McCain needed to win; he did not. He got owned. Say goodnight, Johnny. It's President That One to you."
- ********0
An escalating number of voters registering as Democrats is providing evidence that the 2008 election could produce a wave of support for Barack Obama — and trigger a decades-long shift of party allegiance that could affect elections for a generation.
The numbers are ominous for Republicans: Through May, Democratic voter registration in Broward County was up 6.7 percent. Republican registrations grew just 3 percent while independents rose 2.8 percent.
Democrats have posted even greater gains statewide, up 106,508 voters from January through May, compared with 16,686 for the Republicans.
"It's a huge swing," says Marian Johnson, political director for the Florida Chamber of Commerce. "I looked at that and said, 'Wow.'"
- http://www.sun-senti…********
- but they have to vote. how many o them will stand in long lines to cast their ballot?monkeyshine
- That type of analysis is what made the major media of the day print "Dewey Defeats Truman" headlines. In the last presidential election, something like 30 percent of registered voters didn't bother to actually go to the poll. So again, having 50 percent of register voters pick you only produces a majority if all of them vote, which isn't going to happen.********
- http://www.sun-senti…
- hallelujah0
“In the U.S., there’s a small percentage of people who in nationwide surveys say they won’t vote for a qualified black presidential candidate,” Professor Dovidio said. “But a bigger factor is the aversive racists, those who don’t think that they’re racist.”
Faced with a complex decision, he said, aversive racists feel doubts about a black person that they don’t feel about an identical white. “These doubts tend to be attributed not to the person’s race — because that would be racism — but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience,” he added."
- I'm always reminded of this when people who don't like McCain say they're still holding out for more "specifics" or because of experiencehallelujah
- because of experiencehallelujah
- I'm fully expecting the crazy bigots to come out in full force when Obama is elected...SigDesign
- hallelujah0
"At times he was cranky and condescending, referring to Mr Obama as "that one", when asking the audience which of them had voted for an energy bill. Without a partisan audience to laugh at his wisecracks, he made a couple of attempts at snide humour that fell completely flat.
::::::
Twenty years from now, will McCain's "that one" be included in other notable debate moments? If voters react like one undecided citizen from the Springfield News Leader (MO) focus group, it just might:
After the 90-minute debate, the News-Leader surveyed the thoughts of Honeycutt and five other Ozarkers who were undecided voters before the debate.
Honeycutt said he was disturbed when McCain referred to Obama as "that one."
"That pretty much cinched it right there for me," said Honeycutt, who voted for George W. Bush in 2004. "That showed a lot of disrespect for Sen. Obama."
- TheBlueOne0
And the noose on us all tightens...
"Central bankers around the globe are working feverishly to reestablish trust and confidence but their heroic efforts bear no fruit. Each failure spawns new failure and a deeper crisis of confidence.
The system is spinning out of control and at this time it is difficult to imagine that this long running episode can resolve itself with anything other than a historic and tragic financial calamity."
- TheBlueOne0
Commentary found on the internets, passed along for insightful humor:
"Best dumb ass line of the debate so far: "Senator Obama says it has to be safe for disposal or whatever, my friends I’ve been on ships with nuclear... and I’m fine. It’s safe.” This from the man who’s been treated for five – count em five – episodes of melanoma, not to mention other bizarre health conditions."
- Oh yeah, I take baths in nuclear waste... it's totally refreshing...SigDesign
- SigDesign0
You know, it's a very interesting predicament we've gotten ourselves into... American money is no longer based on gold (of course, since the 70s). It's speculative paper, so it's a bit volatile.
I think people who are calm and make some smart investments right now will benefit big time, because we're in a world market now, and while we know things will get worse, eventually they will also get better.
Don't you guys think that the housing market in NYC is out of whack? I mean, it's expensive in many cities, that's true, but I lived over in Jersey City for a little while working in Manhattan and it just didn't make sense to me. I don't feel that NYC is worth THAT much...certainly it's huge and so many people flock there that the demand is incredibly high, but I think people are taking way too much advantage of the situation, and that market will fall.
I'm having difficulty deciding where to move to next, because the disparity between housing prices is so huge between places like Portland, Seattle, NYC, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh (I live near that one, that's why I'm considering it).
