The Viper Room - NO SCRUBS

[Nick Danger]

Thread Guideline: Say anything you want about politics or religion here. Then be prepared for a counter-argument.


Semantics is a key here -when a politician uses the word 'fight', does he or she mean physical fighting with guns, fists, pikes and so on? Or vigorous debate?

I assume that in the Senate trial, the lawyers for Trump will dispute the meaning of his words on the basis that he referred to political fights not fist-fights. His supporters may have stormed the Capitol chanting 'Hang Mike Pence' -and Trump was tweeting against Pence after the riots began- but would he have endorsed the violent slogans? And can his words prove that this was the case?

Or the US may be in the position that what used to be 'mere rhetoric' has become more concrete because those who were on the fringes of politics have moved - or have been brought -closer to the centre, do not accept the outcome of democratic elections, and intend to do something about it that involves violence -there is a strain of thought, associated either with Mike Flynn or people who support him, who believed the storming of the Capitol would give Trump the occasion to declare Martial Law, and thus suspend the certification process in Congress, and seek a reversal or the election in selected States.

By changing the rules of the game, Trump and his supporters have begged many questions about the resilience of the democratic process, have they also changed the way in which language is now used, and is that also a consequence of three decades of sectarian politics?

I thought it was interesting that many of the Capitol rioters said, after the fact, that they felt like they were taking a direct order from the sitting President to do what they did.

I'm not deaf or blind, so I'm not going to pretend Trump's speech wasn't intentionally inflammatory. Matter of fact, I'd go one step further and say that Trump undoubtedly got some personal satisfaction from the fact that his words resulted in a riot.

But one step further than that would be to say that he hoped violence would be the result of his speech, and I don't agree with that. I don't think he's that smart, OR that stupid.

He'd begun this process of planting the seed of doubt about the election results and he had to follow through. My family is based in NYC, so I grew up with Trump. Used to really hate the guy actually. The one overriding characteristic of Donald Trump is lack of humility, a literal inability to admit that he's wrong. I personally find that to be an effective quality in a leader though it can be quite problematic as well.

The "Capitol Riots" speech was always going to happen. From the moment he first said publicly that he was going to contest the election, it was inevitable that he'd make that speech at the end of all things.

Pretty sure he's not going to be impeached over it. And yes, Stavros, I agree with you (for once) that semantics is the key to this thing. Trump's lawyers could easily play tens of thousands of videos in which politicians use the word "fight" as a euphemism for "vote" or "protest." It's pretty standard rhetoric and I don't think they can prove otherwise in a fair trial.


Nick Danger: "I would like to see you illustrate the "Circle of Death" in which Marjorie Taylor Greene's ramblings led to hate crime murders."

Have you forgotten Pizzagate, the forerunner to QAnon? This had real consequences - a guy turned up with a gun and fired shots at the restaurant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

The great replacement theory that she advocates has inspired a number of murders, most notably the Christchurch mosque massacre that killed 51 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

You're speaking as if Marjorie Taylor Greene's support of this Great Replacement Theory is a cause creating an effect. White supremacists do not take their cues from this woman, they are quite sexist in addition to being racist.

They take their cues from people like Adolf Hitler and David Lane.

Also, Pizzagate? Really Flighty? Have you noticed that every now and then, a conspiracy theory comes along that's so batshit insane that anyone with a 3-digit IQ can see it's a steaming pile of shit? You get to wondering why the media even continues to cover these things, right? They cover it because as long as there are all these crazy conspiracy theories floating around, "conspiracy theorists" will always be marginalized, and real conspiracies are marginalized right along with them.

[filghy2]

Also, Pizzagate? Really Flighty? Have you noticed that every now and then, a conspiracy theory comes along that's so batshit insane that anyone with a 3-digit IQ can see it's a steaming pile of shit?

I guess more than half of Republican voters must have an IQ of well under 100 then. QED

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/qanon-conspiracy-mostly-true-republicans-trump-daily-kos-civiqs-poll-a9702261.html
https://www.newsweek.com/only-17-trump-supporters-dont-believe-qanon-conspiracy-theory-poll-1540782

You keep trying to pretend this is just a few kooks at the margins when it's a disease that seems to have infected most of your party.

