Will Obama Censor KATG?

[Cretaceous Bob]

Not in cash, but yes. Why do you think they've done fucking nothing since 2006, despite threatening to do what they were elected to do? The Republicans do stuff that would benefit Democrats (expanding executive power), and so the Democrats put on a show about being upset, but then do nothing and wait for their turn to abuse power.

[motownguy]

Originally Posted by Grapist

They had a labor day, 18 month no interest sale. They kept it pretty quiet.

Fuck, I coulda bought me one. Probably didn't send the ad circular to Libertarians, however. Labor Day sale makes complete sense too.

[dzagama]

Originally Posted by Cretaceous Bob

Not in cash, but yes. Why do you think they've done fucking nothing since 2006, despite threatening to do what they were elected to do? The Republicans do stuff that would benefit Democrats (expanding executive power), and so the Democrats put on a show about being upset, but then do nothing and wait for their turn to abuse power.

See, this is the beauty of abstraction. One can argue back and forth over details, but there is a net action occurring, it doesn't matter if it is intentional or not: power is diverging positively. Politics is a comedic tragedy where *someone* is getting fucked, without fail. Not that getting fucked is bad, getting fucked by the state is.

Why aren't there more Libertarians?

(I reuse my grammatical constructs, bitch.)

[Cretaceous Bob]

Originally Posted by dzagama

See, this is the beauty of abstraction. One can argue back and forth over details, but there is a net action occurring, it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not: power is diverging positively. Politics is a comedic tragedy where *someone* is getting fucked, without fail. Not that getting fucked is bad, getting fucked by the state is.

Why aren't there more Libertarians?

(I reuse my grammatical constructs, bitch.)

I voted for the only Libertarian on my ticket last year (not counting the sham of a nomination that was Bob Barr), and he got something like .9% of the vote. People convincing other people that you have to choose between the lesser of two evils and people convincing other people that not voting is unpatriotic are creating a mountain of support for things the majority of voters believe are both shitty. At least if we're going to drive off a cliff, I'd feel better if everybody had voted their conscience on whether or not we should drive off a cliff, instead of whipping themselves into a fervor over how soon they should go over it.

[TulsaCowboy]

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Cripple Al Qaeda, Sure. I get that. They were in a country called Afghanistan. Not the one called Iraq. They were not in Iraq until Bush went there. Even he admitted that. Eventually. No evidense of Iraq collaborating with Al Qaeda has been found. Bush sent Colin Powell in front of the UN and said that we needed to invade Iraq because they had or were developing weapons of mass destruction. We're still waiting on those. He ignored everyone that had any intelligence saying that wasn't true. After the invasion, the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its WMD programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the invasion. So we invade a country. Now all of these years later we have a shit hole of a country that has a mass of refugees, civilians displaced from their homes, 4245 American soldiers dead, at least 320 Soldiers for our allies are dead, And we will go with the low ball estimate and not the largest number of Iraqi civilians that are dead. 90,440 dead Iraqis. How mush are they worth. How much is an American soldier worth?

Don't give me the whole brutal dictator bullshit argument. There are dictators all over the world but we don't invade all of those countries. How about North Korea. Lets go kick the shit out of Kim Jung Il. Cuba? How about China or Vietnam?

You were the one who lumped in Afghanistan with Iraq not me. Pretty much every intelligence agency produced data that showed Iraq had WMD, they were all fooled, not just Bush. It seems crazy anyway because they were guaranteed to be restarting the program, and they had used WMD in the recent past. Now we have a thriving democracy in the middle of the least free region of the world, that hopefully will spread when the Islamic fascists see freedom right across their boarder. The world is a much better place and we have lost less soldiers than we lost in 30min of WWII or any other serious war.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Bush's little butt buddy over paid 78 billion for stock. That was super. Democrats pushing Bush? When was he ever bipartisan?

I also doubt they get all their money back since government bureaucracies are stupid, however my point was they wont be on the hook for all of it. There is no need for bipartisanship when you have a large majority like the Dems have. The bailout was going to pass even over a veto.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Lets take what you say at face value and not argue the points. There is a huge fucking difference between warning someone about something and doing something about it. If you're the President of the United States you can get shit done in seven years. Thanks for the warning. What are you going to do about it? Noting? Okay then.

You have to be kidding, he did try to do something about it.

When Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed for comprehensive Fan/Fred reform in 2005, Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut successfully threatened a filibuster. Later, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed, Mr. Dodd asked, "Why weren't we doing more?”

