You don't have to be Warren Buffet to see the shithole that we're digging for ourselves here in the US. Our economy is being brought to its knees deliberately so that the neocons can use the crisis to take back the New Deal. The Bush tax cuts and the wars were supposed to generate big budget deficits, and they've succeeded. They've also stimulated consumption as intended, but I don't think that these geniuses considered how much of that would be spent overseas, pumping up the trade deficit. There are stormy seas ahead.
the South shall rise again in Glory heretofore unheard of
Y'all already have risen again. Lost the battle but won the war. Since southerners will only vote for other southerners in national elections, being southern (real or fake, like W's daddy) has been a requirement for the presidency for quite a long time now.
The way things are going, it's just a matter of time before y'all get your slaves back.
You knock the war, but actually it has been (and will continue to be) extremely profitable for many Americans, not all of whom have close ties with the current administration. Perhaps your comment is nothing more than war-profit envy?
What a rant. What it has to do with the issue at hand, however, I'm not sure. If you're one of those think-tank neocons - and you sound like one - then I'll even suggest that you're being disingenuous.
Of course Warren Buffett is hedging against the dollar. He isn't doing it because of Social Security, he's watching his wealth shrink by the day as the dollar tumbles. The "50%" stake you cite isn't being put at risk as you imply, it's being protected from risk. That's what a "hedge" is. We're in a period of stunning and quite deliberate fiscal mismanagement - and an expensive, quixotic war and occupation on top of that - designed specifically to create a fiscal crisis and, as the neocons are fond of saying, "starve the beast" (intending, of course, to decide which beasts get starved). We are simultaneously running unprecedented fiscal and trade deficits. You complain about Americans "believing they can get something for nothing", but it is Bush and the Republicans that sold this idea to them. Let's all consume more now, borrow the difference, and let our children pay. And, oh yeah, we'll have a few wars and not pay for those, either. All of that cash that Bush gave back to us, to be funded through higher deficits and more borrowing, now floods the rest of the world to service our voracious appetite for foreign bling. We increasingly rely on foreign lenders to finance our ballooning deficits, but faced with a weak and declining dollar they will demand ever higher interest rates and we will have no choice but to accommodate them. High interest rates (think 70s levels) will suppress equities markets and - voila! - those private accounts will be funding paying off old deficits instead of fueling economic growth. What a shithole we're digging, and it's all by design, it's happening today, and as far as I know it's not even impeachable, because it doesn't involve any titillating sexual indiscretions.
Social Security is still running surpluses and of course has nothing to do with this (and won't for several decades to come). Demographics will put considerable stress on the system around mid-century, but that can be dealt with via measures that are far less radical than what we're being sold, which appears intended to precipitate the complete destruction of the system.
So if I'm allowed to invest my money how I choose, I'm being swindled?
You can already do that. You do have an IRA or 401-K, right? We're just talking about a guaranteed floor here.
Funny, that's what I thought about being compelled to pay into a system that can't possibly sustain itself.
You're assuming something not in evidence here. If the system doesn't sustain itself, it'll be at the hands of people who wanted to destroy it all along (and won't hesitate to lie through their teeth to get it done).
Well why don't you take your property and your liberty someplace that has no stable government or system of written laws - Sudan, maybe? - and see how well you (and the private army you're going to need) can hang onto it...
The problem is that most people are so accustomed to living beyond their means that they don't save any money. But, if the government stepped in and made the saving mandatory, everything works out.
Don't assume that our economy can productively absorb a sudden surge in money available for investment, though. In the 90s we saw what happens when too much money chases too few good investment opportunities: equity prices get bid up irrationally from the demand side, and everyone thinks they're doing great until the bubble bursts, which it inevitable does. Woe unto you in this brave new world if it happens after you retire. But oh, excuse me: Only stupid people lose money in a crash.
You can start by ending the bullshit myth that Social Security is going to be around to help then when they fail.
This we know, because Our Lords the Republicans tell us so. Yet the numbers tell a different story. You are being swindled, pal. Wise up before it's too late.
You're certainly free to help out as many poor, starving seniors as you wish, but you have no right to empower the government to demand everyone else hand over a significant portion of their income at gunpoint to help out said seniors.
