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King Dopplepopolos posted:That was the Investor's Business Daily. The WSJ is almost as bad, though. Oh, you're right. I hate it when I misattribute quotes like that. Has the WSJ had any bad articles of that caliber?
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# ? Sep 3, 2012 02:58 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 20:31 |
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Another wonderful letter from the Cumberland Times-News. This guy does not have the best grasp on how hypothetical some things are. Oh and he's pretty much an idiot too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To the Editor: Cumberland Times-News Extremist left-wingers like to talk about hypotheticals. The earth will melt, the poor starve, or blacks hung from trees. So today I’d like to write about facts and choices and your birthright as an American. FDR foisted Social Security onto a people frightened by the Great Depression. Today that program is bankrupt; all that it stands upon are notes obligating the taxpayers to pay for it. But did anyone ask you if you wanted to participate? Were you given a choice? The Supreme Court, one ten-thousandth percent of the American Republic’s population said no, you don’t have a choice, some freedom and liberty huh? Prior to that, in 1913 the states foolishly ratified the amendment that created the income tax. It was wholly immoral and once again, do you have a choice about that? The power to tax, the creation of a central bank, did you have a choice about those things? Authoritarian leftists and their counterparts in the Republican Party like to say: no man is an island, what about the services you enjoy? Well, because we have no choice, how can anyone answer that? I think that we’d have police, fire and the military because those things existed before income taxes and central banking. Now we have Obamacare. Were you asked about that? Do you have a choice? No civilization on earth has ever been in debt as we are now. No one knows what will happen. If you worry about your future and if you will have money or a job or a place to live, I wonder then how many times you wished you could opt out. America used to be about those choices. Now you can read here the writings of small-minded, hate-filled people, the antithesis of freedom-loving people. Their common theme is that you should have no choice. Why, if you make money, maybe you should have to have a gold dollar sign stitched onto your clothing. It’s time for choices again. The Martin O’Malleys, and Barack Obamas only have power while you choose to give it to them. It is time to make choices and exercise your freedom again, time to deal with America’s real enemies and take back your birthright of freedom. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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# ? Sep 3, 2012 05:54 |
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I always find it hilarious when people think there's no more social security money around.
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# ? Sep 3, 2012 05:56 |
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Limbo posted:Another wonderful letter from the Cumberland Times-News. This guy does not have the best grasp on how hypothetical some things are. Oh and he's pretty much an idiot too. What the gently caress is this poo poo about not having choices? Just because this guy personally didn't vote for Social Security, the 16th Amendment, the PPACA, etc. doesn't mean that American citizens didn't choose them. The 16th Amendment is an especially egregious example because of how the amendment ratification process actually works. This guy doesn't really seem to understand that the country doesn't work by revoting for or reenacting every law, constitutional amendment, etc. every single year. We'd never get anything done if everything the public already approved of had to be agreed to again every year in perpetuity. We also don't live in a direct democracy where every bill and act of Congress is voted upon by the citizenry, but that doesn't mean the public didn't choose those laws and acts. They chose these things by virtue of electing and reelecting the people who enacted these things and the people who continually support them by not repealing them. Honestly, was this guy homeschooled or did he drop out of high school before he had to take any civics classes or what? I think I've seen a similar, though not quite as stupid trope, from other libertarians that basically equate anything they don't like as basically some kind of government tyranny that somehow violated the will of the people even though the people actually loving voted for those things.
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# ? Sep 3, 2012 10:19 |
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Emy posted:I find it difficult to tell on the Wall Street "Stephen Hawking would have died under the NHS" Journal. Wall Street "Laffer Curve" Journal.
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# ? Sep 3, 2012 15:30 |
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I think George Will is finally losing his mind. He just wrote a piece about how progressives are responsible for college football factories. It seriously reads like a confused old man shouting random sentences on a street corner. quote:Society found football, which like war required the subordination of the individual, and which would relieve the supposed monotony of workers enmeshed in mass production.
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 04:34 |
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Emy posted:Oh, you're right. I hate it when I misattribute quotes like that. I can't find the original article for free, so have a few quotes. quote:Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. When these escape hatches are figured against income, the result is either a zero liability or a liability that represents a tiny percentage of income. Those poor are so lucky not to have to pay tax*! * Only applies to Federal Income Tax.
