"A black sheriff?!": The Official Topic of Obama and New Era American Politics

[Mandark]

Okay, there's one big problem with JD's post.

Can anyone in the classroom tell us what it is?

[EmCeeGrammar]

Probably some logical fallacy that I'm unaware of.  I, however, am utterly astounded that libertarians in general disregard historical precedent in nearly every subject discussed.  We've had periods of tolerated discrimination (we kinda still do), free markets with no regulation, flat taxes, etc at various points in the USA's history. They were shitcanned for good reasons.

[Human Snorenado]

Also, I love how from the 40's-80's, when we had our most stable economic growth as a nation and the rich were getting taxed at like 70% never happened.  By the power of Ayn Rand's strap-on, let it be so!

[The Fake Shemp]

Yes, but the rich were not filthy rich and wealth was dispersed to middle-class workers. You can't run an economy like that!

[ToxicAdam]

Getting this back on track:


Note that those are percentages of conservatives who want to cut those programs, not of the population at large.

This pretty well dovetails with Prole's repeated observation that most of the people demanding less spending have absolutely no clue about the composition of the federal budget.  Foreign aid is the money that falls out of Social Security's wallet and the State Department finds beneath the sofa cushions a month later.

The hobbyhorses of soi-disant deficit hawks (funding for the arts, foreign aid, earmarked spending, welfare) is a miniscule part of the overall budget, and an even tinier part of future obligations.  It's like they believe that the cost of a program is directly proportional to their own sputtering outrage at that program's existence.

I think it's pretty apparent that it shows that conservatives are for spending cuts until you start to specify programs/categories. Then support for cutting spending drops significantly.

So, it should be no surprise that minor or bloated programs receive the greatest support for cuts because they are the low-hanging fruit.

[Dickie Dee]

Also, people's dislike of the money going to the dirty poors makes them wildly exagerate the actually burden placed on them.

[Stoney Mason]

No surprise there.

[Mandark]

Problem is JD goes on about a "theoretical community" as if there had been no period in our history when an ethnic group was systematically shunned by most of the private sector, and suffered deeply from it.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

BLACK PEOPLE IN THE POSTBELLUM SOUTH

[close]

Talking to libertarians can be like talking to Martians who have some very strong viewpoints about how humans behave, though they haven't done any fieldwork yet.

[Van Cruncheon]

they have a very reductivist approach to human nature, as though everything can be encoded in simple rules that stupid frustrating libtards refuse to acknowledge with their discussions of "sociology" and "anthropology" and "history"

the idea that we, as individuals, must be in a persistent state of negotiation and compromise with society seems to offend them on some deep level

[Van Cruncheon]

how is it waste? you place an inordinate value on the efficiency of money in a system, as though it must operate at some mathematically effective level for government's role to be realized, and failing to focus on any/all sociological and psychological benefits that, say, foreign aid, offers to the society at large regardless of its imperfect distribution

[Mandark]

PROLE:  Look, a hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk!

JAYDUBYA:  Nonsense.  If there had been a hundred dollars, someone would have already taken it.  That's how the market works, you know.

[Van Cruncheon]

mandark: clearly you are not aware of libertarian society's golden rule!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

AN' IT HARM WELL WHO THE FUCK CARES, MAXIMIZE THY RETURNS SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

[close]

[Flannel Boy]

RE: The market will solve discrimination

This would only be plausible if everyone had access to all relevant information, which wouldn't happen unless a business is being blatant ("no coloreds allowed!") or its discriminatory practices are widely publicized in the press.

Customers would have a hard time boycotting businesses because they would not know which ones were actually discriminatory, especially absent government laws and investigations. Every time a customer buys a product, he is literally dealing with dozens if not hundreds of different corporations. He couldn't possibly take the time to inform himself about each companies' hiring practices. Even if he could, he wouldn't have access to the relevant information anyway.

[Mandark]

Malek:  Even then you're still assuming a society where most people would boycott a business for being racist, rather than one where most people (and/or the people with most of the money) would boycott one for being colorblind.

It's really hard to imagine how an oppressed minority community bootstraps itself up to economic parity in that case, and harder to find real life examples in the past.

[Flannel Boy]

Malek:  Even then you're still assuming a society where most people would boycott a business for being racist, rather than one where most people (and/or the people with most of the money) would boycott one for being colorblind.

