[Al_U_Card]

 awm, on 2017-November-23, 10:50, said:

I thought this is a very good article, and it brings together some of the things I've thought about this election for a while. Some of the salient points (and I encourage people to read the article, but it's long):

1. Trump is not really a new phenomenon -- candidates running with this sort of racist/nationalist rhetoric have been running (and winning a lot of white votes) for quite some time.
2. The narrative about "struggling white working class" voters doesn't really hold up to analysis.
3. There's a lot of racism here, but it's not exactly individual racism but rather a refusal to understand privilege and the real issues faced by minority communities.

Indeed, also the differences between opportunity and privilege. Removing or reducing P generally increases and improves O. Much like the fallacious nature of trickle-down economics, the down-trodden are mainly so owing to being stepped on.

[kenberg]

 barmar, on 2017-November-22, 10:02, said:

LOL. Have you met our education system?

Being Thanksgiving I am in a thankful frame of mind and my school teachers come to mind. Thanks.

I actually did learn about the general notions Zel was referring to although I either did not learn or do not remember the names Crittenden and Corwin.

About education: When I was in 8th grade (I turned 13 during 8th grade, as clarification for those from other lands) I set out to get bad grades. My mother was always bragging to the neighbors about my good grades, this set me off, do I decided to do something about it. I almost overdid it but I still graduated and they sent me on to high school. In my Sophomore year, I turned 15 that year, I decided to be cool and started using double negatives along with effing this and effing that.

Teachers have one hell of a tough job. So thanks again. I imagine the system could be better but we students had/have a responsibility also.

So thanks again.

[Winstonm]

 awm, on 2017-November-23, 10:50, said:

I thought this is a very good article, and it brings together some of the things I've thought about this election for a while. Some of the salient points (and I encourage people to read the article, but it's long):


3. There's a lot of racism here, but it's not exactly individual racism but rather a refusal to understand privilege and the real issues faced by minority communities.

I like to think of it as "deniable racism", as in, "I have nothing against "x,y,z" but the government is handing jobs/money/favors/etc. to "x,y,z" and discriminating against whites and/or Christians. Therefore, I am not racist but a victim of discrimination.

Candidate Joe/Josephine Shmoe says my feelings are valid and he/she will fix the discrimination against whites and Christians. I will vote for him /her.

These are the same people who claim, after 200 years of slavery and/or discrimination against minorities, that it is unfair when company A hires 1000 people when the U.S. population is 20% African Americans and the Supreme Court requires 150 jobs to go to African Americans.

Maybe we(the U.S.A.) is in need of a slogan or bumper sticker: White privilege IS racism!

[hrothgar]

Public confirmation that Flynn has flipped.

https://www.nytimes....WT.nav=top-news

[Winstonm]

 hrothgar, on 2017-November-23, 18:46, said:

Public confirmation that Flynn has flipped.

https://www.nytimes....WT.nav=top-news

That would explain why last night Trump's lawyer made it clear that Trump would not pay any of the legal fees for Flynn, although he was planning to pay for others caught up.

[y66]

 cherdano, on 2017-November-22, 17:34, said:

You should read "Troll warning" as in "Deer warning". I am not warning the deer to get off my lawn the road. I am warning the drivers not to hit the deer, as it might damage their car.

I intended the tenor of my yellow card metaphor to be the drivers in your deer warning metaphor. This seemed clear in what I took to be the context: <troll> <warn> <reply to troll> but I see now that the actual context was: <troll> <warn> <troll> <troll> <reply to troll>.

[ggwhiz]

 Winstonm, on 2017-November-23, 18:43, said:

Candidate Joe/Josephine Shmoe says my feelings are valid and he/she will fix the discrimination against whites and Christians. I will vote for him /her.

There is only 1 time in American history when immigrants completely destroyed the fabric of a nation and we celebrated it yesterday

[RedSpawn]

 ggwhiz, on 2017-November-24, 09:22, said:

There is only 1 time in American history when immigrants completely destroyed the fabric of a nation and we celebrated it yesterday

America's past is so twisted, distorted, and self-serving. Are there enough focal lenses in the world to provide the proper context of our grand heist and kidnapping of young America from her original occupants?

Rumor has it that we did it all legal and that all transactions and contracts were executed at arm's length? Hmmmmm.

[Winstonm]

McClatchy reports that Paul Manafort was in much deeper with Russia and Putin than previously thought.

Quote

What’s now known leads some Russia experts to suspect that the Kremlin’s emissaries at times turned Manafort into an asset acting on Russia’s behalf. “You can make a case that all along he ...was either working principally for Moscow, or he was trying to play both sides against each other just to maximize his profits,” said Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state who communicated with Manafort during Yanukovych’s reign in President George W. Bush’s second term.

