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Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462429)

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources...EGYPT-PROTESTS

We haven't noticed what's happening in Egypt, presumably because they've left the Israeli Embassy alone for the moment.

no. because it's exactly what i predicted would happen. tell obama to leave the troops nearby.

Continuing my ADD review of the news.

Is it fair to say that the difference between MF Global and a rogue trader is that MG Global is a whole firm and a rogue trader is just one guy?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 462431)

no. because it's exactly what i predicted would happen. tell obama to leave the troops nearby.

What did you predict, and what will happen next?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462433)

What did you predict, and what will happen next?

islamic republic. Israel expelled. or military crack down with NATO having the choice to go help establish the islamic republic.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 462435)

islamic republic. Israel expelled. or military crack down with NATO having the choice to go help establish the islamic republic.

I'm ready to credit this to W's invasion of Iraq now.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LessinSF (Post 462443)

Megyn Kelly Quickmeme - http://www.quickmeme.com/Megyn-Kelly...ar/1/?upcoming

IRL, she's a pretty cool chick. Most people at her level would be douchebags. Pretty nice. And stupid hot. The rare sort who looks better in person than made up for TV.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462429)

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources...EGYPT-PROTESTS

We haven't noticed what's happening in Egypt, presumably because they've left the Israeli Embassy alone for the moment.

We noticed. We just don't want to use "Told you so" too early. Personally, I want to wait until Libya turns into a disaster to use the phrase.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 462445)

We noticed. We just don't want to use "Told you so" too early. Personally, I want to wait until Libya turns into a disaster to use the phrase.

Told me so about what?

I continue to believe that there's not much we can do to shape events in the region, and that most of what we can do would make things worse.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462446)

Told me so about what?

I continue to believe that there's not much we can do to shape events in the region, and that most of what we can do would make things worse.

The biggest things we can do is trade more, teach more arabic, and translate things into arabic from western languages. Outside of those things, virtually everything we have done has made things worse.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 462448)

And we can try to align ourselves with (small-d) democrats and the eventual winners. What we did in Libya helped for that reason.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462449)

What we did in Libya helped for that reason.

and this is a prediction that the new Libyan gov won't be fucked: a very brave (and seemingly ill-informed) prediction given what we've seen so far.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 462470)

and this is a prediction that the new Libyan gov won't be fucked: a very brave (and seemingly ill-informed) prediction given what we've seen so far.

Because the old one wasn't fucked?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 462472)

Because the old one wasn't fucked?

I'm not going to suggest that we did a hell of a lot of good or bad in Libya; we did less of either in Egypt, and less still in Tunisia. Why aren't people focused more on the elections in Tunisia and Morocco?

I'm going out on a limb, and what I think will be emerging over the next five years is a more moderate branch of Islamicism that will be in conflict with some of the older more radical Islamicism. I think Iran will stay radical, and worry about Saudia Arabia, Iraq, and Syria all moving toward the radical. I suspect Egypt and the Magreb will be embracing something that looks different if anyone in the US bothers to look closely enough to make the distinction.

I wouldn't give us or Europe a lot of credit or blame for it either way, unlike radical Islam, where we took a strong but misguided hand to the rudder, and US policy under both administrations over the 30 years after WWII can take a lot of credit for encouraging its emergence.

Hank, see what your daughter thinks on that. I believe she's actually studied the area?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 462474)

Sounds about right to me.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Bill Bratton is going to head the UC Davis inquiry?

I cannot think of a worse choice.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 462481)

Bill Bratton is going to head the UC Davis inquiry?

I cannot think of a worse choice.

Ging Newtgrich?

Whats the scariest thing to find your HS senior has been looking up on your iPhone?

Sixth circuit jurists. Fuck sex ed, they shouldn't allow prelaw classes in HS.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462489)

Ging Newtgrich?

Has Newt been advocating using weapons in crowds again? Maybe.