No I wasn't. I was simply saying that access to information was a necessary condition ("only be plausible if" = necessary), not a sufficient one.

[Mandark]

Fine, fine.

Amended to "lower information costs would only help fight discrimination if the population (or segment of it which controlled most of the wealth) were already predisposed against racism".

[Flannel Boy]

So Prole, it struck me that you're basically arguing "Foreign aid makes people feel good, so why the fuck not?"

It seems like a win-win if it raises public utility while helping a foreign country!

[Mandark]

Most of our foreign aid goes to buying off or propping up regimes that have been deemed strategically important, either to keep oil prices stable and low, or to fight Al Qaeda.  Plus half the aid is money that they're obligated to spend buying weapons from US suppliers.

Whatever you think of the policies (and the politics behind them sure aren't pretty), benefits definitely accrue to US citizens.

[Mandark]

hahaha

JD:  If policy X is so great, how come there are no benefits? 

Librul:  Well, there are tangible benefits.

JD:  Yeah, well I'm against the policy!

Librul: 

[Mandark]

Maintaining a power equilibrium in the region to prevent energy price disruptions like the one during the Yom Kippur War.

[Mandark]

Uh oh!  GVPT200 just got counterintuitive, and the students aren't just gonna sit down and take it!

[Mandark]

Whatever you think of the policies (and the politics behind them sure aren't pretty), benefits definitely accrue to US citizens.

You never listen.  It makes me sad.

[Mandark]

Uh huh.

Excuse me, this is my stop.  *walks out of bar*

[AdmiralViscen]

Jd's responses on racism were ao enlightening. I dont know why i ever gave him shit for dropping arguments he started himself.


Jd should i quote the posts in question for you so you dont have to scroll?

[brawndolicious]

It's like a man facing bankruptcy donating thousands of dollars to charity each month.  It's insanity.

if .16% of what he made every month was thousands of dollars then yeah, it would be exactly like that.  not really affecting anything at all in the scheme of things but otoh, from a pragmatic pov, it makes the rest of the world hate us a lot less.

[The Fake Shemp]

And getting burned by am nintenho is the worst kind of ether.

[brawndolicious]

The percentage is relevant because why now?  Money you don't have is money you don't have.

$50,000,000,000+ is a shitton of money we don't have, and this is what we throw away every year.

What is that the cost of?

The percentage is relevant if you're actually concerned about the government taking on too much debt.  Caring about foreign aid spending really only means that you're opposed to the ideal of giving any aid at all (which makes some sense).

[Boogie]

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that war involved two major* foreign aid recipients on opposite sides...  So.  We're encouraging two nations to not fight...

... by giving them free weapons?

I'm not so sure that Egypt was even receiving US aid in the time of the Yom Kippur war.  Considering Egypt was mostly rocking Soviet equipment and aid at that time.  Proxy wars and all.

[AdmiralViscen]

Sorry Boogie, it's a new page. JayDubya is officially off the hook for that one.

[Boogie]

[Human Snorenado]

Of course spending must be cut.  We couldn't possibly go the other direction. 

[Mandark]

In short: read better before getting that snarky.

Irony bomb deployed.

[AdmiralViscen]

Why does it require sleuthing to read what was said on the last fucking page dude? Multiple people responded to your dipshit infantile remarks about civil rights law, and you completely ignored it while making other posts within hours. How hard is this to get your head around?

Get your head around this too - the whole point I'm trying to make is that it is useless to respond to you because you will completely ignore a line of debate once you get fucked hard enough on the point. What rational actor would continue to invest time into something that will produce no returns?

[AdmiralViscen]

I'll hold your hand for this one since you are the worst individualist I've ever seen on a forum.

Let's take a trip down the posts of yesteryear:

Probably some logical fallacy that I'm unaware of.  I, however, am utterly astounded that libertarians in general disregard historical precedent in nearly every subject discussed.  We've had periods of tolerated discrimination (we kinda still do), free markets with no regulation, flat taxes, etc at various points in the USA's history. They were shitcanned for good reasons.