What do you think makes property and investment even possible, you idiot? Property is a legal construct, and it comes from living under the stable rule of law. You can invest in relative security because there are layers upon layers of laws that govern securities transactions, punish fraud, and enable contracts to be enforced. Like most conservatives you take the benefits of civilization and government as your divine right, but believe that you owe nothing in return. You tell me how you're going to save for your lavish retirement without a stable government protecting your precious "property" as well as your sorry ass!
They suffer the consequences of their inaction and/or ignorance?
This is exactly how the neocons think, at least until it is their own interests or security that is threatened. From this it should be clear to everyone that their agenda is to eliminate Social Security, and not to "rescue" it, as Bush claims. Does anyone really believe that the Republicans are going to keep spending at a level necessary to meet current obligations, once the revenue rug has been pulled out from under the program? No, no, no: This is what the conservatives call "starve the beast"; i.e., bankrupt and then eliminate it as something we can no longer afford.
The hypothesis that a particular population has a statistical predisposition to have high X or low Y is either true or not true.
You should think a little more deeply about what you're saying. Showing that two groups differ significantly in a trait X or Y says nothing about "predisposition" or causation. It simply notes that there is probably a difference between two groups at one particular point in time, and it assumes that we know the meaning of what we're measuring (which may be complex or poorly defined) and that we're measuring it properly. Truth often (usually?) comes in shades of gray, and dealing with an issue superficially is a great way to draw erroneous conclusions.
What do you make of the "statistical truth" that there are few African American athletes playing hockey in the NHL? Two superficial (and probably wrong) conclusions you could draw are that (1) black people are not "genetically predisposed" to play hockey well, or (2) that NHL teams are so racist that they would refuse to hire black athletes even at the cost of losing games. But the "truth" is much more subtle than that, isn't it?
They do it today when they proclaim that all men are rapists, that marriage is oppression, etc.
I for one am quite tired of it
Oh, puleeze! Did Rush Limbaugh get you all stirred up by pulling out a choice quote or two? Are any women you actually know assaulting you verbally (or otherwise) with this stuff? Are you still afraid that they'll be sitting next to you in the potty? Because I live in one of the more "liberal" towns around, and I'm not hearing any of it.
Someone (I forget who) said that "feminism is the radical notion that women are people." That's all you really need to know about it.
Are there fewer female engineers because of rampant sexism or merely a lack of interest from the majority of females?
Or maybe some of the "lack of interest" is itself the product of "rampant sexism", just applied at an earlier age?
Don't get me wrong - I think that there probably are statistical differences between men and women in this regard (just as there are between individual men and individual women). Verbal aptititude tends to run the other way. There may even be a biological basis for it, but we know that it's not absolute and doesn't dictate destiny for individuals.
women are free to choose whatever occupation they like so why would we waste time trying to push them into something they don't want to do?
By definition, most people feel "free" to make choices from among the options that their culture presents to them (and encourages). That's what culture is and what it does. I'm talking about broadening options beyond the limits imposed by culture (or tradition, if you will).
Your argument reminds me of the debates in the 19th and early 20th centuries over whether resources should be "wasted" on the education of freed slaves in the US. Most of them worked for whites in fields, factories and kitchens, so what need or interest could they have for anything beyond a vocational education? Why then "waste" time and money teaching them science, philosophy, or literature?
if you study them and it comes out that men are better at something than women, why must it be that you are immediately misogynist?
Because accepting as law something that may only be true statistically - and even then for unknown reasons - makes individual accomplishment irrelevant. I've personally known women who were "good at math". I've even known white men who could jump. You may say that it's not misogyny or racism or whatever, but what other purpose is there when you limit a person's opportunities based on these "rules", ignoring their individual talents and abilities?
There'd be a lot less resistance to ads if advertisers respected their audience a little more and avoided the most intrusive and annoying practices (popups, animation, Flash, etc.). It's as if print magazines started to glue pages together to make it difficult to get to the actual content, forcing us to look longer at the ads. Eventually internet advertisers will learn that irritating prospective customers isn't the golden path to sales. Until then, there's Mozilla...
