libertron's Comments (218)

“It's a bit more complex than SUVs and capitalism, but you're about right.”

“The climate watchers worldwide point to the melting glaciers at North and South Poles, the
pervading drouth in Africa, and Alaskan Villages and Pacific Islands succumbing to the
rising oceans.”

“Your poor grammar is eliciting a Pavlovian response from me: ugh.”

“Aren't those pics of the blizzards insane? I've seen pictures of the train go through in the 1800's and the snow was higher than the train.”

“That's right! How'd you guess?”

“The kind built by the GOP. Any more questions?”

“No, he won't. Just the opposite, in fact.”

“The American Middle Class is on the way out. Good paying jobs created the Middle Class not Tax Cuts and easy credit. I think Ed is striking the right tone for the coming decade or so.”

“This is pretty much par for the course in our culture. People will hear something on Oprah and then read "Earth in the Balance" by Rev. Al Gore of the Great Green Religion, and get all "concerned" and when "critical mass" (read marketability and profitability of the "crisis") is reached, then a "Union of Concerned Scientists" will pop up with government funding or founded by one or other of the great foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Carneige) and will serve as an ad hoc body to confirm that the scientific consensus is that everybody else (scientist or otherwise) who disagrees is in the pocket of some other (usually malign) competing interest and brand all dissenters (again, scientific or otherwise) with perjoratives like "denier". The timetables for catastrophe will consistently be pushed back as, it will be claimed, government actions have led to significant improvements, but it will never be enough, until a more effective (and lucrative) crisis can be hijacked and managed by the powers that be.
This is a pattern: Climate Crisis, Energy Crisis, Ozone Crisis, etc. ad infinitum. The oligarchs manage the manageable population via the constant fear of "crisis".

"Mr President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!"

General Buck Turgidson, speaking on the great mine shaft crisis of 1963”

“Forgiven.

It would not be against international law for commercial ships prey to pirates to just carry guns and shoot those criminals.

However, it is currently uneconomic for commercial ships to do so.

You have to remember, under international law commercial ships carry flags of convenience, and if they shoot anybody at all they will not only have to justify the death under international law but they will also have to justify it under the domestic law of the flag they fly.

While there are quite strong flags that fly against piracy, commercial ships tend not to fly these flags, for the economic reasons that such flags impose regulations and standards that are uneconomic. For the same reason, it is uneconomic to arm commercial ships, given the relative peace provided by the strong provision for piracy in international law.

In historic terms, the piracy going on right now is minor, and relatively civilized, due to the influence of international law.

It's funny you bring up piracy, which in international law is one of the oldest of crimes.

Murder is still a crime even if your local police never solves even one.”

“"Those reports were ignored because of political correctness, where you couldn't accuse an arab of being a terrorist unless you ripped a bomb vest of of him."

Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. The FBI has harrassed blacks, whites, latinos, arabs, and all other ethnic groups with impunity and doesn't really care about being "politically correct".”

“This is the kind of reply that I would expect to come from someone with a mind-set that has never cared to really, really look into the lives of others on the same planet, but simply imposes his own experience, perspective and values upon them and expects this to work in their world and their reality. Maybe this could be cured with more travel to far away places and getting to know more ordinary people who struggle to survive in a world very different from our own USA.”

“those poor workers have no opportunities in their home countries and have families to support. the are desperate.

the ppl who scam them are totally exploiting them with lies. the poor guys and women don't know any better.”

“That fits my experience too.

Anybody counter?”

“"When the author talks about "spending down the debt" she means printing money to induce extra inflation to deflate the real value of our national debt."

Nope. She means borrowing to stimulate the economy, which will increase tax revenue.

We *can't* inflate away the debt. A lot of it is in short-term t-bills. The short-term debt is always turning over: we pay off one t-bill by selling another. If we start printing more money than growth and stimulus can justify, the interest on the new debt will include not only a premium for the expected inflation but also a risk premium for the possibility of more inflation later. Having the debt structured that way is part of why we can get such low interest rates.”

“Inflation benefits people like me who are employed and have mortgages.”

“"
That abnormally drove up prices came from the government forcing lending institutions to give loans to "disadvantaged people" who both couldn't pay back the loans and also drove down the value of the places where they live.
"
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You are wrong in so many ways.

The (R)s push that narrative of the government forcing banks to give to the 'disadvantaged' or in other words - blacks and other minorities ( that's exactly what you meant when you stated THEY drove down the prices in the places they live).