Problem is JD goes on about a "theoretical community" as if there had been no period in our history when an ethnic group was systematically shunned by most of the private sector, and suffered deeply from it.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

BLACK PEOPLE IN THE POSTBELLUM SOUTH

[close]

Talking to libertarians can be like talking to Martians who have some very strong viewpoints about how humans behave, though they haven't done any fieldwork yet.

they have a very reductivist approach to human nature, as though everything can be encoded in simple rules that stupid frustrating libtards refuse to acknowledge with their discussions of "sociology" and "anthropology" and "history"

the idea that we, as individuals, must be in a persistent state of negotiation and compromise with society seems to offend them on some deep level

RE: The market will solve discrimination

This would only be plausible if everyone had access to all relevant information, which wouldn't happen unless a business is being blatant ("no coloreds allowed!") or its discriminatory practices are widely publicized in the press.

Customers would have a hard time boycotting businesses because they would not know which ones were actually discriminatory, especially absent government laws and investigations. Every time a customer buys a product, he is literally dealing with dozens if not hundreds of different corporations. He couldn't possibly take the time to inform himself about each companies' hiring practices. Even if he could, he wouldn't have access to the relevant information anyway.

Malek:  Even then you're still assuming a society where most people would boycott a business for being racist, rather than one where most people (and/or the people with most of the money) would boycott one for being colorblind.

It's really hard to imagine how an oppressed minority community bootstraps itself up to economic parity in that case, and harder to find real life examples in the past.

Fine, fine.

Amended to "lower information costs would only help fight discrimination if the population (or segment of it which controlled most of the wealth) were already predisposed against racism".

And the VERY NEXT POST:

So Prole, it struck me that you're basically arguing "Foreign aid makes people feel good, so why the fuck not?"

durp durp edited by jaydubya

There you go, have at it.


You don't even have to thank me for the convenience, as I was merely following through with my generous offer 2 posts after yours that you ignored.

Jd's responses on racism were ao enlightening. I dont know why i ever gave him shit for dropping arguments he started himself.


Jd should i quote the posts in question for you so you dont have to scroll?

[The Fake Shemp]

[youtube=560,345]uiPsWamwSnQ[/youtube]

[Mandark]

JayDubya:politics::Green Shinobi:movies

[AdmiralViscen]

I already explained, twice, that it makes no sense to spend time framing out a debate with you when you are so likely to walk away from it at a moment's notice. But since those two already spent the time, it'd be nice if you'd at least respond. The bolded parts take big shits on your 6th-grade worldview, but that's probably why even now you aren't responding. And to think, you are the one who turned a conversation about Gaborn into this debate in the first place.

And I'll explain again - I could give a shit if you respond to what was here months ago. Mentioning that was just a framing device for my asking you why anyone should bother responding to you now.

[Boogie]

JD: now, correct me if I'm wrong, but ...

Boogie: actually, I think you might be wrong.

JD: NO I'M NOT!  Also, stop being so snarky and intellectually dishonest!

[AdmiralViscen]

JayDubya:politics::Green Shinobi:movies

Hey now, GreenShinobi unflinchingly responds to absolutely everything that anyone says to him. He can't be convinced of anything but at least you know he is reading your posts.

JD: now, correct me if I'm wrong, but ...

Boogie: actually, I think you might be wrong.

JD: NO I'M NOT!  Also, stop being so snarky and intellectually dishonest!

JD: Just boycott racist companies!

Others: here are several reasons why that doesn't work

JD: That doesn't say anything!

[Mandark]

JD:  You can't stop two countries from going to war by giving them weapons!

Boogie:  In this particular case, the US actually did just that.  Now that's a simplification and of course historical context is important, as up to this point...

JD:  But it doesn't work like that!

Boogie:  But it did.  You see...

JD:  But it can't!

Boogie:  ...but it did.

JD:  I don't think you understand.  It can't!

ad nauseum

[AdmiralViscen]

maybe if we boycott him he will become a liberal

[Mandark]

Hey, it's worked for 31 years, while in the 31 years previous the two countries fought against each other in three wars.  It may seem backwards to you, but I give more weight to the historical record than to your intuition.

Nothing personal, mind.

[Green Shinobi]

Hey now, GreenShinobi unflinchingly responds to absolutely everything that anyone says to him. He can't be convinced of anything but at least you know he is reading your posts.

Hey now! In just the past two weeks, Mandark convinced me that I had been operating with an incorrect or incomplete definition of the word "melodrama," which led to me spending a few hours reading articles by film critics about melodrama and really improving my knowledge of the subject. I am perfectly willing to admit when I am wrong about something and take steps to rectify that.

[Mandark]

I don't want to jinx it, but GS really has been making strides and is an early frontrunner for the Jinfash Memorial Most Improved Poster Award 2010, provided he keeps it up.