I'm not so sure that "objectivity" isn't oversold. It leads to the he-said/she-said stance that so much of the media limits itself to and relies on to avoid the costs and responsibilities of good investigative journalism. If Party A says the sun rises in the east and Party B says it rises in the west, the "objective" Press will merely say that the sunrise is "controversial" and leave it at that; sending a reporter out at dawn is too much like "bias".
Just about everything that's important about politics depends on the motivations and histories of the parties and interests involved; i.e., context. Events are meaningless without interpretation. It may be "objective" to leave that out, but doing so does no service to anyone trying to understand what's going on.
For walking and driving around sunglasses would be much more stable than the average headset.
You must live in - where? - Sandy Eggo?
What pathetic chumps we are as consumers. Now we've been been convinced that we need different MP3 devices for every time of day, for every kind of weather, for every mood...
True, but at 256MB you get polarized lenses; those could easily set you back $15 without the MP3 stuff. Agreed, however: the dork factor is pretty high here...
You may say only a few bits of Firefox are proprietary, but the number of bits is increasing all the time.
Would you care to expand on that? I can't find any mention in the license of any components that can't be redistributed, nor any claim or acknowledgement of proprietary rights. Maybe you're talking about plugins (e.g., Flash) or extensions that don't come from mozilla.org?
Also, Bush Jr. will use a Texas way of talking (both accent and phrases), which, to some people, make him sound like a dumb hillbilly.
I really don't think that's part of it, though. Lyndon Johnson was from Texas, and while many people didn't like him for a variety of reasons, no one impugned his intelligence. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both "talked southern", and ditto for them. Agree with them or not, none of those men sounded clueless or confused at press conferences (which, BTW, they did much more frequently than W).
Find a recording of Bush's last press conference, and listen to the whole thing. It's really quite stunning, especially on the questions about social security.
The man is certainly not an intellectual, but he IS a lot smarter than you give him credit for.
I used to suspect exactly that, until I listened to his last news conference; he was nearly - and surprisingly - incoherent. I've heard it suggested that this is all just an act designed to win votes from the common folk, but if so it's an awfully good one. OTOH, if he was the guy next door instead of the President, I wouldn't say he was an idiot, but neither would I say he was the brightest bulb on the block.
No argument about Quayle; he was awesome. But it's not surprising that the Republicans were grooming him for the post-Reagan presidency. Their whole model of leadership is different that that of the Democrats: Run a folksy, controllable figurehead as front-man, while the real power remains behind the veil.
Those aren't objections, they underscore the point. It's not about whether terrorism is "bad"; of course it is, and not unreasonably so. It's about how the property "bad" can then be extended to anything we wish, just by affixing the "terrorism" label to it.
Gates simply understands that while it may be hard to get people frothed over the evils of free open-source software - which sounds good - it's far easier if he can get us to equate it with "communism", which to most Americans is unquestionably bad and to be fought at all costs.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to be Warren Buffet to see the shithole that we're digging for ourselves here in the US. Our economy is being brought to its knees deliberately so that the neocons can use the crisis to take back the New Deal. The Bush tax cuts and the wars were supposed to generate big budget deficits, and they've succeeded. They've also stimulated consumption as intended, but I don't think that these geniuses considered how much of that would be spent overseas, pumping up the trade deficit. There are stormy seas ahead.
Y'all already have risen again. Lost the battle but won the war. Since southerners will only vote for other southerners in national elections, being southern (real or fake, like W's daddy) has been a requirement for the presidency for quite a long time now.
The way things are going, it's just a matter of time before y'all get your slaves back.
You knock the war, but actually it has been (and will continue to be) extremely profitable for many Americans, not all of whom have close ties with the current administration. Perhaps your comment is nothing more than war-profit envy?
