January low political content thread - Page 10 - Politics and Economics

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January low political content thread

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01-07-2010 , 11:07 AM

#226

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

Quote:

Originally Posted by Not_In_My_Name

I'm not saying the video doesn't make any good points, but how do people swallow this conservative partisan hackery? OPPOSE SUBSIDIES TO THE POOR, BUT LEAVE OUR SUBSIDIES ALONE!

Why do you think we're libertarians and not "conservatives"?

Quote:

"free market principles which have made this country great!" Just lol. America got ahead of the rest and industrialized by massive, fundamental deviations from free market principles. "The myth of Rugged Individualism" by Charles Beard should be required reading for all these conservative big-business-propagandist blowhards.

[opens can of worms]

This is of course wrong. The right's welfate scams are just as bad as the left's. It's just harder to see because of the problem of the seen and the unseen.

01-07-2010 , 11:58 AM

#227

RollinHand

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 9,382

Parents Charged With Tattooing Kids

...

01-07-2010 , 02:54 PM

#228

Bigdaddydvo

King of the Politics Forum

Join Date: Aug 2004 Posts: 21,496

A LOL letter to Lew Rockwell from a fan:

Quote:

Writes an anonymous guy (from DC?):

f***you, tom dilorenzo. have you ever thrown a chair at anyone? i bet you have. i can’t wait for you to link to the latest bit of right wing outrage framed in hyperbolic terms like AN ABSOLUTE MORAL CALUMNY when it’s just about unions or something. the south shall rise again!

f*** you, lew rockwell, and your despicable attempts at piggybacking on ron paul’s success. we must make the banksters shake in their boots! buy end the fed!, despite the fact the banksters don’t care if your sh**** books sell or not.

f*** you, david kramer, with all my heart. can you write? i can if i try, and so should you. have you read anything besides the LRC canon? GUNvernment! democRATS! i long for the day when half the blog is not written by some illiterate putz.

f*** you, stephan kinsella, and your perpetual attempts at provoking more famous libertarians before retreating and crying that THEY STARTED IT and I MAINTAINED ABSOLUTE CIVILITY. don’t you think that gays’ freedom to buttbang is more important than a gang of thieves’ right not to have their decisions overturned by another gang of thieves?

f*** you, gary north and your little masquerade. can someone whose ultimate goal is biblical theocracy really be called a libertarian? apparently, in lewrockwell land, they can. stone the adulterers! burn the heathens! the crash is coming.

f*** you, alternative medicine cranks. thanks for murder. you must be truly demented to believe that because something is banned it must be good? cancer is a fungus? scientists are all in the pocket of big pharma? you belong in a (voluntary) mental ward.

karen de coster, bob murphy, butler shaffer, tom woods, david gordon, mike gaddy, walter block and most of all RODERICK LONG. f****** you would be a privilege. you are the little gems inside this fetid swamp of villainy, each in your own way.

but enough of this, have at you.

01-07-2010 , 03:05 PM

#229

ErikTheDread

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Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 9,124

Quote:

f*** you, gary north and your little masquerade.

Can't really argue with that one.

01-07-2010 , 03:11 PM

#230

ElliotR

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Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 30,029

Can we find that guy and invite him to post here?

01-07-2010 , 03:16 PM

#231

Brian J

TOTP Master

Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 10,650

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bigdaddydvo

For our Michigan posters (Ikes, Dvault, Riverman, etc), check out this depressing vid. It's official. Teh Libruls have ruined Detroit.

loved the dead polar-bear falling on the cadillac, would make an awesome avatar

01-07-2010 , 03:17 PM

#232

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bigdaddydvo

A LOL letter to Lew Rockwell from a fan:

Awesome.

01-07-2010 , 03:17 PM

#233

pvn

Guest

Posts: n/a

01-07-2010 , 03:18 PM

#234

SL__72

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 16,499

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElliotR

Can we find that guy and invite him to post here?

He already does, ldo.