[filghy2]

You're speaking as if Marjorie Taylor Greene's support of this Great Replacement Theory is a cause creating an effect. White supremacists do not take their cues from this woman, they are quite sexist in addition to being racist.

The same argument could be made about every proponent of these ideas. Obviously there is no single master mind directing all this, but the more people espouse these ideas the more credence they gain with some people. In particular, when prominent people espouse them, or at least give the impression they are sympathetic, then it emboldens these people. There is no doubt that white supremacists have been emboldened since Trump came on the scene.

[filghy2]

But we're talking months and months here. Even after it was determined that the incident wasn't what it seemed, the Democratic machine kept pushing for violence. Because they knew that was the only thing that was going to get them into office in 2020. It worked. I stand in awe of the power of a political party that owns the media. Even though they have absolutely zero good ideas on how to move forward from the crises of 2020 (other than to simply cave in to every special interest that holds out a cup), they won the White House and the Senate. Incredible really. If I were a Democrat I'd be on here crowing about our amazing powers of political skullduggery.

I thought this was a particularly silly claim. It's clear that Trump was delighted when violence occurred at some of the protests because he thought he would benefit from a law and order campaign. Many Democrat supporters were worried about that, including one who posts here sometimes.

Why would Democrats have wanted to distract attention from Trump's incompetent handling of the pandemic, which was the primary reason he lost? Elections around the world have shown that incumbents have generally benefited as long as they have done a reasonable job of dealing with the virus. Al Trump had to do was show that he cared and do some basic things right. Far from being a political genius, this man is a political dunce.

[Nick Danger]

I guess more than half of Republican voters must have an IQ of well under 100 then. QED

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/qanon-conspiracy-mostly-true-republicans-trump-daily-kos-civiqs-poll-a9702261.html
https://www.newsweek.com/only-17-trump-supporters-dont-believe-qanon-conspiracy-theory-poll-1540782

You keep trying to pretend this is just a few kooks at the margins when it's a disease that seems to have infected most of your party.

First of all I'm obliged to point out that those are two left-leaning publications you're linking. The Independent is not too awful but Newsweek is a joke, I wouldn't let my dog shit on Newsweek and I don't even have a dog.

Still, I don't totally disagree with you, or the articles you linked either. I'm well-aware that the Republican Party is comprised of two distinct types of Americans. Type A is your garden-variety productive citizen, who has worked hard for what he has and understands that a lifetime of hard work and financial responsibility is the only difference between him and the guy who's barely making it, wants to keep what he's earned, not particularly sympathetic to laziness or weakness, that guy. Me.

Then there's the Type B Republican. Not too smart. Not too prosperous. Has a lot of deeply-imbedded beliefs that he holds as sacred. Not easy to reason with, but easily convinced of practically anything if it comes from one of his trusted sources. Identifies as a Republican almost strictly because of moral or religious beliefs.

I'm not going to pretend we don't need Type B Republicans in order to be competitive with liberalism in this country. And I'll just leave it at that.


The same argument could be made about every proponent of these ideas. Obviously there is no single master mind directing all this, but the more people espouse these ideas the more credence they gain with some people. In particular, when prominent people espouse them, or at least give the impression they are sympathetic, then it emboldens these people. There is no doubt that white supremacists have been emboldened since Trump came on the scene.

I could relate this back to my response on the previous post, because the white supremacists you're talking about are Type B Republicans.

I think Trump thought he could get away with failing to repudiate white supremacists for one reason. Because there's a little racism in the heart of most wealthy white people. Obviously they're not all blatantly racist, not even mostly, but that's an effort of will. It's in there and if a racist thing happens to happen right in front of them, they'll usually let it slide.

Give you a perfect example - my own father. My father is a racist. He only knows one word for black people and it's the one you think it is. He's also got slurs for every other ethnicity from the Irish to the Puerto Ricans to the Japanese. He's old, obviously. And to be fair, he grew up in an Italian neighborhood of New York City which was strictly divided along racial lines. Not a single person I've ever met from that neighborhood is a bit different from my father.

