US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[Human Snorenado]

Marx? Keynes? Lots of possibilities here.

[benjipwns]

As much 'knobslobbing' as there has been (the NYT needs to chill lmao) theres as much backfire

I'm including this in the knobslobbering, one day I went to two semi-libertarian sites and they both had like fifteen fucking posts linking to anything critical of the book.

And nobody links to probably the best negative review: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-century

EDIT: Dear god, Mises is the same way lol

Economist uses the same image as the Krugman article 

[benjipwns]

Yet, Democrats in Congress today would sooner sell their first-born to the Koch brothers than even consider it.

I knew they were buying babies.

[brob]

Latest Member: Ripclawe

This thread about to get good

[Broseidon]

Cato

Mises

[benjipwns]

If billionaires used their money to improve society by all means they can keep their money. Many use most of it to buy bigger yachts, personal jets, lavish mansions, stupendous parties, stashing it in offshore accounts, etc. None of that helps anybody other than those supplying luxury items.

would you like some Heritage Foundation with your order, sir?

:bastiatumad

Robin Hood was returning stolen money that was taken under the guise of "taxation!" :bastiathulkmad

[benjipwns]

HEAVYDUTY752p · 6 days ago
EXACTLY....A MISNOMER WE WERE TAUGHT TO BELIEVE......IT WAS BASICALLY FOLKS IN THE CASTLE/RULING CLASS JUST TOOK WHAT THEY NEEDED FROM THE OUTSIDE FOLKS...WHENEVER THEY NEEDED MORE FOOD/GOLD/ETC.....SURE THEY WERE THE RICH.......KINGS AND SUCH ..THAT WOULD BE OUR CONGRESS,,,,,MORE NEEDED,,,,,,,RAISE THEIR TAXES...."THEIR"......=OURS,,THE WORKERS JUST MORE SOPHISTICATED METHODS FOR GREED./......

EXACTLY

[Joe Molotov]

I wish we could trade the entire Heritage readership to Southern Sudan.

What would we have to give up in return?

[Broseidon]

There are probably better ways to achieve a more equitable wealth distribution.

Guaranteed minimum income and adopt a Socialist mode of production. After all, is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

[Great Rumbler]

Bush never abandoned anyone to die nor did he lie and fabricate a story to cover his butt to win an election.

[Human Snorenado]

Cato (Image removed from quote.)

Mises (Image removed from quote.) (Image removed from quote.)

AND the WSJ, brehs 

[benjipwns]

That's kind of the opposite of what Piketty and other progressive economists are saying. He's saying that people at the extreme high end of the income spectrum are reaping rewards far in excess of the fruits of their labor.

Of course, the inevitable response is, "Who are you to decide what's fair, the market always makes the best allocation of wealth, etc". A lot of it comes back to Nozick, who argues that no pattern of wealth distribution can be unjust if all the individual transactions that led to it were just. But the second part of that argument is a pretty massive assumption. I'd argue that a lot of exchanges in society are better characterized by what I'd call "micro-inequities", which, accumulated over many different interactions, lead to very unjust outcomes.

Answering the question of what is just and unjust also contains pretty massive assumptions.

Why is it unjust to be good enough to reap rewards beyond the fruits of your labor or be able to better exploit micro-inequities to your favor?

How is having more wealth or capital than someone else unjust in and of itself? I mean even just trying to define "excess" is in the eye of the beholder, aren't you attempting to create a dividing line between what is and isn't just so that you can make a claim on the "unjust" excess.

If the problem is the power that stems from access to that wealth, then why is the solution always giving more monopoly power to the largest corporation and its subsidiaries? As if it never does anything unjust.

For example, in a society without public education, the total amount of education will be less than what's societally optimal.

It'd be more accurate to say less than what you consider optimal, not what that society considers optimal.

[Positive Touch]

How is having more wealth or capital than someone else unjust in and of itself? I mean even just trying to define "excess" is in the eye of the beholder, aren't you attempting to create a dividing line between what is and isn't just so that you can make a claim on the "unjust" excess.

 

live in a fantasy world where poverty is just a talking point and not a literal matter of life and death

[benjipwns]

Generally I'm using it to refer to "creates the most utility" or "results in the least suffering." In the case of public education, most people would agree that "societally optimal" is fairly straightforward in that it leads to more tangible prosperity overall.