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 04:41 |
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Presto posted:I think George Will is finally losing his mind. He just wrote a piece about how progressives are responsible for college football factories. George Will is a huge baseball fanboy, not surprised that he'd go off on a competing sport (Yes their actual seasons don't overlap that much, but these days NFLchat is eternal while baseball's fan base is eroding).
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 05:20 |
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George Will posted:Replicating industrialism’s division of labor, universities introduced the fragmentation of the old curriculum of moral instruction into increasingly specialized and arcane disciplines. These included the recently founded social sciences — economics, sociology, political science — that were supposed to supply progressive governments with the expertise to manage the complexities of the modern economy and the simplicities of the uninstructed masses. This complaint comes from 100 years ago, when economics, sociology, and political science were actually new and industrialism happened in America. He's regressing into his great-grandfather right before our eyes.
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 05:32 |
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RPZip posted:I can't find the original article for free, so have a few quotes. The best part is the last sentence. That person only cares about manipulating the poor and suffering into lowering the tax burden of the wealthy. "All these exemptions and deductions for stupid poo poo like 'education' and 'child care' are preventing us from convincing people who make $12,000 that they should be outraged that a millionaire has to pay more they do!" Presto posted:I think George Will is finally losing his mind. He just wrote a piece about how progressives are responsible for college football factories. Wow, I don't know what's worst, (A) the classic melodrama of goddamned sports fans (Ooh, football is like war and relates to the class struggle of the industrial revolution at the turn of the century you say? Tell me more. Maybe you could do it with more overwrought, hyperbolic analogies and cliched amateur philosophy and political science), (B) the historical revisionism (yep, none of the public wanted the aims of progressivism like social justice, workers' rights, immigrants' rights, women's rights, etc., it was all top-down from a bunch of ivory tower elitists. What's a Triangle Shirtwaist?), (C) the devaluation of something and its supporters simply because you don't enjoy it (I'm not a football fan, but I don't project other things I dislike onto its fans and the sport in general so that they buttress one another to support my raging hate-on against them) or (D) the dismissal of entire disciplines of study (Hmm, I wonder why the "old curriculum of moral instruction" went away when new disciplines like social sciences were developed? It's almost like we decided to focus more on empiricism and scientific study, which would necessitate specialization due to the complexity and ever increasing body of knowledge about the world around us, as it would be impossible for a person to be an expert in everything. Nah, must be a bunch of progressive douchebags and their hippy liberal "education." Let's get back to the way it used to be of educating the gentry to rule over the rabble.). I'm pretty young, so I haven't been reading George Will for most of his career, but is this what he's always been like or is this part of a steep decline? I mean, this is the intellectual heft of conservatism? What a loving overrated douche. Jack Gladney posted:This complaint comes from 100 years ago, when economics, sociology, and political science were actually new and industrialism happened in America. He's regressing into his great-grandfather right before our eyes. He's just manufacturing imaginary connections between things he hates so that he has a thesis about why all these things he hates both exist and are popular. It's just like how other idiots imagine connections between Obama and other things they hate, e.g. gun control (Obama hasn't really even articulated a position on this topic, let alone done anything concrete about it, like push any legislation to Congress), high gas prices ("it's Obama's fault that my gas is expensive, not geopolitical events and speculation in commodities markets!"), etc.
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 07:17 |
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RPZip posted:I can't find the original article for free, so have a few quotes. I had no idea the "lucky ducky" cartoons came from something, let alone something written un ironically. Holy god. EDIT: oh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_duckies
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 13:12 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:I'm pretty young, so I haven't been reading George Will for most of his career, but is this what he's always been like or is this part of a steep decline? I mean, this is the intellectual heft of conservatism? What a loving overrated douche.