Well, my dad's still out there, voting. It certainly didn't bother him when Trump acted like he didn't know who David Duke is. My dad is one of the worst of them but most older white people grew up in a different country than the rest of us. And that's Trump's base.


I thought this was a particularly silly claim. It's clear that Trump was delighted when violence occurred at some of the protests because he thought he would benefit from a law and order campaign. Many Democrat supporters were worried about that, including one who posts here sometimes.

Why would Democrats have wanted to distract attention from Trump's incompetent handling of the pandemic, which was the primary reason he lost? Elections around the world have shown that incumbents have generally benefited as long as they have done a reasonable job of dealing with the virus. Al Trump had to do was show that he cared and do some basic things right. Far from being a political genius, this man is a political dunce.

Can't agree with you about the pandemic thing, Flighty, I just have not seen the evidence that there is a competent way to handle this. It would be very, very difficult for anyone to convince me that we'd have had substantially more deaths in this country if we'd simply done nothing at all but continue with business as usual. Meanwhile the economy is going to shit behind our ridiculous counter-measures. On the other hand, I'm kind of a hardass who isn't going to die of covid so maybe I'm just being too harsh.

You know, governments and corporations make decisions all the time about how much human life is worth in cold hard cash. At various levels we are constantly risking our lives. When we drive a car, every time we get behind the driver's seat there's a certain % chance we are going to die, couldn't tell you what it is but it's a chance. Every time you walk out your front door you're taking a chance.

I'm not a runner and hider, Flighty. I'm a confronter and let's get it doner. I don't have much sympathy for blind fear, and IMO we, humans, are handling this thing like a bunch of cowards. How long are we going to shut down the planet to save A FEW lives? There are 8 billion goddamn people on this planet, we can lose some. When it's someone's time, it's their time, that's it.

But like I said, I'm prepared to admit that sounds a bit harsh.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1958200]

I'm well-aware that the Republican Party is comprised of two distinct types of Americans. Type A is your garden-variety productive citizen, who has worked hard for what he has and understands that a lifetime of hard work and financial responsibility is the only difference between him and the guy who's barely making it, wants to keep what he's earned, not particularly sympathetic to laziness or weakness, that guy. Me.

Then there's the Type B Republican. Not too smart. Not too prosperous. Has a lot of deeply-imbedded beliefs that he holds as sacred. Not easy to reason with, but easily convinced of practically anything if it comes from one of his trusted sources. Identifies as a Republican almost strictly because of moral or religious beliefs.

On the basis of the above, and the fact that you claim the massacre at Sandy Hook was a 'staged' event, you clearly believe all or any of the worthless drivel on which your view is based. My estimate thus ranks you, on the basis of your own score, as AB Negative.

[filghy2]

Still, I don't totally disagree with you, or the articles you linked either. I'm well-aware that the Republican Party is comprised of two distinct types of Americans. Type A is your garden-variety productive citizen, who has worked hard for what he has and understands that a lifetime of hard work and financial responsibility is the only difference between him and the guy who's barely making it, wants to keep what he's earned, not particularly sympathetic to laziness or weakness, that guy. Me.

Then there's the Type B Republican. Not too smart. Not too prosperous. Has a lot of deeply-imbedded beliefs that he holds as sacred. Not easy to reason with, but easily convinced of practically anything if it comes from one of his trusted sources. Identifies as a Republican almost strictly because of moral or religious beliefs.

I'm not going to pretend we don't need Type B Republicans in order to be competitive with liberalism in this country. And I'll just leave it at that.

You seem to be suggesting that the Republican party is as it's always been, but I don't think that's the case. What seems to have changed is that the extremists no longer fear that expressing their extremism will have adverse consequences from fellow partisans. I don't think the amount of active bigotry is fixed - most people will either rein in their worst instincts or give vent to them, depending on what they think the financial and social consequences will be.

There have always been some extreme elements around the Republican party. In the 50s and 60s there was the John Birch Society, whose founder claimed that even Eisenhower was a Communist stooge. However, there was more active pushback from the mainstream party against those extremists than there is at present.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/02/republican-extremism-and-john-birch-society/617922/

If you want the Republican Party to regain power next time you had better hope they do more to isolate the crazies because they can't win without the support of moderate, independent voters, Association with extremism is poison with those voters. This is the big problem with so many Republicans believing the stolen election lie. If you can't admit you lost then you can't ask why you lost and address the reasons for that.

