McCain picks Sarah Palin as VP [Archive] - Page 4

Nimrod's Son

09-25-2008, 04:24 PM

i'm curious as to why you think he's a special interest-purchased candidate. i'd say he's the least 'bought' senator seeing has to how he's the third or fourth poorest serving member. he did pass a bill that benefited his son's company once though, but that's one thing out of a 30 year career.
He's been in the RIAA and MPAA pockets for years. This is a fairly neutral source.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html

Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record

Posted by Declan McCullagh (http://news.cnet.com/8300-13578_3-38.html?authorId=111) 101 comments (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html#comments)

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Printhttp://adlog.com.com/adlog/i/r=11872&s=501815&o=10784:13578:&h=cn&p=2&b=5&l=en_US&site=3&pt=8301&nd=13578&pid=&cid=10024163&pp=100&e=3&rqid=01c18-ad-e748CB116A5BBBF61&orh=www.google.com&ort=riaa%2520biden&oepartner=&epartner=&ppartner=&pdom=www.google.com&cpnmodule=&count=&ra=207.7.104.10&dvar=dvar%255fversion%253d2008&ucat_rsi=&pg=Aj4sRgoPjGIAABJiRG4AAABB&t=2008.09.25.21.23.14/http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/Ads/common/dotclear.gif ********** digg_url = 'http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Joe_Biden_s_pro_RIAA_pro_FBI_tech_voting_record';</script><script src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.js"></script><iframe style="visibility: visible; display: inline;" src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.php?u=http%3A//digg.com/2008_us_elections/Joe_Biden_s_pro_RIAA_pro_FBI_tech_voting_record" frameborder="0" height="80" scrolling="no" width="52"></iframe> By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10024067-93.html), the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET's Technology Voters' Guide (http://news.cnet.com/2009-1040-6130830.html), and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP.
That's probably okay with Barack Obama: Biden likely got the nod because of his foreign policy knowledge (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAZmO80dLfE). The Delaware politician is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee who voted for the war in Iraq (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237), and is reasonably well-known nationally after his presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008.
Copyright
But back to the Delaware senator's tech record. After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill (http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-946732.html) in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden's bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-954651.html) but eventually died (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-956811.html) after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20080416/SenatorJBiden_270x405.jpgSen. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee, whose anti-encryption legislation was responsible for the creation of PGP.
(Credit: Biden.senate.gov (http://biden.senate.gov/press/press_kit/))
A few months later, Biden signed a letter (http://www.politechbot.com/docs/congress.p2p.letter.081002.pdf) that urged (http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-982121.html) the Justice Department "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.
Last year, Biden sponsored (http://news.cnet.com/Senators-aim-to-restrict-Net,-satellite-radio-recording/2100-1028_3-6149915.html) an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.00256:) aimed at restricting Americans' ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued (http://news.cnet.com/2061-11199_3-6073185.html) XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.)
All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (http://www.politechbot.com/p-03517.html) hosted by the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here (http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/dmca-celebration-may02.html).)
Now, it's true that few Americans will cast their votes in November based on what the vice presidential candidate thinks of copyright law. But these pro-copyright views don't exactly jibe with what Obama has promised; he's pledged (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10019187-38.html) to "update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated." These are code words for taking a more pro-EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) than pro-MPAA approach.
Unfortunately, Biden has steadfastly refused to answer questions on the topic. We asked him 10 tech-related questions, including whether he'd support rewriting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as part of our 2008 Technology Voters' guide. Biden would not answer (http://news.cnet.com/Election-2008-Technology-Voters-Guide/2009-1028_3-6237418.html) (we did hear back from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Ron Paul).
In our 2006 Technology Voters' Guide (http://news.cnet.com/2009-1040-6131719.html), which ranked Senate votes from July 1998 through May 2005, Biden received a mere 37.5 percent score because of his support for Internet filters in schools and libraries and occasional support for Internet taxes.
Privacy, the FBI, and PGP
On privacy, Biden's record is hardly stellar. In the 1990s, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:s.00266:), which the EFF says (http://w2.eff.org/effector/effect03.01) he was "persuaded" to do by the FBI. A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:s.00618:). Both were staunchly anti-encryption, with this identical language:

It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law. Translated, that means turn over your encryption keys. The book Electronic Privacy Papers (http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Privacy-Papers-Documents-Surveillance/dp/0471122971) describes Biden's bill as representing the FBI's visible effort to restrict encryption technology, which was taking place in concert with the National Security Agency's parallel, but less visible efforts. (Biden was no foe of the NSA. He once described now-retired NSA director Bobby Ray Inman as the "single most competent man in the government.")
Biden's bill -- and the threat of encryption being outlawed -- is what spurred Phil Zimmermann to write PGP, thereby kicking off a historic debate about export controls, national security, and privacy. Zimmermann, who's now busy developing Zfone (http://zfoneproject.com/), says it was Biden's legislation (http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/index.html) "that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil libertarians and industry groups."
While neither of Biden's pair of bills became law, they did foreshadow the FBI's pro-wiretapping, anti-encryption legislative strategy that followed -- and demonstrated that the Delaware senator was willing to be a reliable ally of law enforcement on the topic. (They also previewed the FBI's legislative proposal (http://news.cnet.com/Former-FBI-chief-takes-on-encryption/2100-1028_3-961969.html) later that decade for banning encryption products such as SSH or PGP without government backdoors, which was approved by one House of Representatives committee but never came to a vote in the Senate.)
"Joe Biden made his second attempt to introduce such legislation" in the form of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d103:HR04922:) (CALEA), which was also known as the Digital Telephony law, according to an account (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/digitel_pr.html) in Wired magazine. Biden at the time was chairman of the relevant committee; he co-sponsored the Senate version (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d103:SN02375:) and dutifully secured a successful floor vote on it less than two months after it was introduced. CALEA became law in October 1994, and is still bedeviling privacy advocates: the FBI recently managed to extend (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028-6082085.html) its requirements to Internet service providers.
CALEA represented one step in the FBI and NSA's attempts to restrict encryption without backdoors. In a top-secret memo (http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199607/msg00077.html) to members of President George H.W. Bush's administration including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and CIA director Robert Gates, one White House official wrote: "Justice should go ahead now to seek a legislative fix to the digital telephony problem, and all parties should prepare to follow through on the encryption problem in about a year. Success with digital telephony will lock in one major objective; we will have a beachhead we can exploit for the encryption fix; and the encryption access options can be developed more thoroughly in the meantime."
There's another reason why Biden's legislative tactics in the CALEA scrum amount to more than a mere a footnote in Internet history. They're what led to the creation of the Center for Democracy and Technology -- and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's simultaneous implosion and soul-searching.
EFF staffers Jerry Berman and Danny Weitzner chose to work with Biden on cutting a deal and altering the bill in hopes of obtaining privacy concessions. It may have helped, but it also left the EFF in the uncomfortable position of leaving its imprimatur on Biden's FBI-backed wiretapping law universally loathed by privacy advocates. The debacle ended with internal turmoil, Berman and Weitzner leaving the group and taking their corporate backers (http://news.cnet.com/Silicon-money-Nonprofits-are-true-powerbrokers/2009-1028_3-6050711.html) to form CDT, and a chastened EFF that quietly packed its bags and moved to its current home in San Francisco. (Weitzner, who was responsible for a censorship controversy (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9731230-7.html) last year, became a formal Obama campaign surrogate (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/05/is-obama-a-mac.html).)
"Anti-terror" legislation
The next year, months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d104:s.00390:). It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of "terrorism" that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detection of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review. The Center for National Security Studies said the bill would erode (http://w2.eff.org/Legislation/Bills_by_number/s390_hr896_95_cnss.analysis) "constitutional and statutory due process protections" and would "authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations."
Biden himself draws parallels between his 1995 bill and its 2001 cousin. "I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill," he said when the Patriot Act was being debated, according to the New Republic (http://www.tnr.com/columnists/story.html?id=ba9b09bb-ed01-4582-b6ec-444834c9df73&k=93697), which described him as "the Democratic Party's de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism."
Biden's chronology is not accurate: the bombing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing) took place in April 1995 and his bill had been introduced (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d104:SN00390:@@@L&summ2=m&) in February 1995. But it's true that Biden's proposal probably helped to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration's Patriot Act.
In 1996, Biden voted to keep intact an ostensibly anti-illegal immigration bill that outlined what the Real ID Act (http://news.cnet.com/Real-ID-could-mean-real-travel-headaches/2009-1028_3-6228133.html) would become almost a decade later. The bill would create a national worker identification registry; Biden voted to kill (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=104&session=2&vote=00101) an Abraham-Feingold amendment that would have replaced the registry with stronger enforcement. According to an analysis (http://epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_3.06.html) by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the underlying bill would have required "states to place Social Security numbers on drivers licenses and to obtain fingerprints or some other form of biometric identification for licenses."
Along with most of his colleagues in the Congress -- including Sen. John McCain but not Rep. Ron Paul (http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll161.xml) -- Biden voted for the Patriot Act (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1&vote=00313) and the Real ID Act (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00117) (which was part of a larger spending bill). Obama voted for the bill containing the Real ID Act, but wasn't in the U.S. Senate in 2001 when the original Patriot Act vote took place.
Patriot Act
In the Senate debate over the Patriot Act in October 2001, Biden once again allied himself closely with the FBI. The Justice Department favorably quotes Biden on its Web site (http://www.lifeandliberty.gov/highlights.htm) as saying: "The FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put it bluntly, that was crazy! What's good for the mob should be good for terrorists."
The problem is that Biden's claim was simply false -- which he should have known after a decade of experience lending his name to wiretapping bills on behalf of the FBI. As CDT explains (http://www.cdt.org/security/usapatriot/031027cdt.shtml) in a rebuttal to Biden: "The Justice Department had the ability to use wiretaps, including roving taps, in criminal investigations of terrorism, just as in other criminal investigations, long before the Patriot Act."
But Biden's views had become markedly less FBI-friendly by April 2007, six years later. By then, the debate over wiretapping had become sharply partisan, pitting Democrats seeking to embarrass President Bush against Republicans aiming to defend the administration at nearly any cost. In addition, Biden had announced his presidential candidacy (http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/01/31/cq_2212.html) three months earlier and was courting liberal activists dismayed by the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping.
That month, Biden slammed (http://biden.senate.gov/press/transcripts/transcript/?id=8571c550-454e-4386-be65-0267b0c0f536) the "president's illegal wiretapping program that allows intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans without a judge's approval or congressional authorization or oversight." He took aim at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for allowing the FBI to "flagrantly misuse National Security Letters" -- even though it was the Patriot Act that greatly expanded their use without also expanding internal safeguards and oversight as well.
Biden did vote against (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168) a FISA bill with retroactive immunity for any telecommunications provider that illegally opened its network to the National Security Agency; Obama didn't (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9986716-38.html). Both agreed to renew the Patriot Act (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00029) in March 2006, a move (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6045496-7.html) that pro-privacy Democrats including Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold opposed. The ACLU said (http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/22394leg20051207.html) the renewal "fails to correct the most flawed provisions" of the original Patriot Act. (Biden does do well (http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?page=legScore&congress=0&session_num=0&repId=199&lcmd=top&lcmd_cf=) on the ACLU's congressional scorecard.)
"Baby-food bombs"
The ACLU also had been at odds with Biden over his efforts to censor bomb-making information on the Internet. One day after a bomb in Saudi Arabia killed several U.S. servicemen and virtually flattened a military base, Biden pushed to make posting bomb-making information on the Internet a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in jail, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
"I think most Americans would be absolutely shocked if they knew what kind of bone-chilling information is making its way over the Internet," he told the Senate. "You can access detailed, explicit instructions on how to make and detonate pipe bombs, light-bulb bombs, and even -- if you can believe it -- baby-food bombs."
Biden didn't get exactly what he wanted -- at least not right away. His proposal was swapped in the final law (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=104_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ132.104) for one requiring the attorney general to investigate "the extent to which the First Amendment protects such material and its private and commercial distribution." The report (http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/bombmakinginfo.html) was duly produced, concluding that the proposal "can withstand constitutional muster in most, if not all, of its possible applications, if such legislation is slightly modified."
It was. Biden and co-sponsor Dianne Feinstein introduced their bill again the following year. Biden pitched it as an anti-terror measure, saying in a floor debate (http://jya.com/explosive.htm) that numerous terrorists "have been found in possession of bomb-making manuals and Internet bomb-making information." He added: "What is even worse is that some of these instructions are geared toward kids. They tell kids that all the ingredients they need are right in their parents' kitchen or laundry cabinets."
Biden's proposal became law (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/842.html) in 1997. It didn't amount to much: four years after its enactment, there had been only one conviction (http://www.senate.gov/%7Efeinstein/03Releases/r-bombmaking3.htm). And instead of being used to snare a dangerous member of Al Qaeda, the law was used to lock up a 20-year old anarchist Webmaster (http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5062481.html) who was sentenced to one year in prison for posting information about Molotov cocktails and "Drano bombs" on his Web site, Raisethefist.com (http://raisethefist.com/).
Today there are over 10,000 hits on Google for the phrase, in quotes, "Drano bomb (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22drano+bomb%22)." One is a video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3333743341327156731) that lists the necessary ingredients and shows some self-described rednecks blowing up small plastic bottles in their yard. Then there's the U.S. Army's Improvised Munitions Handbook (http://cryptome.org/tm-31-210.htm) with instructions on making far more deadly compounds, including methyl nitrate dynamite, mortars, grenades, and C-4 plastic explosive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-4_%28explosive%29) -- which free speech activists placed online as an in-your-face response to the Biden-Feinstein bill.
Peer-to-peer networks
Since then, Biden has switched from complaining about Internet baby-food bombs to taking aim at peer-to-peer networks. He held one Foreign Relations committee hearing (http://www.techlawjournal.com/alert/2002/02/13.asp) in February 2002 titled "Theft of American Intellectual Property" and invited executives from the Justice Department, RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft to speak. Not one Internet company, P2P network, or consumer group was invited to testify.
Afterwards, Sharman Networks (which distributes Kazaa) wrote a letter (http://www.politechbot.com/docs/biden.kazaa.letter.030202.html) to Biden complaining about "one-sided and unsubstantiated attacks" on P2P networks. It said: "We are deeply offended by the gratuitous accusations made against Kazaa by witnesses before the committee, including ludicrous attempts to associate an extremely beneficial, next-generation software program with organized criminal gangs and even terrorist organizations."
Biden returned to the business of targeting P2P networks this year. In April, he proposed (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html) spending $1 billion in U.S. tax dollars so police can monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity. He made that suggestion after a Wyoming cop demonstrated a proof-of-concept program called "Operation Fairplay" at a hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
A month later, the Senate Judiciary committee approved (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9945915-7.html) a Biden-sponsored bill (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.01738:) that would spend over $1 billion on policing illegal Internet activity, mostly child pornography. It has the dubious virtue of being at least partially redundant: One section would "prohibit the broadcast of live images of child abuse," even though the Justice Department has experienced no problems in securing guilty pleas (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/millerPlea.htm) for underage Webcamming. (The bill has not been voted on by the full Senate.)
Online sales of Robitussin
Around the same time, Biden introduced (http://biden.senate.gov/press/press_releases/release/?id=872293B5-AD8B-441E-B88F-EA6BF27EFADF) his self-described Biden Crime Bill of 2007 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.02237:). One section expands electronic surveillance law (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002516----000-.html) to permit police wiretaps in "crimes dangerous to the life, limb, and well-being of minor children." Another takes aim at Internet-based telemedicine and online pharmacies, saying that physicians must have conducted "at least one in-person medical evaluation of the patient" to prescribe medicine.
Another prohibits selling a product containing dextromethorphan -- including Robitussin, Sucrets, Dayquil, and Vicks -- "to an individual under the age of 18 years, including any such sale using the Internet." It gives the Justice Department six months to come up with regulations, which ******* when retailers should be fined for shipping cough suppressants to children. (Biden is a longtime drug warrior; he authored the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.226:) that the Bush administration used to shut down benefit concerts (http://www.mpp.org/states/ohio/news/law-threatens-free-speech-free.html).)
Net neutrality
On Net neutrality, Biden has sounded skeptical (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6083733.html). In 2006, he indicated that no preemptive laws were necessary because if violations do happen, such a public outcry will develop that "the chairman will be required to hold this meeting in this largest room in the Capitol, and there will be lines wandering all the way down to the White House." Obama, on the other hand, has been a strong supporter (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9806707-7.html) of handing pre-emptive regulatory authority to the Federal Communications Commission.

Nimrod's Son

09-25-2008, 05:45 PM

I wonder what she sounds like when she's having an orgasm.
I wonder what you sound like

Esty

09-25-2008, 09:45 PM

I wonder what you sound like

Like wild injun.

Gish08

09-25-2008, 10:41 PM

Yeah, the one thing I absolutely cannot stand about Biden is the fact that he's a DMCA/RIAA/MPAA whore. I don't care about how much you like the guy and the Obama/Biden ticket; there's no denying this. His involvement in such matters has been on the decline in recent years, but he still makes no secret about it. I'm concerned how much influence over such matters he'd have as VP. I would hope it's one area where Obama will always overrule him, because Obama himself is most definitely not like Biden when it comes to this. He's made many statements on the importance of net neutrality and keeping the Internet as more of a free and open thing, as it has been thus far. It'll be interesting, therefore, how he would react to Biden's positions, both publically and privately, should things like music piracy ever become a hot topic again...

TuralyonW3

09-26-2008, 01:32 AM

you know something tells me file-sharing isn't going to be very high on the agenda

Debaser

09-26-2008, 12:14 PM

Who's horrified, Couric? I'm not surprised. Was it because Palin couldn't offer a specific answer on a very specific question? Was it a gotcha?

So you didn't watch it huh

Debaser

09-26-2008, 12:24 PM

shit is jokes. this is the most embarrassing VP pick in my lifetime, if not in history. She is a babbling idiot. She has no clue what she is talking about.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dwTJzXKo9zE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dwTJzXKo9zE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

http://i36.tinypic.com/27wy7us.jpg

Debaser

09-26-2008, 12:33 PM

you remember that time in school when you had to give that book report in front of the class but you didn't even read the book beforehand?

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SMj2liB7Bko&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SMj2liB7Bko&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

bardy

09-26-2008, 12:38 PM

those sentences dont even make sense to me.

I dont understand what she means by job creation and health care reform having anything to do with bailing out AIG.

Not that they dont tie into each other, but if they do she is horrible at explaining.

Debaser

09-26-2008, 01:03 PM

I dont understand what she means by job creation and health care reform having anything to do with bailing out AIG.

Sarah Palin doesn't either.

TuralyonW3

09-26-2008, 02:13 PM

I bet the VP debate moderators are fucking salivating. Biden won't even have to do anything.

Debaser

09-26-2008, 03:09 PM

Palin Accepted $25,000 in Gifts, Alaska Records Show (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092503988.html)
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda...

Travis Meeks

09-26-2008, 07:36 PM

Travis Meeks

09-26-2008, 07:40 PM

I'm scared to death at the possibility of McCain and Palin in the White House

God help us all

sppunk

09-26-2008, 08:06 PM

Hmm, this is interesting.

Palin should quite, prominent conservative says
(CNN) – Prominent conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, an early supporter of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, said Friday recent interviews have shown the Alaska governor is "out of her league" and should leave the GOP presidential ticket for the good of the party.

The criticism in Parker's Friday column is the latest in a recent string of negative assessments toward the McCain-Palin candidacy from prominent conservatives.

It was fun while it lasted," Parker writes. "Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who is clearly out of her league."

