Braineack

iTrader: (62)

i see what you did there.

yes, I would. As much as gov't shouldn't take from the rich and give to the poor, it's reprehenisble that the Gov't should take from the poor and give to the rich.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

my taco bells are ringing.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wo...ma-at-the-bmj/

Holy ****. This blind-sided me. I mean, completely and totally blind-sided me.

Scrappy? Any thoughts on this? If this is even half-true, holy ****.

cordycord

iTrader: (2)

I'm for closing loopholes--oil, farm subsidies, Solyndra, etceteras. BUT, that's how government officials really get paid. "The system" would collapse. Cats would be sleeping with dogs. Fish would be riding bicycles.

You don't want your state and federal officials to simply retire on the benefits that they get but aren't afforded to the rest of us, do you?

I think that we should rely on government to be the "job creators", because they are SOOOO efficient.

Washington Examiner

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

Romney picks Ryan as vice presidential running mate: source | Reuters

What the ****.

Well, Romney's officially McCain all over again it's looking like. What the **** - why in the world would he pick a running mate that only appeals to the base that is going to vote for him anyways, and push away everyone that is moderate-to-centrist?

Ryan? I mean, Ryan? I hope all of the news sources quoting the GOP party are wrong, 'cause if Romney really did pick Ryan, he's just handed Obama a win. It's ******* Palin all over again.

David Frum on it...(A well-respected conservative!)

cordycord

iTrader: (2)

There are those who say modern society is too complicated for the average man or woman to deal with. This is a long-standing argument, but we heard it more frequently after the mortgage credit collapse and financial meltdown in 2008. They say we need more experts and technocrats making more of our economic decisions for us. And they argue for less “political interference” with the enlightened bureaucrats … by which they mean less objection by the people to the overregulation of society.

If we choose to have a federal government that tries to solve every problem, then as long as society keeps growing more complex, government must keep on growing right along with it. The rule of law by the people must be reduced and the arbitrary discretion of experts expanded. . .

"If the average American can’t handle complexity in his or her own life, and only government experts can … then government must direct the average American about how to live his or her life. Freedom becomes a diminishing good.
But there’s a major flaw in this “progressive’” argument, and it’s this. It assumes there must be someone or some few who do have all the knowledge and information. We just have to find, train, and hire them to run the government’s agencies.

Friedrich Hayek called this collectivism’s “fatal conceit.” The idea that a few bureaucrats know what’s best for all of society, or possess more information about human wants and needs than millions of free individuals interacting in a free market is both false and arrogant. It has guided collectivists for two centuries down the road to serfdom — and the road is littered with their wrecked utopias. The plan always fails!"

Paul Ryan

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

FRED Graph - FRED - St. Louis Fed

Sorry bro, Ryan's a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

This is a poor argument, at best. Ryan no more has singular control over the employment of Wisconsin than Obama does over the USA. If anything, Ryan has significantly less influence as he is not the chief executive of the state.

Also, I will PayPal you $20 if you can go two months without posting "bro" or any derivative or other adolescent pronoun in this subforum.

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

Wait, are you trying to call out all the people in this thread insisting it's Obama's fault our economy is only slowly recovering? (Or, in their words, how Obama is destroying the economy?)

Very well then, Scrappy. Challenge Accepted and date noted.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

The President (regardless of who it is) often gets too much credit or too much blame for the general economy of the USA but he has far more influence over it than one of the 8 House of Representatives of Wisconsin has over that state's economy.

Unless you also think Sam Johnson is largely responsible for the state of the Texas economy...


I'll address my thoughts on Paul as a VP in another post.


Oh, it's been brought-en.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

tl;dnr: Paul Ryan moves the Romney ticket further right, adds almost nothing to his appeal to center-right independents

Adding Paul Ryan as his VP makes me like Romney as president less. Any hardcore
conservative was probably going to vote for whatever Republican was on the ticket as an anti-Obama vote anyway even if they didn't like or love Romney. Romney, while having a smaller war chest than Obama, has been doing very well in terms of fundraising. Adding Ryan to the ticket might add to Romney's "conservative" credentials, but it also might paint Ryan in to hardening his policy positions even more to show he hasn't "sold out" to the moderates.

That effectively moves the Romney-Ryan ticket farther to the right. Ryan is charismatic and very telegenic but he should make an easy target for the type of disingenuous attack ads popular with both sides during elections. That is, taking sound bites or quotes out of context or presenting true facts with a misleading conclusion (e.g. the recent “Mitt Romney and Bain Capital killed my wife” ad).

I generally see Ryan doing very little to attract the independents likely necessary to win the presidency but possibly turning off the vast swath of center-right independent voters that are not tuned in to politics on a deep level. A good example is my wife, who is a registered Republican and a successful and very intelligent professional. When the news of Ryan’s selection came on the news this morning, her response to me was, “Would I know who Paul Ryan is?” My answer: “Nope.”

Her impressions of him will likely be driven by news stories and TV ads. She will at least have the benefit of having someone like me around to refute or affirm most of those claims based on my deeper (but still imperfect) knowledge of facts involved.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

I'm not terribly excited about Paul Ryan, either, mostly for the same reasons. He talks a big game on budgets, but his voting record sucks. Conservatives may not have loved Romney, but they would have voted against Obama regardless. Ryan has no added value for the GOP ticket.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

I would add to the end of that last sentence, "derived from my willingness to look for those facts." I spend (waste?) more of my time fact-checking and source citing regarding politics than she ever would.

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

Mg, this is the thing that aggravates so much about you. With the exception of when you try to force an argument, your analysis is typically fairly good. It's just when you try to force an argument of something that isn't there that it drives me nuts, and trying to engage you in a debate frequently results in this. This post is a good example, you are spot on with what you have posted- but if I or other people try to draw further discussion from you on this point, past experience dictates that it will quickly go from a discussion to something else entirely, with anything that the other party tried to say being heavily distorted.

I already know that this will be somewhat irritating for me. Half the reason I post like a teenage twit on politics sometimes is because it makes me laugh. The rest is it acts as a nice stress relief, and I do not have to worry about coming off unprofessionally on the politics section of a freaking car forum. I deal with too much crap in The Real World which if I gave even the slightest hint of acting unprofessionally, I'd see severe repercussions.

Want some lulz, Scrappy?

Mitt Romney’s constitutional amendment would bar Paul Ryan from the presidency

No, really. This sums up both Romney and the entire Republican party at this point.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Don't give me too much credit, I was copying answers from Scrappy's post.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

This page needs more pictures:

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

You are welcome, Scrappy.

viperormiata

iTrader: (24)

Is this right? Can they take away children because of their names?

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

There is a long and nasty history of domestic violence, parental mental issues, child abuse/neglect, and some other crap that has a gag order over it with them Viper. That's just what I've gleaned from doing a quick search involving previous court cases/police reports/etc. involving them, of course, and I'm not even *trying* to claim it's just limited to that.

It has nothing to do with their names, and any news agency that says it does are, frankly, lying and are trying to sensationalize the story for ratings. As one example as to what caused the judge to rule that way, in the past the wife had to slip a note to a neighbor saying her husband was going to kill her and she needed the police called.

This story is also a few months old bro, the only real questions left at this point is just what the judge ordered a gag order on.