But here you're already making assumptions about and defining what weights to apply to different costs and benefits. Hell, you have to define "tangible prosperity overall" and "most utility" because these aren't objective standards.

live in a fantasy world where poverty is just a talking point and not a literal matter of life and death

What does this have to do with what you quoted?

[benjipwns]

Also the monopoly or monosopy power of the public education system which imposes its own costs. To where you're exploiting the lower middle class and below's labour to pay for an upper middle class bureaucracy that fails to educate their children and attempts to deny them alternative options if it isn't actively working to cause them harm. Like most instances of trickle down economics, aggregate statistics don't do them very much good in those instances.

[Human Snorenado]

The real flaw in libertopian/objectivist thinking is that people will always do the best or right thing, or that the best or right thing for one person will produce the best or most correct outcome for society. It's a bunch of shit, and you know it is because you can just look at the basic, fundamental problem in the equation: human beings.

Humans are stupid, short-sighted creatures. You can explain to them that a robust and awesome education system will produce a smarter, more productive society with fewer criminals, and they'll still balk at it BECAUSE MAH TAXES GOAN GO UP, AND THAT'S TYRANNY HUR HUR HUR. Basically, the vast majority of human beings are too stupid to be entrusted to make correct decisions, which is why we have to have minimal safety standards, FDA food consumption guidelines, etc. And yes, education. Because I don't trust you to properly educate your children. You're all too fucking stupid. I know this because I see the television you watch, and it makes me want to throw all of you into the fucking sun.

tl;dr- people are stupid and this is why we can't have nice things. Now please stfu now and forever, libertopians, about how your precious fucking liberty is being assaulted.

[benjipwns]

Which is why we should give them absolute power to employ violence against those they don't like.

This has been the contradictory impulse of progressivism ever since the Social Gospel beginnings, how to square the gushing over democracy with the Christian duty of the upper classes to civilize the lower ones, against their will if necessary.

[Joe Molotov]

I'm sure you've explained this to Mandark or COG in the past, but in your ideal society, would there be a government to enforce contracts? And what would we do about crime? And if there was some kind of organization that handled these issues, how would it be funded?

Rational self-interest.

[benjipwns]

I'm sure you've explained this to Mandark or COG in the past, but in your ideal society, would there be a government to enforce contracts? And what would we do about crime? And if there was some kind of organization that handled these issues, how would it be funded?

You fucked up breh'lady. In my ideal society there wouldn't be any crime and everyone would peacefully resolve disputes. 

I didn't mean to debate with your points from a purely voluntaryist view, that's my mistake if I have or gave the impression, though it's obviously silly to think there's no influence to any argument I might make. I was trying more to illustrate how many assumptions one bakes into things merely to avoid admitting it's a moral question of just/unjust. (And I'm not trying to claim any immunity from this.)

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm sure you've explained this to Mandark or COG in the past, but in your ideal society, would there be a government to enforce contracts? And what would we do about crime? And if there was some kind of organization that handled these issues, how would it be funded?

You fucked up breh'lady. In my ideal society there wouldn't be any crime and everyone would peacefully resolve disputes. 

But would you make Coretta Scott King mayor of the cities?

[benjipwns]

But would you make Coretta Scott King mayor of the cities?

No, the Wu Tang Clan would rotate through the position. You need people with financial acumen.

[Kara]

Can you elaborate more on "Socialist mode of production"?

Next time you're blue read up on an-syn, you will probably chortle irl. (Take a shot if it's when you reach "bourse du travail".)

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You know I love you Cheez. 

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[Broseidon]

I'm a communist  :'(

[Kara]

I'm a communist  :'(

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Seriously doe I thought you were an-syn.

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[Broseidon]

They tricked me with the DELICIOUS CANDY

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Seriously doe I thought you were an-syn.

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I know. It was because of a post I made a year ago

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[Rufus]

People change.

[Broseidon]

*peers through crystal ball*

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[Broseidon]

Also I'm not into auto-erotic asphyxiation so I can't be a gay tory anyway

[Kara]

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I know. It was because of a post I made a year ago

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It was this post but I misremembered it.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=95772928&postcount=10084

I was still half right though, and let's be honest, the Party isn't going to discern between either at the end of the day. 

[Broseidon]

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It was actually a different post. I remember it but I'm too lazy to go get it from GAF

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[Kara]

Might've been in the Actually Existing Socialism thread. 