Palin's interview with Couric drew criticism when the Alaska governor was unable to provide an example of when John McCain had pushed for more regulation of Wall Street during his Senate career. Palin also took heat for defending her foreign policy credentials by suggesting Russian leaders enter Alaska airspace when they come to America. Palin was also criticized last week for appearing not to know what the Bush Doctrine is during an interview with Charlie Gibson.

“If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself," Parker also writes. "If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true."

Parker, who praised McCain's "keen judgment" for picking Palin earlier this month and wrote the Alaska governor is a "perfect storm of God, Mom and apple pie," now says Palin should step down from the ticket.

“Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves," Parker writes. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country."

Parker's comments follow those by prominent conservatives David Brooks, George Will, and David Frum who have all publicly questioned Palin's readiness to be vice president.

"Sarah Palin has many virtues," Brooks wrote in a recent column. "If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."

Starla

09-26-2008, 10:37 PM

I wonder what you sound like

Go bang your........CANADIAN! :)

million_watts

09-27-2008, 07:54 AM

ok, i just watched the interviews she did so far. this woman's utter incompetence is mindblowing. she got dominated and torn apart in a rather friendly and comfortable enviroment by fucking hand-picked tv show hosts. now picture her sitting face to face behind closed doors in a room with no cameras with putin or basically any random political leader. picture this woman making a trip to the middle east. i mean, seriously, think about that for a minute! picture the world's fate in the hands of a woman who proudly lists russia's geographical proximity to alaska as her qualification.

Starla

09-27-2008, 06:19 PM

If she can't make her way through a Katie Couric interview, I wonder how she'll fare with Biden on Oct 2.

dudehitscar

09-27-2008, 06:50 PM

I'm starting to think Sarah might be much more of a hinderance for Mccain then a help.

ravenguy2000

09-27-2008, 09:22 PM

Not to beat a dead horse here but this is the first time I've actually seen any of this stuff written out. Wow.

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Starla

09-27-2008, 11:27 PM

ha ha that was one of many wtf's during that interview

Sarcastic Smile

09-28-2008, 06:05 AM

Mccain's camp doesn't have the resources to put her in some kind of quick retard boot camp? She sounds horrible..

bardy

09-28-2008, 03:19 PM

she is using her beauty pagent training to answer questions... saying stuff that sounds nice but doesn't really mean anything

The Jesus

09-28-2008, 04:39 PM

They're going to have to fit this witch up with an earpiece for the VP debate.

killtrocity

09-28-2008, 05:32 PM

the length of this thread suggests to me that palin has served her only purpose quite well which is to draw as much attention to her campaign as possible, regardless of the positive or negative connotation of said attention, because as we well know reason is completely powerless in this political climate. there is no quality but quantity, nothing more

Eulogy

09-28-2008, 05:34 PM

killtrocity

09-28-2008, 05:37 PM

I'm saying if rationality had any power Palin would've been forced to drop out a long time ago. MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIKE HER. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

Future Boy

09-28-2008, 05:42 PM

If her debate is a complete and total disaster she just might. My initial thought was they were setting expectations low. Now I think there's a chance for a total disaster. Must see TV.

Eulogy

09-28-2008, 05:43 PM

I'm saying if rationality had any power Palin would've been forced to drop out a long time ago. MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIKE HER. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

she's hurting him among independents. which is the only group that matters at this point. his vp pick backfired. his campaign suspension backfired. his attempts at painting obama as too naive to understand foreign policy issues backfired. and whatever he does next will probably backfire. his entire campaign is in a fucking toilet. it's beautiful.

Eulogy

09-28-2008, 05:44 PM

If her debate is a complete and total disaster she just might. My initial thought was they were setting expectations low. Now I think there's a chance for a total disaster. Must see TV.

i've never been this excited for a debate before. not even close. it's gonna be awesome.

maybe a little scary.

killtrocity

09-28-2008, 06:04 PM

I also can't wait for biden to tear her apart

killtrocity

09-28-2008, 06:04 PM

.

I guess all I'm trying to ask is what the fuck is wrong with 43% of Americans?
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/

mickyshambles

09-28-2008, 07:15 PM

i've never been this excited for a debate before. not even close. it's gonna be awesome.

maybe a little scary.

awesome? fool.

Eulogy

09-28-2008, 07:19 PM

why is it foolish for me to be excited to see the final nail in the coffin of the candidate i don't want to win be hammered down?

are you just upset about the rep?

hnibos

09-28-2008, 07:20 PM

why is it foolish for me to be excited to see the final nail in the coffin of the candidate i don't want to win be hammered down?

are you just upset about the rep?

he gets real butthurt about it.

mickyshambles

09-28-2008, 07:24 PM

two of life's winners. :erm:

Eulogy

09-28-2008, 10:57 PM

why is it foolish for me to be excited to see the final nail in the coffin of the candidate i don't want to win be hammered down?

are you just upset about the rep?

two of life's winners. :erm:

so that's a "yes," right?

Starla

09-29-2008, 04:29 AM

I'm starting to wonder if there will be an October surprise. I cannot see her debating Biden after that Katie Couric failure.

Nimrod's Son

09-29-2008, 11:09 AM

she is using her beauty pagent training to answer questions... saying stuff that sounds nice but doesn't really mean anything

yeah she should say things that are more substantial, like "hope" and "change" and "hope" again

ravenguy2000

09-29-2008, 11:11 AM

Or maybe she should say things that directly contradict her running mate and kinda sound like something Obama has said. Hrrm.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bn_xSSc-PQs&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bn_xSSc-PQs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

ravenguy2000

09-29-2008, 11:17 AM

Oh, and guys, don't get too excited about the debate. McCain staffers are already threatening the moderator that if there's too much foreign policy material then it's clear they're just stacking the deck in favor of big, mean, proficient debater Joe Biden.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MENUu--lTS4&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MENUu--lTS4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
Because, you know, if there are clear differences in knowledge, know how, and experience between two candidates, then that's just unfair. That's not what debating's about at all, don't you see?

Nimrod's Son

09-29-2008, 12:06 PM

mmm... Nancy Pfotenhauer... she can fix my election anytime, knowhaimeen

Future Boy

09-29-2008, 12:11 PM

What's most shocking is them trying to game the thing in favor of their candidate. What has this country come to.

Caine Walker

09-29-2008, 12:27 PM

it's really not that shocking.

Nimrod's Son

09-29-2008, 12:52 PM

Nancy Pfotenhauer can game my thing

Future Boy

09-29-2008, 12:58 PM

She's got a weird ostrich neck/head thing going.

Nimrod's Son

09-30-2008, 01:21 PM

She's got a weird ostrich neck/head thing going.

she can give me ostrich head

Nimrod's Son

09-30-2008, 01:23 PM

I can't believe nobody has posted this yet. Look at who could be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/biden-fdr.html

Palin has blundered badly several times in the past several days, often on issues relating to the economy.

She's been caught contradicting her running mate, which is among every political ticket's Ten Commandments of no-no's.

And on one occasion, she got her facts wrong. With voters closely watching and worrying about the financial crisis, these inconsistencies could have real consequences come Nov. 4, now less than six weeks away.

And they distract badly from the message the McCain campaign is trying to push on Barack Obama (namely, that the Illinois Senator is out of touch on the economy).

Palin made one mistake last week, when NBC's Meredith Vieira asked her whether the federal government should bail out ailing insurance corporation AIG. Palin said no, the same position Barack Obama took.

That would have been fine, except for the little fact that McCain had already endorsed the bailout, saying that he would not "second-guess" the government's attempt to save AIG. This morning, "Today's" Matt Lauer called McCain out on the contradiction. McCain patiently but firmly suggested Palin should have waited to respond.

And last night, in an interview with “CBS Evening News,” Palin misspoke when she told anchor Katie Couric that today's leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to a previous national financial crisis.

Declared Palin: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'”

What's wrong with that, some might ask?

Well, for starters Republican Herbert Hoover was president when the stock market crashed in October 1929. Second, Roosevelt didn't take office until four years later. And, not to be picky, but there were also no televisions in use at the time. Radio was Roosevelt's favored medium.

Palin has made non-economic goofs as well. In last night's interview with Couric, she called one of her own campaign's TV ads "terrible."

"I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it," she said, referring to a commercial that mocked Obama for being elitist.

That kind of honesty might hurt Palin, but it also has the potential to help. As our colleague Faye Fiore points out in her excellent profile of Palin, published in Tuesday's print editions of The Times, the governor's off-the-cuff demeanor is also part of her appeal. Hmm, "straight talk," where have we heard that before?

Fiore spent several days last week on the campaign trail with Palin, and the headline of her story speaks volumes about the character of the candidate:

"In-your-face time with Sarah Palin"

-- Kate Linthicum

Debaser

09-30-2008, 01:58 PM

It's not a newsflash that Biden is gaffe-prone and loves to run his mouth.

But he's not intellectually vacuous like Palin.

Debaser

09-30-2008, 02:02 PM

Jeffrey Goldberg (http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/sarah_palins_terrifying_ignora.php)

Sarah Palin Endorses Hamas

29 Sep 2008 10:43 am
How can it be that some people still pretend that Sarah Palin is suited for high office? This country has never seen someone so comprehensively unprepared for the vice presidency; Dan Quayle was Metternich by comparison. I've watched Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric three times, and my astonishment does not diminish. Her nonsensical answer about Russia has deservedly been highlighted, but let me focus on another question, this one concerning the export of democracy. Couric asked, "What happens if the goal of democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome? In Gaza, the U.S. pushed hard for elections and Hamas won."

Palin's answer, in full, was this: "Yeah, well especially in that region, though, we have to protect those who do seek democracy and support those who seek protections for the people who live there. What we're seeing in the last couple of days here in New York is a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel ... and we're hearing the evil that he speaks and if hearing him doesn't allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the Mideast, then nothing will."

The issue here is not that Palin didn't know the answer. There are many possible answers to this question, some of which are right and some of which are wrong. The issue here is that she didn't know the question. Because she was apparently ignorant of the subject, she endorsed Hamas' victory, and, in essence, called for the U.S. to "protect" Islamists who seek to use democratic elections to lever themselves into power. And, of course, Ahmadinejad came to power in a more-or-less democratic election. Palin's answer was truly remarkable. A person who could be President of the United States has shown herself to be completely ignorant of one of the most vexing and important foreign policy questions of the day. Freshman congressmen know how to answer this question. Here's one possible Republican response:

"Yes, Katie, it's true that if you push for democracy, sometimes you get an outcome that you don't want. This happened in Gaza with Hamas, and I think the Bush Administration was as surprised as everyone else. So the lesson here is that you have be careful when you try to export democracy. But I still believe that, over the long-term, democracy is the best antidote to terrorism that we have. What we have to do, though, is know when to push, and know when not to push. And every day, we have to do the hard work of advocating for press freedom, and the rule of law, and for all those things that build a civil society."

See? Not that hard. Unless you don't:

a) Know what happened in Gaza;
b) Know where Gaza is;
c) Know who rules Gaza today;
d) Care.

I want to wait and see Palin on Thursday night in her debate with Joe Biden; perhaps her performance in the Couric interview was abnormally bad. But I have a terrible feeling that John McCain has placed this country - and, of lesser importance, his campaign - in an untenable position.

Debaser

09-30-2008, 02:04 PM

Fareed Zakaria: (http://www.newsweek.com/id/161204/page/1)

Palin Is Ready? Please.
McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true.
Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

"It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state."

There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. "It is from Alaska that we send out those …" What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. ("We mustn't blink.") But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Domestically, the bailout and reform of the financial industry will take years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Health-care costs, unless curtailed, will bankrupt the federal government. Social Security, immigration, collapsing infrastructure and education are all going to get much worse if they are not handled soon.

And the American government is stretched to the limit. Between the Bush tax cuts, homeland-security needs, Iraq, Afghanistan and the bailout, the budget is looking bleak. Plus, within a few years, the retirement of the baby boomers begins with its massive and rising costs (in the trillions).

Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

Nimrod's Son

09-30-2008, 02:19 PM

It's not a newsflash that Biden is gaffe-prone and loves to run his mouth.

But he's not intellectually vacuous like Palin.
So he's completely ignorant of basic US 20th century history and yet not intellectually vacuous? Is he then simply ignorant?

Travis Meeks

09-30-2008, 09:23 PM

Palin talks abortion and newspapers — sort of — in Couric interview

KANSAS CITY, Missouri - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is happy to discuss her views on social issues like abortion and homosexuality, but reluctant to list what she usually reads to keep up on world events.

That’s the takeout from a series of interviews the Alaska governor did with CBS anchor Katie Couric, which aired on Tuesday night.

Palin, whose opposition to abortion rights has ignited support among social conservatives, some of whom were wary of presidential nominee John McCain, discussed whether rape or incest victims should be allowed to have an abortion.

“Personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in,” she said. “If you’re asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an … abortion, absolutely not.”

When asked about her views on homosexuality, Palin talked about a close friend who is gay.

“One of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay, and I love her dearly,” Palin said. “She is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn’t a choice I would have made. But I am not going to judge people.”

Palin has faced criticism for lacking experience in foreign policy. Before becoming governor some two years ago she was the mayor of a small town.

Couric asked Palin what newspapers and magazines she read regularly before becoming McCain’s running mate “to stay informed and to understand the world.”

Here is her response, according to a transcript provided by CBS:

Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/2008/09/30/palin-talks-abortion-and-newspapers-sort-of-in-couric-interview/

idiotic...and it's it fundamentally wrong to say that her friend chose to be gay?

Debaser

09-30-2008, 10:06 PM

So he's completely ignorant of basic US 20th century history and yet not intellectually vacuous? Is he then simply ignorant?

Equating Biden with Palin says more about you than Biden.

Debaser

09-30-2008, 10:30 PM

Debaser

09-30-2008, 10:35 PM

what's couric's expression at 0:35

SlingeroGuitaro

09-30-2008, 10:41 PM

wow

Sarcastic Smile

09-30-2008, 11:03 PM

[B][I]

idiotic...and it's it fundamentally wrong to say that her friend chose to be gay?

By choice she could have meant she chose not to suppress her feelings and live a straight life anyway.... kind of like skipgo

Sarcastic Smile

09-30-2008, 11:07 PM

the video of the newspaper question;
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xRkWebP2Q0Y&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xRkWebP2Q0Y&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

By now I'm pretty sure I'm more qualified than Palin to be VP.

When Katie says "tap" I wonder if she is mocking Palin's excessive use of the word... by the third time she asks and Sarah starts rambling you can see Katie look over at someone like "is this really happening"..

alexthestampede

09-30-2008, 11:08 PM

del

Sarcastic Smile

09-30-2008, 11:53 PM

can you do that to all your posts?

Sarcastic Smile

10-01-2008, 01:25 AM

redbreegull

10-01-2008, 02:14 AM

Sarcastic Smile

10-01-2008, 02:32 AM

I can't find it now =( I gotta go to bed, watch this for now

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4490713n

and this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4490056n

lipstick pig?

Starla

10-01-2008, 06:42 AM

She wears too much make up.... and her lips....she lines them like gang girls do. I don't want a woman in the white house looking like a whore. It's ok if you are one ie: monica lewinsky, but damn, don't advertise.

Kahlo

10-01-2008, 07:36 AM

I can still see her hands, her face and even her knees. the whore must wear a burka!

Starla

10-01-2008, 07:40 AM

A blue dress.

Nimrod's Son

10-01-2008, 11:33 AM

Equating Biden with Palin says more about you than Biden.

Keep deflecting.

Debaser

10-01-2008, 03:35 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-01-2008, 03:54 PM

I think calling Biden's comments out as a gaffes pretty much covers it. Biden makes mistakes, Palin simply doesn't know what she is talking about and tries to fake it. It's not that hard to see the difference.

Gaffe

See also: microphone gaffe

A gaffe is a verbal mistake, usually made in a social environment. The mistake may come from saying something that is true, but inappropriate. It may also be an erroneous attempt to reveal a truth. Finally, gaffes can be malapropisms, grammatical errors or other verbal and gestural weaknesses or revelations through body language. Actually revealing factual or social truth through words or body language, however, can commonly result in
None of that definition explains the fact that he thought the crash happened in the 1930's, or thought FDR was president in 1929, or that people had tv in 1929 opr that he made up the fact that FDR went on television.

That is not a "gaffe" it's a complete fabrication or a total lack of understanding of history.

Debaser

10-01-2008, 04:04 PM

Thaniel Buckner

10-01-2008, 04:05 PM

Corganist

10-01-2008, 04:59 PM

You say potato, I say gaffe.

Despite citing a boneheaded non-example analogy, Biden had a coherent point.

Palin doesn't even have a coherent point in the first place. It's just mixed up talking points flooding out of her maw.

I'd put more stock in Palin, in all her incoherency and cluelessness, falling ass backwards into a correct answer on any issue than I ever would Biden coming up with one on purpose.

That said, God help us if either one were in any position to become President.

Karl Connor

10-01-2008, 05:59 PM

yeah lets put more stock in another aloof two term governer who doesnt know shit

Nimrod's Son

10-01-2008, 06:02 PM

yeah lets put more stock in another aloof two term governer who doesnt know shit
that's all we've had since 1992

Karl Connor

10-01-2008, 06:03 PM

its not like its going to matter, right. it may be cataclysmic. but she has five kids. and she shoots animals. how adorable, i would fucking love her to run my life as opposed to some douchebag senator who doesnt knwo shit. oh he's just some con law professor who works on the foreign relations comitee. man, if he ever get's in the oval office, its just game over man

maoi

10-01-2008, 06:18 PM

there is no comparison on who is better prepared to run this country, biden or palin. no comparison at all. why are we even bothering arguing with these two fucking idiots who have no talking points at all. e nough already.

Debaser

10-01-2008, 09:43 PM

(no) comparison:
<embed src='http://www.cbs.com/thunder/swf30can10cbsnews/rcpHolderCbs-3-4x3.swf' FlashVars='link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecbsnews%2Ecom%2 Fvideo%2Fwatch%2F%3Fid%3D4493093n&partner=cbssports&vert=News&autoPlayVid=false&releaseURL=http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=kmbZJiBysEZaxIgmdRiNHdo6IMUVVQB 6&name=cbsPlayer&allowScriptAccess=always&wmode=transparent&embedded=y&scale=noscale&rv=n&salign=tl' allowFullScreen='true' width='425' height='324' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer'></embed><br/><a href='http://www.cbs.com'>Watch CBS Videos Online</a>

Debaser

10-01-2008, 10:06 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-01-2008, 10:10 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-01-2008, 10:15 PM

Palin is just an utter embarrassing disgrace. She still manages to contradict herself with what little she knows. If you agree that the right to privacy is in the constitution you can't with the next breath say that privacy should be left up to the states-- unless you didn't know how the constitution works or unless you didn't know that the right to privacy was the cornerstone of abortion rights (which is probably why Palin contradicted herself -- after Couric explained what privacy right meant to Roe v. Wade).
I'm a strict Constitutionalist.. I dont' want to get off on an abortion tangent (please, no) but I have the firm belief that the Court overstepped its bounds and found what they wanted to see in the Constitution rather than what was really there in Roe v. Wade. There is no "privacy clause" and it's certainly not at all related to the human body. That doesn't mean of course that there couldn't be a law (state or federal) that could legalize abortions, it simply means that the Court had no right to declare it legal or illegal. It should have been rejected on the grounds that it's not a Constitutional issue.

That said, you're right - you can't have it both ways.