[EmCeeGrammar]

JayDubya doesn't see results.  He see moral atrocities that have no right to occur.  Therefore, they should not have occured.  Therefore they did not occur.

Am I parsing it correctly?

edit: It's like arguing with a crazy person that the shadow people aren't in his house, except you're arguing with the crazy guy who can't see his own children or something that is most certainly tangible!

edit2: Seriously JayDub, I get the sense that you're so tied up in "rights" and "morale" that you forget that the world is perfectly capable of operating outside of these abstracts and -IN FACT- does so while maintaining a nice equilibrium.

[Boogie]

Mandark: exactly. More concise than what my next response would have been too, which would have been a pain in the ass since all my posting is being done from my iPhone, so thanks.

[Green Shinobi]

Egypt was rocking T-55s and shit back in the Yom Kippur War, right?

Anyway, it makes sense that providing weapons to both sides would reduce the likelihood of armed conflict. The better-equipped each side is, the less of a target they are. Neither side wants to risk the high number of casualties that an all-out war would involve.

[AdmiralViscen]

Hey now, GreenShinobi unflinchingly responds to absolutely everything that anyone says to him. He can't be convinced of anything but at least you know he is reading your posts.

Hey now! In just the past two weeks, Mandark convinced me that I had been operating with an incorrect or incomplete definition of the word "melodrama," which led to me spending a few hours reading articles by film critics about melodrama and really improving my knowledge of the subject. I am perfectly willing to admit when I am wrong about something and take steps to rectify that.

My bad dawg.

[Stoney Mason]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The filibuster -- tool of obstruction in the U.S. Senate -- is alternately blamed and praised for wilting President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda. Some even say it's made the nation ungovernable.

Maybe, maybe not. Obama's term still has three years to run.

More certain, however: Opposition Republicans are using the delaying tactic at a record-setting pace.

''The numbers are astonishing in this Congress,'' says Jim Riddlesperger, political science professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

The filibuster, using seemingly endless debate to block legislative action, has become entrenched like a dandelion tap root in the midst of the shrill partisanship gripping Washington.

But the filibuster is nothing new. Its use dates to the mists of Senate history, but until the civil rights era, it was rarely used.

A tactic unique to the Senate, the filibuster means a simple majority guarantees nothing when it comes to passing laws.

''The rules of the Senate are designed to give muscle to the minority,'' said Senate historian Donald Ritchie.

With the Senate now made up of 100 members, two for each of the 50 states, an opposition filibuster can only be broken with 60 votes -- a three-fifths majority.

As a matter of political philosophy, the concept of the filibuster arises from a deep-seated, historic concern among Americans that the minority not be steamrolled by the majority.

It is a brake and protective device rooted in the same U.S. political sensibility that gave each state two senators regardless of population.

The same impulse gave Americans the Electoral College in presidential contests -- a structure from earliest U.S. history designed to give smaller population states greater influence in choosing the nation's leader.

Given recent use of the filibuster by minority Republicans and the party's success in snarling the legislative process in this Congress, Democrats say the minority has gone way beyond just protecting its interests.

The frequency of filibusters -- plus threats to use them -- are measured by the number of times the upper chamber votes on cloture. Such votes test the majority's ability to hold together 60 members to break a filibuster.

Last year, the first of the 111th Congress, there were a record 112 cloture votes. In the first two months of 2010, the number already exceeds 40.

That means, with 10 months left to run in the 111th Congress, Republicans have turned to the filibuster or threatened its use at a pace that will more than triple the old record. The 104th Congress in 1995-96 -- when Republicans held a 53-47 majority -- required 50 cloture votes.

During most of Obama's first year in office and for a few weeks this year, 58 Democratic senators and two Independents who normally vote with them held a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate.

That vanished last month when Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown captured the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died last summer.

Most notably, Brown's victory has stymied Obama's push to overhaul health care just as the bill was approaching the finish line. Before Brown's election, both the Senate and the House of Representatives had passed separate versions of the reform legislation.

Brown broke the Democratic 60-seat majority before the two chambers could meld differences in their bills for a final vote in both houses.

However, one of Brown's first votes after taking office saw him joining four other Republicans to help Democrats break a threatened filibuster by his party's leaders against a job bill.

The measure, $13 billion in tax incentives for businesses to hire unemployed workers, was quickly passed the next day with 12 Republicans joining Brown and 55 Democrats in favor of it.