[Oblivion]

Does anyone know how many investigations took place after the first 9/11 (you know, the less important one)? Checking the wiki page for 9/11, it says only 3 investigations, one from the FBI, one from the CIA, and the 9/11 commission report:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Investigations

I wouldn't be surprised if the actual number was much lower than BENGHAZI! (tm), but three investigations sound pretty damn paltry regardless.

[Dickie Dee]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/the-countrys-most-republican-company-the-makers-of-wonder-bread.html

[Joe Molotov]

I wonder what Hellmann's political contributions look like. 

[Brehvolution]

Give thousands of dollars to politicians and still declare bankruptcy, brehs.

[Positive Touch]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/the-countrys-most-republican-company-the-makers-of-wonder-bread.html

  well good thing i eat bunny brea- wait FUCK THEY MAKE TASTYKAKES TOO GOD DAMMIT FUCK FUCK FUCK

[Howard Alan Treesong]

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

Give thousands of dollars to politicians and still declare bankruptcy, brehs.

this is actually about the company that bought Hostess out of bankruptcy.  Hedge fund vampires were the guys that prompted a year long twinkie drought.

[Oblivion]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/05/08/seven_essential_benghazi_products_that_will_restore_your_faith_in_america.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

[Mandark]

And nobody links to probably the best negative review: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-century

Not reading Krugman.   

[Yeti]

That shower curtain is pretty badass

[benjipwns]

And nobody links to probably the best negative review: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-century

Not reading Krugman.   

His blog?

[Joe Molotov]

That shower curtain is pretty badass

OBAMA LIED, TOWELS DRIED

[Mandark]

His blog?

dur

[benjipwns]

Thought you might have meant he mentioned it in that review.

dat MONICA & HILLARY graphic
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/05/09/coulter_democrats_are_against_rape_unless_its_committed_by_a_clinton_or_a_kennedy.html

ANN COULTER: If we're going to start a the list of things Bill Clinton should have done, this is going to be a long night, a really long segment. But, yeah, Sidney Blumenthal, as Christopher Hitchens said, was going around spreading to journalists that Monica was a stalker and a lunatic.

SEAN HANNITY: Nuts and sluts.

COULTER: It's the way they treated --

HANNITY: Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick, another whole different issue.

COULTER: Yeah, that's a big one.

HANNITY: Kathleen Willey. I mean, all the jokes --

COULTER: And Juanita Broaddrick, by the way, is the rape.

HANNITY: That would be rape.

COULTER: As exposed --

HANNITY: He had Kathleen Willey shoved up against the wall.

COULTER: As exposed by NBC, ABC, and others.

HANNITY: But they were all attacked. And this is the side of this because the war on women, Republicans are guilty of war on women. Wait a minute, they started a war against women to a degree that we have not seen before.

COULTER: Right, right, they're against rape unless it's committed by a Clinton or a Kennedy.

HANNITY: Okay. That made news. Uh, let's go to --

COULTER: Just giving you the rules.

[lordmaji]

Fuck Benghazi and fuck the idiots in the gov that want to play games by dicking around with this. How about focus on more important shit instead of this stupid shit.

God damn our reps are jackasses. (I guess that makes half/a good portion of our country jackasses).

fucktards. 

/grumpydayrant

[benjipwns]

How about focus on more important shit instead of this stupid shit.

How about imagine what they could fuck up regarding important shit.

[benjipwns]

[lordmaji]

(Image removed from quote.)

Ah, our list of douches that have nothing better to do with their time. Fucking cunts.

[benjipwns]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/the-benghazi-deniers-106498_full.html

The deniers evidently believe:

An administration should be able to make erroneous statements about a terror attack that killed a U.S. ambassador in the weeks before a presidential election and expect everyone to accept its good intentions afterward.

An administration should be able to withhold a bombshell White House email from congressional investigators and expect everyone to greet its long-delayed release with a yawn.

An administration should be able to send out its press secretary to abase himself with absurd denials of the obvious and expect everyone to consider its credibility solidly intact.
...
The administration’s apologists claim that President Obama immediately called Benghazi a terror attack in a statement in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, the day after the assault. He did indeed refer to “acts of terror,” although vaguely. In an interview the same day with CBS, he was asked: Was Benghazi the result of a “mob action,” or was it something more serious? “I don’t want to jump the gun on this,” the president said.

He obviously wouldn’t have said he didn’t want to jump the gun if he had already jumped it. Besides, if the president of the United States was willing to say it was a terrorist attack from the very beginning, why was one of his national security officials stuffing his ambassador to the United Nations with pablum in an email just a few days later?