SlingeroGuitaro

10-01-2008, 10:21 PM

Do you have an external link? The embedding won't play for me. Ignore if this is just the Couric/Palin interview.

same

Debaser

10-01-2008, 10:23 PM

Do you have an external link? The embedding won't play for me. Ignore if this is just the Couric/Palin interview.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4493093n

Couric asks Biden about Roe V. Wade, then asks Biden about what other Supreme court decisions he disagrees with.

Then they show the exact same questions to Palin. Palin meanders around with talking points on the first question and completely vamps, unable to name another supreme court decision, on the second question.

EDIT:

found youtube
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jBt0r9Exv2I&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jBt0r9Exv2I&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Debaser

10-01-2008, 10:31 PM

I'm a strict Constitutionalist.. I dont' want to get off on an abortion tangent (please, no) but I have the firm belief that the Court overstepped its bounds and found what they wanted to see in the Constitution rather than what was really there in Roe v. Wade. There is no "privacy clause" and it's certainly not at all related to the human body. That doesn't mean of course that there couldn't be a law (state or federal) that could legalize abortions, it simply means that the Court had no right to declare it legal or illegal. It should have been rejected on the grounds that it's not a Constitutional issue.

That said, you're right - you can't have it both ways.

sorry to nitpick, but if you have a problem with the privacy clause, then technically, your issue is with Griswold v. Connecticut... (though Roe v. Wade cites it)

Sarcastic Smile

10-01-2008, 10:39 PM

She didn't do as horrible as I thought she would

Nimrod's Son

10-01-2008, 11:33 PM

sorry to nitpick, but if you have a problem with the privacy clause, then technically, your issue is with Griswold v. Connecticut... (though Roe v. Wade cites it)

Well yeah, but there's no need to go into that much detail to get the point across. Griswold established bad precedent, and Roe followed it.

Starla

10-02-2008, 06:28 AM

idiotic...and it's it fundamentally wrong to say that her friend chose to be gay?

I don't believe a "pray away the gay" person could possibly have a gay friend.

Eulogy

10-02-2008, 07:50 AM

del

Travis Meeks

10-02-2008, 05:03 PM

why can't I type full words on netphoria

Travis Meeks

10-02-2008, 05:05 PM

Gotta slow it down bro, slow it down.

10-02-2008, 05:40 PM

Travis Meeks

10-09-2008, 04:17 PM

SlingeroGuitaro

10-09-2008, 04:19 PM

f*ing brilliant

topleybird

10-09-2008, 04:33 PM

lol she's a woman

10-09-2008, 05:08 PM

"Cindy McCain claims Obama is waging dirtiest campaign ever"

The nerves of these people... :noway:

Nimrod's Son

10-09-2008, 07:08 PM

this is a real cover, btw, from 2004:
http://www.poynter.org//resource/public/20080904_115837_29014.jpg

BlissedandGone2

10-09-2008, 07:12 PM

this is a real cover, btw, from 2004:
http://www.poynter.org//resource/public/20080904_115837_29014.jpg

why would we not believe that to be real? sorry, what exactly are you getting at?

Nimrod's Son

10-09-2008, 07:15 PM

why would we not believe that to be real? sorry, what exactly are you getting at?

the comments was simply pointing out that it's not a photoshop and that it's not a recent parody on Palin.

BlissedandGone2

10-09-2008, 07:25 PM

the comments was simply pointing out that it's not a photoshop and that it's not a recent parody on Palin.

gotcha. i guess thats funny.

AndySlash

10-13-2008, 08:52 PM

Andrew_Pakula

10-14-2008, 03:10 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-14-2008, 03:46 PM

^ I still can't stand seeing Gomez in that uniform.

rolmos

10-14-2008, 04:47 PM

Palin As President

<embed width="820" height="520" src="http://palinaspresident.com/index.swf">

Caine Walker

10-14-2008, 04:55 PM

oh my god, hahahahahahahaha

Travis Meeks

10-14-2008, 06:36 PM

how scary is seeing her behind that desk

Ever

10-14-2008, 06:47 PM

Teen pregnancy is over 9000 on that stock ticker there but that thing is annoying

10-14-2008, 06:52 PM

Did I just blow up the White House by picking up a phone?

Andrew_Pakula

10-17-2008, 10:14 AM

Nimrod's Son

10-17-2008, 04:18 PM

Travis Meeks

10-17-2008, 04:22 PM

luckily her audience can't count

Travis Meeks

10-17-2008, 04:48 PM

http://www.drudgereport.com/mpb.jpg

Lies, dripping off your mouth like dirt
Lies, lies in every step you walk
Lies, whispered sweetly in my ear
Lies, how do I get out of here?
Why, why you have to be so cruel?
Lies, lies, lies I ain't such a fool!

Lies, lies in my papa's looks
Lies, lies in my history books
Lies, lies like they teach in class
Lies, lies, lies I catch on way too fast
Fire, fire upon your wicked tongue
Lies, lies, lies you're trying to spoil my fun

Lies, lies you dirty jezebel
Why, why, why, why don't you go to hell?
Why, why you think me such a fool?
Lies, lies, lies honey that's ya rules!

Travis Meeks

10-17-2008, 04:49 PM

sorry I'm on a big Stones kick

Nimrod's Son

10-17-2008, 05:30 PM

luckily her audience can't count

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpxszD7pMO8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpxszD7pMO8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

BlissedandGone2

10-17-2008, 05:47 PM

Did yo9u see what Palin said yesterday?

"The biggest thing that this election is about is what JohN McCain said yesterday, and it happens to be a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."

I can't believe Olbermann isn't hammering on this.

was this an attempt to get people to flare up about your lie and then you walk in triumphant that in fact it was not palin, but was biden? fail.

Travis Meeks

10-17-2008, 06:11 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-17-2008, 06:24 PM

was this an attempt to get people to flare up about your lie and then you walk in triumphant that in fact it was not palin, but was biden? fail.
No it was an attempt to point out that the media has completely ignored it, and were it Palin it would be front page news and there would be 50 SNL skits about her counting skills and Alaska elementary schools

Sarcastic Smile

10-18-2008, 02:08 AM

Did yo9u see what Palin said yesterday?

"The biggest thing that this election is about is what JohN McCain said yesterday, and it happens to be a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."

I can't believe Olbermann isn't hammering on this.

luckily her audience can't count

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpxszD7pMO8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpxszD7pMO8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

howard stern +

BlissedandGone2

10-18-2008, 02:51 AM

No it was an attempt to point out that the media has completely ignored it, and were it Palin it would be front page news and there would be 50 SNL skits about her counting skills and Alaska elementary schools

even bigger fail.

BlissedandGone2

10-18-2008, 03:02 AM

it was on every news station and was on jay leno. i dunno what youre talking about. maybe itll be on snl tomorrow, you have no idea.

Sarcastic Smile

10-18-2008, 03:04 AM

Starla

10-18-2008, 06:58 AM

Palin is to appear on SNL tonight with Tina Fey.

threetwooneZERO

10-20-2008, 12:42 AM

http://www.mopo.ca/uploaded_images/sarah-palin-716969.jpg

Starla

10-20-2008, 08:30 AM

Andrew_Pakula

10-20-2008, 10:42 AM

ravenguy2000

10-20-2008, 12:46 PM

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/10/palin-you-are-probably-anti-american.html

""We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe...we believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.""

What a dumb whore. I think she's the first politician I not only loathe but feel personally affronted by.

Nimrod's Son

10-20-2008, 02:09 PM

ravenguy2000

10-20-2008, 02:21 PM

More breaking political news:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/10/30-to-life-for-gay-cannibal.html
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/10/three-gay-divas-plus-one.html
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/10/homoquotable-sir-ian-mckellen.html

Yes, this is clearly relevant when I was quoting something which directly came out of her mouth.

Dear Nimrod,

Please try harder.

Thanks,

Everyone

Nimrod's Son

10-20-2008, 03:40 PM

Yes, this is clearly relevant when I was quoting something which directly came out of her mouth.

Dear Nimrod,

Please try harder.

Thanks,

Everyone
The whole site is dedicated to thinks coming out of mouths

10-20-2008, 06:04 PM

10-20-2008, 06:16 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-20-2008, 06:32 PM

In the past, MacFarlane has gotten into hot water for his skewering of several subjects, including actor and Scientologist Tom Cruise.

Is he trying to rip off South Park yet <i>again?</i>

Caine Walker

10-21-2008, 04:32 PM

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/21/palin-vp-senate/

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat for an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. In response to a question sent to the network by a third grader at a local elementary school about what the Vice President does, Palin erroneously argued that the Vice President is “in charge of the United States Senate“:

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

*****************************

fucking hell, man. FUCKING HELL!!!

Future Boy

10-21-2008, 04:39 PM

breaking news

Caine Walker

10-21-2008, 04:43 PM

as always.

Karl Connor

10-21-2008, 07:34 PM

if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

Karl Connor

10-21-2008, 07:38 PM

why does she always speak in yoda syntax. is it some alaskan colloquialism or something

Starla

10-21-2008, 10:36 PM

The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

All that money and she still looks like #$@$

rolmos

10-22-2008, 04:18 PM

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/7592/originalhw8.jpg
^Pretty scarf you got there, genius.

SlingeroGuitaro

10-22-2008, 04:35 PM

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/7592/originalhw8.jpg
^Pretty scarf you got there, genius.

please tell me that is fake

rolmos

10-22-2008, 05:01 PM

ubetcha, not:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/10/21/in-which-sarah-palin-displays-the-latest-in-donkey-fashion.aspx

Future Boy

10-22-2008, 05:12 PM

Clearly she's just trying to show she can bring the two sides together.

Oklahoma Sexual

10-22-2008, 05:15 PM

Clearly she's just trying to show she can bring the two sides together.

What, Old Navy and Versace?

Nimrod's Son

10-22-2008, 06:29 PM

Clearly she's just trying to show she can bring the two sides together.

Make it the sides of those dsls and i'll vote for her

Banana

10-22-2008, 06:42 PM

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y100/aireckoressal/gifs/palinraisetheroof.gif

pale_princess

10-23-2008, 11:10 AM

http://www.dlisted.com/files/imagecache/photo-preview/files/galleries/heidinononono.jpg

Eulogy

10-23-2008, 11:45 AM

http://www.dlisted.com/files/imagecache/photo-preview/files/galleries/heidinononono.jpg

who the fuck are those people

Caine Walker

10-23-2008, 11:47 AM

awful, terrible people.

Starla

10-23-2008, 03:53 PM

she's still w/ that guy?

cynders

10-23-2008, 03:54 PM

isnt that the girl from that terrible show "the hills"?

Tchocky

10-23-2008, 09:50 PM

Yeah, Heidi Montag. She's a bitch who put dick before chicks.

And The Hills does suck. :p

10-25-2008, 02:15 PM

John Cleese about Sarah Palin

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WR3eUjD6y6o&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WR3eUjD6y6o&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

killtrocity

10-25-2008, 03:11 PM

are those bimbos aware they're satirizing themselves

Andrew_Pakula

10-25-2008, 09:43 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/25/palin.tension/index.html

Palin's 'going rogue,' McCain aide says

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.

But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu news conference on a Colorado tarmac.

Tracey Schmitt, Palin's press secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt tried several times to end the unscheduled session.

"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Palin adviser recently said, arguing that "it's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.

The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.

In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there."

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."

Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.

"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind; it brings out the worst in people, finger-pointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser said.

This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well, most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America's enemies will try to "test" Obama.

Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.

John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John Kerry's strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political interests.

Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton's, some of Al Gore's aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was being scheduled for campaign events.

Jack Kemp's aides distrusted the Bob Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by Gov. Palin's aides.

With the presidential race in its final days and polls suggesting that McCain's chances of pulling out a win are growing slim, Palin may be looking after her own future.

"She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012," Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. "And the difficulty is, when she went on 'Saturday Night Live,' she became a reinforcement of her caricature. She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day, voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and personally."

Tchocky

10-25-2008, 10:56 PM

That's nothing new. There have been several cases in which the Prez and the VP didn't like each other. A prime example is JFK and LBJ.

Starla

10-26-2008, 03:00 AM

it's another tactic so she can prove what a maverick she is

ohnoitsbonnie

10-26-2008, 05:31 AM

Alright we get how much you hate your fellow females, starla!

Gish08

10-26-2008, 08:16 AM

Inside McCain Camp, a Mood of Gritty Determination

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008; A10

ALBUQUERQUE, Oct. 25 -- Only a few hundred people were on hand at the New Mexico state fairgrounds Saturday morning to hear Sen. John McCain's acknowledgment that "we're a few points down" in the polls and to cheer loudly when he bellowed, "We've got them right where we want them!"

The small crowd in a state now believed to be leaning strongly toward his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, added to the sense of fatalism that many Republicans now have about their chances of retaining the White House. But inside the McCain campaign the mood remains one of gritty resolve. Top aides know they are behind, but they hold out hope and, like their candidate, stubbornly refuse to give up.

"He's been in tougher spots than being behind in a few polls," senior adviser Steve Schmidt said in an interview Saturday morning. Schmidt has taken on the role of chief morale officer and according to campaign sources delivered an impassioned plea to staff members at McCain national headquarters in Arlington two weeks ago.

"Being part of an effort that fails does not make you a loser; it makes you a competitor," Schmidt, a former Bush White House official, told them. "What makes you a loser is curling up into the fetal position at a time of adversity. The only thing that would ever define anyone as a loser is to quit before it is over."

His words were meant to buck them up, but they betrayed the fear among McCain's senior advisers of where the presidential race is probably headed. A top aide to the campaign said later that "people know exactly where the race is. But people continue to fight to the end."

McCain's Arlington headquarters still buzzes with activity. The number of days until the election is written on dry-erase boards. Young opposition researchers intently monitor a bank of flat-screen televisions.

But the news on those TVs is almost entirely bleak for McCain, who has watched a small lead in the middle of September vanish into a double-digit deficit in most public polls. And the anonymous finger-pointing and rationalizing has already begun.

In the Washington echo chamber, unnamed GOP officials are publicly second-guessing Schmidt and the other top McCain campaign officials. They say McCain abandoned his successful brand, made erratic and confusing tactical decisions and has not been consistent in his descriptions of Obama.

Many of the accusations come from Capitol Hill, where the mood is even darker. House Republicans are resigned to losing a large number of seats; among GOP strategists, the only question at this point is whether that number is closer to 20 or 40.

The fight last month over economic rescue legislation split the party in two, with many conservatives opposed to the measure and angered by their leaders' support of the package, and Republican strategists now see their fates as inexorably linked to the bailout and the broader economy.

"Clearly the X factor is how the economic rescue package plays and how the stock market does," a Republican leadership aide said.

The same is true for McCain's White House prospects, said his advisers, who have watched as economic conditions have led less than 10 percent of Americans to say that the country is headed in the right direction.

But among McCain supporters, aides say they have not seen a drop-off in intensity. They said the desire to fight on is fueled in part by a frustration that McCain has not been treated fairly by the media.

"Most staff and volunteers do not worry about the armchair quarterbacks and second-guessers; they simply work hard fighting for the person they believe should be president," said political director Mike DuHaime, who works with the volunteers. "No poll or critic will ever make any staffer or volunteer believe Barack Obama would be a better president than John McCain."

On the trail, McCain himself seems more agitated than he did during the primaries. His smile seems more forced during television interviews, and the string of jokes he used to tell -- such as the one about the inmate who says, "The food was better in here when you were governor" -- are largely gone, replaced with a passionate, intense stump speech.

At the end of his speeches, he vows to be a fighter for causes he believes in, imploring his crowds not to "give up hope. Be strong. Have courage. And fight." The words are about issues, but as the campaign winds down, they feel more like a plea to continue campaigning for him.

It is reminiscent of the "No Surrender Tour" that McCain launched as his primary campaign floundered in the summer of 2007. The tour's title was about the Iraq war, but many saw it as a campaign motto, as well.

"Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history," McCain said in Albuquerque on Saturday. "Now, let's go win this election and get this country moving again!"

Senior aides who see McCain describe his mood as "steady" and "realistic." "He's fighting hard, and he believes he can win," one adviser said. "He knows he has to come from behind. But he believes he can win this race."

About 1,000 people gathered at a plaza in Mesilla, N.M., on Saturday afternoon to hear McCain once again predict that Obama will join with revitalized Democrats in Congress to raid their pocketbooks and "spread the wealth around."

"We're a few points down. The pundits have written us off, just like they have before," he said, drawing cheers by adding: "Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned. I prefer to let voters decide these things."

McCain's crowds appear to be getting smaller just as Obama has returned to the massive rallies he held earlier in the campaign. Obama drew tens of thousands of people to his own rally in Albuquerque on Saturday night.

Frustrated McCain campaign aides disputed the crowd counts of some of their candidate's recent events, insisting that they were larger than reported. On the McCain plane Saturday, senior adviser Mark Salter said 1,400 people were recorded as going through security in Albuquerque. He said a rally in Durango, Colo., on Friday attracted 8,000.

But his top aides have not entirely lost their sense of humor.

One night last week, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of McCain's closest friends, joked with a group of reporters, predicting with great gusto that McCain would win Graham's home state -- hardly a huge achievement given South Carolina's GOP leanings.

And Friday night, Graham and Salter laughed as they watched the "Saturday Night Live" spoof of a full-throated endorsement of McCain from President Bush.

But there is no talk among aides about transition plans or possible jobs in the White House. Instead, conversations almost always turn to complaints about Obama's negative campaigning and the unfair treatment they believe McCain has received at the hands of the media.

"At the end of the day, it's important to set the record straight about Barack Obama's negative campaign, and the immense hypocrisy of his claims about our campaign when he's the real culprit in this race," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a memo sent to reporters.

Staff writer Paul Kane in Washington contributed to this report.
McCain staffers on monster.com sending out the resumes, lol.

wounded

10-26-2008, 08:33 AM

watching republicans reaction as this thing slowly slips away is hilarious.

Gish08

10-27-2008, 10:01 AM

Tchocky

10-27-2008, 10:13 AM

McCain has all but proven that the Southern GOP strategy is dead... Bush only won because his name was popular; otherwise Huckabee would be going up against Obama right now.

The South will likely always be a stronghold for the GOP, but it won't spread elsewhere like it did in 2000 because of the Bush name, and 2004 because Americans were scared to death of terrorism in the middle of a war (plus John Kerry ran a pretty lousy campaign). I mean, geez, Huckabee is like a combination of Dubya's social views and Clinton's charisma. He would have been a tough one to beat, I would think. But people outside of the South didn't really want him for the most part.

Jeb could try to run, and I hope he does -- the Bush name is completely ruined.

Huckabee wouldn't play well outside of the south. One, he's too anti-corporate for many fiscal conservatives. Two, he's painfully theocratic. He's too regional to be a legitimate candidate for president.

I'd hate to say it, but if Obama wins this election, Rudy Giuliani might be the GOPs best chance in 2012. Jeb could run, but there's not a chance in hell he'd get elected unless the first four years of an Obama presidency were a complete flop.

Gish08

10-27-2008, 10:19 AM

hahaha, are you serious? Rudy's career ended the day he went on morning TV shows with makeup on, acting like a total poser, thinking all he needed was Florida to carry him over the top.

A McCain loss will send shockwaves through the GOP. They will go back to someone who isn't perceived as a maverick, but a George W. Bush type. Rudy is too much of a centrist for them, despite his pandering. If Obama wins, he has captivated the Independent vote for at least four years, and the GOP will know that. Rudy wouldn't stand a chance. He's extremely negative, and he would get called out for it just like McCain did. Let's not forget how Rudy's extremely negative and misleading smear of Obama (some people like to call it a "speech") contributed to Obama getting millions of dollars in one night.