Of course Warren Buffett is hedging against the dollar. He isn't doing it because of Social Security, he's watching his wealth shrink by the day as the dollar tumbles. The "50%" stake you cite isn't being put at risk as you imply, it's being protected from risk. That's what a "hedge" is. We're in a period of stunning and quite deliberate fiscal mismanagement - and an expensive, quixotic war and occupation on top of that - designed specifically to create a fiscal crisis and, as the neocons are fond of saying, "starve the beast" (intending, of course, to decide which beasts get starved). We are simultaneously running unprecedented fiscal and trade deficits. You complain about Americans "believing they can get something for nothing", but it is Bush and the Republicans that sold this idea to them. Let's all consume more now, borrow the difference, and let our children pay. And, oh yeah, we'll have a few wars and not pay for those, either. All of that cash that Bush gave back to us, to be funded through higher deficits and more borrowing, now floods the rest of the world to service our voracious appetite for foreign bling. We increasingly rely on foreign lenders to finance our ballooning deficits, but faced with a weak and declining dollar they will demand ever higher interest rates and we will have no choice but to accommodate them. High interest rates (think 70s levels) will suppress equities markets and - voila! - those private accounts will be funding paying off old deficits instead of fueling economic growth. What a shithole we're digging, and it's all by design, it's happening today, and as far as I know it's not even impeachable, because it doesn't involve any titillating sexual indiscretions.
Social Security is still running surpluses and of course has nothing to do with this (and won't for several decades to come). Demographics will put considerable stress on the system around mid-century, but that can be dealt with via measures that are far less radical than what we're being sold, which appears intended to precipitate the complete destruction of the system.
You can already do that. You do have an IRA or 401-K, right? We're just talking about a guaranteed floor here.
Funny, that's what I thought about being compelled to pay into a system that can't possibly sustain itself.
You're assuming something not in evidence here. If the system doesn't sustain itself, it'll be at the hands of people who wanted to destroy it all along (and won't hesitate to lie through their teeth to get it done).
You're not a conservative, you're a libertarian!
Well why don't you take your property and your liberty someplace that has no stable government or system of written laws - Sudan, maybe? - and see how well you (and the private army you're going to need) can hang onto it...
Don't assume that our economy can productively absorb a sudden surge in money available for investment, though. In the 90s we saw what happens when too much money chases too few good investment opportunities: equity prices get bid up irrationally from the demand side, and everyone thinks they're doing great until the bubble bursts, which it inevitable does. Woe unto you in this brave new world if it happens after you retire. But oh, excuse me: Only stupid people lose money in a crash.
This we know, because Our Lords the Republicans tell us so. Yet the numbers tell a different story. You are being swindled, pal. Wise up before it's too late.
What do you think makes property and investment even possible, you idiot? Property is a legal construct, and it comes from living under the stable rule of law. You can invest in relative security because there are layers upon layers of laws that govern securities transactions, punish fraud, and enable contracts to be enforced. Like most conservatives you take the benefits of civilization and government as your divine right, but believe that you owe nothing in return. You tell me how you're going to save for your lavish retirement without a stable government protecting your precious "property" as well as your sorry ass!
This is exactly how the neocons think, at least until it is their own interests or security that is threatened. From this it should be clear to everyone that their agenda is to eliminate Social Security, and not to "rescue" it, as Bush claims. Does anyone really believe that the Republicans are going to keep spending at a level necessary to meet current obligations, once the revenue rug has been pulled out from under the program? No, no, no: This is what the conservatives call "starve the beast"; i.e., bankrupt and then eliminate it as something we can no longer afford.
You should think a little more deeply about what you're saying. Showing that two groups differ significantly in a trait X or Y says nothing about "predisposition" or causation. It simply notes that there is probably a difference between two groups at one particular point in time, and it assumes that we know the meaning of what we're measuring (which may be complex or poorly defined) and that we're measuring it properly. Truth often (usually?) comes in shades of gray, and dealing with an issue superficially is a great way to draw erroneous conclusions.
What do you make of the "statistical truth" that there are few African American athletes playing hockey in the NHL? Two superficial (and probably wrong) conclusions you could draw are that (1) black people are not "genetically predisposed" to play hockey well, or (2) that NHL teams are so racist that they would refuse to hire black athletes even at the cost of losing games. But the "truth" is much more subtle than that, isn't it?
I for one am quite tired of it
Oh, puleeze! Did Rush Limbaugh get you all stirred up by pulling out a choice quote or two? Are any women you actually know assaulting you verbally (or otherwise) with this stuff? Are you still afraid that they'll be sitting next to you in the potty? Because I live in one of the more "liberal" towns around, and I'm not hearing any of it.