Blaming the video allowed the administration to put the most anodyne possible interpretation on Benghazi, while staying in its ideological comfort zone.

If the video had incited the attack, it meant that extremists both at home and overseas were to blame and that the administration could adopt a defensive posture about our country and its alleged Islamophobia. Parts of the media eagerly picked up this narrative. Time magazine ran an evenhanded cover story lambasting people who make obnoxious YouTube videos and people who kill ambassadors. “These hatemongers,” according to Time, “form a global industry of outrage, working feverishly to give and take offense.”
...
The other notable Benghazi defense from the past week is the “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” version of the standard “old news” deflection. Asked about the editing of the initial Benghazi talking points by Fox News’ Bret Baier on “Special Report,” former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor explained helpfully, “Dude, this was like two years ago.”

What’s the statute of limitations on misleading the public about a terror attack , dawg?

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

part of the Benghazi thing is sour grapes over 2012, probably a big part of it.

to be honest, I'd rather the pubs go snipe hunting over this shit then blame Acorn and voter fraud/poor people for their presidential loss.  Starting up committees hurts less people then encroachment on voting rights and actively disenfranchising people (say, killing organizations that help people because VOTER FRAUD DEY STOLE OUR CUNTRY).

[Joe Molotov]

(Image removed from quote.)

Is there going to be trading cards, so I see what their stats are?

[benjipwns]

Does anyone actually believe that any revelation about the attack would have made any difference in the election? Maybe Romney loses by 4.9 million votes instead of 5 million?

Even if I agree with the argument that Romney would have won if the whole truth was out, so what?

Mitt Romney's unstoppable momentum after the crushing first debate of the feckless Obama was blunted when Candy Crowley worked in concert with Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice and the Obama White House to lie during a debate knowing it was a lie, all to make Mitt Romney look bad. That's why all the data that was pointing to a massive Romney landslide was "wrong" because it didn't account for the Obama Media's secret plot to derail the Romney Train, they were only polling the real voice of the American people, not the skewed one.

[benjipwns]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/progressive-bloggers-are-doing-the-white-house-s-job-20140509

When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary's finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down.

But Carney needn't have worried. He had plenty of backup.

He had The New Republic's Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as "nonsense." He had Slate's David Weigel, along with The Washington Post's Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a "smoking gun." Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a "hoax." Salon wrote that the GOP had a "demented Benghazi disease." Daily Kos featured the headline: "Here's Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here's Why They're Wrong." The Huffington Post offered "Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP."

It's been a familiar pattern since President Obama took office in 2009: When critics attack, the White House can count on a posse of progressive writers to ride to its rescue. Pick an issue, from the Affordable Care Act to Ukraine to the economy to controversies involving the Internal Revenue Service and Benghazi, and you'll find the same voices again and again, on the Web and on Twitter, giving the president cover while savaging the opposition. And typically doing it with sharper tongues and tighter arguments than the White House itself.

While the bond between presidential administrations and friendly opinion-shapers goes back as far as the nation itself, no White House has ever enjoyed the luxury that this one has, in which its arguments and talking points can be advanced on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. No longer must it await the evening news or the morning op-ed page to witness the fruits of its messaging efforts.

...

The new landscape has allowed the White House communications shop do what it does best: Figure out new ways to bypass the mainstream media. It holds off-the-record briefings, sometimes with Obama in the room, for select progressive bloggers from outlets such as TPM and ThinkProgress. (More than once, a National Journal reporter who previously worked at a liberal outlet has been invited as well.)

The outreach to progressive bloggers is part of a multipronged White House media strategy that also involves briefings with the likes of bureau chiefs, prominent columnists, even conservative writers such as Byron York and David Brooks, although certainly with each group, the mileage varies.

Consider: A search of White House records shows Ezra Klein, then with The Washington Post's Wonkblog, visiting more than 25 times since 2009; last week, a Post story detailed the travails of Lesley Clark, a White House reporter for McClatchy who has been to the Oval Office three times in the last three years, and has asked one question directly to Obama in all that time.

The hope, from the White House's perspective, is that progressive media elites sway the mainstream press.

....

Still, Jilani worries that some endorse the White House's positions not because they always agree with them, but because they don't want to give the GOP any fodder. "That's a hard thing to separate," he says.