McCain definitely succeeded in skyrocketing Palin's career; if he fails, he at least got that right. And then you have Bobby Jindal, who is essentially the GOP's answer to Barack Obama. Other than those two, I expect Romney to make a comeback in 2012. His convention speech was a clear indication that he was covering his ass first, McCain's second. I expect these three to be the frontrunners in the middle of a highly competitive 2012 GOP primary season.

Rudy will fail harder than he already has should he try to run for President again. He's gone from being "America's Mayor" to an old, hateful, bitter asshole that no one can relate to.

redbreegull

10-27-2008, 11:54 AM

He's gone from being "America's Mayor" to an old, hateful, bitter asshole that no one can relate to.

When was he not these things

Travis Meeks

10-27-2008, 05:04 PM

well he was a great mayor

Tchocky

10-27-2008, 09:54 PM

I will admit, Rudy did more to hurt his political credibility than perhaps any other candidate this year. However, if the Obama campaign has taught America anything, it's that you need a candidate that appeals to not only your party base but has the ability to win voters over from the center and the other end of the political spectrum. McCain would have bee a good candidiate almost any other year for the Republicans...unfortunately he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. People are sick of the GOP and 8 years of miscues by the Bush administration, and fair or not, whomever the next Republican candidate would have been would have to deal with that albatross around their neck. Not to mention the whole Sarah Palin thing seems to have backfired. If anyone here seriously believes that dumb bitch has a future on the national level of politics, they're gravely mistaken. She's a complete caricature to too many Americans, and plenty of people will remember her as such in the coming years.

redbreegull

10-27-2008, 11:01 PM

well he was a great mayor

if you hate The Constitution, I guess so.

Nimrod's Son

10-28-2008, 11:29 AM

Saw this thing parked yesterday at lunch. I think my favorite part is the "Ass Clown" reference

Nimrod's Son

10-28-2008, 11:35 AM

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/25/palin.tension/index.html

So they brought her in and gave her a big GOP convention speech all about how much of a maverick she is, and their first complaint is that she's too maverick-y.

Travis Meeks

10-28-2008, 04:56 PM

if you hate The Constitution, I guess so.

yes, I despise it

Sarcastic Smile

10-28-2008, 05:49 PM

duovamp

10-28-2008, 06:20 PM

Saw this thing parked yesterday at lunch. I think my favorite part is the "Ass Clown" reference

Holy shit. Do you mind if I show a couple of people this?

Nimrod's Son

10-28-2008, 06:53 PM

Holy shit. Do you mind if I show a couple of people this?

Pass it on. Spotted in Carlsbad, CA on 10/27/08. My coworker snapped it with his iPhone

Gish08

10-29-2008, 02:22 PM

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_talk_hertzberg

For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”
Palin is as much of a "socialist" as Barack.

Actually, she's more, because she actually did these things.

Nimrod's Son

10-29-2008, 04:34 PM

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_talk_hertzberg

Palin is as much of a "socialist" as Barack.

Actually, she's more, because she actually did these things.

Wait, what? That whole article is a complete stretch. Oil prices went up, oil revenues went up, the checks went up. The alaskans have been getting checks for decades.

Travis Meeks

10-29-2008, 06:25 PM

but it gives evidence that her life and career in Alaska hardly reflects the lives of people living in the continental US. How can she relate to real American's lives?

Gish08

10-29-2008, 11:20 PM

Wait, what? That whole article is a complete stretch. Oil prices went up, oil revenues went up, the checks went up. The alaskans have been getting checks for decades.
When things go up elsewhere in the country you don't necessarily see an equal distribution of the wealth to the people of [state].

I'm just making a point to say that what Palin did is essentially no different than what Obama is proposing. Revenues can go up, down, stay the same or not exist. It doesn't matter. It's the same concept. She's giving a handout to her people.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing just because she's Sarah Palin. I'm just saying it confirms how big of a hypocrite she is here.

Kind of like how she rips on Obama's energy policy, even though just before she got picked for VP she went on television saying she praised Obama for signing on with a forward-thinking energy policy. Obama's energy policy has not changed beyond him being Presidential and willing to make compromises about offshore drilling (in return for an assurance that we will also spend money on more practical ways to reduce our dependence on oil).

kelsome

10-30-2008, 12:14 AM

I guess this can go here.
http://forums.netphoria.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=33191&stc=1&d=1225343436

Debaser

10-30-2008, 12:17 AM

Wait, what? That whole article is a complete stretch. Oil prices went up, oil revenues went up, the checks went up. The alaskans have been getting checks for decades.

another comprehension failure.

It's not the fact that the checks went up that Alaska is "socialist".

It's how the Alaskan government is set up in the the first place that makes it the most "socialist" state in the union. The citizens of Alaska collectively own the natural resources of the state, they heavily tax (Palin even raised them during her short tenure) the companies that extract those resources, spend it on the government and then give handouts of the leftover money to the people. So it's pretty hard to take Palin and McCain attacking Obama for a reference of "spreading the wealth around" when Palin literally does exactly that in Alaska.

It's not surprising that Palin is (was?) the most popular governor in the U.S. when her main job is to pass out oil profit checks to its citizens.

Andrew_Pakula

10-30-2008, 09:16 AM

hnibos

10-30-2008, 10:35 AM

what a diva

Gish08

10-30-2008, 11:22 AM

sppunk

10-30-2008, 11:38 AM

Palin's got to be hoping Stevens is re-elected so he'll get kicked out of the Senate and she can place herself in his spot. She'd then in essence defacto leader of the Republican party.

hnibos

10-30-2008, 11:42 AM

she should just raise her retarded kid instead

Nimrod's Son

10-30-2008, 12:24 PM

When things go up elsewhere in the country you don't necessarily see an equal distribution of the wealth to the people of [state].

I'm just making a point to say that what Palin did is essentially no different than what Obama is proposing. Revenues can go up, down, stay the same or not exist. It doesn't matter. It's the same concept. She's giving a handout to her people.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing just because she's Sarah Palin. I'm just saying it confirms how big of a hypocrite she is here.
No no no no no no no. How can you possibly be so wrong on this?

Obama is planning on taking money from the wealthy and giving it to others.

The oil checks have been around for years and when profits went up, the Alaskan government sent bigger dividend checks to the citizens of Alaska. That's sharing the profits to EVERYONE, not taxing some to give to others. Do you not see the fundamental difference there?

Eulogy

10-30-2008, 12:34 PM

No no no no no no no. How can you possibly be so wrong on this?

Obama is planning on taking money from the wealthy and giving it to others.

The oil checks have been around for years and when profits went up, the Alaskan government sent bigger dividend checks to the citizens of Alaska. That's sharing the profits to EVERYONE, not taxing some to give to others. Do you not see the fundamental difference there?

is the principle any different considering money was being stolen from the people who got taxed in order to pay for those checks?

Gish08

10-30-2008, 02:31 PM

Palin's got to be hoping Stevens is re-elected so he'll get kicked out of the Senate and she can place herself in his spot. She'd then in essence defacto leader of the Republican party.
I expect Begich to win, now.

Obama is planning on taking money from the wealthy and giving it to others.
And so did Palin. When revenues go up for a company, who normally shares the wealth? It isn't the customer.

Debaser

10-30-2008, 03:55 PM

Obama is planning on taking money from the wealthy and giving it to others.

in other words, a progressive tax system. the same system we've had for a century. the same system that every single modern westernized country has. hard to believe that Obama is willing to continue such a radical system

Debaser

10-30-2008, 04:05 PM

hnibos

10-30-2008, 04:14 PM

the rest has stagnated

lazy fuckers

Nimrod's Son

10-30-2008, 05:05 PM

is the principle any different considering money was being stolen from the people who got taxed in order to pay for those checks?

The companies that are drilling there signed contracts to do so. If a government agent comes over and negotiates a tax rate with me then that wouldn't be a theft as it would be something I'd signed off on.

Nimrod's Son

10-30-2008, 05:07 PM

It's hilarious how wingnuts try to hammer that Obama wants to "spread the wealth" and "redistribute wealth" as if it's some secret evil plan -- when Obama goes around openly telling everybody that he wants to raise taxes on the rich and use it to help out everyone else -- "redistribution" is not his ulterior plan, it is his plan.

When the gap between the haves and have-nots is as wide as ever, where people easily can see that the top percent has prospered while the rest has stagnated..."spreading the wealth" doesn't sound as bad as it's supposed to.
Although he's not just going after the top percent, he's going after the small business owner and wants to mail checks - tax refunds - to someone who didn't pay taxes (and please don't go on about sales taxes and payroll taxes, that's silly and is what the Earned Income tax credit is for anyway).

Debaser

10-30-2008, 07:18 PM

ah, that redistributive EITC, vastly expanded by that known socialist commie, Ronald Reagan...

Debaser

10-30-2008, 07:26 PM

From what I understand, the vast majority of small business owners don't net $250k a year in profit, so they're not getting a tax increase. Plus, Obama is proposing a tax credits and incentives specifically for small business owners. McCain is not.

Nimrod's Son

10-30-2008, 07:30 PM

ah, that redistributive EITC, vastly expanded by that known socialist commie, Ronald Reagan...Why can't you simply admit that Obama wants to turn the tax system into the welfare state?

Debaser

10-30-2008, 07:49 PM

Because it's not true.

Debaser

10-30-2008, 07:50 PM

You're really out of your depth here. You talk as if you don't really know the actual meanings of the terms you throw out.

Corganist

10-30-2008, 08:31 PM

When the gap between the haves and have-nots is as wide as ever, where people easily can see that the top percent has prospered while the rest has stagnated..."spreading the wealth" doesn't sound as bad as it's supposed to.

It'd be one thing if people really thought that taxing the rich would really bring poor people up, but the vibe I always get from the whole "gap between rich and poor" rhetoric is that if poor people are gonna suffer, then they should be spared the traumatic experience of seeing anyone else doing well. That's why the whole "redistribution of wealth" idea doesn't fly with people. It's clear that even the people who support it don't see it as a way to make anyone happier or more successful. It just seems like a way to cut people down to size so that we can all share in the misery together.

Debaser

10-30-2008, 08:51 PM

Corganist

10-30-2008, 09:05 PM

Nimrod thinks the left wants everyone on welfare and Corganist thinks struggling people don't actually have a desire to overcome, but rather, have a desire for everybody else to struggle also.

I didn't say struggling people want other people to struggle or anything of the sort. I said people who focus their attention and rhetoric on the rich/poor gap apparently do. Barack Obama is not a struggling person. I'd be willing to bet you're not either.

All I'm saying is that people might not look so harshly on the rhetoric of "spreading the wealth" if it focused a little more on what the "have-nots" don't have instead of what the "haves" do.

dudehitscar

10-30-2008, 10:10 PM

It's clear that even the people who support it don't see it as a way to make anyone happier or more successful. It just seems like a way to cut people down to size so that we can all share in the misery together.

you really couldn't be more wrong about this.

Gish08

10-31-2008, 01:09 PM

Nimrod's Son

10-31-2008, 01:38 PM

Nimrod thinks the left wants everyone on welfare and Corganist thinks struggling people don't actually have a desire to overcome, but rather, have a desire for everybody else to struggle also.

Promising people free checks if elected is essentially buying votes. I think a lot of people on the left want to continue the welfare state or expand it for that reason.

Politicans love power and that's an easy way to get it.

neopryn

10-31-2008, 01:41 PM

Debaser

10-31-2008, 03:00 PM

All I'm saying is that people might not look so harshly on the rhetoric of "spreading the wealth" if it focused a little more on what the "have-nots" don't have instead of what the "haves" do.

Promising people free checks if elected is essentially buying votes. I think a lot of people on the left want to continue the welfare state or expand it for that reason.

Politicans love power and that's an easy way to get it.

Sure, I guess those statements make sense if one has no sense of history.

statements from an information cocoon.

Caine Walker

10-31-2008, 03:11 PM

oh, this is fucking cute:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/10/palin-fears-med.html

Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights

ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

However she feels about the way her story has been told in the press, Palin told WMAL she is not discouraged.

"It's sort of perplexing to me, because I'm a practical person and plainspoken also, but just cutting to the chase and calling things like I see them, just like most Americans. But this has not left a bitter taste in my mouth, the bitter shots taken by the mainstream media and by some of the elitism there in Washington," Palin said.

"What this has left me with is a very energized and positive feeling about America, because there are enough Americans who are desiring the positive change that John McCain's gonna usher in."

Plante then suggested that in her next sit-down interview, Palin should tap the reporter on the knee and ask, "So who you votin' for?"

Palin laughed and said, "Yeah, maybe that just would say it all."

"I'm gonna try that," she said.

Gish08

11-01-2008, 01:58 PM

Notorious Quebec comedy duo talks politics in prank call to Sarah Palin

1 hour ago

MONTREAL — A Quebec comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state has reached Sarah Palin, convincing the Republican vice-presidential nominee she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In the interview, which lasts about six minutes, Palin and the pranksters discuss politics, pundits, and the dangers of hunting with current vice-president Dick Cheney.

The Masked Avengers, who have a regular show on Montreal radio station CKOI, intend to air the full interview on the eve of the U.S. elections.

The well-known duo of Sebastien Trudel and Marc-Antoine Audette have also tricked Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and French president Jacques Chirac.

The call to Chirac was rated by the BBC as one of the top 30 best moments in radio history of all time.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5idPXM6GDkOzIX-_At5WVYrBoJ6JQ

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Gish08

11-01-2008, 02:21 PM

The hits keep comin':

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1108/Ensign_says_Palin_not_up_to_being_president.html

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, who heads the NRSC, said in a Las Vegas interview late this week that Joe Biden is more qualifed than Sarah Palin and that an argument can be made that she has hurt the ticket.

Ensign's analysis is perhaps the most extended critique of the Palin pick and her subsequent rollout from any prominent Republican.

His comments come as the NRSC moves to distance itself from McCain, airing ads in two races that assume the GOP nominee will lose and warning of complete Democratic control of the capital.

Some Republicans, including those not tied to McCain's campaign, believe Ensign is already moving to shift blame for Senate losses.

"No doubt it has been a tough year, but he's been so undisciplined," said one senior Senate aide, noting these and other candid comments about the GOP's dim prospects. Ensign, this official said, must take some of the blame for the party's poor recruitment of Senate challengers.

"It will be a real disappointment if he isn't challenged," said this source, alluding to who will head the NRSC in the 2010 cycle.

Ensign has signaled that he won't likely serve another term atop the campaign committee. Sens. John Cornyn and Norm Coleman are talked about as potential successors.
I'm not a fan of getting cocky and calling elections ahead of time, but seriously, if the writing isn't on the wall now...

11-01-2008, 02:48 PM

I'm not convinced of anything until Obama is sworn in.

rolmos

11-01-2008, 04:09 PM

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5idPXM6GDkOzIX-_At5WVYrBoJ6JQ

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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:rofl::rofl::rofl:

11-01-2008, 04:26 PM

That's... cruel. And she had no clue. Tss.

Gish08

11-01-2008, 08:32 PM

http://barackobamaeatsbabies.com/

Ever

11-01-2008, 09:41 PM

Nimrod thinks the left wants everyone on welfare and Corganist thinks struggling people don't actually have a desire to overcome, but rather, have a desire for everybody else to struggle also.

Somehow, I don't feel the need to rebut these.I don't think anyone believes the left is currently asking for everyone to be put on welfare, nor do I think that many people believe that the poor are jealous of the rich and hate their wealth. This is not where the issue with welfare comes from.

First lets establish some common ground. Surely we can agree that Obama plans to expand the current amount of welfare to some reasonable extent. We can also agree (seeing as I have limited evidence and limited will to believe otherwise) that Obama wishes to build the economy from the ground up and wishes to see some sort of "social progress" arise from his policies.

I won't bore you with the psychological argument against welfare. I'm sure you've already heard it a million times "The lazy man given no incentive to work becomes lazier" to which you replied "that's true for some but the majority really are good people who have hit hard times and are struggling" And you're right. I agree, the majority are battlers.

Neither will I bore you with the moral argument that says "why should anyone be forced to give their hard earned money to someone they don't even know?" For I'm sure you dismiss such words as those of misers and people with no heart or no sense for the "common good". Fair enough. I disagree that means can justify the end but I'll concede for now. "Besides people can't be trusted to do good things out of their own free will"

And here is my gripe with welfare. Tell me then, Debaser, if "people" and by "people" you mean private citizens can't be trusted to do good things then why can the almighty hand of the government bureaucrat? Is he some sort of exception to this rule? Cannot he too make mistakes?

"Naysayer!" you would shout "you don't buy into the message of hope" But since when is hope defined as having so much mistrust in your fellow man that you feel the need to rob them of their heard earned wealth and spend it how you think is best? I don't think that's hope.

I mean need I point you to private charity? These are Organizations built around the voluntary goodwill of private citizens. Their survival and existence is based solely on their reputation and the tremendous amounts of work they do in helping those out in need. And what about the local church who gives people the guidance and education to move out of a life of crime and into the happiness of a meaningful and productive existence?

"They address the problem" you might say "but not enough so we can see any fundamental change. Only a large public fund can make true 'change' happen" Here I will make the argument against all public enterprise. When you take the risk incentive of the market out of the equation there is little incentive to perform and perform well. Observe the case of private charity first. For example when a church does not provide a realistic and good case for its doctrine, or a path out of misery for the needy in a needy neighborhood it will cease to exist. When a private charity is instead filled with embezzlement and corruption, people will stop giving it money. They are free to do so. What happens when a government organization doesn't perform well? It gets more money! It gets bigger it continues to exist and more plunder more loot is taken out of everyone's pocket to prop it up. You can have all the corruption you want, all the money laundering and it will just get fed more and more. Here you will be tempted to call me cynical. Let me just point out once again that, unless the meaning of cynical is that I don't trust the good will and heart of my fellow men if left to themselves, then I am surely not cynical.

And let's not forget the pure inefficiency of the public sector. All these forms all these papers all this work just to prove to someone that you're not well off. Imagine if the salvation army or the red cross or something made those starving people in Africa fill out over nine thousand forms and papers to prove they are starving. The impoverished people would simply turn around and search the dumpsters for food; its prolly more beneficial to them that way. And how about the process of getting the money to the social workers that's even more cluttered. It leaves so much room for waste and it just means that everyone pays more for worse service then they would if it was all left to private charity.

You might make the claim that at least it's the rich that pay for the majority of these services. That however is more than silly. I don't know about you but from my observations the rich have this uncanny way of getting out of taxes and the politicians have this uncanny way of squandering wealth and investment into pointless paperwork and bureaucracy and more often than not into the hands of the rich. So let's be pragmatic. Who ends up paying? The poor and the middle class. What do they pay for? A crappy service that gets nothing done that if any private charity provided would cease to exist and cease to exist fast. Let's say even if the rich paid their taxes what then? Do you really think the fat greedy capitalist pig will keep wages the same and all costs the same? No its passed right onto the worker and the consumer. The price of living goes up, wages go down and no one wins.

Moreover Debaser, I must ask you how much of your tax payer dollars do you think goes into things that benefit the poor? How much do you think goes to the rich? "But all that will change with Obama" you say "He's a real Robin Hood"

I don't hear Obama talking about the overinflated military budget. Not just the war on Iraq, Debaser, but the hundreds and hundreds of American military bases and outposts overseas. All I can hear is some phony debate whether billions of dollars should be spent sending Americans to die in Afghanistan or to die in Iraq. And who benefits from this? Is it the poor or the arms manufacturers and warmongers?

How about that bailout Debaser? That big give away from the poor over to the rich for "the sake of the poor" did Obama oppose that? No surely not this is a man who gets things done you don't "get things done" opposing such things, not for the rich anyway. All this talk about building the economy from the ground up and there you have the biggest economic decision and look what happened. I mean here is the consumer the people saying look this didn't work this won't ever work it has to collapse it has to go bankrupt and what does Obama want do? Prop it up! lets just see more of the same here cause too much depends on it, trust me, it'll work this time. Who benefited here?