But really, aren't many of Bratton's theories part of what is on trial - the use of immediate punishment as crowd control, the applicability of urban policing theories to college campuses, the extension of non-lethal force from battons to tasers and pepper spray and rubber bullets (which he'd give virtually every cop if he could)? I think he'd advocate whips and firehoses, too, which generally are less lethal and damaging than some of his other techniques, but messy and have a bad reputation.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 462481)

Bill Bratton is going to head the UC Davis inquiry?

I cannot think of a worse choice.

Louis Freeh is occupied with Penn State.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462489)

Ging Newtgrich?

Dr. Seuss could work with that.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

We are not Greece.

Quote:

I’ve been saying the following to friends and colleagues for months now: In all my many years as a business and economics reporter, I have never seen a greater cognitive dissonance than in the current coverage of the U.S. bond market. Even Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf would have by now taken early retirement had their warnings proved as lame as those of the MSEM (mainstream economic media).

“S&P Downgrades!” “Bond Vigilantes Poised to Strike!” “America is Greece!” One-liners meant to catch the eye, freeze the heart. But flat-out irresponsible.

…

And, checking with NYU’s celebrated economic historian Richard Sylla, we find that today’s rates are astonishingly close to the lowest in the entire history of the United States: 1.85 percent, the nadir reached in late 1941. That was the record, I should say — until September 22, when the 10-year U.S. interest rate plunged briefly to 1.695 percent.

So what’s going on? Well, rather obviously, investors are a lot more worried about the credit of Greece — or Spain or Italy — than ours. Investors are also more worried about stock investments. Investors are also more worried about almost any other asset into which they might put their money.

Investors also seem pretty sure that U.S. inflation is not going to be a problem anytime soon. If inflation scared them, they’d hardly let the United States lock in an interest rate of less than 2 percent for an entire decade.

So then why isn’t it plausible to draw the following conclusion: that U.S. interest rates have been going in the “wrong” direction because investors are scared that the U.S. is going to reduce its debt and deficits, and such a reduction might horse-collar the world economy?

Paul Solman

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462517)

We are not Greece.

You may want to tell the NYPD that.

Ezra Klein:

Quote:

In August, Republicans scored what they thought was a big win by persuading Democrats to accept a trigger that consisted only of spending cuts. The price they paid was 1) concentrating the cuts on the Pentagon while exempting Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, and 2) delaying the cuts until January 1, 2013. That was, they figured, a win, as it eschewed taxes. Grover Norquist's pledge remained unbroken.

But 12 years earlier, George W. Bush had set a trigger of his own. In order to pass his tax cuts using the 51-vote budget reconciliation process, he had agreed to let them sunset in 2010. A last-minute deal extended them until the end of 2012.

So now there are two triggers. One is an extremely progressive spending trigger worth $1.2 trillion that goes off on January 1, 2013. The other is an extremely progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off on...January 1, 2013. If you count reduced interest payments, the two policies alone would reduce future deficits by about $6 trillion. That's far more than anything the supercommittee came close to discussing. It's distributed far more progressively than anything the Democrats have even considered proposing. And all that needs to happen for it to pass is, well, nothing.

Republicans can't stop these triggers on their own. They need Senate Democrats and President Obama to join them in passing an alternative, or they need House and Senate Democrats to join them in overturning President Obama's veto of their alternative. So the only way for Republicans to avoid this dual-trigger nightmare is to somehow convince Democrats to bail them out. And for that, they have two points of leverage.

The first is political: Democrats don't want to raise $3.8 trillions in taxes, much of which will fall on middle-class households. Already, Democrats have said that their preference is to make the the Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000 permanent. That means making 80 percent of them permanent.

The second is that this particular deficit-reduction plan could be devastating for the economy. Rather than phasing in slowly over the course of the next decade, it would all hit at once. If the economy was stronger, that might be fine. But in a recovery this weak, it could lead to another contraction.

So the GOP is not without options. But the Democrats are in the driver's seat. Gridlock means a deficit deal that they could never have imagined getting any other way. Basic negotiating theory would suggest that whatever the Republicans offer them must somehow be better even than that. And yet, that's not how either party is acting. Republicans don't seem particularly worried about the triggers and Democrats don't seem particularly interested in pressing their advantage. At least for now.