Joan Walsh, an editor-at-large at Salon, brought this tension to a head last year when she slammed Klein for being too critical of the Obamacare rollout and, in essence, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. "On one hand, yes, it's important for Democrats to acknowledge when government screws up, and to fix it," Walsh wrote. "On the other hand, when liberals rush conscientiously to do that, they only encourage the completely unbalanced and unhinged coverage of whatever the problem might be."

Unbalanced. Interesting word for a card-carrying member of the progressive media to use.

[Joe Molotov]

Three words:

Fox Effing News

[Great Rumbler]

The amount of water that Fox carried for the Bush administration could have filled the Great Lakes.

[benjipwns]

Newt's on top of Bokoghazigate:
http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2014/05/hillary-clinton-boko-haram-and-benghazi-the-real-scandal/

[benjipwns]

But what about #Benghazi?!?

[Great Rumbler]

Gohmert followed that up by complaining that Comcast wouldn't let Glenn Beck be on TV in favor of Al Jazeera's sharia law agenda.

[benjipwns]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377686/why-lois-lerner-should-be-granted-immunity-andrew-c-mccarthy

In this week’s episode of the Capitol Hill soap opera, Lois Lerner, the apparatchik at the center of the IRS jihad against conservative groups, was at long, long last held in contempt of Congress. Amid the farce, the House’s IRS probe is floundering.

Ironically, this happens just as the chamber’s separate probe of the Benghazi massacre has been given a chance to succeed. That is because House speaker John Boehner, after over a year of delay, has finally agreed to appoint a “select committee” to investigate Benghazi. Congress has no constitutional authority to enforce the laws it writes, a power our system vests solely in the executive branch. But a select committee, with a mission to find out what happened — as opposed to conducting oversight through the prism of some committee’s narrow subject-matter jurisdiction (judiciary, budget, education, reform, etc.) — is the closest legislative analogue to a grand jury.

...

The IRS investigation, to the contrary, remains mired in Capitol Hill’s labyrinth of committees and subcommittees. To be sure, some important information has been uncovered. But the case is languishing. Indeed, during the House’s months of dithering over the contempt citation — which is meaningless from an investigative standpoint, however consequential it may be politically — the Obama administration has busied itself codifying the very abuses President Obama claimed to find “outrageous” and “unacceptable” when they first came to light.

In a competent investigation, one designed to find out what actually happened, Lois Lerner would have been immunized months ago. That is, Congress would have voted to compel her testimony by assuring that her statements could not be used against her in any future prosecution — removing the obstacle of her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

...

Lois Lerner clearly presents the second situation . . . though that is apparently less than clear to the folks running the House. Asked about the IRS scandal recently, Speaker Boehner declared, “I don’t care who is going to be fired. I want to know who is going to jail!” That’s a good, fiery sound bite for the campaign season, but it’s exactly wrong.

When officials prove unfit for government power, taking that power away is the highest public interest. Even if you’ve deluded yourself into thinking the Obama Justice Department would lift a finger to prosecute Lois Lerner, who cares if she ever sees the inside of a jail cell? What matters is laying bare the entirety of the scheme and finding out how high it goes: Who and what induced her to orchestrate the harassment of conservative groups? Why was the government’s fearsome tax agency placed in the service of the Democratic party’s political needs?

To get the answers to those questions, you need Ms. Lerner to testify. Instead, the House has wasted a full year chewing over a tough legal issue that, even if it were ultimately resolved in the Oversight Committee’s favor, would not get her any closer to answering questions — at least not for a long time.

...

“But wait,” you say, “if we immunize her, we can’t prosecute her.” My first impulse is to say, “So what?” If she testifies truthfully and gives a full account of what happened, we’ll be a lot more interested in pursuing the officials who instigated the scheme than in prosecuting those who carried it out. But if “Who is going to jail!” is really your big concern, immunity for Ms. Lerner does not protect her if she lies or obstructs the investigation. The statute of limitations on such crimes will not have run out when a new administration takes over in 2017. She could still be prosecuted, and the penalties for those crimes are more severe than whatever her actions at the IRS could have earned her.

If the House really wants to get to the bottom of the IRS abuses, it is long past time to immunize Lerner. Let’s find out what she knows and advance the public’s knowledge of the facts. It will then be possible to determine which, if any, higher-ranking officials in the Obama administration were involved: Were they active participants? Nod-and-a-wink approvers? Unknowing, incidental beneficiaries of the inability of conservative groups to organize effectively?