And what about the inflation tax? The country is five trillion dollars or so in debt where do you think the money comes from to keep the state running if it is in debt? How does it get in debt who is it in debt to? It's simple it asks the fed to print more money. Who does this benefit Debaser? Simply put whoever gets it first and let me tell you it's never the poor people who get it first. The people who get it last lose out and lose out big time cause all their savings and all their work is now greatly devalued. You talk about wanting to protect people's retirement protect people's savings and insurance but no one is talking about the sound dollar.

Debaser the problem people have with welfare is not that they are worried the poor are jealous of the rich or that everyone is going to be rationed their dollars nor is it because the rich so bitterly cling onto their wealth at the expense of the poor. Both sides of the argument want to see a more just distribution of wealth. The problem my side has with welfare is simply because it doesn't work. Welfare like all public institutions is inefficient, slow, does not do its job well, costs everyone more (moreover costs the very people it's meant to help more) and creates thousands more problems than it solves. Once again you may attempt to call me cynical for thinking like this and choose instead to buy into the "hope" that Obama preaches. Well Debaser, don't let anyone tell you that it is cynical to think that a strong community spirit and a can do attitude can solve our problems. Don't let anyone tell you that if you don't vote to give them vast amounts of power to "get things done" that you are cynical. This isn't cynicism Debaser, cynicism is thinking that we need the guiding hand of the Washington law maker to run our lives lest we dissolve into chaos. That is cynicism.

True hope is understanding that when people are simply left to themselves, and not forced into doing anything for anyone's idea of the "greater good" or "social progress" that true change can happen. That is hope. That is the message Obama tries to preach and the message Obama uses to lie to you and so we see four more years of more of the same. Ladies and Gentlemen I hope you don't buy it.

Debaser

11-02-2008, 01:51 AM

I don't think anyone believes the left is currently asking for everyone to be put on welfare, nor do I think that many people believe that the poor are jealous of the rich and hate their wealth. This is not where the issue with welfare comes from.

First lets establish some common ground. Surely we can agree that Obama plans to expand the current amount of welfare to some reasonable extent. We can also agree (seeing as I have limited evidence and limited will to believe otherwise) that Obama wishes to build the economy from the ground up and wishes to see some sort of "social progress" arise from his policies.
You do realize that both sides of the aisle promote “welfare”? The only difference is whether you steer it to help those at the top (corporate welfare, tax cuts for the rich, farm subsidies, etc) or steer it to help everybody else (tax cuts for middle class). So don't characterize that only one side gives handouts.

I won't bore you with the psychological argument against welfare. I'm sure you've already heard it a million times "The lazy man given no incentive to work becomes lazier" to which you replied "that's true for some but the majority really are good people who have hit hard times and are struggling" And you're right. I agree, the majority are battlers.

Neither will I bore you with the moral argument that says "why should anyone be forced to give their hard earned money to someone they don't even know?" For I'm sure you dismiss such words as those of misers and people with no heart or no sense for the "common good". Fair enough. I disagree that means can justify the end but I'll concede for now. "Besides people can't be trusted to do good things out of their own free will"
Stop.
You're already operating under this false assumption of what taxes are. Forced? Despite what the marxists-of-the-right (libertarians) say, taxation is not theft. You live in this country and you receive innumerable benefits and services from this. Taxes are your dues. If you do not want to pay America's “membership fee”, then you are completely free to leave. There are no laws in this country against emigration. So please, drop the “forced” schtick. Sure, bitch about how the government spends your tax money, but to act like they took this money from you against your will is just unnecessary promotion of false outrage.

And here is my gripe with welfare. Tell me then, Debaser, if "people" and by "people" you mean private citizens can't be trusted to do good things then why can the almighty hand of the government bureaucrat? Is he some sort of exception to this rule? Cannot he too make mistakes?

"Naysayer!" you would shout "you don't buy into the message of hope" But since when is hope defined as having so much mistrust in your fellow man that you feel the need to rob them of their heard earned wealth and spend it how you think is best? I don't think that's hope.

I mean need I point you to private charity? These are Organizations built around the voluntary goodwill of private citizens. Their survival and existence is based solely on their reputation and the tremendous amounts of work they do in helping those out in need. And what about the local church who gives people the guidance and education to move out of a life of crime and into the happiness of a meaningful and productive existence?

"They address the problem" you might say "but not enough so we can see any fundamental change. Only a large public fund can make true 'change' happen" Here I will make the argument against all public enterprise. When you take the risk incentive of the market out of the equation there is little incentive to perform and perform well. Observe the case of private charity first. For example when a church does not provide a realistic and good case for its doctrine, or a path out of misery for the needy in a needy neighborhood it will cease to exist. When a private charity is instead filled with embezzlement and corruption, people will stop giving it money. They are free to do so. What happens when a government organization doesn't perform well? It gets more money! It gets bigger it continues to exist and more plunder more loot is taken out of everyone's pocket to prop it up. You can have all the corruption you want, all the money laundering and it will just get fed more and more. Here you will be tempted to call me cynical. Let me just point out once again that, unless the meaning of cynical is that I don't trust the good will and heart of my fellow men if left to themselves, then I am surely not cynical.
Wow. Do I even need to be here? The notion that government gives welfare because it doesn't trust it's citizens to help out is absurd. Charity simply cannot do the same job better than the government. It's not only because a lack of funds, but it's a systemic problem. Most charities are small, highly localized and unable to handle big problems like national disasters. If an economic disaster hits a region, the charity organizations that would help it – the local ones – are the least able to help, since they will be stricken, too. So that means other charities will have to travel to the disaster area, set up temporary local organizations, only to leave later or dismantle move to the next disaster. Do you think that's more efficient than just already having a national government system in place? The vast majority of charity funds are both collected and spent locally, which means rich communities tend to have well funded charities, and poor communities tend to have poorly funded ones. So in reality, a very small percent of charity funds actually get to the neediest. This notion that private charities are somehow more resistant to corruption is nonsense. How hard does the average person look into the inner workings of private charities? Most charities are church-related – what percentage of those funds go to church administration, religious and educational facilities, and efforts to convert the poor in other countries to their faith? You're not just cynical. You also have a superficial understanding of how things work -- you know just enough to get in trouble.

And let's not forget the pure inefficiency of the public sector. All these forms all these papers all this work just to prove to someone that you're not well off. Imagine if the salvation army or the red cross or something made those starving people in Africa fill out over nine thousand forms and papers to prove they are starving. The impoverished people would simply turn around and search the dumpsters for food; its prolly more beneficial to them that way. And how about the process of getting the money to the social workers that's even more cluttered. It leaves so much room for waste and it just means that everyone pays more for worse service then they would if it was all left to private charity.

More speaking from the gut here. I don't think you know what you are talking about. Bringing up the Red Cross is weird because a perfect example of where a private charity can systematically fail is what happened during the Indian Ocean Tsunami relief 4 years ago. When it was reported 2 years later that Red Cross still had $400 million of the $550 million in donations it had collected for tsunami relief, it simply couldn't spread the relief around fast enough. Which brings up another problem, leaving it all up to private charities leads to some charities getting more money than they can handle, while other charities, that may be better suited for the situation, begging.

ugh. I'm tired. Maybe more later.

Ever

11-02-2008, 05:51 AM

You do realize that both sides of the aisle promote “welfare”? The only difference is whether you steer it to help those at the top (corporate welfare, tax cuts for the rich, farm subsidies, etc) or steer it to help everybody else (tax cuts for middle class). So don't characterize that only one side gives handouts.I do realize, yes.

My intentions were not to characterize one side as less prone to hand outs than the other. I understand that this is not the case and am ardently opposed to both. However, I am well acquainted with your own support of Obama and was well acquainted with my own support for the man only three or four months earlier. So I appeal to you not to convince you to vote candidate A or candidate B but just take some things into consideration which you might not have in the past.

You're already operating under this false assumption of what taxes are. Forced? Despite what the marxists-of-the-right (libertarians) say, taxation is not theft. You live in this country and you receive innumerable benefits and services from this. Taxes are your dues. If you do not want to pay America's “membership fee”, then you are completely free to leave. There are no laws in this country against emigration. So please, drop the “forced” schtick. Sure, bitch about how the government spends your tax money, but to act like they took this money from you against your will is just unnecessary promotion of false outrage.
That's a fair comment. You're saying "well you're a citizen so you've signed the contract and those are the terms of the contract" Ok, good that's fair enough. I get it.

Now, Debaser, I ask you to just take this one situation into consideration.

Lets say I'm a shop keeper. One day five men walk into my shop and say "we heard there are some bad guys making the rounds around this neighborhood, real nasty thugs, and small helpless businesses like this are in need of 'protection', we can offer you this 'protection' for a very small fee every year. All you have to do is sign this contract" I, as the shopkeeper, never having encountered a band of thugs in my neighborhood politely refuse and tell the men "I appreciate it but I have a gun underneath the counter and its all the protection I've ever needed"

The next day I wake up and go to my shop and notice all the windows are broken and all the products have been knocked off of the shelf. Sure enough as I'm cleaning the mess up and setting my self up to go about business as usual the five men appear again. They say "My, looks like those thugs made the rounds even over here and don't tell us we didn't warn you. So what do you say to our offer yesterday?" The situation now being clear as day to me makes me reluctantly sign the contract.

I "pay my dues" and sure enough the band does offer me "services" of protection from any rival bands. I am free to leave and set up shop elsewhere under the "services" of another band but really there is no point now is there, Debaser?

So suddenly, Debaser, I have to be content with this situation? I should simply brush it off with no "false outrage"?

The notion that government gives welfare because it doesn't trust it's citizens to help out is absurd. Charity simply cannot do the same job better than the government. It's not only because a lack of funds, but it's a systemic problem. Most charities are small, highly localized and unable to handle big problems like national disasters. If an economic disaster hits a region, the charity organizations that would help it – the local ones – are the least able to help, since they will be stricken, too. So that means other charities will have to travel to the disaster area, set up temporary local organizations, only to leave later or dismantle move to the next disaster. Do you think that's more efficient than just already having a national government system in place? The vast majority of charity funds are both collected and spent locally, which means rich communities tend to have well funded charities, and poor communities tend to have poorly funded ones. So in reality, a very small percent of charity funds actually get to the neediest. This notion that private charities are somehow more resistant to corruption is nonsense. How hard does the average person look into the inner workings of private charities? Most charities are church-related – what percentage of those funds go to church administration, religious and educational facilities, and efforts to convert the poor in other countries to their faith? You're not just cynical. You also have a superficial understanding of how things work -- you know just enough to get in trouble.

No, no of course the government knows that most of the work will be done through private organization and charity. My argument was that the supporters of government welfare believe that only the government can get the job done adequately. I think your arguments against the "system" of private charity as too localized and not static enough were a great example of my very point. You believe that the guiding hand of the Washington law maker is more capable in dealing with the problem than the folks who are dealing with it first hand every day.

You also seem to have a problem with rich people contributing more to charity than the poor. I'm glad you noticed the trend. Debaser, if such a trend is not indicative that we don't need to force the wealthy out of their money to get it to the poor than I don't know what is.

I believe there was the question of efficiency in a disaster zone. Well here's the short answer. Yes it is far more efficient. Lets consider for a second exactly what you're proposing. You're proposing that people are forced into giving their money to a "just in case" organization located near a potential disaster zone. Well gee whiz if a hurricane hits City X and the City X "people's emergency reaction force" is stationed in City X with all their supplies then you can kiss them goodbye. In fact not only is the method of private enterprise quickly moving in, setting up, getting the job done, and then dismantling and moving out more efficient, resulting in a better allocation of resources and wealth for everyone, it is in fact the only method to deal with a disaster. The public sector can only imitate it. Moreover when there is no disaster people's voluntary contributions to charities will be spent on things with more current relevance so as to maximize contributions. For example if there is a problem with breast cancer in a certain community then more money from that community will go to a charity addressing that cause than any other. Once again the public sector and the guiding hand of the planner who knows better what to do with people's money than the people themselves can only hope to calculate their needs and their wants for them. He can make predictions, but as he can not be everyone at once, he will not do the job nearly as quickly or as efficiently as the private sector.

More speaking from the gut here. I don't think you know what you are talking about. Bringing up the Red Cross is weird because a perfect example of where a private charity can systematically fail is what happened during the Indian Ocean Tsunami relief 4 years ago. When it was reported 2 years later that Red Cross still had $400 million of the $550 million in donations it had collected for tsunami relief, it simply couldn't spread the relief around fast enough. Which brings up another problem, leaving it all up to private charities leads to some charities getting more money than they can handle, while other charities, that may be better suited for the situation, begging.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on this point. You're right some charities are better suited than others for a task, sometimes a charity does a job badly.

My problem here is not with your accurate and well observed statements. Rather my problem here is with your proposed solution. Lets imagine, Debaser, that the Red Cross and its inept handling of the situation was the only charity around. Let us too imagine that everyone has to give them money and their failure in handling the situation won't result in less money in the future but instead them demanding and forcing out more. Now is the more capable charity capable of moving in at a later time seeing as people realize how bad the Red Cross is? No they're not. Is there the chance of a better future charity? Well yes I suppose after four years of ineptness you might get some guy who makes the system marginally better or marginally worse but you had to wait four years! You had no alternatives during this time you were completely powerless. Not only that but someone who could very well do the job better is denied the chance because of the monopoly on charity.

Once again Debaser I cannot put into words the folly of thinking that by eliminating competition you're going to solve the problem or make anything better. By eliminating competition I do not mean getting rid of all charity but government charity. I mean just introducing government charity as the same principles apply. Everyone has to give it money, and everyone has to give it money the worse it does, even if when allowed to keep the wealth themselves they might have been able to afford to give it to a far more capable organization.

Debaser

11-02-2008, 11:24 AM

You might make the claim that at least it's the rich that pay for the majority of these services. That however is more than silly. I don't know about you but from my observations the rich have this uncanny way of getting out of taxes and the politicians have this uncanny way of squandering wealth and investment into pointless paperwork and bureaucracy and more often than not into the hands of the rich. So let's be pragmatic. Who ends up paying? The poor and the middle class. What do they pay for? A crappy service that gets nothing done that if any private charity provided would cease to exist and cease to exist fast. Let's say even if the rich paid their taxes what then? Do you really think the fat greedy capitalist pig will keep wages the same and all costs the same? No its passed right onto the worker and the consumer. The price of living goes up, wages go down and no one wins.

That's a pretty impossible way to think of it...so we should do away progressive taxation because people at the top figure out ways to escape it? To me, you're making an argument to close these loopholes, not an argument throw out the entire system.

Moreover Debaser, I must ask you how much of your tax payer dollars do you think goes into things that benefit the poor? How much do you think goes to the rich? "But all that will change with Obama" you say "He's a real Robin Hood"
I'm not looking for a Robin Hood. I'm just looking for a more just distribution of wealth. I'm looking for a little more fairness. And I'm just looking for a safety net for everybody. The basic liberal philosophy here that "we're all in this together", not "steal from the rich to give to the poor".

I don't hear Obama talking about the overinflated military budget. Not just the war on Iraq, Debaser, but the hundreds and hundreds of American military bases and outposts overseas. All I can hear is some phony debate whether billions of dollars should be spent sending Americans to die in Afghanistan or to die in Iraq. And who benefits from this? Is it the poor or the arms manufacturers and warmongers?
You seem to think that I'm somehow advocating shifting the majority of our budget to welfare for the poor. I am not. I'm only saying that welfare is not an evil thing, it's just a tool, and shouldn't be the only one.

How about that bailout Debaser? That big give away from the poor over to the rich for "the sake of the poor" did Obama oppose that? No surely not this is a man who gets things done you don't "get things done" opposing such things, not for the rich anyway. All this talk about building the economy from the ground up and there you have the biggest economic decision and look what happened. I mean here is the consumer the people saying look this didn't work this won't ever work it has to collapse it has to go bankrupt and what does Obama want do? Prop it up! lets just see more of the same here cause too much depends on it, trust me, it'll work this time. Who benefited here?
Well that's just extremely glib. The banking crisis is not something you can look at with such a narrow view. And it would be crazy to want a leader that does.

And what about the inflation tax? The country is five trillion dollars or so in debt where do you think the money comes from to keep the state running if it is in debt? How does it get in debt who is it in debt to? It's simple it asks the fed to print more money. Who does this benefit Debaser? Simply put whoever gets it first and let me tell you it's never the poor people who get it first. The people who get it last lose out and lose out big time cause all their savings and all their work is now greatly devalued. You talk about wanting to protect people's retirement protect people's savings and insurance but no one is talking about the sound dollar.
The government is not at the stage of simply printing more money to cover it's debts, economists doubt that it ever will. The amount of money printed is determined by the demands of the economy, not by the demands of the federal government. The government still borrows money by issuing debt: selling treasury bills, treasury notes, treasury bonds, and treasury inflation protected securities. This really has little to do with this welfare discussion, unless poor people are buying these debt instruments and even then, the U.S. has yet to ever default on its debt. This is all over the place...it's so much more complicated than you or I know. A weak dollar has benefits that can lead to higher demand of U.S. goods, while levers to strengthen the dollar (such as raising interest rates) can hurt other sectors of the economy. It's just not that simple.

Debaser the problem people have with welfare is not that they are worried the poor are jealous of the rich or that everyone is going to be rationed their dollars nor is it because the rich so bitterly cling onto their wealth at the expense of the poor. Both sides of the argument want to see a more just distribution of wealth. The problem my side has with welfare is simply because it doesn't work. Welfare like all public institutions is inefficient, slow, does not do its job well, costs everyone more (moreover costs the very people it's meant to help more) and creates thousands more problems than it solves. I don't know where you get the idea that welfare is some sort of massive failure. What evidence do you actually have? Sure, there are cheaters and there may be inefficient programs (there are good programs, too), but to ignore the good and only look at its faults and then declare the whole thing a failure is pure cynicism. Just check out poverty levels falling by almost 2/3 from between the great depression to the late 70's only to level out when Reagan began cutting welfare spending. That's not to say that social programs deserves all the credit -- but it's strange to look at history and conclude that welfare hurts the cause.

Once again you may attempt to call me cynical for thinking like this and choose instead to buy into the "hope" that Obama preaches. Well Debaser, don't let anyone tell you that it is cynical to think that a strong community spirit and a can do attitude can solve our problems. Don't let anyone tell you that if you don't vote to give them vast amounts of power to "get things done" that you are cynical. This isn't cynicism Debaser, cynicism is thinking that we need the guiding hand of the Washington law maker to run our lives lest we dissolve into chaos. That is cynicism.

True hope is understanding that when people are simply left to themselves, and not forced into doing anything for anyone's idea of the "greater good" or "social progress" that true change can happen. That is hope. That is the message Obama tries to preach and the message Obama uses to lie to you and so we see four more years of more of the same. Ladies and Gentlemen I hope you don't buy it.

This is devolved into an anti-statist rant. Look, basically I believe there is a role for government and there are a couple things that a government is better suited to handle than private entities. You seem to be advocating hope in anarchy. You don't buy the idea of good government and I don't buy the idea of anarcho-capitalism.

Debaser

11-02-2008, 12:23 PM

That's a fair comment. You're saying "well you're a citizen so you've signed the contract and those are the terms of the contract" Ok, good that's fair enough. I get it.

Now, Debaser, I ask you to just take this one situation into consideration.