Mortgage loans were being leveraged to obtain other funds at several times their face value by institutions that had both banking responsibilities and powers of investment. A $100,000 sub-prime loans could be leveraged into a $1,000,000 in borrowed money.. No one has to be forced into that deal

The government-influenced loans (CRA) were NOT the toxic loans you were hearing about. 80% of those non-CRA subprime mortgages expired in 30 months; they perpetually had to be refinanced. 75%+ of subprime mortgages had a prepayment penalty.

When the economy had peaked and started to sour those non-CRA became toxic because the financial institutions stopped or slowed refinancing and the prepayment penalties added onto these loans was cost prohibitive.

to learn more:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/06/30/why-cra-loans-werent-toxic-subprime-loans/”

“Ah, Fargo. The State motto of N Dakota... "Forty Below Helps Keep Out the Riffraff."”

“Yes, there were people who lived beyond their means and you are wise not to live beyond yours. But don't for a minute think that there weren't some very greedy people taking advantage and gaming the system they bought legislation to game.”

“The government didn't force the banks to lend money to anyone. The CRA was about requiring banks not to "redline." Redlining is the practice of denying loans or giving sub-prime loans to people who QUALIFY for prime loans but who live in the "wrong" neighborhoods. Those who told you otherwise are lying to you. I'll eat my words if you can show me any language in any legislation that forces banks to make bad loans. Banks don't do what they don't have to do. They buy politicians by the dozen and write their own rules.

Since you probably won't get it anywhere you get your news, let me give you a brief explanation:

Wall Street was buying any and every mortgage they could get their hands on. Mortgage brokers were lending to anyone with a pulse and selling the mortgages to Wall Street. Wall Street then took all those mortgages, put them in a big pot stirred them up and sold ladles-full of the brew which had prime, sub-prime and worse-than-sub-prime mortgages in it. They sold them as what they call "derivatives" - Credit Default Swaps and Collateralized Debt Obligations. And they were leveraging at 3000%. Then they insured the whole mess with insurance companies like AIG and hoped Uncle Sam would pick up the tab when everything blew up.”

“Well, whoopee for you. Have you checked out the stuff Palin pulled in office?

She has not done anything that suggests she has common sense - or sense of any kind.

Don't accept that she has common sense just because she tells you she has. Look at what she's done and ask yourself if there's any evidence.”

“Good that you were lucky enough to be able to buy and fix up a cheap house.. But Palin didn't help you to do that, so just the fact that you two use the same phrase doesn't mean anything in particular about how our government should be run, or who should run it. That's just common sense too.”

“The bubble had already burst by 2008. Had you purchased your first house between 2003 and 2006, then you would have been right in the thick of the bubble and they would have offered you an interest only no doc loan with payments of less than $500 per month. You would have certainly considered the offer if not taken it.

By 2008 there were no more quicky loans being offered and that is why you were spared the horror that others found themselves in.

Common sense did not save you, the timing on your home purchase saved you.”

“The bubble had already burst by 2008. Had you purchased your first house between 2003 and 2006, then you would have been right in the thick of the bubble and they would have offered you an interest only no doc loan with payments of $489.00 per month. You would have jumped at it.

So before you go thinking that you used your common sense, just know that the bank did not protect you from anything. The game was already over and there were no more quicky loans out there.

Common sense did not save you, the calendar saved you.”

“The bubble had already burst by 2008. Had you purchased your first house between 2003 and 2006, then you would have been right in the thick of the bubble and they would have offered you an interest only no doc loan with payments of $489.00 per month. You would have jumped at it.

So before you go thinking that you used your common sense, just know that the bank did not protect you from anything. The game was already over and there were no more quicky loans out there.

Common sense did not save you, the calendar saved you.”

“That's nice....

But things are different in heavily populated Big City Metro Areas.... place where multitudes of people actually want to live.

Places with no housing bubble had no high demand for housing either.”

“"conservative voice of reason"

That's one helluvan oxymoron. Using it to describe Krauthammer makes it all the more ridiculous.

Krauthammer and his ilk never admitted they were wrong to not only cheerlead, but catapult the propaganda (LOL, I still find that hilarious) before invading Iraq and during the occupation. They never admitted they were wrong to connect 9--11 and Saddam Hussein. They were wrong about everything, still are.”

“The reason why none of the religions in this country haven't stoned anyone to death, is that there is a check on religion, thank god (pun intended). Otherwise you could count on it. And yet we still have our criminal behavior cloaked in the name or religion. For example the "Yearning for Zion" ranch leader who was recently convicted for sexual assault of an underage girl.”