[Nick Danger]

On the basis of the above, and the fact that you claim the massacre at Sandy Hook was a 'staged' event, you clearly believe all or any of the worthless drivel on which your view is based. My estimate thus ranks you, on the basis of your own score, as AB Negative.

HA! You're a funny guy, Stavros. Funny like a clown. Kinda makes me wonder why you go to the trouble of acting like such a stiff in most of your posts.

I'm absolutely willing to have the Sandy Hook debate with you, Stavros. But if you want to do that, make sure you understand that it's a real debate, a long conversation, and it's no joke. There is a LOT of evidence that it's a hoax, and zero evidence that it happened. There is, in fact, zero evidence that the children ever existed. It's EXTREMELY difficult to hold up the government's version of the events of that day in real-time debate.

To put it in perspective for you, I'm well-aware that if the Sandy Hook Massacre actually DID happen, and I maintain it didn't, that makes me one of the world's biggest assholes. It's dead children we're talking about here. A person would have to be very sure it was a hoax. VERY. SURE.

I'm gonna link the best video I've seen on the subject of the Sandy Hook hoax. If you do decide you want to have that argument with me, I suggest you watch this first:

https://archive.org/details/WeNeedToTalkAboutSandyHookNEW2015Documentary


You seem to be suggesting that the Republican party is as it's always been, but I don't think that's the case. What seems to have changed is that the extremists no longer fear that expressing their extremism will have adverse consequences from fellow partisans. I don't think the amount of active bigotry is fixed - most people will either rein in their worst instincts or give vent to them, depending on what they think the financial and social consequences will be.

There have always been some extreme elements around the Republican party. In the 50s and 60s there was the John Birch Society, whose founder claimed that even Eisenhower was a Communist stooge. However, there was more active pushback from the mainstream party against those extremists than there is at present.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/02/republican-extremism-and-john-birch-society/617922/

If you want the Republican Party to regain power next time you had better hope they do more to isolate the crazies because they can't win without the support of moderate, independent voters, Association with extremism is poison with those voters. This is the big problem with so many Republicans believing the stolen election lie. If you can't admit you lost then you can't ask why you lost and address the reasons for that.

A few things have changed in this country since the Eisenhower administration, Flighty. Brylcreem is no longer the average young man's hair styling gel of choice. Buddy Holly died. Studebaker went out of business. I Love Lucy got cancelled.

Our nation's political parties have changed a bit too. Matter of fact, they are constantly changing and there's change underway right now.

There are 4 essential ideologies in American politics. Two concern the economy, and two concern morality.

Liberal fiscal policy: Government as charity.
Liberal morality policy: Everyone should be able to live as they please.
Conservative fiscal policy: Enforced personal responsibility.
Conservative morality policy: Lawmaking as an extension of Christianity.

Over the decades, each of the two political parties have latched on to 2 of these 4 essential ideologies to obtain voters, and the other party has latched onto the other 2. They have both occasionally taken a swim toward the middle but have ultimately found no one else swimming there.

Before 1912 and Teddy Roosevelt's Independent presidential run, it was the Republican Party that upheld liberal policies. And it wasn't until FDR's New Deal that Democrats became identified with the welfare state.

It's always been interesting to me that no party has ever represented me fully. I believe in liberal morality AND conservative fiscal policy. Personally I think most people feel that way, but it's not as if I have my finger on the pulse of the nation.

In the end nobody gets what they really want, and everyone has to make a difficult choice. My choice is, the economy is the most important thing. Within a weak economy, very little else is possible. Other people see things differently and have different priorities.

I have no problem with every single voter voting in his own best interest. That's exactly as it should be and if we had that, we'd have the best possible government that served the most possible citizens. Unfortunately we have a media problem in this country. The media convinces some people to vote for other people's interests, shifting the balance of power in unsustainable ways.