Lets say I'm a shop keeper. One day five men walk into my shop and say "we heard there are some bad guys making the rounds around this neighborhood, real nasty thugs, and small helpless businesses like this are in need of 'protection', we can offer you this 'protection' for a very small fee every year. All you have to do is sign this contract" I, as the shopkeeper, never having encountered a band of thugs in my neighborhood politely refuse and tell the men "I appreciate it but I have a gun underneath the counter and its all the protection I've ever needed"

The next day I wake up and go to my shop and notice all the windows are broken and all the products have been knocked off of the shelf. Sure enough as I'm cleaning the mess up and setting my self up to go about business as usual the five men appear again. They say "My, looks like those thugs made the rounds even over here and don't tell us we didn't warn you. So what do you say to our offer yesterday?" The situation now being clear as day to me makes me reluctantly sign the contract.

I "pay my dues" and sure enough the band does offer me "services" of protection from any rival bands. I am free to leave and set up shop elsewhere under the "services" of another band but really there is no point now is there, Debaser?

So suddenly, Debaser, I have to be content with this situation? I should simply brush it off with no "false outrage"?
Well that's one wrong way to look at it I guess.

If you really "got" my point like you said, then in the analogy you would not be the store-owner and the government as extortionists (you've fell back to the taxation as theft meme).

In reality, the store is the government and you are the customer. You've entered the store, taken some goods, and upon your refusal to pay, you are sent to jail. That is a better analogy of the social contract theory.

No, no of course the government knows that most of the work will be done through private organization and charity. My argument was that the supporters of government welfare believe that only the government can get the job done adequately. I think your arguments against the "system" of private charity as too localized and not static enough were a great example of my very point. You believe that the guiding hand of the Washington law maker is more capable in dealing with the problem than the folks who are dealing with it first hand every day.
Government social programs and private charities are not mutually exclusive. I like the idea of both co-existing while you want to cripple one and "hope" that the other can cover it.

You also seem to have a problem with rich people contributing more to charity than the poor. I'm glad you noticed the trend. Debaser, if such a trend is not indicative that we don't need to force the wealthy out of their money to get it to the poor than I don't know what is.
That's a misread of what I said. The fact that the rich can contribute more is not a problem. The problem is that charities are highly localized. And you've ignored another point. We're not "forcing" money out of the wealthy for the purpose of giving to the poor.

I believe there was the question of efficiency in a disaster zone. Well here's the short answer. Yes it is far more efficient. Lets consider for a second exactly what you're proposing. You're proposing that people are forced into giving their money to a "just in case" organization located near a potential disaster zone. Well gee whiz if a hurricane hits City X and the City X "people's emergency reaction force" is stationed in City X with all their supplies then you can kiss them goodbye. In fact not only is the method of private enterprise quickly moving in, setting up, getting the job done, and then dismantling and moving out more efficient, resulting in a better allocation of resources and wealth for everyone, it is in fact the only method to deal with a disaster. The public sector can only imitate it. Moreover when there is no disaster people's voluntary contributions to charities will be spent on things with more current relevance so as to maximize contributions. For example if there is a problem with breast cancer in a certain community then more money from that community will go to a charity addressing that cause than any other. Once again the public sector and the guiding hand of the planner who knows better what to do with people's money than the people themselves can only hope to calculate their needs and their wants for them. He can make predictions, but as he can not be everyone at once, he will not do the job nearly as quickly or as efficiently as the private sector.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on this point. You're right some charities are better suited than others for a task, sometimes a charity does a job badly.

My problem here is not with your accurate and well observed statements. Rather my problem here is with your proposed solution. Lets imagine, Debaser, that the Red Cross and its inept handling of the situation was the only charity around. Let us too imagine that everyone has to give them money and their failure in handling the situation won't result in less money in the future but instead them demanding and forcing out more. Now is the more capable charity capable of moving in at a later time seeing as people realize how bad the Red Cross is? No they're not. Is there the chance of a better future charity? Well yes I suppose after four years of ineptness you might get some guy who makes the system marginally better or marginally worse but you had to wait four years! You had no alternatives during this time you were completely powerless. Not only that but someone who could very well do the job better is denied the chance because of the monopoly on charity
That's just untrue. Too many false assumptions to unpack here. You've put forth a mischaracterization of how both government and charities work. The vast majority of charities are simply nowhere near as equipped as you think they are. It is faster for the national government to simply divert funds to needed areas than to rely on local charities to travel to needed areas, set up shop, get donotions, and then start helping. Local charities can also be highly specific and unlike a government program, they can't share funds between each other, even if both charities are in the same community! What if there's an epidemic in a community, but the local educational charity cannot reallocate its funds to the local health charity. And then back to accountability: unlike what you imagine, government programs are held under intense scrutiny, whether its oversight from other government entities, the media, or even its detractors. Private charities do not have the same scrutiny, and private charities are notorious for spending their a high percentage of donations on "administrative" costs. Donors keep donating to bad charities until a tammy-faye-baker-like scandal breaks out, and by then it's too late, they've already wasted all those donations.

Again, I'm not arguing for government programs to be the only thing to fight poverty. We can have both. And both can be improved to work better.

.

Once again Debaser I cannot put into words the folly of thinking that by eliminating competition you're going to solve the problem or make anything better. By eliminating competition I do not mean getting rid of all charity but government charity. I mean just introducing government charity as the same principles apply. Everyone has to give it money, and everyone has to give it money the worse it does, even if when allowed to keep the wealth themselves they might have been able to afford to give it to a far more capable organization.

You don't pay your taxes as a substitute for giving to charity. That is the folly of this comparison.

Ever

11-02-2008, 04:06 PM

That's a pretty impossible way to think of it...so we should do away progressive taxation because people at the top figure out ways to escape it? To me, you're making an argument to close these loopholes, not an argument throw out the entire system.

I'm not looking for a Robin Hood. I'm just looking for a more just distribution of wealth. I'm looking for a little more fairness. And I'm just looking for a safety net for everybody. The basic liberal philosophy here that "we're all in this together", not "steal from the rich to give to the poor".

You seem to think that I'm somehow advocating shifting the majority of our budget to welfare for the poor. I am not. I'm only saying that welfare is not an evil thing, it's just a tool, and shouldn't be the only one.

Well I for one do want to see the poor get more money so they can get back on their feet. I for one am tired of corporate welfare and government scratching the backs of large corporations and vice versa. This is why I just don't want this money assigned arbitrarily according to the infinite wisdom of some lawyer. I want this money to be real wealth, made by the poor for themselves or donated to them out of the kind hearts of my fellow man with the encouragement and expectation that they'll be able to pick themselves up and get on with their lives.

I too want to see a just distribution of wealth. We are arguing for the same thing here. I just believe that the most just distribution where everyone benefits doesn't come from the hand outs of government welfare but rather the natural organization of society.

Well that's just extremely glib. The banking crisis is not something you can look at with such a narrow view. And it would be crazy to want a leader that does.

The government is not at the stage of simply printing more money to cover it's debts, economists doubt that it ever will. The amount of money printed is determined by the demands of the economy, not by the demands of the federal government. The government still borrows money by issuing debt: selling treasury bills, treasury notes, treasury bonds, and treasury inflation protected securities. This really has little to do with this welfare discussion, unless poor people are buying these debt instruments and even then, the U.S. has yet to ever default on its debt. This is all over the place...it's so much more complicated than you or I know. A weak dollar has benefits that can lead to higher demand of U.S. goods, while levers to strengthen the dollar (such as raising interest rates) can hurt other sectors of the economy. It's just not that simple.

Debaser the problem isn't who is printing the money or why they're printing the money. Its not the problem of who borrows the money or to whom the money goes. It is that money is printed it is counterfeiting, plain and simple. Its creating wealth out of thin air and you don't need a degree in economics to have the sense that that's disastrous.

Look if I had a machine that printed me money and I printed myself out a few thousand billion dollars and went on a spending spree I'd end up with a bunch of stuff. Now everyone else who got my money would now have a lot of money but a lot less stuff to buy and a lot more money meaning, well, everything costs more. Who benefited? Me and only me. The people who get their hands on the money out of the printing press first are the one's who benefit most.

Let me give you an analogy I recently read up on

A baker exchanges his ten saved loaves of bread for ten potatoes. The potatoes are now sustaining or funding the baker while he is engaged in the baking of bread. Likewise the bread sustains the potato farmer while he is engaged in the production of potatoes. The respective production of the baker and of the potato farmer enables them to secure goods for consumption.

What makes the consumption productive in this example is the fact that both the baker and the potato farmer consume in order to be able to produce. The consumption of both the baker and the potato farmer maintains their lives and well-being. This is the only reason for production.

The introduction of money doesn't change what was said so far. For instance the baker can exchange his ten loaves of bread for $10 — he then uses money to secure ten potatoes. Likewise the potato farmer can now exchange his ten dollars for ten loaves of bread. Observe that, apart from fulfilling the role of the medium of exchange, money has contributed absolutely nothing to the production of bread and potatoes.

So far we have seen that to secure potatoes, the baker had to exchange bread for money and then employed money to secure potatoes. Something was exchanged for money, which in turn was exchanged for something else — or something for something is exchanged with the help of money.

Trouble erupts when money is created "out of thin air." Such money gives rise to consumption, which is not backed by any production. It leads to an exchange of nothing for something.

For instance, a counterfeiter has printed a perfect $20 note. Since he secured this money by means other than the production of some useful goods or services, the counterfeiter has therefore obtained the $20 by exchanging nothing for it.

The counterfeiter uses the $20 to buy ten loaves of bread. What we have here is the diversion of real funding — ten loaves of bread — from a potato farmer towards the counterfeiter. Note that the diversion takes place by the counterfeiter paying a higher price for bread — he pays two dollars per loaf. Previously the price stood at one dollar per loaf. Also note that since the counterfeiter doesn't produce anything useful he is engaged in nonproductive consumption.

The potato farmer is now denied the bread that he must have to sustain himself while he is producing potatoes. Obviously this will impair the production of potatoes. As a result, fewer potatoes will become available, which in turn will undermine the consumption of the baker, thereby impairing his ability to produce.

We can see that, while productive consumption sustains wealth generators and promotes the expansion of real wealth, nonproductive consumption only leads to economic impoverishment.

Printing money by the central bank produces exactly the same damaging effect as the counterfeit money does. Likewise the creation of money through fractional-reserve banking produces the same damaging effect. The expansion of money sets the platform for nonproductive consumption — an agent of economic destruction.

I don't know where you get the idea that welfare is some sort of massive failure. What evidence do you actually have? Sure, there are cheaters and there may be inefficient programs (there are good programs, too), but to ignore the good and only look at its faults and then declare the whole thing a failure is pure cynicism. Just check out poverty levels falling by almost 2/3 from between the great depression to the late 70's only to level out when Reagan began cutting welfare spending. That's not to say that social programs deserves all the credit -- but it's strange to look at history and conclude that welfare hurts the cause.

No no no no no. Unless the definition of cynicism has changed into we need someone smarter than us to take money from us cause we're to stupid to know what to do with it ourselves I'm not the cynical one. The fact that such a system could come to exist in the first place is the product of complete cynicism.

My argument is that if you leave it to the hands of Washington officials and not localized governments or better yet no government at all then the system cannot be efficient. It cannot be responsive, it cannot be fast enough to meet the demands of society and its inherently broken. If we let people to themselves we'd see more social justice, a better distribution of wealth and more prosperity for all than if we think that it is only the infinite wisdom of the government bureaucrats that can solve our problems.

You mentioned the use of historical trends. Look at this way then: America through colonial times till about 1916 and world war one was doing fine. It had minimal regulation and minimal government interference and certainly very minimal welfare if any at all. From 1916 we've seen nothing but more and more government intrusion and strangely enough more and more poverty and a greater gap between the rich and poor. And how about that New Deal that pronged the depression for another six with its Keynesian programs. The New Deal after all was built on welfare. Its a vague trend. I know. There are a lot of other factors to consider but its just as vague as your 70s up until the Reagen trend.

Debaser as a strong leftist I'm sure you love the Scandinavian countries. After all here are the shining examples of social democracies. I want you to look at them a bit more carefully.

While the rest of the world aside from a few exceptions was getting owned by nationalist socialists and Germans, Sweden enjoyed the benefits of a free market and a policy of non-interventionism which lead to huge economic growth. The socialist democrats allowed this to happen throughout most of the 30s and 40s with little intervention into the markets. This is what gave the socialist democrats such a good platform when they decided to tighten up the markets in the 50s. They did well at first absorbing unemployment into the public sector as happens always with the beginning of any socialist system. There are jobs, work to do and the economic engine seems robust powerful and maintains a clear direction. Observe FDRs new deal for example, or the early years of communist rule in my own homeland of Yugoslavia. Another example is the now long socialist healthcare system of Britain and in Canada. All this is built on the back of the free-market. Do you see the similarity between all these socialist dreams? FDR's new deal worsened the depression by extending it for eight years, Yugoslavia fell apart into civil war and the healthcare systems of Britain and Canada are expensive, cost the tax payer a kajillion dollars every year and now the bureaucrats are fighting over how to "overhaul" it so they can get more money. The whole interventionism leads to more interventionism starts rolling around sooner or later. (this is the theory where when you distort the market in one way to solve a problem you create three other problems leading to three more distortions leading to nine problems etc.) So back to Sweden. Since 1970 Sweden has been on the decline, economic growth has slowed tremendously and the government is about to head into debt. During the 60s the socialist democrats were the most radical and they abandoned their earlier more pragmatic positions in favor of expanding the welfare state, cause really that's all they could do. Between 1970 and 1990 taxes increased steadily at a rate of one percentage point a year. During the 70s this was seen a as great success curbing unemployment and creating work. No one dared question if the policy was sustainable.

"From the 1950s until the early 1970s, the Swedish social democratic model managed to successfully deliver on its promises of low unemployment, low inflation, and a relatively egalitarian distribution of wealth. But during the course of the past 25 years, the Swedish model has seemed to be headed along a path of slow disintegration, culminating in the disastrous economic recession of the early 1990s."

~ Jason Coronel. "Foundations, Decline and Future Prospects of the Swedish Welfare Model: From the 1950s to the 1990s and Beyond." DePaul University Spring 2002

And now with government growing and regulation growing there are some big cracks in the foundations of the economy. No one is starting up new business, no one is making anything new competition has stagnated as government bureaucrats take over every big firm and solidify it whether it could succeed in the real world or not. No single large Swedish company exists established after 1970. None. Sweden has moved from being the fourth richest country in the world in 1970 to being the fourteenth in 2002. The average American has a 37% higher purchasing power than the average Swede and (lol) twice the private consumption. 30% of the entire Swedish population falls below the poverty line for Americans.

"The Swedish system is in serious trouble. The Swedish economy is no longer creating jobs – private sector employment has been shrinking for decades, and the public sector can no longer absorb more workers… Many Swedes are pessimistic about the future, in large measure because they cannot imagine how their system can survive, yet cannot overcome the political obstacles to changing it."

~ Virginia Postrel, Reason Magazine November 1999

And that's not mentioning the decay of work ethic among the Swedish people. With all this free money and this Marxist notion that money grows on trees people are retiring early, taking more sick leave than they should and simply put: not producing. And wow look at those living standards I mean you just walk into Sweden and money is thrown at you without so much as lifting a hair. It's the whole "each to his ability and each to his needs" thing where everyone ends up needing a whole lot and no one ends up having too many abilities. There are a vast number of people now living off of unemployment, leeching of others and enjoying the benefits of a system that's going to collapse and going to collapse sooner rather than later.

Ever

11-02-2008, 05:05 PM

Well that's one wrong way to look at it I guess.

If you really "got" my point like you said, then in the analogy you would not be the store-owner and the government as extortionists (you've fell back to the taxation as theft meme).

In reality, the store is the government and you are the customer. You've entered the store, taken some goods, and upon your refusal to pay, you are sent to jail. That is a better analogy of the social contract theory.

But I don't want to take the goods. Its like walking into a store with a gun to my head telling me to buy the nachos and the porno magazine but I just went in to get the milk. I'm happy to pay for the services I use, Debaser. I'm even happy to pay for some I don't I'm just wary of it. The less people are forced out of their money for it to go to places they don't want it to go the better. For example the billions of stolen dollars funding the maintenance of the the overseas empire. Surely you can agree.

Ideally I'm against all taxation but as it stands now we don't need to raise taxes on anyone we just need to cut spending like crazy, stop the wars overseas, stop the corporate welfare and backscratching, get rid of all these failed programs and shrink government. Too much money is going to waste, to propping up failed systems no sane man would pay for or make voluntary contributions to if given the choice.

That's just untrue. Too many false assumptions to unpack here. You've put forth a mischaracterization of how both government and charities work. The vast majority of charities are simply nowhere near as equipped as you think they are. It is faster for the national government to simply divert funds to needed areas than to rely on local charities to travel to needed areas, set up shop, get donotions, and then start helping. Local charities can also be highly specific and unlike a government program, they can't share funds between each other, even if both charities are in the same community! What if there's an epidemic in a community, but the local educational charity cannot reallocate its funds to the local health charity. And then back to accountability: unlike what you imagine, government programs are held under intense scrutiny, whether its oversight from other government entities, the media, or even its detractors. Private charities do not have the same scrutiny, and private charities are notorious for spending their a high percentage of donations on "administrative" costs. Donors keep donating to bad charities until a tammy-faye-baker-like scandal breaks out, and by then it's too late, they've already wasted all those donations.

Again, I'm not arguing for government programs to be the only thing to fight poverty. We can have both. And both can be improved to work better.

I agree and once again well observed. You are correct, the small charities such as the cancer councils or animal conservationists or whatever don't really have the means to deal with disasters. Does this mean there are no charities that do? The red cross is, after all, gigantic. Does this mean that prominent billionaires and large companies don't flood the new hot humanitarian craze with money in order to, believe it or not, advertise themselves? You greatly underestimate how well the free market channels negative energy into positive.

Moreover the market creates room for competition, if wealth can be allocated better or more efficiently it will be. The same government official now planning it with no risks will instead plan it on the job there at the location with risks and with direct accountability to the people and not some random oversight committee.

You mentioned the presence of oversight in order to improve efficiency. You failed to realize that oversight in the market is done simply by consumers and no resources have to be allocated to it. This is and always will be far more efficient than devoting resources to paper work forms and bureaucracy. And lets not forget the ironic dehumanization which bureaucracy that tries to serve humanist principles must engage in.

I'll concede one thing to you. If you were to pull the plug out of all government welfare and all disaster relief now you won't be doing anyone a lot of good. But Ideally our road should be to get away from this notion that we need to force people out of their money to prop up systems that no one wants and no one would pay for if given the choice. Not to bigger systems and more money flowing into them the worse they do and more people paying for what they don't want or need but rather what someone thinks they need.

Lets not be cynical anymore Debaser. People do good things, they know whats good for themselves. The time to change Washington is now, its time to get on the road to give power back to the individual and not take more away from him.

Ever

11-02-2008, 05:37 PM

You don't pay your taxes as a substitute for giving to charity. That is the folly of this comparison.I have $10. The government takes away $5, $2 of which goes to welfare. With my $5 I have left I buy food and live. If I had my full $10 I would have bought my food and maybe something cool like candy or something, maybe paid for my son's education or something and given $1 to a charity of my choice which I think solves a problem which is relevant to me. Maybe I wouldn't have.

However if this welfare was so good and so beneficial I'd give it my money anyway wouldn't I? I mean if I thought it was I wouldn't need to be forced into doing it. Are you saying, Debaser, that we can't trust private citizens to be responsible and good people and do the right thing? That if we didn't force people into giving up their hard earned money and distributing the wealth by the benevolent hand of the man in Washington that these people would cling bitterly on to their money and stomp on the poor and laugh?