I don't know if anyone realizes this, but you can buy a 3 bedroom nice, renovated house in Pittsburgh for $60-80,000, whereas Portland, a similar city where my wife and I want to move, is more than twice that. Really, the only major downfalls about Pittsburgh are that it's landlocked, and not many people are moving there. Not that anyone really wants to know any of this!
Right...politics thread... got my Obama sign! And, what's up with McCain talking about telegraphs and tillers? He was pretty creepy in the debate...
- Calling it speculative is a stretch...TheBlueOne
- Yeah, I exaggerate, but still, when people freak out and sell, everything falls...SigDesign
- But NYC is no more expensive than Tokyo or London for example..TheBlueOne
- ..and the NYC real estate market dropped in Sept. for the first time in what? A bazillion years?TheBlueOne
- You're right, actually London is amazingly expensive. Also, didn't know about the drop thanksSigDesign
- NYC is opportunity heaven... so the rent was really my only gripeSigDesign
- Yeah rent is a bitch - especially in Manhattan...TheBlueOne
- Manhattan isn't the best place to live imho, though... I liked lots of Brooklyn, but that's expensive now tooSigDesign
- hallelujah0
"The New York Times lead editorial this morning is a MUST READ this morning. Finally, the wretched ugliness that is the McCain-Palin campaign is being called to account:
It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.
Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. "This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America," Ms. Palin has taken to saying.
Spectacles of anger and insult. Finally, the media is catching on to what America has been seeing with its own eyes for a while.
Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled "kill him!" as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.
There it is, America. Demagoguery, inciting violence, unbridled racism.
When Barack Obama wins on November 4, let us never forget the tactics that were used against him. While Obama can be gracious in victory, we, as a country, should never again tolerate this kind of behavior.
I hope this editorial is the first of a slew of voices from the Fourth Estate condemning the unmasked ugliness and outright racism that McCain has tried to tap to keep his fading hopes alive. I hope.
Update Biden went on The Early Show this morning and hit back:
Biden, appearing Wednesday on CBS' "The Early Show," called Palin's remarks about Obama and Ayers "over the top."
"You know, the idea here that somehow these guys are once again injecting fear and loathing into this campaign is ... I think it's mildly dangerous. I mean, here you have out there these kinds of, you know, incitements out there — guy introducing Barack using his middle name as if it's some epitaph [sic] or something,"
- SigDesign0
I keep hearing this on blogs... every once in a while I'll got to the Fox News site and check out comments, and several people mentioned:
"Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate for 8 years, so they were really the ones in charge of the country."
This has got to be some rumor point created by the neo-cons that some ignorant people picked up on. Sometimes it feels as though people have been living inside a windowless psych ward room for the past 8 years.
- The democrats have held the congress since 2006. That's less than 24 months...TheBlueOne
- And...the democrats have mostly sucked ass, elected to get us out of Iraq they have done nothing...TheBlueOne
- But other than that this has been a Republican show since 2000....TheBlueOne
- Both parties are to blame for our situation. I really don't see much of a change coming either. Hope I'm wrong.tommyo
- TheBlueOne0
Palin pwned by giant electronic billboard:
- tommyo0
Why Government is SO bad with money?
by Don RasmussenEveryone complains about what poor stewards of the people's money the government tends to be, but rarely does anyone address the question why. We chalk it up to greed and stupidity, or we just take it as the natural course of things, joke about $200 hammers and move on.
But there are actual, quantifiable reasons that government is bad with money and those reasons are systemic in nature, meaning that no matter who is in charge, or what laws are passed, the root reasons for the waste and fraud will still be with us.
Milton Friedman brilliantly described the four ways that money is spent.
* The first and most common way in the private sector is people spending their own money on themselves. In this case, the buyer is interested in both quality (the best product or service that he can afford) and value (getting it at the best price) because he is both the producer of the wealth being spent and the consumer of the good or service being procured.
* The second way is when people spend their own money on others (such as gifts). Here they are still concerned about value (it's their money), but less concerned about service quality as they are not the consumer.