[filghy2]

There are 4 essential ideologies in American politics. Two concern the economy, and two concern morality.

Liberal fiscal policy: Government as charity.
Liberal morality policy: Everyone should be able to live as they please.
Conservative fiscal policy: Enforced personal responsibility.
Conservative morality policy: Lawmaking as an extension of Christianity.

Over the decades, each of the two political parties have latched on to 2 of these 4 essential ideologies to obtain voters, and the other party has latched onto the other 2. They have both occasionally taken a swim toward the middle but have ultimately found no one else swimming there.

Before 1912 and Teddy Roosevelt's Independent presidential run, it was the Republican Party that upheld liberal policies. And it wasn't until FDR's New Deal that Democrats became identified with the welfare state.

It's always been interesting to me that no party has ever represented me fully. I believe in liberal morality AND conservative fiscal policy. Personally I think most people feel that way, but it's not as if I have my finger on the pulse of the nation.

In the end nobody gets what they really want, and everyone has to make a difficult choice. My choice is, the economy is the most important thing. Within a weak economy, very little else is possible. Other people see things differently and have different priorities.

I have no problem with every single voter voting in his own best interest. That's exactly as it should be and if we had that, we'd have the best possible government that served the most possible citizens. Unfortunately we have a media problem in this country. The media convinces some people to vote for other people's interests, shifting the balance of power in unsustainable ways.

There's another dimension missing from your potted history of US politics, and that is white identity politics. The Democrats used to be the white identity party until the civil rights legislation of the Johnson administration, after which the Republicans embarked on the southern strategy to win over disgruntled working class whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

I doubt that most of those people enthusiastically cheering Trump at the MAGA rallies were there because they wanted smaller government or enforcement of Christian morality. They were mainly there because they hate the idea of the US ceasing to be a country dominated by white folks. There is loads of research showing that this was the main factor behind Trump's support.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study

It's interesting that you consistently try to downplay this element.. It's also odd that complain that the media is somehow convincing people to vote Democrat against their true interests when the whole point of the southern strategy has been to convince the white working class to vote for the party that favours the interests of the rich.

[filghy2]

Conservative fiscal policy: Enforced personal responsibility.


What exactly is your definition of conservative fiscal policy? Surely it can't have escaped your notice that every period of Republican rule since Reagan has seen increases in budget deficits? It was Dick Cheney who claimed that deficits don't matter.

The actual Republican fiscal policy is to cut taxes for rich people whenever they get the chance, never mind the deficit, and then switch to claiming deficits are a huge problem whenever there's a Democrat administration.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1958237]

HA! You're a funny guy, Stavros. Funny like a clown. Kinda makes me wonder why you go to the trouble of acting like such a stiff in most of your posts.

I'm absolutely willing to have the Sandy Hook debate with you, Stavros. But if you want to do that, make sure you understand that it's a real debate, a long conversation, and it's no joke. There is a LOT of evidence that it's a hoax, and zero evidence that it happened. There is, in fact, zero evidence that the children ever existed. It's EXTREMELY difficult to hold up the government's version of the events of that day in real-time debate.

To put it in perspective for you, I'm well-aware that if the Sandy Hook Massacre actually DID happen, and I maintain it didn't, that makes me one of the world's biggest assholes. It's dead children we're talking about here. A person would have to be very sure it was a hoax. VERY. SURE.

I'm gonna link the best video I've seen on the subject of the Sandy Hook hoax. If you do decide you want to have that argument with me, I suggest you watch this first:

https://archive.org/details/WeNeedToTalkAboutSandyHookNEW2015Documentary


This is not a documentary, it is a collection of YouTube videos made by mostly anonymous cowards, not one of whom went to Newtown to interview anyone in the town but have cobbled their evidence from archive footage. The film's tone is set with the brief reference to Fairfiled Hills psychiatric hospital (1931-1995), the Newtown hospital that has 'fearsome tunnels' which really are just tunnels connecting different parts of the building. The 'macabre' medical procedures that were carried out there were standard procedures at the time whatever you think of them now.