Then I put forth this question If you can't trust your neighbor how can you trust a man you don't even now to play around with what is essentially stolen loot?

To see a fair and just distribution of wealth you cannot leave it up to even the most kind hearted and well to do government official. He cannot know the common good because he cannot be everyone at once. He can only calculate some sort of utilitarian judgment for any one time but this can never accurately reflect the cumulative desires of everyone. Sure people vote him in but more often or not they don't agree with everything he says or just some of it and if things mess up you have to wait four years and there's just too much at stake most of the time.

Do I advocate getting rid of all welfare, all government, all government officials?. No no no no that would be too chaotic right now, too counterproductive. I'm saying we need to be wary and cautious in what we allow government to do and just what we should allow government to have control over. And right now is not the time for bigger government that will just make our problems worse. I advocate slowly returning power back to the individual, getting the people's voice heard all the time through the vote of the dollar and moving towards a more natural organization of society. Not a less natural one, and one that less meets the needs of everyone and more the desires of the select few.

suncrashesdown

11-02-2008, 06:13 PM

I think Ever might be Andrew Ryan

redbull

11-02-2008, 09:05 PM

ever is ron paul

killtrocity

11-02-2008, 10:35 PM

this is the greatest page on netphoria, or at least this forum

Debaser

11-03-2008, 09:52 PM

Well, damn. I guess I really don't need to be here. Despite whatever I say you just keep on plowing on. Oh, well it's facinating, I guess. You've put so much on the table, I doubt I have the time or desire to cover it all. I'll just have to take bits and pieces.

Debaser

11-03-2008, 09:59 PM

Well I for one do want to see the poor get more money so they can get back on their feet. I for one am tired of corporate welfare and government scratching the backs of large corporations and vice versa. This is why I just don't want this money assigned arbitrarily according to the infinite wisdom of some lawyer. I want this money to be real wealth, made by the poor for themselves or donated to them out of the kind hearts of my fellow man with the encouragement and expectation that they'll be able to pick themselves up and get on with their lives.

I too want to see a just distribution of wealth. We are arguing for the same thing here. I just believe that the most just distribution where everyone benefits doesn't come from the hand outs of government welfare but rather the natural organization of society.
There seems to be a logical disconnect somewhere as you are trying to be both compassionate and a hardcore libertarian at the same time. You feign like you are arguing for wealth redistribution but at the same time argue for no government intervention -- which is the opposite. The "natural organization of society" is a weird phrase that could mean anything.

Debaser

11-03-2008, 10:19 PM

Debaser the problem isn't who is printing the money or why they're printing the money. Its not the problem of who borrows the money or to whom the money goes. It is that money is printed it is counterfeiting, plain and simple. Its creating wealth out of thin air and you don't need a degree in economics to have the sense that that's disastrous.

Look if I had a machine that printed me money and I printed myself out a few thousand billion dollars and went on a spending spree I'd end up with a bunch of stuff. Now everyone else who got my money would now have a lot of money but a lot less stuff to buy and a lot more money meaning, well, everything costs more. Who benefited? Me and only me. The people who get their hands on the money out of the printing press first are the one's who benefit most.

Let me give you an analogy I recently read up on

A baker exchanges his ten saved loaves of bread for ten potatoes. The potatoes are now sustaining or funding the baker while he is engaged in the baking of bread. Likewise the bread sustains the potato farmer while he is engaged in the production of potatoes. The respective production of the baker and of the potato farmer enables them to secure goods for consumption.

What makes the consumption productive in this example is the fact that both the baker and the potato farmer consume in order to be able to produce. The consumption of both the baker and the potato farmer maintains their lives and well-being. This is the only reason for production.

The introduction of money doesn't change what was said so far. For instance the baker can exchange his ten loaves of bread for $10 — he then uses money to secure ten potatoes. Likewise the potato farmer can now exchange his ten dollars for ten loaves of bread. Observe that, apart from fulfilling the role of the medium of exchange, money has contributed absolutely nothing to the production of bread and potatoes.

So far we have seen that to secure potatoes, the baker had to exchange bread for money and then employed money to secure potatoes. Something was exchanged for money, which in turn was exchanged for something else — or something for something is exchanged with the help of money.

Trouble erupts when money is created "out of thin air." Such money gives rise to consumption, which is not backed by any production. It leads to an exchange of nothing for something.

For instance, a counterfeiter has printed a perfect $20 note. Since he secured this money by means other than the production of some useful goods or services, the counterfeiter has therefore obtained the $20 by exchanging nothing for it.

The counterfeiter uses the $20 to buy ten loaves of bread. What we have here is the diversion of real funding — ten loaves of bread — from a potato farmer towards the counterfeiter. Note that the diversion takes place by the counterfeiter paying a higher price for bread — he pays two dollars per loaf. Previously the price stood at one dollar per loaf. Also note that since the counterfeiter doesn't produce anything useful he is engaged in nonproductive consumption.

The potato farmer is now denied the bread that he must have to sustain himself while he is producing potatoes. Obviously this will impair the production of potatoes. As a result, fewer potatoes will become available, which in turn will undermine the consumption of the baker, thereby impairing his ability to produce.

We can see that, while productive consumption sustains wealth generators and promotes the expansion of real wealth, nonproductive consumption only leads to economic impoverishment.

Printing money by the central bank produces exactly the same damaging effect as the counterfeit money does. Likewise the creation of money through fractional-reserve banking produces the same damaging effect. The expansion of money sets the platform for nonproductive consumption — an agent of economic destruction.

Well I have to admit, you did really stump me here. This is an argument that I only hear from rightwing fringe, Ron Paul and Austrian economists. They all cry that we need to shift back to the gold standard. But at the same time, Keynesian "paper" monetary policy is so vastly accepted by just about all noted economists from the left and right and in all modern countries, it was hard to actually find a break down of reasons for it. It's like an open and shut case that nobody bothers to explore.

I finally did come across some old Steve Kangas (RIP) essays on this that I found very convincing. Of couse, that could be my liberal bias towards a liberal essay.

Kangas (http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-gold.htm):

Once the subject of heated national debate over 100 years ago, the gold standard today has nearly disappeared as a political issue. The world has abandoned the gold standard in favor of so-called "paper money," and only a diminishing group on the far right continues to call for its return. However, if mainstream economists (on both the left and the right) have anything to say about it, there will never be a return to "that barbarous relic," as John Maynard Keynes called gold over 60 years ago.

Even so, defenders of the gold standard in.clude such former presidential candidates as Jack Kemp and Stephen Forbes. Furthermore, the rise of well-funded, right-wing think tanks in the last few decades has managed to resurrect the issue. Therefore, reviewing the arguments of the "gold bugs" -- as they are irreverently known in academia -- is well worthwhile, if only to screen our presidential candidates for obsolete economic ideas.

The reason why the far right opposes the current money system is because it allows the government to control the size of the money supply. They argue that an unscrupulous government might pay its bills by printing more money, which would cause inflation. They also argue that shrinking the money supply allows the government to create recessions. Under a gold standard, the total value of money would be fixed (or nearly so), and the market would adjust itself efficiently around it. In his book, The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises wrote: "The excellence of the gold standard is to be seen in the fact that it renders the determination of the monetary unit's purchasing power independent of the policies of governments and political parties."

Mainstream economists, however, have a powerful counter-argument. The current system might, in theory, allow an unscrupulous government to create inflation or unemployment, but it also allows the government to fight inflation and unemployment. And that is a tremendous achievement, because not one nation around the world using Keynesian monetary policy has experienced a depression in the last six decades. It appears that we eliminated depressions when we eliminated the gold standard.

It hasn't been for lack of opportunities. In 1987, the U.S. stock market crashed, in a "meltdown" that was even worse than the Crash of 1929. But the Federal Reserve had learned its lessons from the Great Depression, and this time it responded correctly: with a sharp expansion of the money supply. And not only was there no depression, but there was no recession either -- in fact, the remarkable economic boom of the 80s continued without even a bump. Under a gold standard, the Fed would have been robbed of this anti-recessionary weapon.

Of course, the gold bugs have developed a set of apologetics for arguments like these. To put everything in perspective, it is helpful to trace the evolution of the monetary system, from its very beginnings to the rise and fall of the gold standard. The reason for starting at the beginning is twofold: even the basics are disputed by people who believe themselves informed on the issue, and many lay persons might not know them anyway. So, with apologies, let's start with the invention of money.

The history of monetary systems

The first economic activity was undoubtedly bartering. Two people would make a direct exchange: say, food for furs. However, bartering is a most inefficient trading system. If the person with furs wanted food, but the person with food wanted wood carvings, they would have to search for a third party with wood carvings before they could make their trade. And the third party may not want either of their tradeables, requiring a search for a fourth party -- as you can see, the process quickly becomes unworkable.

The invention of money solved this problem. As a medium of exchange, money allows people to conduct multi-person bartering without all the effort of searching for a hundred people before making the transaction that everyone wants. True, a hundred people may indeed be involved in the final transaction -- but no thought or planning has to go into it, because money, by some miracle of economics, eliminates such a need. In short, money is a tool that allows for easy and painless multi-person bartering. In and of itself it has little or no intrinsic value.

But the invention of money presented a problem of what should be used for it. Suppose that a common resource like stones was used for money. The problem is that tradeable goods are limited -- it may take all day to hunt game or weave a rug. When you put your final product on the market, buyers will compete for it, because, after all, everyone desires to hoard wealth. The first buyer may pick a rock off the ground and offer it to you, whereupon a second buyer will pick up two rocks and better the offer. Soon a bidding war erupts, with buyers picking up rocks as fast they can. In the end you might receive an entire rock quarry for your marketed good. This example highlights two absurdities. First, this is the essence of inflation. When there is too much money available, prices soar, and tons of money are needed to buy things. Second, it is a waste of human and natural resources to dig up so much money -- people might as well devote all this effort to producing the actual goods.

So early money had to be made out of something rare. Silver and gold met this requirement, although some societies used other rare materials, like conch shells among African tribes. However, money that is too rare has the opposite effect described above. Suppose that a village is using gold for money, but unfortunately there is only one gold nugget. Whoever possesses that nugget will be able to buy literally anything in the village -- but only once. After surrendering the nugget for an item, that person will then have to turn around and offer literally anything to get it back. Because the village has numerous people waiting in line to use the nugget for money, economic activity will slow down to a crawl, unemployment will rise, and the result is a recession. This example highlights another principle: money needs to be divisible. The village's economic activity would be doubled just by cutting the gold nugget in half. Of course, dividing money is the same thing as expanding the money supply.

So the amount of money has to be optimal -- not too much, but not too little, to support the natural amount of trading that goes on. As you can see, this calls for some knowledge of the amount of economic activity that normally occurs. An economist would need to measure this activity, and calculate how many coins would cover this activity without causing either inflation or unemployment. One of the practical ways to do this is to watch the economic indicators: when inflation starts rising, cut back on the money supply; when unemployment starts rising, expand the money supply. This approach is called Keynesian monetary policy, after the British economist who devised it, John Maynard Keynes. But when the money supply is determined by some completely arbitrary factor, like the amount of gold that happens to be in the hills, then the odds that the money supply will match the amount needed are virtually zero.

An insufficient money supply is not the only thing that can cause a recession. Recessions commonly occur when people start hoarding money. In normal economies, there is a circular flow of money, as my spending becomes part of your earnings, and your spending becomes part of my earnings. But for some reason, you may see tight times ahead, and decide to save your money to get through them. But this only makes things worse on me, because I am depending on your spending. So I respond to tight times by hoarding my money also. The result is a drop in economic activity, rising unemployment, and recession. Keynesian monetary policy calls for expanding the money supply, which puts more money in the hands of consumers, restores their confidence, and encourages them to begin spending again.

Gold bugs argue that we don't need to adjust the size of the money supply to match the level of economic activity -- the value of money will automatically adjust itself to the level of economic activity. Here's how it works. Suppose three people live in a village, and they have 100 gold coins among them. And suppose this covers 100 units of work. A loaf of bread may require five units of work, and therefore cost five gold coins. Now suppose that their economy grows to 120 units of work. There are two ways for the money supply to adjust to this new activity. The villagers could simply add 20 more coins to their money supply, so they now have 120 coins. Or they could let the value of the coins increase.

How would that work? Well, suppose the extra 20 units of work is being produced by just one of the three villagers. Obviously, he is eager to sell his product, just as the other two are eager to buy it. But no one can afford the sale, because there is insufficient money. So they artificially "create" money by lowering their prices for all their other goods, to increase their savings so they can buy it. For example, a loaf of bread still requires five units of work, but they may lower its price from five to four gold coins. The extra gold coin can now be used towards the purchase of the new product. This process is called deflation.

Prices do indeed inflate and deflate in this way. The problem is that this process is terribly inefficient. In real economies, prices tend to be "sticky" -- that is, enormously resistant to change. (At least in a downward direction. In an upward direction, they climb easily. This is good if you want to fight inflation, bad if you want to fight unemployment and recessions.)

There are several reasons for price stickiness. One is psychological -- people hate to cut their prices and wages. Another is that salaries and wages are often locked into contracts, the average of which is three years. And for many, raising prices incurs certain costs (reprinting, recalculating, reprogramming, etc., not to mention a dip in business) that may not make the price change seem worth it. Even if they do decide to change prices, it takes many companies quite some time to put them into effect. Sears, for example, has to reprint and remail all its catalogues. But perhaps the most important reason is that in a big and complex economy, people just don't realize at first when goods start becoming excessive on the market, and the glut may have to reach severe proportions before people notice it and take action.

Price stickiness means that the value of money is slow to adapt to changing economic conditions. Economists have found it much faster and simpler just to expand the money supply and cut the recession short. The Great Depression, for example, dragged on for ten years, with the natural deflation of money proceeding at a glacial pace. It wasn't until World War II that the government was forced to conduct a massive monetary expansion (to fund its defense spending). The result was such explosive economic growth that the U.S. economy doubled in size between 1940 and 1945, the fastest period of growth in U.S. history. Another example is Japan in the 1990s. Its economy has stagnated for five years now, and many economists have criticized its government for not doing enough to expand the money supply. But whatever the solution, the important point is that Japan's government has done very little, and its economy has not deflated or adjusted itself -- Japan's economic pain continues five years later.

But let's return now to our history of money. Historians debate the exact sequence and nature of events that led to our current monetary system, but the following fictionalized account is often retold and widely accepted as reasonable.

Suppose that an economy starts by using gold coins. There are disadvantages to circulating gold: large purchases require lugging around lots of the heavy metal, and a family might be worried about protecting its gold reserves from thieves. So people may decide to store their gold in a secure, centralized location: perhaps the goldsmith, who already protects his store of gold in a large safe. The goldsmith accepts their gold, and, to keep a record of who owns what, writes them a receipt for their deposit. So the goldsmith has now become a banker.

When the people have spent their pocket change and need to draw on their gold reserves for more, they can visit the bank and make a withdrawal. But that wastes a lot of time and effort. Instead, people can just buy their goods with their receipts for gold, rather than the gold itself. The seller then becomes the new owner of the receipt, and the share of gold it represents, and he can visit the bank and trade the receipt for gold any time he wants. Of course, he may want to use the receipt himself in another sale. In this way, people start circulating receipts for money, and paper money is born.

The banker soon decides to facilitate this system, by issuing receipts that say, "This bank will pay the bearer of this note 10 gold units upon demand." Now the receipts have become banknotes, and the bank has become a bank of issue. The banknotes, like the gold coins they represent, are called commodity money, because they are based on commodities like gold or silver.

But under the new system, the banker notices that people are visiting his bank much less frequently. His gold stocks are just sitting around. So he gets a bright idea: he'll print up some new banknotes and issue them as loans. The new banknotes are not backed up by actual gold reserves, but he can get away with this because only a percentage of the note-bearers come in on a given day asking for their gold. It's profitable for him, because he collects interest on the loans, and it's profitable for the people, because they can increase their productivity. So from now on the bank will issue banknotes on a fractional reserve, and the bank itself will become a trust, because people must now trust that the banker will have the gold reserves to cover their withdrawals. And the banknotes are no longer called commodity money, but fiduciary money, after the Latin word fide, meaning trust.

Of course, if too many people come in at once demanding their gold, the banker is out of luck. Experience may teach him that he needs to keep a reserve ratio of 1 gold unit to 3 banknotes. Any more banknotes and he might not be able to cover withdrawals. Still, this is a somewhat risky business, because it creates the possibility of a bank run or bank panic. That happens when people become afraid that a bank may not be in sound condition, and they start withdrawing their gold to protect themselves. Once this process starts, however, it becomes a vicious circle, as disappearing reserves create yet more panic and more customers running to the bank to be the first to withdraw their gold. The result is a bank failure, leaving most of the customers holding worthless banknotes. These sort of bank panics have the effect of reducing the money supply, which can -- and often did -- result in higher unemployment, recession and even depression.

Fiduciary money was widespread in Europe by the early 19th century. During the Napoleonic wars, however, Britain found itself hard-pressed to fund its war effort. So the Bank of England temporarily scrapped the fiduciary system and issued fiat money instead -- money whose value was determined not by gold, but by the command, or fiat, of the government. After the war, England returned to a fiduciary gold system, although people were not allowed to cash in their notes for gold unless it was for very large amounts, usually for international trade.

Temporarily suspending the gold standard in favor of fiat money during times of war became common over the next century. During the American Civil War, the government interrupted its policy of gold convertibility and issued nonconvertible "greenbacks" instead. During World War I, all belligerent nations did much the same. It is interesting to note that during times of war, when a nation's survival is on the line and it must boost productivity, the economic policies its leaders resort to are always liberal ones. Fiat money, tax hikes and Keynesian monetary expansions result in booming economies, hence the truism that "war is good for the economy." It took economists and politicians over a century to learn that these policies could be applied during times of peace as well.

In 1821, Britain became the first nation to switch to a full gold standard. Until then, nations had used a bimetallic regime of gold and silver. In the 1870s, the U.S. and the rest of Europe followed suit, after the discoveries of huge gold deposits in the American West. From then until 1914, the world would operate under a unified gold standard. This era is known as the Gilded Age, and it offers us a chance to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the gold standard, or at least an early version of it.

Bitter controversy over the gold standard was a hallmark of the Gilded Age. It was widely regarded as a tool of the rich. Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan spoke for the poor when he charged, famously, that "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." The U.S. suffered three depressions during the Gilded Age, and the gold standard and its bank panics were often held to blame.

Throughout this era, the value of gold was fixed at a certain price. One U.S. dollar, for example, was defined as 23.22 grains of pure gold. A British pound sterling was defined as 113.00 grains of pure gold. This meant that the total value of a nation's money supply was determined by the size of its gold reserves. Furthermore, fixed rates meant that international exchange rates were also fixed. In other words, the world operated under a single, unified monetary system. One British pound always equaled 4.8665 U.S. dollars (113.00/23.22), at least according to the official rate. The actual rates might fluctuate, due to the shifting supply and demand of international trade, but the nations set up a system to make sure that they never fluctuated too far from the official rate. This system was rather complex, but basically it kept exchange rates stable and close to the official rate by making sure that nations with trade deficits paid their bills quickly and directly in gold. (1)

But there were economic consequences to such a system. Suppose Britain ran up a trade deficit with the U.S., and promptly paid in gold. The U.S. money supply would expand, and its economy would experience a mixture of inflation and growth. Conversely, the British money supply would shrink. Theoretically, this should have resulted in deflation, but in practice it resulted in widespread unemployment, due to price stickiness. Therefore, outflows of gold from a country were often very painful to its economy. And when people learned that gold was leaving the country, they often conducted bank runs, trying to withdraw their gold before it ran out. Thus, the Gilded Age was replete with bank panics and failures.