Someone (I forget who) said that "feminism is the radical notion that women are people." That's all you really need to know about it.
Or maybe some of the "lack of interest" is itself the product of "rampant sexism", just applied at an earlier age?
Don't get me wrong - I think that there probably are statistical differences between men and women in this regard (just as there are between individual men and individual women). Verbal aptititude tends to run the other way. There may even be a biological basis for it, but we know that it's not absolute and doesn't dictate destiny for individuals.
women are free to choose whatever occupation they like so why would we waste time trying to push them into something they don't want to do?
By definition, most people feel "free" to make choices from among the options that their culture presents to them (and encourages). That's what culture is and what it does. I'm talking about broadening options beyond the limits imposed by culture (or tradition, if you will).
Your argument reminds me of the debates in the 19th and early 20th centuries over whether resources should be "wasted" on the education of freed slaves in the US. Most of them worked for whites in fields, factories and kitchens, so what need or interest could they have for anything beyond a vocational education? Why then "waste" time and money teaching them science, philosophy, or literature?
Because accepting as law something that may only be true statistically - and even then for unknown reasons - makes individual accomplishment irrelevant. I've personally known women who were "good at math". I've even known white men who could jump. You may say that it's not misogyny or racism or whatever, but what other purpose is there when you limit a person's opportunities based on these "rules", ignoring their individual talents and abilities?
There'd be a lot less resistance to ads if advertisers respected their audience a little more and avoided the most intrusive and annoying practices (popups, animation, Flash, etc.). It's as if print magazines started to glue pages together to make it difficult to get to the actual content, forcing us to look longer at the ads. Eventually internet advertisers will learn that irritating prospective customers isn't the golden path to sales. Until then, there's Mozilla...
I'm not so sure that "objectivity" isn't oversold. It leads to the he-said/she-said stance that so much of the media limits itself to and relies on to avoid the costs and responsibilities of good investigative journalism. If Party A says the sun rises in the east and Party B says it rises in the west, the "objective" Press will merely say that the sunrise is "controversial" and leave it at that; sending a reporter out at dawn is too much like "bias".
Just about everything that's important about politics depends on the motivations and histories of the parties and interests involved; i.e., context. Events are meaningless without interpretation. It may be "objective" to leave that out, but doing so does no service to anyone trying to understand what's going on.
You must live in - where? - Sandy Eggo?
What pathetic chumps we are as consumers. Now we've been been convinced that we need different MP3 devices for every time of day, for every kind of weather, for every mood...
True, but at 256MB you get polarized lenses; those could easily set you back $15 without the MP3 stuff. Agreed, however: the dork factor is pretty high here...
Would you care to expand on that? I can't find any mention in the license of any components that can't be redistributed, nor any claim or acknowledgement of proprietary rights. Maybe you're talking about plugins (e.g., Flash) or extensions that don't come from mozilla.org?
How's that? Firefox 1.0 sources are available here .
Been there. Here's a prognostication: You'll always be too busy downloading and burning to actually use any of it...
I really don't think that's part of it, though. Lyndon Johnson was from Texas, and while many people didn't like him for a variety of reasons, no one impugned his intelligence. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both "talked southern", and ditto for them. Agree with them or not, none of those men sounded clueless or confused at press conferences (which, BTW, they did much more frequently than W).
Find a recording of Bush's last press conference, and listen to the whole thing. It's really quite stunning, especially on the questions about social security.
I used to suspect exactly that, until I listened to his last news conference; he was nearly - and surprisingly - incoherent. I've heard it suggested that this is all just an act designed to win votes from the common folk, but if so it's an awfully good one. OTOH, if he was the guy next door instead of the President, I wouldn't say he was an idiot, but neither would I say he was the brightest bulb on the block.
No argument about Quayle; he was awesome. But it's not surprising that the Republicans were grooming him for the post-Reagan presidency. Their whole model of leadership is different that that of the Democrats: Run a folksy, controllable figurehead as front-man, while the real power remains behind the veil.
Gates simply understands that while it may be hard to get people frothed over the evils of free open-source software - which sounds good - it's far easier if he can get us to equate it with "communism", which to most Americans is unquestionably bad and to be fought at all costs.
Isn't there a pill we could take for this?