* The third way is spending other people's money on yourself. Think of the rich man's girlfriend who buys herself the nicest dresses in the store on his credit card without even looking at the tag. She wants quality, but value is irrelevant since she sacrifices nothing.
* The fourth way is when people spend other people's money on other people. In this case, the buyer has no rational interest in either value or quality. Government always and necessarily spends money in this fourth way. This guarantees inefficient public spending because the spenders have no vested interest in efficiently allocating those funds.
Adding to the inherently inefficient nature of public spending is what is referred to as the "theory of measurable output." This is the idea that every system needs a "yard stick" to monitor its relative health and effectiveness. For private enterprise, these outputs are called profits (or losses), dividends, share prices, etc. However, public entities have no such affirmative measures. The only measurable outputs are increases in the entity itself, bigger budgets, more employees, greater power and regulatory authority, etc. So a million dollar loss in a private firm will signal the need to save money, cut employees, make better products, or cease to exist. In a bureaucracy, that same loss will result in a million dollar increase in budget for the next year with accompanying increases in staff, salaries and political power. If that same bureaucracy fails to spend/waste all of the annual budget, then that budget is more likely to be cut. Hence, failure is rewarded and success is punished.
The third thing to consider is the nature of the legislative process. We have seen this in full color in the last week as the bailout bill grew from 3 pages to more than 400 as additional spending was added to satisfy the special interests that control the votes of the members of congress.
While hardly comprehensive, this should give some insight into why the government is, and always will be, bad with your money. Please keep this in mind whenever someone predicates their argument on the assumption that allowing government to intervene will lead to desirable results. This was a key argument for why they should pass the bailout. We were told that buying worthless paper would be a good deal when the government analyzed these "assets" and sold them back into the market. Don't hold your breath.
- Milton Friedman is a asshat of divine proportions.TheBlueOne
- ..or "was an asshat"...TheBlueOne
- Hisd theories took a perfectly good global economic system and threw them into the goddamn toilet...TheBlueOne
- So the fundamentals are wrong in this article? Government doesn't try and spend all of their budget so that it doesn't gettommyo
- cut in subsequent years?tommyo
- They haven't spent $600 on toilet seats? They look for 'value' for our money they're spending? Companies whotommyo
- get gov contracts DON'T see it as monetary gift from god?tommyo
- ********0
I should have never played the John McCain drinking game and given "Take one shot of Wild Turkey" for each time he says "My Friends" before it started. I thought "Maverick" would be the main keyword so I gave that one a Take a shot of Beer instead. Ouch.
Holy headache.
- CALLES0
really?!?!?
- dbloc0
The Ultimate McCain Supporter......
- I like the disabled plates. I wonder if collects disability?TheBlueOne
- mentally disablezaq
- Rest of the world: please remember that not all Americans are like this guy.imakethepictures
- who is OBAMMA?janne76
- LOL, +1 at janne. didn't even notice.imakethepictures
- "Praise the Lord...now get out of my fucking way or I'll kill you, you fucking black Muslim Commie"...BusterBoy
- hallelujah0
"Who are these two trying to kid? Here is Sarah Palin and John McCain, talking about Barack Obama:
"But in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to it, that judgment and that truthfulness," she said.
"It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that," McCain told a crowd in Albuquerque.
In the five weeks since Sarah Palin was named as John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin has spent most of that time hiding from the media. Beyond the interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, Palin has either been in an undisclosed location or only talking to the media arms of the Republican Party, where she faces a grilling on whether or not the liberal media has been fair to her. She has yet to appear on a Sunday news show, and she has held zero press conferences. Talk about being unable to answer questions (forthrightly or otherwise), and thinking the usual rules don't apply."
- seed0
Here are some links to videos of Ron Paul discussing the bailout and potential collapse of the dollar and some articles explaining sound money economics. I highly recommend 'Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure' below. I'm curious what you all think.
http://themessthatgreenspanmade.…
http://www.boom2bust.com/2008/09…
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Institute
http://mises.org/story/3127Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster
http://www.mises.org/story/2810- I think more people need to listen to Paul. The guy knows what he's talking about.tommyo
- mia_free0
- Bidens expression is so great.robotron3k
- YAY three days in a row!!
//tommyo - keep posting********
- CALLES0
1900!