Talk to the White House, and you'll hear that they fiercely oppose permitting the Bush tax cuts to expire, and that they would prefer to see the spending trigger replaced with a bigger, more thoughtful deficit-reduction plan. But then, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Letting the Bush tax cuts expires is not a popular policy. Nor do crowds cheer for automatic sequestration. If they happen due to Republican obstruction, that's one thing. If they happen because Democrats don't want to make an alternative deal, that's quite another.

So I take the White House at their word when they say they want to extend most of the Bush tax cuts. But it's hard not to wonder. Their economic-policy team can run the numbers as well as anyone else can. They know the revenue levels they're talking about are completely insufficient to deal with the retirement of the Baby Boomers. And if they try their hardest to come to a deal with the Republicans, but it, like so many other deals over the last year, falls apart at the last minute because the GOP won't break their tax pledge and let the upper-income cuts expire, do they really think that would be a bad outcome? Or is it a better one than they could have imagined?

Congressional Democrats can surely be counted on to fuck this up, not least because while this may be the policy they want, they also want to win the approval of folk with a lot of money by being one of the few Democrats to vote against it.

Re: dual triggers

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462524)

Ezra Klein:

Congressional Democrats can surely be counted on to fuck this up, not least because while this may be the policy they want, they also want to win the approval of folk with a lot of money by being one of the few Democrats to vote against it.

This sounds awesome to me.

Re: dual triggers

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462524)

The flaw in this analysis is that there is an election before both triggers go into effect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462564)

Thanks to the European Central Bank, Newt Gingrich is going to be our next President.

We're getting closer to primary season, and I think the winner of the R primary will be one or two surges after Newt.

So, is the next surge Paul, Bachmann, or Santorum, or are we going to do a reprise of Cain or Perry?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 462444)

IRL, she's a pretty cool chick. Most people at her level would be douchebags. Pretty nice. And stupid hot. The rare sort who looks better in person than made up for TV.

Then she should take the pledge.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LessinSF (Post 462583)

Then she should take the pledge.

I know Taser's aren't like food products, but, boy, I am so glad the police have "tools" like them!

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

at what point does the leader of pakistan become enough of an enemy that obama feels free to order a Predator murder?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 462600)

at what point does the leader of pakistan become enough of an enemy that obama feels free to order a Predator murder?

They bombed us killing 24 soldiers?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 462600)

at what point does the leader of pakistan become enough of an enemy that obama feels free to order a Predator murder?

Related to how the US is arguably the largest war criminal ever, this article is interesting re US nuking Japan is not what made them surrender.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LessinSF (Post 462602)

Related to how the US is arguably the largest war criminal ever, this article is interesting re US nuking Japan is not what made them surrender.

didn't you find out you were European? European cro-magnons basically wiped Neanderthals out, systematic genocide. I'm sure you feel bad, but that hardly helps the Neanderthals. The only thing to do now is to find the dumbest people you can and give them everything you have to help them move forward.

Why isn't Frank running for re-election?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 462625)

Why isn't Frank running for re-election?

With redistricting, he got a bunch of new constituents, making it more work. And he's 71, and has been in Congress for 31 years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 462629)

With redistricting, he got a bunch of new constituents, making it more work. And he's 71, and has been in Congress for 31 years.

That makes sense, I guess. He will be missed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 462625)

Why isn't Frank running for re-election?

You're going to hear 25 different reasons but don't believe any of them. The real reason, I believe (having had a bit of interaction with him recently), is that he plans to have more fun and be even more curmudgeonly. Expect some outrageousnous from Barney, and don't be surprised if he finds a high profile perch from which to spew Barneyisms at the world. When Barney goes, ain't no one going to forget Barney.

As to his district, meh. He would have won, but he'd much rather piss people off than stroke them, and stroking is what campaigns are all about. Barney is my favorite over-the-top asshole in all of DC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 462630)

That makes sense, I guess. He will be missed.

by who?