Perhaps this explains why he offered his services for free to the campaign.

[blackshoe]

 Winstonm, on 2017-November-20, 14:11, said:

If Kelley is as smart as advertised, why did he join the Marine Corps?

You think anyone who serves in the military is stupid? Or is it just the Marine Corps?

[Winstonm]

 blackshoe, on 2017-November-24, 17:16, said:

You think anyone who serves in the military is stupid? Or is it just the Marine Corps?

No, I do not.

I think the choice of the Marine Corps is an odd one - for anyone - but I may be confusing enlistees and officers, which can certainly be different. What is your take on it?

[blackshoe]

 kenberg, on 2017-November-21, 13:21, said:

As I get it, nobody gives a damn if the players turn their brains into mush running into each other at full tilt as long as they don't kneel before the start of the game. This is beyond my understanding.

In Beyond This Horizon Robert Heinlein told the story of "The Man From the Past", a stockbroker who, around the time of the 1929 stock market crash, is placed in suspended animation, and wakes up several hundred years later into a society where his learned skills are obsolete. There is no money, no markets, no "want". So he's trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life when he's introduced to a man who designs games. Not for a living, but apparently to avoid dying from terminal boredom. Anyway, the Man From The Past describes football to this guy, who says "Sounds interesting. How many players die during a game?" Shocked, TMFTP replies "no one dies!" "Oh," says our game designer, "We can fix that!"

Bread and circuses...

[Winstonm]

This may be an important move in the Russian investigation.

[blackshoe]

 Winstonm, on 2017-November-24, 17:24, said:

No, I do not.

I think the choice of the Marine Corps is an odd one - for anyone - but I may be confusing enlistees and officers, which can certainly be different. What is your take on it?

I think people have a lot of different reasons for serving. As for the enlisted/officer differentiation, some people when they first join up aren't - yet - qualified to be officers. Some of those later become officers. One of my classmates at OCS had ten years of prior enlisted service, during the last three or so of which the Navy sent him to college. When we were commissioned after OCS, I was commissioned Ensign, he was commissioned Lieutenant {jg). I ran into him again some 12 years later. I'd been a LCDR for two or three years, and did not expect to be promoted to CDR before another two. He had just made CDR. I had prior enlisted service myself - but only three years, and it was in the Army. I didn't like the Army. Mostly I didn't like the mud, and getting shot at, and being at the bottom of the hierarchy. Not necessarily in that order. :-) After I finished grad school I thought long and hard about rejoining — and eventually joined the Navy as an officer. It seemed at the time like a good idea, and I don't regret it. Other people have gone different routes in the service, for many different reasons.

Why join the Marine Corps? For many it was "my father and grandfather were marines". For a few it was 'the judge said "Marines or jail, take your pick"'. For some, especially after 9/11, it was "no, we can't let them get away with this." That last, other services too.

There are some incompetents in the military, just as there are some incompetents in any field. And yes, over the years I met a few, a very few, who were truly stupid.

[Winstonm]

 blackshoe, on 2017-November-24, 18:09, said:

I think people have a lot of different reasons for serving. As for the enlisted/officer differentiation, some people when they first join up aren't - yet - qualified to be officers. Some of those later become officers. One of my classmates at OCS had ten years of prior enlisted service, during the last three or so of which the Navy sent him to college. When we were commissioned after OCS, I was commissioned Ensign, he was commissioned Lieutenant {jg). I ran into him again some 12 years later. I'd been a LCDR for two or three years, and did not expect to be promoted to CDR before another two. He had just made CDR. I had prior enlisted service myself - but only three years, and it was in the Army. I didn't like the Army. Mostly I didn't like the mud, and getting shot at, and being at the bottom of the hierarchy. Not necessarily in that order. :-) After I finished grad school I thought long and hard about rejoining — and eventually joined the Navy as an officer. It seemed at the time like a good idea, and I don't regret it. Other people have gone different routes in the service, for many different reasons.

Why join the Marine Corps? For many it was "my father and grandfather were marines". For a few it was 'the judge said "Marines or jail, take your pick"'. For some, especially after 9/11, it was "no, we can't let them get away with this." That last, other services too.

There are some incompetents in the military, just as there are some incompetents in any field. And yes, over the years I met a few, a very few, who were truly stupid.

I probably err by thinking of Marines from the non-officer POV - it seems to me those folks turn over their brains to the "corps" - a position I can't imagine adopting on a voluntary basis.

[y66]

From Out of 42 top economists, only 1 believes the GOP tax bills would help the economy But all of them think it will increase the debt. by Ezra Klein:

Quote

The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business runs an ongoing survey of top economists spanning a wide number of specialties and political outlooks. The panel includes multiple Nobel Prize winners, White House veterans, and former presidents of the American Economic Association. Recently, they were asked about the Republican tax reform bills. The results weren’t encouraging.