/edit no, nevermind. Most of that criticism is too spot on to be him and the last paragraphs invalidates that idea completely.

01-07-2010 , 03:19 PM

#235

RollinHand

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 9,382

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElliotR

Can we find that guy and invite him to post here?

Sure, I'll shoot him a mail and see if he Fly:s over here.

Last edited by RollinHand; 01-07-2010 at 03:20 PM. Reason: slow pony!!

01-07-2010 , 03:32 PM

#236

mosdef

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Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 11,290

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElliotR

Can we find that guy and invite him to post here?

What makes you think he doesn't post here? It's the right format, the right tone, it's got politard written all over it.

01-07-2010 , 03:45 PM

#237

pokerbobo

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Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 14,432

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian J

loved the dead polar-bear falling on the cadillac, would make an awesome avatar

It's from some enviro-whacko zealot shock ad. IIRC

01-07-2010 , 04:06 PM

#238

ElliotR

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Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 30,029

Quote:

Originally Posted by mosdef

What makes you think he doesn't post here? It's the right format, the right tone, it's got politard written all over it.

Well, the tone and content suggests possibly only one person I can think of, and it's not Fly. It would be cool if it was someone here, though.

01-07-2010 , 04:36 PM

#239

Brian J

TOTP Master

Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 10,650

uh oh

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aXIvW4igKV38

Geithner Told AIG to Lie to Public About "Backdoor Bailout" of Big Banks and Investment Houses Through AIG

Quote:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.

“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.” President Barack Obama selected Geithner as Treasury secretary, a post he took last year.

commentary from AoS:

Quote:

So here is the malfeasance: AIG paid other banks 100 cents on the dollar -- that is, full freight -- for their own credit default swaps, which were now either worthless or worth pennies on the dollar.

Why would AIG do this? Why would it put out good, hard cash to get back virtually worthless paper? And why in the hell would you want to saddle a company which was already insolvent with even more insolvency-creating bad paper? All the while pumping its cash (cash from the government, of course) right out the door?

Well, the government -- or more specifically, Tim Geithner -- seems to have instructed them to do so as a requirement for continuing government assistance. And he instructed them not to disclose such 100-cents-on-the-dollar swaps to the public.

Here's my possibly naive belief: In this sort of situation, you want the bad paper spread out among as many actors as possible. That way everyone takes a loss -- takes a haircut -- but it's not necessarily anything that most companies can't bear, that will put them under. It just might give them a few lean years. But the system -- the thing we're trying to keep intact -- continues on, bruised and battered but still alive.

So why was all this bad paper being sucked into one company? Well, that one company was The Big One as far as bailouts, and it was the one the government was acknowledging trying to save.

Why was this extraordinarily generous 100-cents-on-the-dollar backdoor bailout offered to banks like Goldman Sachs? To the extent you're bailing them out -- why not something that makes a lot more sense like 60 cents on the dollar? Why so generous -- careless -- with taxpayer money?

Is it necessary that Goldman Sachs not even take a haircut -- not even lose some profitability or the ability to pay huge bonuses -- for a year or two?

No. Or at least it doesn't seem so to me. Even if I accept that some bailing out is necessary or prudent, what the hell is this crap with the full-on 100-cents-on-the-dollar complete immunization of Goldman Sachs against its extraordinarily bad decisions, all on the taxpayer dime?

Well, you can maybe see why Geithner demanded this be illegally withheld from the public, from stockholders, for example, who had a legal right to an accurate accounting of where AIG's money was coming from and where it was going. If you make it known to them, the public is informed, and then people start to get very annoyed that Goldman Sachs and other mega-banks aren't even being asked to take a 30% haircut on one portion of their accounts.

And that the American taxpayer, meanwhile, is being shellacked for the full cost of this.

This was kept illegally secret from the public because the public would never have blessed it had they known about it. Actually, the public never really blessed any kind of financial sector bailout, but they seemed to accept, reluctantly, the version of it they were sold on; but they never, in a thousand years, would have accepted this grotesquery had it been revealed to them.