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# ? Sep 9, 2012 17:52 |
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I figured I could post some of our terrible political commentaries (about the US) from eastern ("central") Europe; the way things are we are doubly hosed. For the longest time the conservatives here were the voices of reason, like it or not, and now when they are waking up to their western origins there is really no one to support. Our choices are either terribly populist (as in, literal free beer for our voters) socialist left or utterly corrupt and increasingly neoliberal center/right. It doesn't help that the main support base of the socialists are old people who yearn for the years of glorious stalinism. This means that all of our better-than-daily-mail journals are riddled with neocon crap, but at least it provides some daily entertainment. Unfortunately a lot of people tend to really believe in that poo poo. Anyway, some choice excerpts: Here is one blaming student debt issues on the fact that federal subsidies and scholarships exist at all, with a heavy dose of FYGM: Reflex posted:It starts with a decent general description of the student debt issues, and then Laffer curve means that you collect largest capital gains tax at near zero rate. Also taxes on the wealthy are definitely what destroyed the middle class. And the crisis was caused by taxes: Pavel Kohout posted:The French government is looking to reduce taxes. It seems the cuts will mainly benefit a small group of extremely wealthy. Why? Sorry that I didn't post the whole thing but the goddamn things are well over a page, hard to translate and condense, and on top of that I have an exam resit to deal with. And we still have free college education, but god knows for how long, considering guys like these are in charge (the second one is an "economic advisor" to the government). edit: I changed the italics to subscripts, it's far easier to read this way. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Sep 10, 2012 |
# ? Sep 10, 2012 02:56 |
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Goddamn I hate Chicago school economics. All I ask is just one example where lowering the corporate tax-rate increased the government take or the standard of living, anywhere. Just one example of the actual "tax hell" effect they claim exists. It would still be anecdotal, but right now the one major example they have under Reagan had the exact opposite effect. That's not science, that's a goddamn cult belief. And they managed to sell this idea to the rest of the planet.
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# ? Sep 10, 2012 06:19 |
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George Will used to be okay- contemptible, but okay- until the 2003 Iraq invasion, whereupon he started just spewing Republican talking points like every other pundit on Wingnut Welfare. He's been slacking massively ever since.
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# ? Sep 10, 2012 09:38 |
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Does he seriously always write like that? Jesus Christ.
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# ? Sep 10, 2012 10:29 |
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This was pretty terrible. It's not even really full of points that can be rebutted, it's just awful nonsense. The worst part is this was the editorial sidebar of my local newspaper, not just a letter from some syphilitic old republican out in surrey, or something.quote:Once again the Rage Boys of the Arab world are letting the planet know just how much they resent having their feelings hurt. But they have no monopoly on histrionics. Before the Democratic National Convention fades too far in the rearview mirror, it's worth looking back to note that even by the debased standards of modern political discourse, this year's event was remarkably mean-spirited and hateful.
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# ? Sep 14, 2012 15:58 |
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http://savannahnow.com/column/2012-09-21/swindle-must-see-movie-voters-2016-obamas-america#.UFyz-q5P_Toquote:My wife, Angie, and I saw “2016: Obama’s America” recently while in the Denver area. I hope that every citizen will take the time and be open-minded enough to see it, too. OH BOY quote:President Obama is the antithesis of the America I have known — the America for which I have willingly accepted personal sacrifice, extreme challenges and hardships. I lost many friends doing the same thing. quote:I recently received some thoughts from a dear and courageous old friend from our difficult days in Hanoi, who, like me, was watching the Democratic National Convention. I agree with him totally and wanted to share his heartfelt thoughts: "If you elect Obama, the thousand years of darkness will descend upon my innocent granddaughters, and my tolerance and peace with Obama's PURE EVIL SUPPORTERS will end... just sayin'"
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# ? Sep 21, 2012 19:42 |
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More WTF-worthy is his bio at the bottom where he's literally spent his entire career working for the government in one form or another:quote:Orson Swindle III is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a member of the board of directors of Citizens Against Government Waste. He served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan administration, as Georgia state director of the Farmers Home Administration and as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission from December 1997 to June 2005. He lives in Alexandria, Va. But I guess he worked for Reagan so that was the good government.
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# ? Sep 21, 2012 19:59 |
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quote:darkness unlike anything anyone living today has ever experienced BRING IT ON
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# ? Sep 21, 2012 20:09 |
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So, "banning profit" would entail what? Because I could actually see a bill suggesting that 100% of gross income be paid out in some fashion. It probably wouldn't be a net great idea, but it would solve the "corporations literally sitting on more money in history" problem that we have now.
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# ? Sep 21, 2012 20:40 |
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There should be some kind of law where you can only call something "communist" if you can actually define what communism is.
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# ? Sep 22, 2012 06:04 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:There should be some kind of law where you can only call something "communist" if you can actually define what communism is. If we applied that to every -ism, conservatives would never be allowed to speak.
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# ? Sep 22, 2012 06:25 |
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There's a problem with that?
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# ? Sep 22, 2012 06:28 |
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Letter from my local Indiana paper.quote:I am wondering if this country is bereft of its senses? For more than 30 years Islam has been at war with the USA. The killing of hundreds of our marines in Lebanon should have confirmed that. Killing Jews, Americans and Christians has been their goal. They state it often enough.