But Mr. Dodd wasn't the only Democrat to heap abuse on the Bush reforms. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts defended Fannie and Freddie as "fundamentally sound" and labeled the president's proposals as "inane.” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York dismissed Mr. Bush's "safety and soundness concerns" as "a straw man.” "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," was the helpful advice of both Sen. Thomas Carper of Delaware and Rep. Maxine Waters of California. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York berated a Bush official at a hearing, saying, "I am just pissed off" at the administration for raising the issue.

Democrats had ready allies among lenders accustomed to Fan/Fred buying their risky mortgages. For example, Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial, complained that "an overly cumbersome regulatory process" would "reduce, or even eliminate, the incentives for Fan/Fred and their primary market partners."

Hell, Acorn was organizing protests of banks saying they were being overly critical of homebuyers’ credit as late as 2007. What does Obama do, he gives Acorn $6 billion dollars (stimulus) for helping create the problem that helped him get elected.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

That was cute what you did there. You say the estimate of 3 trillion for Iraq is no good. You can't believe it. So you counter with someone else's estimates of something that hasn't happened yet with Obamas stimulus package. You throw out up to $8 trillion. Why do you accept those estimates but not the ones for the final cost of the Iraq war?

And I'm glad the money will be spread out over time. I don't expect everything to happen next month. I am curious where you got 2016 from though.

We will have to just differ on this one I guess. I haven’t seen the $3T figure for Iraq. I was looking at your $12B per month figure which to get to $3T would have to run rate for 20yrs at historical spending. So yea, that stat sounds questionable.

As far has Obama’s spending not happening yet, he seems to announce another quarter trillion every couple of weeks. The original economic theory behind this bill was to spend the money quickly to create jobs fast. But even the most talented spenders on Capitol Hill couldn't find enough projects to fund in such a rush. So they spread out the largesse over several years -- long after everyone hopes the recession is over. Some of these "timely" stimulus payments won't hit the economy until after the 2016 Olympics. The healthcare portions extend way out.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

rich families were the undisputed winners from President Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the earnings scale were not paying much in taxes anyway.

By not much you mean less than 3% yea, since only the rich pay taxes, by default any tax cut is going to help only the rich. Problems is if you tax the people for being productive your economy tanks. Working people with income are the only ones paying income taxes by definition.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Wow. So when they release some figures you like you will quote them. But the other numbers they put out suck ass? Either take it all or none. Dont pick and choose what will fit for you.

Low taxes and scant regulation are good for business and a great way to create more problems. Lets have no regulation and I'm sure all the company's will play by the rules and pay all their taxes and treat the employees fare and the enviroment will be better than ever. You betcha !!

Yea when they release some baseball stats I also wont quote them either. I was just pointing out that they have a shitty track record as a job forecaster, since they are an accounting office not an economic think tank.

Ok you got me there regulation is great, just look at Cuba or Venezuela or even France. The more economically free a country is the better the economy does, this correlation has been proven.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

I'd like to take this moment to thank Bush for that check he sent me.

To win over Senate Democrats, Bush both phased in the tax rate reductions and settled for politically popular but economically worthless tax rebate checks. Those checks provided a short-term lift to consumer spending but no real boost to risk-taking or business investment. So I agree with you the checks were dumb.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Bush will never be called that. Republicans don't even like to mention his name.

Obama will have to work pretty damn hard to beat Bush and leave office with a lower approval rating of 22%

Well the right decision is not always popular. I guess he should have just spent trillions of dollars to have the government buy the people homes, employment and cars.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Good solution. Do nothing. Shit will fix itself. Car compnany's won't go bankrupt and banks won't go bust.

That is precisely why things will go bust again. Markets will realign in equilibrium it has happened thousands of times. Companies will go bankrupt if they are poorly run. For example, they have management making millions above market salaries and pay employees $85k to work a broom. Banks that gambled like crack heads will instead be bailed out and given more chips after their “all in” hand was crushed. I am sure they learned a lesson and won’t do that again. Only bankruptcy, painful as it may be, offers the tools and legal authority needed to force all stakeholders to change the habits that brought the companies to this ebb.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Wire tapping who? We don't know who they tapped. We know a few. Like US soldiers calling home. Intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk broke that news. And without warrants. Which means illegally.

And just because someone else in the past did something wrong in no way justifies anything you do. Because we put Japanese Americans in camps during WW II I guess we can fuck around with the brown people now.

Yea, I agree with you here. They were overly hasty in their “wartime” security efforts. They fucked that up.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Expansions will pale? Who the fuck are you kidding. Under Bush we had a Vice President that wouldn't even admit that he was part of the Executive Branch of government. Those assholes were so secretive that you weren't even allowed to look at the visitor log of the White House.