Filibusters to make the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress look inept are one thing. Quite another is a vote against creating jobs in an economy with nearly 10 percent unemployment and midterm elections nine months away.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/01/us/politics/AP-US-Filibuster-Gone-Awry-Analysis.html?_r=3&ref=aponline

[Mandark]

Evan Bayh, the very model of a Principled, Moderate Deficit-Hawk, wants to block student loan reform.  The current system gives billions of dollars annually to banks so they can act as middlemen in transactions between the government and students, and Bayh is worried cause a lot of those middlemen are in his home state.

I look forward to his next op-ed on why it's so hard to get things done in the Senate.



edit:  Speaking of DLC golden boys, looks like New York won't have Harold Ford to kick around anymore.

[ToxicAdam]

Washington, D.C. - Congressman Ron Paul has continued to run his Congressional office in a frugal manner, and was able to return more than $100,000 from his allotted office budget to the Treasury this year, an increase over the $90,000 returned last year.

“Since my first year in Congress representing the 14th district I have managed my office in a frugal manner, instructing staff to provide the greatest possible service to the people of the 14th district at the least possible cost to taxpayers,” said Paul.

Ron Paul is using slave labor!

[Stoney Mason]

edit:  Speaking of DLC golden boys, looks like New York won't have Harold Ford to kick around anymore.

That whole thing was bizarre and he's becoming a bit of a joke. I'm surprised he hasn't simply moved over to the media where it seems like he would have a brighter future there than as a full time politician

[Phoenix Dark]

Damn, I'm bummed Ford isn't going to run. That would have been such an entertaining, satisfying trainwreck.
[youtube=560,345]EvWCjMmR2VI[/youtube]
annihilated

is this what a corporation sounds like, Jay Dubya? I don't know any

[Mandark]

It's hard to remember when Ford was the Max Cleland of the 2006 election cycle:  a Democrat who wasn't that far to the left but got a lot of sympathy from liberals thanks to his opponent's ad campaign.  He just proved to be amazingly tone deaf.  I can't remember the last candidate who was meant to be taken seriously yet had such consistently awful instincts.

Oh well.  We've still got Newt to make fun of.  In this week's episode, he tells people how Camus and George Orwell, socialists, warned of the dangers of socialism (read: the current health care bill) in their works: 1 2 3

To quote Nick Cohen, "No novelist with any talent just deals with political themes, and readers who scour their books for ideological clues have the souls of secret policemen."

[Eric P]

i guess Newt may not be familiar, or rather is betting his readers are not familiar with Tribune.

[Mandark]

Considering he was at a conference that featured Glenn Beck as keynote speaker, that's probably a safe assumption.

Anyway "government health care will lead inevitably to a totalitarian nightmare!" is some of the oldest FUD out there.

[youtube=560,345]6FzNTB1qtFA[/youtube]


Of course he was talking about the potential evils of passing Medicare, which the current group of anti-government activists want to protect.

There is no question that Medicare is on an unsustainable course; the government has promised far more than it can deliver. But this problem will not be solved by cutting Medicare in order to create new unfunded liabilities for young people.

Thanks for that insight, Newt!  And yeah, my memory really does get fuzzy after about fifteen years.  Why do you ask?

[Stoney Mason]

It's hard to remember when Ford was the Max Cleland of the 2006 election cycle:  a Democrat who wasn't that far to the left but got a lot of sympathy from liberals thanks to his opponent's ad campaign.  He just proved to be amazingly tone deaf.  I can't remember the last candidate who was meant to be taken seriously yet had such consistently awful instincts.

I never faulted him for being a conservative dem from Tennessee. I think a person's politics are as much about core beliefs as whom they represent. What doesn't make sense is for him to be in NY still acting like he is a dem from Tennessee.

[The Fake Shemp]

Obama caught lip-syncing speech

[Oblivion]

Jim Bunning is such a piece of shit. Not only that, but his republican butt buddies are actually coming to his defense. I don't know how anyone that's not a millionaire can side with these assholes.

Obama caught lip-syncing speech

[Mandark]

An interesting blog post on hospital costs.

The upshot:




Maryland has done this by strictly regulating the hospitals, not allowing them to charge patients different rates for the same procedures, and establishing a commission to set rates.  Hospitals in the state have made steady profits since the commission's inception.