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# ? Sep 22, 2012 07:57 |
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colonelslime posted:And they managed to sell this idea to the rest of the planet. They sold it to the wealthy and the powerful the world over, who then paid people to repeat that bullshit over and over in the media and the schools, all for their own benefit. Easiest. Sell. Ever.
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 00:24 |
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A little girl went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jelly jar from its hiding place in the closet. She poured the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Three times, even.. The total had to be exactly perfect... No chance here for mistakes. Carefully placing the coins back in the jar and twisting on the cap, she slipped out the back door and made her way 6 blocks to Rexall's Drug Store with the big red Indian Chief sign above the door. She waited patiently for the pharmacist to give her some attention, but he was too busy at this moment. Tess twisted her feet to make a scuffing noise. Nothing. She cleared her throat with the most disgusting sound she could muster. No good. Finally she took a quarter from her jar and banged it on the glass counter. That did it! 'And what do you want?' the pharmacist asked in an annoyed tone of voice.. I'm talking to my brother from Chicago whom I haven't seen in ages,' he said without waiting for a reply to his question. 'Well, I want to talk to you about my brother,' Tess answered back in the same annoyed tone. 'He's really, really sick....and I want to buy a miracle.' 'I beg your pardon?' said the pharmacist. 'His name is Andrew and he has something bad growing inside his head and my Daddy says only a miracle can save him now. So how much does a miracle cost?' 'We don't sell miracles here, little girl. I'm sorry but I can't help you,' the pharmacist said, softening a little. 'Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If it isn't enough, I will get the rest. Just tell me how much it costs.' The pharmacist's brother was a well dressed man. He stooped down and asked the little girl, 'What kind of a miracle does your brother need?' ' I don't know,' Tess replied with her eyes welling up. I just know he's really sick and Mommy says he needs an operation. But my Daddy can't pay for it, so I want to use my money..' 'How much do you have?' asked the man from Chicago . 'One dollar and eleven cents,' Tess answered barely audible. 'And it's all the money I have, but I can get some more if I need to.' 'Well, what a coincidence,' smiled the man. 'A dollar and eleven cents---the exact price of a miracle for little brothers.' He took her money in one hand and with the other hand he grasped her mitten and said 'Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let's see if I have the miracle you need.' That well-dressed man was Dr. Carlton Armstrong, a surgeon, specializing in neuro-surgery. The operation was completed free of charge and it wasn't long until Andrew was home again and doing well. Mom and Dad were happily talking about the chain of events that had led them to this place. 'That surgery,' her Mom whispered. 'was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost?' Tess smiled. She knew exactly how much a miracle cost....one dollar and eleven cents...plus the faith of a little child. In our lives, we never know how many miracles we will need. A miracle is not the suspension of natural law, but the operation of a higher law. _________ well this is not only creepy but horrific as all gently caress
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 01:06 |
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Even in fantasy stories for conservatives, healthcare completely bankrupts you...
B-Rock452 fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Sep 23, 2012 |
# ? Sep 23, 2012 01:25 |
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What a coincidence, that is one one-hundred-thousanth of the cost of a miracle. Come back with 99,999 more handfuls of coins just like that and maybe your brother gets his miracle.
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 02:01 |
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Why is the pharmacist also a neurosurgeon? Well I guess if he keeps giving away operations he's gotta do SOMETHING to make money.
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 02:54 |
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Aliquid posted:A little girl went I'm not sure I understand this. Did the girl's father say it would take a miracle to cure her brother or a miracle to afford the procedure that would cure him? These are two very different things and it seems like the former is true of the first half of the story and then it switches to the latter for the second half. The latter explanation is also troubling because this person is not at all troubled or angered that it would take a completely unrealistic series of coincidences for a child to get life saving brain surgery, rather than a robust universal healthcare system.
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 07:47 |
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Also the majority of childhood brain cancers are infratentorial tumors that often lead to significant motor and intellectual defects when resected. Did this lovely gentleman pay for rehab and followup visits?
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 20:25 |
I assumed, from the references to Chicago, that the email was about Obama taking care of a kid with cancer via Obamacare. Otherwise, it's just a story about a really unlikely coincidence.
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# ? Sep 23, 2012 21:04 |
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a foolish pianist posted:I assumed, from the references to Chicago, that the email was about Obama taking care of a kid with cancer via Obamacare. Otherwise, it's just a story about a really unlikely coincidence. But the story clearly says the man from Chicago is Dr. Carlton Armstrong, not Barack Obama. Honestly, it would be better if it was Obama, though it would still be pretty stupid because it would basically be implying that Obama is going to bing medical miracles to every sick American, when the PPACA is pretty tepid as it is.