The first question was straightforward. Would they agree that if the US passed a tax bill “similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate,” GDP would be “substantially higher a decade from now”? Of the 42 economists polled, only one thought the Republican bill would boost the economy. The plurality said it wouldn’t, and the remainder were uncertain or didn’t answer.

The survey includes an optional space for respondents to add a comment, and a few of the comments are notable. “Of course not,” wrote the University of Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee, who served as chief economist for President Obama. “Does anyone care about actual evidence anymore?”

A number of the economists argued that tax policy simply isn’t as powerful a lever as Republicans want to believe. “Tax policy appears to have little effect at the margin on GDP growth in OECD countries,” wrote MIT’s David Autor, an eminent trade economist. “Doubt it will substantially change things either way,” wrote the University of Chicago’s Anil Kashyap. “Aside from the redistribution of wealth, hard to see this changing much,” wrote Richard Thaler, who just won the Nobel Prize in economics.

The only economist to say the bill would increase GDP was Stanford’s Darrell Duffie, and he added the concern: “Whether the overall tax plan is distributionally fair is another matter.”

The second question asked whether passage of the Republican tax bills would mean “the US debt-to-GDP ratio will be substantially higher a decade from now than under the status quo.” Here, too, the news was grim from Republicans. In this case, all but one economist agreed that the bills would blow up the deficit, and the outlier, Stanford's Liran Einav, turned out to have misread the question — he later clarified that he also agrees the bill would add to the debt.

“How could it be otherwise?” asked MIT’s Daron Acemoglu. “Cut taxes. Lose money. Repeat,” said Goolsbee. “This is at least is clear,” said Yale’s William Nordhaus: “No way the growth effects will be strong enough to offset the revenue losses.” Even Darrell Duffie, the sole economist who agreed that the bill would boost GDP, says the plan will pile on debt.

So here, then, is the verdict of the economics profession. The growth benefits of the Republican tax plans are either nonexistent or uncertain. The increase in debt, by contrast, seems certain.

[blackshoe]

 Winstonm, on 2017-November-24, 20:08, said:

I probably err by thinking of Marines from the non-officer POV - it seems to me those folks turn over their brains to the "corps" - a position I can't imagine adopting on a voluntary basis.

Having met quite a few Marine non-coms and junior enlisted, I have to disagree.

[blackshoe]

It seems to me that our economic plans should have several goals, some of which are at least at first glance, contradictory.

1. Reduce the National debt.
2. Balance the budget.
3. Decrease taxes.
4. Decrease expenditures.
5. There's probably more, but let's start with these.

I don't think "redistribute wealth" should be a goal, but some certainly do.

#1 sounds good, but how do we do that? If we just reduce taxes, that won't help. If we decrease taxes more than we decrease expenditures that won't help either.
#2 also sounds good, but again, how? I would start by asking "if we keep the same revenue (which means not reducing taxes) how much will we need to decrease expenditures to balance the budget?" Then we get into "which expenditures do we reduce, and by how much?" Spread it over five years, or ten, or twenty if you need to. I expect the folks whose ox is getting gored are going to be dragging their feet big time.

All I know is if we keep going the way we are we're going to be in the same boat we were in 230 years ago or so, and "not worth a Continental" or something very like it will be on everyone's lips again.

Interesting factoid: in terms of 1913 dollars (the year the Federal Reserve System was founded and, probably not coincidentally, the national Income Tax got started (via the 16th Amendment) the 2016 dollar was worth about 5 cents. Don't remember where I read that, so don't ask. I would imagine the current dollar is worth less.

[barmar]

 blackshoe, on 2017-November-26, 22:14, said:

It seems to me that our economic plans should have several goals, some of which are at least at first glance, contradictory.

1. Reduce the National debt.
2. Balance the budget.
3. Decrease taxes.
4. Decrease expenditures.
5. There's probably more, but let's start with these.

Why should #4 be a goal of its own? It seems like it should just be used as a means to address some of the other goals? E.g. tou can balance the budget either by increasing revenue, reducing expenditures, or both.

And in order to do #1, you have to do better than just balancing the budget, you need a net profit so you can pay down the debt. If you merely balance the budget, the debt stays where it is until the bonds are all paid off (and assuming no new bonds are issued).

BTW, it's not really feasible for the government to stop issuing bonds, even if they somehow got into a position where they didn't need to borrow money -- Treasury bonds are a critical component of financial markets.

[Zelandakh]

 barmar, on 2017-November-27, 05:20, said:

Why should #4 be a goal of its own?

Ed is a believer in smaller government. Therefore all of his aims tend to lean in this direction. So goals that do not appear on his list are for example fairness, equality and fiscal stability, which would probably be on most people's lists.