“"end freedom as we know it" seems to be a constant mantra of the libertarian sect, but just what does that mean? It's seems that over the centuiries we've essentially had lebertarian social development with little pulses like Magna Carta, the Declarartion of Independence, etc thrown into the mix to remind the powerful elite that there are more people in a society than just them. To me libertarianism is only a minor step away from those "good old days" .

The facts of life are that "all men are created equal" is not biologically tenable, and history shows that it is not a societlal certainty, either. It is a credo that a society has to work on. And the end result is taxes that redistribute wealth, create institutions that benefit all, and sometimes attempts to influence bad behavior (i.e., behavior that adds unwarranted costs to society and should be avoided). The problem with taxation in the AGW "arena" is that we see no definition of how that money is to be applied to "problem". It is just a stick that punishes, not the corporations that are involved in the "arena", but the people who use the goods and services provided. Wouldn't it be more honest to directly burden each memeber of society, each end user, a tax, and ensure that those revenues are directly applied to remedying "the problem"?”

“I can well imagine that anyone with a conscience would have trouble sleeping at night, if they thought that, either they, or the organization they represent, was responsible for so much death and misery through negligence and incompetence.
I would like to imagine an organization now "thinking" about and "regretting" those failures, might be doing everything possible to make sure that, at the very least, the same city and people wouldn't be victimized by negligence and incompetence again.
Why, then, did the Army Corps Of Engineers lobby to successfully defeat a bill recently, that funded a study on how to construct superior flood protections in NO?
Why is Obama, the Corps' Commander in Chief, still calling the flood wall collapses a "natural disaster?"
Why have they changed their commitment from flood protection, to the less specific, and insecurity inducing, risk reduction?
The reason is, they're continuing on the course of rebuilding these levees to pre-Katrina standards that have already proven inadequate. Standards they themselves label "technically not superior." Would you buy a condom with that written on the label? Not if you wanted to avoid any unnecessary "regret" in the future.
Regrets are meaningless without a commitment to correct what lead to the regret in the first place. CRIMINAL! will be the word plastered on every headline in the future, should these levees be allowed to fail again.”

“This is lovely to hear that some at the USACE 'think and regret' their failure in New Orleans. But I promise you that Maj Gen Don Reily (USACE) in January 2008 stood in front of us, New Orleanians and said it was the local New Orleanians who were to blame for the levee failures.

Imagine losing everything you ever had, and hearing the organization responsible tell you it's your fault?

No one at the Corps has been fired, no one has been reprimanded, and nothing has changed since the USACE saw a spectacular failure of one of its most expensive systems.”

“I agree with you except many people get a degree in college that they should know is not going to give them a saleable skill - history, English, political science, psychology, etc. For a while, jobs just wanted you to have a degree. Now they want you to have a skill. Speaking English is not that unique a skill. Over the next decade we will see a walk away from "liberal arts" degrees in favor of something that an employer can make money off of. And even technical fields may not be much protection. Accounting majors, your jobs can easily be sent overseas via the internet. Remember, a 3 is a 3 all over the world; it doesn't have a language.”

“I agree that this is what we have. We only have to look at the government contracts and how they are given out and it is blatantly apparent. We are passed the stage where it is either a government solution or a business solution. That ping pong ball can't be played anymore. It is time we grow up, as painful a this will be, and find a solution that works for the people. The easy answers that we see from most of the people on this website come from people who are looking for easy answers from the supposed right or the left. It is time to go through the painful process of facing the reality that you articulated. The answers will be something different from what were the easy answers of yesterday.”

“Wow, sounds like a swell place to spend an afternoon.”

“Thomas sexually harassed her in a degrading fashion. There is a great deal of difference. Letterman's "victims" were willing accomplices and he is a comedian; not running for supreme court justice.”

“That's right, use this wonderful article to point the finger and keep fanning the flames. Good job.”

“Clarence Thomas using his role as Anita Hill's boss was totally out of line in the content and intentions of his behavior toward her. Any time a boss is involved with a subordinate there is an imbalance of power in the relationship, and at times, a coercive element as well. Yes...it happens all the time and sometimes things work out perfectly, but that doesn't make it right.

Being pleasant toward someone you supervise is one thing. There is a line that should not be crossed and, frankly most of us have seen unfortunate results of such actions in retaliatory behaviors when things don't work out.”