Last edited by Brian J; 01-07-2010 at 04:58 PM.

01-07-2010 , 04:47 PM

#240

Wynton

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Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 15,189

Quote:

Originally Posted by mosdef

What makes you think he doesn't post here? It's the right format, the right tone, it's got politard written all over it.

I wish I could even pretend to write like that.

Question: how many of you think that (with a gimmick account), you could pose as your political (or stylistic) opposite on this forum?

01-07-2010 , 05:35 PM

#241

Ineedaride2

Politics Court Jester

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 25,080

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wynton

I wish I could even pretend to write like that.

Question: how many of you think that (with a gimmick account), you could pose as your political (or stylistic) opposite on this forum?

I don't even know what the opposite of me would be like.

01-07-2010 , 05:47 PM

#242

ikestoys

banned

Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 94,424

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ineedaride2

I don't even know what the opposite of me would be like.

You'd be one of the British soldiers that doesn't say anything and has no sense of humor.

01-07-2010 , 05:54 PM

#243

Case Closed

self-banned

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 19,112

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wynton

I wish I could even pretend to write like that.

Question: how many of you think that (with a gimmick account), you could pose as your political (or stylistic) opposite on this forum?

Yes, but I don't post a whole ton.

Also, I think what people think their opposite would be and what their opposite actually is maybe two different things for a lot of people(stylistically that is).

01-07-2010 , 05:59 PM

#244

Wynton

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Ineedaride2

I don't even know what the opposite of me would be like.

Perhaps this?

01-07-2010 , 06:10 PM

#245

Wynton

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Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 15,189

Former Bush lawyer in a wee bit of trouble

Quote:

The Associated Press is reporting today that a onetime top official in both Bush presidencies is accused of trying to kill his wife at their Connecticut home.

The lawyer, John Michael Farren, was once considered a rising Republican star in Washington, as detailed in a lengthy profile in Legal Times in 1992. (See below.) His wife, Mary Margaret Farren, is a counsel in the Washington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, according to the Wall Street Journal.

She is stable at a hospital with a broken nose, broken jaw and other injuries, the AP reports. He was ordered held on $2 million bail and is represented by local attorney Eugene Riccio. Click here for a local story from Greenwich Time.

John Michael Farren, also known as J. Michael Farren, was a deputy White House counsel under President George W. Bush. He was undersecretary for international trade at the U.S. Commerce Department under President George H.W. Bush and was deputy campaign manager on Bush’s 1992 re-election campaign. He also worked in the Commerce Department under President Ronald Reagan and worked on Bush's 1988 campaign.

01-07-2010 , 06:42 PM

#246

Ineedaride2

Politics Court Jester

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 25,080

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wynton

Perhaps this?

Ok. Pretty sure I could pull it off, then.

01-07-2010 , 06:43 PM

#247

SL__72

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 16,499

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElliotR

Well, the tone and content suggests possibly only one person I can think of, and it's not Fly. It would be cool if it was someone here, though.

Is it a minarchist?

01-07-2010 , 06:58 PM

#248

TomVeil

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http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.co...of-the-future/

Quote:

Al Jazeera reports on one of the projects driving China’s magical 8 percent GDP growth. Ordos is a modern, luxurious “city of the future” in Inner Mongolia, built entirely over the last five years with government funds. It’s also a ghost town with almost no residents or businesses. While Chinese officials told Al Jazeera that almost all the apartment units in Ordos have sold, most of the buyers seem to be nonresident investors. Nearby business owners are understandably reluctant to set up shop in the empty city. In China, it seems that if you build it, they may not come.

Weird.

01-07-2010 , 07:06 PM

#249

Not_In_My_Name

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Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 23,099

Very weird. Wiki says it has a population of 1.3 million at the end of 2004 and a median income of $14,500 in 2008 which is very rich for China (higher than Beijing for example).

This picture of the place made me lol for some reason