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# ? Sep 24, 2012 01:14 |
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I got one:quote:This lack of humility produces headlines and sound bites like this one on Sunday from The Atlantic: “Tax Cuts Don’t Lead to Economic Growth, a New 65-Year Study Finds.” The piece itself, by business editor Derek Thompson, isn’t terrible, and one has to assume that, like most writers, he probably isn’t responsible for his headlines. But the headlines dominate political discourse, which is by its democratic nature shallow. http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/327805/economic-policy-debate-not-rational-ritual More at the link. The author seems to be implying (specifically with that "trivially true" part) that you can't replicate the growth in early decades with those same tax rates because the world is a much different place, yet seems to be insistent that his idiot low taxes all the time policies would always be okay.
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# ? Sep 24, 2012 06:12 |
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Washington Post - Marc Thiessen takes his best shot at selling the 1998 "redistribution" recording of Obama as an equivalency with the infamous Romney "47%" fundraiser. Even leads off with the Obama tape and everything!: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...9258_story.html
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# ? Sep 24, 2012 20:17 |
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I work at a small town newspaper, and the closer we get to the election, the more crazy loving letters in old lady chicken-scratch start pouring in. Here's a nice sample from today's batch:quote:Will It Be Your Way? Ecclesiastes 10:2, by the way, reads "A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool's heart toward the left." I'm pretty sure she got this little pearl of wisdom in an email forward. quote:During this election everyone has an opinion so I would like to share mine. We hear from Obama talk about Romney’s record and what he’s done. At least she knows it, I guess.
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# ? Sep 26, 2012 00:06 |
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Malmesbury Monster posted:I work at a small town newspaper, and the closer we get to the election, the more crazy loving letters in old lady chicken-scratch start pouring in. Here's a nice sample from today's batch: I love how people just so blatantly project their biases and beliefs onto the Bible and other holy books. $5 says this person has absolutely no idea where the right-left political ideology assignment comes from. "See, the authors of the Bible knew that in 18th and 19th century France the revolutionaries/pro-republic members of parliament would sit to the parliamentary president's left and the anti-revolutionaries/monarchists would sit to his right!" It poo poo like this which makes me temporarily vacillate away from being an agnostic and towards being a smug atheist. Malmesbury Monster posted:At least she knows it, I guess. I actually feel bad for this person because they obviously have some kind of dementia or maybe some weird combo of anterograde and retrograde amnesia that causes her to think that all these things suddenly happened when/after Obama became president and weren't at least partially in existence before he was even elected. Seriously, does this woman really think that China owned $0 of US debt, that no businesses had closed, that no jobs were lost, that the manned space program wasn't scheduled to end, or that Social Security and Medicare had no problems before January 2009? It's like these retards have absolutely no clue who the gently caress George W. Bush is/was.
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# ? Sep 26, 2012 05:10 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:I love how people just so blatantly project their biases and beliefs onto the Bible and other holy books. $5 says this person has absolutely no idea where the right-left political ideology assignment comes from. "See, the authors of the Bible knew that in 18th and 19th century France the revolutionaries/pro-republic members of parliament would sit to the parliamentary president's left and the anti-revolutionaries/monarchists would sit to his right!" It poo poo like this which makes me temporarily vacillate away from being an agnostic and towards being a smug atheist. Well, presumably God knew that, since he's omniscient and all.
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# ? Sep 26, 2012 05:23 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 20:31 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:I actually feel bad for this person because they obviously have some kind of dementia or maybe some weird combo of anterograde and retrograde amnesia that causes her to think that all these things suddenly happened when/after Obama became president and weren't at least partially in existence before he was even elected. Seriously, does this woman really think that China owned $0 of US debt, that no businesses had closed, that no jobs were lost, that the manned space program wasn't scheduled to end, or that Social Security and Medicare had no problems before January 2009? It's like these retards have absolutely no clue who the gently caress George W. Bush is/was. This town is really ancient, so it could very well be dementia setting in. On the other hand, I'm continually amazed at how good conservatives are at forgetting that George W. Bush existed or exonerating him when his memory is unfortunately evoked. And of course we can't discount the fact that W. is white. This is, unfortunately, West Virginia after all.
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# ? Sep 26, 2012 07:51 |