I believe you are confusing government expansion with government secrecy.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

It's more of an issue that they can't be tried in a civil court because the information we got out of them was beat out of them. I doubt you are gay. But if I could take you, put you in a cell, constantly beat the shit out of you, sleep deprive you, and maybe pull a mock execution I think I could get you to admit sucking a dick.

Yea I am sure the hazing they did or didn’t receive could be an issue. However, the Miranda rights issue is guaranteed to trip up prosecutors. But I agree with you there are many reasons these liberal ideas to just throw them to the courts wont work.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

He's been in office four weeks and he's had a few things on his plate. Trying to fix the shit economy has probably taken up a bit of time.

Yea they have been to busy fucking up the economy to stop “torturing”. Great

Originally Posted by Lambboy

That's just a flat out lie. I triple dog dare you to back that up.

Hey you may be right, the manual changes have just been reportedly leaks out of Obama’s cabinet, they may just be trial balloons and never happen.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

And that's a lie as well. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he had heard nothing to suggest that the CIA, through enhanced interrogation methods, had obtained information to thwart a terrorist attack. "On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop,"

Well I guess the CIA is just hazing them for fun. Makes you wonder why every country in the world has tortured even back into Roman times when courts would not accept certain types of testimony unless it was obtained through torture. Our water boarding torture is a pussified version of torture anyway; we do it to all our own special forces as part of training.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Pick a prison. I don't care. We have people in prison that have killed people and ate them. Do you think they are going to escape?

No don’t think they are going to escape, I think they are going to be targets to be “liberated” by Muslim fanatics all over the world, when they are being held in normal jails in Kansas and the like, in addition to spreading their terrorist philosophy in the general prison population.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Working the press more than any other president? Bush got the press to back him up on invading a fucking country. Some reporters were off of his plane just like they were kicked off of McCains plane during the campaign.

I remember plenty of times where Bush would refuse to answer any tough questions and always ended up sounding like a retard anyway.

The press only backed him up on Iraq because everyone else believed the same. Don’t go claiming that Bush was the only one tricking the press into believing Iraq was a threat. Last survey I saw like 80% of the press voted for Kerry and I believe it was closer to 90% for Obama. Even the vaunted Fox News was something north of 60% for Obama. Safe to say I have a difficult time believing any press is going to be in the tank for any limited government candidate.

The point is Bush did take the questions… he may have refused to answer them but they were at least asked. Obama is scheduling softball matches, in which nothing is asked.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

So for a press conference they pick the reporters that get to ask questions. That's normal for Presidential press conferences. And if you compare in any way the speaking of Obama and Bush and come away thinking Obama doesn't know how then there is little hope for you.

There is no way that is normal for reporters to be pre-screened for questions, that has never been done by any president. Obama is good with a teleprompter… good for him.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

What does it matter? They weren't going to vote for it anyway. None from congress and only 3 from the senate. Maybe if any of them had taken the time to read the Patriot Act before they voted on it I would give a shit.

The reason they made it not searchable is that the press was questioning all the crazy shiat in the rushed pork laden bill. The thing ended up being over 80% the other white meat, and its popularity was falling at 10% per week. This thing was a lobbyist feeding frenzy. They had to get it rammed though as quickly as possible without the people finding out what is conatins. This is why it is thrown together so fast to line the pockets of the lobbyists and political payback.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

Maybe because minorities have complained for years that they have been miscounted.

Great so they want to do sampling adjustments to add minorities. Starting in 2000, the Census Bureau conducted three years of studies with the help of many outside statistical experts. According to then Census director Louis Kincannon, the Bureau concluded "adjustment based on sampling didn't produce improved figures" and could damage Census credibility.

The real issue is who directs the Census, the pros or the pols, You would think an administration that's thumping its chest about respecting science would show a little respect for scientists in the statistical field. Once again, even the Carter and Clinton Census directors agreed this is just a power grab by Obama.

Originally Posted by Lambboy

IMHO, Most suck, And Republicans care nothing for the American people and happen to be the most hateful, oppressive, back stabbing, and some times just flat out evil motherfuckers.

Elections come along and I have two choices, one the GOP who says they are going to practice limited government and prudent spending and the Democrats who claim they are going to fucking spend (invest) everything in site. In the end I am a sucker and go for the GOP and they stab me in the back by spending like drunken sailors. This time the Democrats won and have gone beyond any nightmare of spending and government expansion I could have ever imagined. In retrospect that knife in my back from the GOP seems like a nice little pocket knife, as opposed to being macheted in half by the liberals.

You can calculate your portion of all the crazy bailouts here... fun.