The Gilded Age was brief, lasting from the 1870s to 1914, when World War I broke out. During the war, nearly all nations either placed restrictions on gold convertibility or issued non-convertible paper money. But one of their top priorities after the war was the recreation of the full gold standard. It took several years before they succeeded. Britain restored its gold standard in 1925, but in an act of folly, made the pound worth $4.86 again in U.S. dollars -- its old, pre-war parity. Unfortunately, the pound was overvalued at this price now, due to changes in the price of gold, and Britain subsequently experienced a drastic outflow of gold. Again, severe unemployment was the result, not the expected deflation. Britain would struggle with unemployment for the rest of the decade.

By 1928, all the major currencies and most of the minor ones had returned to the gold standard. But the coming Great Depression would lay bare all its disadvantages. A unified monetary system meant that no nation could protect itself from a disaster that occurred in another nation. When the depression struck in the U.S., it quickly ricocheted across the Atlantic. In the U.S., two gigantic bank runs caused over 10,000 bank failures. So many people were left holding worthless banknotes that the money supply shrank by about a third -- a catastrophic reduction.

When Roosevelt took office in 1933, unemployment had soared to nearly 25 percent. His inauguration took place literally in the middle of a third bank panic. Roosevelt stopped it in its tracks by doing something novel: he intervened. He declared a "banking holiday" that closed banks to the public for eight days, to prevent further withdrawals. During that time, the banking system was reorganized. When banks finally reopened, banks deposits actually exceeded bank withdrawals. It was a tremendous political success for Roosevelt, and America's last bank run. Later under the New Deal, bank deposits would become insured by the federal government.

After the Great Depression struck, the world wasted little time severing its ties to gold. Britain left the gold standard in 1931, as did the U.S. in 1933. By 1937, not a single country remained on the gold standard. After World War II, the U.S. partially restored the gold standard for international trade. And to prevent citizens from bank panics, it made its currency inconvertible at home. In 1971, a diminishing gold supply and growing deficits caused the U.S. to suspend the gold standard even for international trade. Ever since, international trade has been based solely on the dollar and other paper currencies. Today, there are no mainstream economists who call for a return to the gold standard; it is widely regarded as a fringe idea of the radical right.

Modern arguments on the gold standard

Gold bugs cite two reasons in particular for returning to the gold standard. The first is that it prevents nations from an irresponsible expansion in the money supply to pay its debts. This is what happened to Argentina. After printing too much money and suffering disastrous inflation, Argentina passed a law tying its currency to the U.S. dollar. This may not be the optimal strategy for Argentina, but it's far better than what it was doing. Likewise, Italy has sought a measure of monetary responsibility by tying its currency to the German mark. So the gold bugs do have a few case histories to point to.

Even so, this reason is weak. Argentina did not need a gold standard to tie its currency to a more responsible country and solve its problems. Furthermore, a monetary policy that's right for one country might be completely wrong for another. For example, in the early 1990s, Europe tried to unify its currency by tying it to the German mark. But subsequently the German economy boomed while the rest of Europe became mired in double-digit unemployment. And following Germany's anti-inflationary monetary policy only made things worse, because it was exactly the opposite policy they should have been following. Finally, many countries have established long and sound reputations with fiat money -- Switzerland, Japan and the U.S., for example.

The second reason cited for a gold standard is because it creates certainty in international trade by providing a fixed pattern of exchange rates. The current system contains a degree of uncertainty -- in the last five years, the dollar has swung between 80 and 120 yen. This tends to make economic analysis and planning difficult for international traders. The costs of such uncertainty are difficult to determine, but they are expected to be significant. However, trade comprises only 10 percent of the U.S. economy, and compared to the enormous benefits of fiat money, these costs are minuscule by comparison.

What are the benefits of the current system? The most important has already been mentioned: the elimination of depressions. Being able to expand the money supply in times of unemployment and recession is a critical tool for government. Before World War II, eight U.S. recessions worsened into depressions (as happened in 1807, 1837, 1873, 1882, 1893, 1920, 1933, and 1937). Since World War II, under Keynesian monetary policies, there have been nine recessions (1945-46, 1949, 1954, 1956, 1960-61, 1970, 1973-75, 1980-83, 1990-92 ), and not one has turned into a depression. In fact, no nation in the world has suffered a depression under Keynesian policies.

The current monetary system also gives us protection from less scrupulous or unfortunate countries. A bank run that starts in Europe is not going to end up in America, thanks to the flexibility and autonomy of the Federal Reserve Board.

And fiat money also gives economists a chance to tie the appropriate size of the money supply to what's actually happening in the economy. In the end, the amount of gold a nation has is completely irrelevant to its level of economic activity. Gold is a commodity that experiences price swings. A change in dentistry or electronics is enough to change the entire market. To see how unrelated it is, consider the following trends. Since the U.S. dropped the gold standard in 1971, the price of gold has risen tenfold. But consumer prices have risen only two and a half times. If the U.S. had instituted a full gold standard in 1971, the result would have been the worst deflation since the Great Depression. And considering that widespread unemployment is usually the result, not deflation, it is easy to see the why such a policy would increase the risk of a depression.

Gold bugs also face an enormously challenging question: what kind of gold standard would they like to create? One based on fractional reserves? But that led to countless bank runs. Furthermore, as a practical matter, it doesn't stop banks or governments from changing the money supply, simply by changing the amount of fiduciary notes.

So the only purist alternative is a return to commodity money, where a bill is backed 100 percent by gold. But there is no longer enough gold in the modern world to cover the needed economic activity. We have already mined all the major deposits, and without new discoveries to match the growing economy, a pure gold standard would see a troublesome fall in commodity prices. Even worse, industry is also increasing its demand on the gold store. In past centuries gold had very little secondary use, so it proved useful as money. Today, modern technology has found a growing number of applications, and industry is consuming more and more of it. In response to all this, a monetary authority could periodically reduce the amount of gold defined as the dollar, but this is no different from the floating, fiat money that the gold bugs so bitterly criticize.

So the gold bugs would have to resolve historical and theoretical challenges of King-Midas proportions before they could ever reinstate the gold standard. But if a workable gold standard requires a tremendous amount of design, effort, regulation and safeguards, we might as well use fiat money, which is already simple and enjoys a successful track record.

sickbadthing

11-03-2008, 10:25 PM

oops i didn 't mean to click on this

my god this is a horrible thread

Debaser

11-03-2008, 10:30 PM

No no no no no. Unless the definition of cynicism has changed into we need someone smarter than us to take money from us cause we're to stupid to know what to do with it ourselves I'm not the cynical one. The fact that such a system could come to exist in the first place is the product of complete cynicism.

My argument is that if you leave it to the hands of Washington officials and not localized governments or better yet no government at all then the system cannot be efficient. It cannot be responsive, it cannot be fast enough to meet the demands of society and its inherently broken. If we let people to themselves we'd see more social justice, a better distribution of wealth and more prosperity for all than if we think that it is only the infinite wisdom of the government bureaucrats that can solve our problems.

This is another example of a disconnect of logic. You're shoe-horning two ideologies that don't go together. The government would be most efficient if there is no government at all? incoherent. You're plainly arguing for anarcho-capitalism and claiming that the "natural way of society" (i.e. unfettered capitalism) leads to a more egalitarian society, but I've yet to ever encounter anything convincing to make me believe it so. If anything, I find it easier to believe that natural unrestrained capitalism leads to concentration of wealth at the top (once you get to the top, you attain the power to corrupt the system to your own advantage and hold those below down), this is something similar you can see during the robber baron railroad age of the early 20th century.

Debaser

11-03-2008, 10:54 PM

But I don't want to take the goods. Its like walking into a store with a gun to my head telling me to buy the nachos and the porno magazine but I just went in to get the milk. I'm happy to pay for the services I use, Debaser. I'm even happy to pay for some I don't I'm just wary of it. The less people are forced out of their money for it to go to places they don't want it to go the better. For example the billions of stolen dollars funding the maintenance of the the overseas empire. Surely you can agree.
You're sticking to taxation as theft no matter what I say. Nobody is forcing you into the store with a gun to your head. If you don't want to pay for anything, don't go into the store. Maybe store is a bad example. Call it a club, with a cover charge. If you don't want to pay cover charge, don't go in the club. You're free to go find a country without a cover charge, just don't be surprised that it's a shitty country. You simply don't like taxes. The government is not "stealing" it from you.

Ugh, forget these stupid analogies for a moment: by choosing to stay in this country you have consented to a social contract with the government to pay taxes.

Ideally I'm against all taxation but as it stands now we don't need to raise taxes on anyone we just need to cut spending like crazy, stop the wars overseas, stop the corporate welfare and backscratching, get rid of all these failed programs and shrink government. Too much money is going to waste, to propping up failed systems no sane man would pay for or make voluntary contributions to if given the choice.

The majority of spending goes to middle-class subsidies. But that's pretty much become a third rail of politics. Neither side is willing to touch cutting spending on that if they want to win elections. So both sides end up only talking about spending cuts that are really quite small compared to the big picture. So pragmatically, you really can't make any headway on controlling the budget without raising taxes.

Future Boy

11-04-2008, 03:33 AM

Ever

11-04-2008, 04:33 AM

I've decided not to quote you anymore as there is too much redundant text floating around and I'm OCD about redundancy so I'll just respond to you with paraphrasing and the like. I hope this doesn't hinder our discourse.

I find it amusing, Debaser, how utterly baffled you are at seeing a right-winger who seems to have compassion for his fellow man.

And before I proceed to utterly destroy the argument which you didn't even write let me just correct your statements preceding it a bit just in case anyone reading (as rare as that might be) takes your word for given. Fiat money is accepted by most economists today, true, but not the Keynesian way of using fiat money. The methods used today have changed. It is now the Chicago School monetarism and the Friedman way which has taken over. Let it also be noted that towards the end of his life Friedman came to the conclusion that a commodity based currency was the way to go.

The first part of the argument you linked seems to cite the need to expand the money supply to keep up with economic activity. It claims and sticks to the Keynesian idea that it is spending that fuels the economy. It moves on to antagonize saving and thriftiness and cites the need for government to inflate the money supply due to "sticky prices".

Let us look more closely at this term "sticky prices". The theory goes that due to psychological factors people are less willing to lower wages, less willing to lower prices and due to the way we draw up contracts over longer periods of time prices of goods are sticky. Now the problem with this theory is that it is no fact of nature. It is simply based of a few observations here and there and again the ever underlying assumption that people can't change rather there has to be someone looking after them and that everyone needs a babysitter. It neglects to take into account that it is the responsibility of the capitalist to lower the wages, to lower the price, to have a flexible pay as he predicts the market in order to maintain productivity and the gain of more capital or wealth. It's no hard task to understand that the capitalist has the responsibility of looking after the modes of production, the price of raw materials and the price of goods if he wishes to remain competitive in the market place during a period of no inflation or deflation. However, suddenly when deflation (which is a normal market force because yes the supply and demand changes everything and yes this includes money) is involved this is somehow hard to fathom? All of a sudden it becomes hard to comprehend that the failing business owner is, after all, failing because of his own lack of initiative? I mean here is a man keeping his prices artificially high and of course he's not selling anything and suddenly the solution is to give everyone a bunch of money to keep this price high? To trick everyone into buying a product they don't want at an inflated price with money they haven't made? Call me crazy but I always thought that the man selling milk for four dollars a liter when he can be selling for two deserves to be punished by any competitor that brings the product to the people for a better price. And that's not even taking into account the millions of problems that come out of creating money out of thin air. I have already outlined the dangers of money created out of nothing and how it diverts capital from productive uses to unproductive uses with the baker and the potato farmer example. I will proceed to talk about this in depth shortly, but for now I want to point out a few more arguments against price stickiness. Let us address the wage issue for a moment

In a Keynesian textbook you'll see something like this

<img src=http://www.bized.co.uk/virtual/dc/diagrams/keynrefl.gif>

As you can see as aggregate demand falls wage stickiness prevents the economy from working at potential output or full employment.

Fair enough, that is the Keynesian theory after all. Now what happens when you get rid of all these silly minimum wage laws and the legal power of unions to have control over wages? Well you get something like this

<img src=http://www.cato.org/images/homepage/cedwards.jpg>

As can be seen when demand falls so do wages and the economy works at full output and full employment. Also note here that the proper way to deal with the problem of "sticky prices" is not by more regulation of the markets but less. Not by more government but less. Not by thinking people are retards and need big brother ever watching them, ever guiding them but instead by trusting them to act rationally and reasonably.

Now that there is no question that the concept of "sticky prices" was a very unsound theory based on assumptions and observations which fail to take innumerable factors into account or, if not that, a complete myth, let's look at the problem with the Keynesian way of alleviating this "problem". Mainly inflation. Before anyone shouts at me "But Avram, prices haven't gone up! No inflation is happening!" I will proceed to give you a definition of inflation. Inflation is not rising prices or wages or anything. This is merely the result of inflation. Inflation is the increase in money supply. So now what happens when we see a Keynesian increase in money supply during a recession (which btw can pretty much exclusively happen only as a result of inflation) Well you get exactly what Keynes promises; an increase in consumption. Everyone's buying everything everyone is fueling the economy all these unaffordable things are now affordable but no one is paying attention to whether all this is sustainable, whether people actually want these products at this price or whether any actual real wealth is being produced. I mean you can print out a bunch of money, create "wealth" out of thin air and get people to go dig holes for hours and pay them for it now that you don't have to do anything actually productive to make money or give people money. What happens here? Well in the end you get a whole bunch of holes in the ground and a whole bunch of money in everyone's hand but all it can buy is holes in the ground. This is referred to as malinvestment or a misallocation of resources - when an artificial rise in money supply distorts the actual worth of things as determined by natural social interaction and exchange. Sure in reality it's not digging holes in the ground but it's some other form of unsustainable overvalued public sector work. When it's not public sector work its misallocation in the hands of those private citizens who get the money hot from the printing press first.

So who benefits from this Keynesian expansion of money? It certainly isn't the economy as a whole which is now set up for an even longer and worse recession. It certainly isn't anyone who wants to combat unemployment or move output to its highest potential. It is, simply put, whoever's price of goods they are selling rises faster than the price of the goods they buy as the money moves from the hands of one recipient to the other. Those who get the money last are the ones who lose out. The people at the end of the chain find that the prices of the goods they buy have increased while the prices of the goods they sell have hardly moved. Here, Debaser, is your "distribution of wealth" by the benevolent hand of guiding big brother economist in the federal reserve and the Keynesian planner. In today's society the people who get the money first are big banks and the government. Those who get it last are the poor and the middle class.

The end result of the Keynesian business cycle theory is akin to building a large tower and realizing there are cracks in the foundation. Instead of fixing the problem with cement and iron and ensuring the tower has a solid foundation it is painted over. A nice wash of white and no one can see the problem. Later a bigger crack appears and you just paint it again. Even bigger? No problem paint (or ink and paper) is inexpensive. Eventually what happens, Debaser, is it all falls down. It comes crumbling. The problem we have today is being painted over yet again. It's just going to make the correction longer and more painful for everyone just like the Keynesian policies of the great depression. We have a completely de-industrialized nation ruined by regulations, bureaucracy and a government determined to prop up failed businesses and failed institutions which no sane capitalist entrepreneur would look at as a suitable place for his new and innovative enterprise.

The social effects of this policy of easy money and the idea that it is consumption and not saving that fuels the economy is even more disastrous than the economic effects. This is where consumerism comes from. As a leftist, Debaser, I'm sure you cannot and do not approve of consumerism. Consumerism destroys work ethic and creates a false set of entitlements. All of a sudden no one is being thrifty no one is making the right decisions and people are encouraged to spend, spend, spend. You already have three cars? Who cares buy a fourth you can afford it, you can back it on the equity of your house. Money grows on trees around here. How about those plasma TVs? Man, better take about four of them or they'll be gone by tomorrow. Then suddenly surprise surprise when the illusion ends? Suddenly it's a recession? Suddenly government has to come in and print us some more money so we can continue living beyond our means for a few more years ever misallocating resources, ever destroying the foundations of our economy, and ever delaying the inevitable collapse of the system? I mean surely you can see some lack of social justice when a hard working man in Jakarta or something works sixteen hours a day in some sweatshop to make some kind of shoe to buy his next meal which a fat over-eating over-consuming ultra-obese American with five SUVs and a kazillion plasma TVs, video games and dvd movies buys with his welfare check. How about the Keynesian solution to this problem, lets raise the Jakartan man's minimum wage and print money to pay for it, hell lets print money for everyone ,the more he consumes the better right? Eventually moving such bad work overseas with your minimum wage laws and your unions and your regulations and taxes comes back and bites you in the ass like we're seeing now. I mean this whole mercantilist arrogance that such work is beyond that of proud Americans is not helping anyone let alone the America that was once truly proud of its can do attitude, its liberties and the simple notion that man should be worth the sweat on his brow.

That moves me on to the other idea expressed in this essay that somehow saving is bad for the economy. That somehow handling your own retirement, your own insurance, putting money away for a rainy day is bad for our economy. That once again people can't be trusted with their money so we need to devalue the dollar so they are compelled to put it in the hands of the wise Wall Street investment bankers and the large insurance firms cause they know what's best for everyone. To the contrary. Saving or "Hoarding" as Keynesians refer to it is not bad for the economy. All the time you hear people saying we need anti-trust laws this we need anti-trust laws that to stop monopoly to keep "barriers of entry" down. Rubbish, all anti-trust laws have ever done is hinder competition, ironically grant monopolies, prop up failing businesses, which obviously aren't offering the consumer what they want, and otherwise distort the markets. And how about the biggest barrier of entry of all? That of course is stopping the little guy from accumulating wealth so he can get the capital to secure the means of production by devaluating his dollar. What about that barrier of entry? Saving is the essential necessity of capitalism. Not spending, not consuming, not squandering wealth. Gaining capital and investing it and producing that's what we need more of if you want to grow the economy.

Now to move on and identify other parts of the essay which need addressing.

The second part of the argument in this essay seems to say the great depression was the result of fractional reserve banking. Well yes, well observed Mr. essay writer it very well was. No Austrian economist would ever advocate fractional reserve banking because under the ethics of private property it is fraud. However the essay then draws the incorrect conclusion that it is up to the government to bailout these fraudsters much like they're doing today by printing them and giving them more money. Yet again here is the market saying "look these people are bad people, they're doing bad things and ruining the prosperity of everyone" and the benevolent hand of the government coming in, picking them up, cradling them and saying "There, there. Big brother's home, everything is going to be ok". All the bank holiday, the hundreds and thousands of new regulatory acts, and the nationalization of the economy (loosely resembling such extremes as Mussolini's fascist Italy) under the guise of the National Recovery Act did was prolong the depression for another eight years with its Keynesian values and Marxist do-goodism. If the market was just allowed to correct itself and we got rid of this notion of fractional reserve banking and a central bank all the hardship would have come to an end much much quicker.

The essay then moves on to critique a heavily regulated and controlled gold standard such as the Bretton-Woods system. This critique makes some nice points. It's a shame the type of money "gold bugs" advocate isn't a gold standard or even gold itself so all that good argument is really in vain. Instead what's being promoted here is a market defined, commodity based money. That is: competing coinages and currencies which would determine, in a natural way, what is used as a medium of exchange.

I will address some of the things you said in direct reply to me later. There are some real important issues and ideas you brought up that I want to comment on and make myself clear on. lol I just hope you care enough to read all that and not just shrug it off. Everyone shrugs everything off these days