The parents are actors and musicians -proof that Sandy Hook was staged? MRSTOSH314 make much of this, as if to prove these men and women were recruited to act in the 'Sandy Hook Massacre Drama' -what it fails to do is establish as a mundane fact that across the USA, millions of mums and dads are involved in amateur dramatics, and some even make films in which they sing children's songs.

The segment by FreeRadioRevolution also attempts to smear Gene Rosen because he too was a part time actor. Well guess what, when I was 9-11 years old I acted in plays that were put on by the church I went to. It happens all over the world, but here's the other thing -I would never call myself an 'Actor'. It was just fun. As for the dads who play the guitar and sing their own songs -er, YouTube has more examples of them than I care to list. So mums and dads who act and play guitar really are just mums and dads who act and play guitar, they are not on the payroll of Murder Inc.

Tosh also makes the claim that Veronique Pozner is also Veronique Haller, when the most basic research shows this to be false -

"The “researcher” claims that Veronique, the mother of Noah, is an anti-gun Swiss diplomat. Now, this is not new, earth-shattering speculation by the hoaxers. This hypothesis has been around since shortly after the shooting. In fact, I never touched on the topic because I’d thought that most of the hoaxers had realized early on that this suggestion was ludicrous. Veronique Pozner, the Connecticut RN, and Veronique Haller, the Swiss diplomat, are two completely different people. Let’s take a closer look at the compelling research this hoaxer presents to establish these woman are the same person."
https://sandehook.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/a-tale-of-two-veroniques/

I could go on -Adam Lanza stole his brother's ID on the day so the first reports based on the ID first responders found claimed the shooter was Ryan Lanza. Others claim nobody attempted to call or talk to Lanza's father Peter, and (on one of the imdb reviews of the film) continued to claim this even after Peter Lanza gave an interview to the New Yorker, as reported here-
https://www.today.com/news/adam-lanzas-father-i-wish-he-had-never-been-born-2D79346468

As for the fundamental driver of this staged event, what was the point of massacring children to force Congress to introduce new gun control measures, when they did no such thing? And when a phone call to Mitch McConnell was all that was needed to confirm that he would not support such measures?

It is simple, Nick -you have stepped out of the world of reason, and into the world of faith, where you can believe anything you want to believe, that the world is flat, that Elvis is still alive, that Black People were not born on planet Earth but arrived here on a spaceship from another planet, and so on.

You embarrass yourself at one level, but on another level you are a mendacious creep who cares nothing for the lives of ordinary Americans slaughtered by extraordinary lunatics. You cling to bogus theories because thse theories suit your template of a world of corrupt politicians profiting from your ignorance, but do so by ignoring veriifiabe facts that prove you to be wrong, because you choose lies over the truth.

In most cases, you are just another crank without a shaft, but when you become part of a movement designed to replace a Liberal Democacy with Anarchy, you become accountable to your fellow Americans who bear arms against a Republic they claim has betrayed them, seeking a Utopian America where there are no laws, no government, no taxes, and where a free citizen can do anything he or she wants.

You hang your pathetic, childish fantasies onto Sandy Hook because your are crippled by a self-doubt that you transform into an absolute certainty, when most people are in normal times possessed of enough reason to distinguish fact from fantasy, even as they know they don't know everything.

You have proven nothing other than your own stupidity, just as you lack the courage to go Newtown and talk to the people who saw what happened, because you are a coward.

[Nick Danger]

There's another dimension missing from your potted history of US politics, and that is white identity politics. The Democrats used to be the white identity party until the civil rights legislation of the Johnson administration, after which the Republicans embarked on the southern strategy to win over disgruntled working class whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

I doubt that most of those people enthusiastically cheering Trump at the MAGA rallies were there because they wanted smaller government or enforcement of Christian morality. They were mainly there because they hate the idea of the US ceasing to be a country dominated by white folks. There is loads of research showing that this was the main factor behind Trump's support.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study

It's interesting that you consistently try to downplay this element.. It's also odd that complain that the media is somehow convincing people to vote Democrat against their true interests when the whole point of the southern strategy has been to convince the white working class to vote for the party that favours the interests of the rich.

I think I plainly said that there's a little racism in the heart of most wealthy white people, Flighty. Poor white people can be even worse, they often have anger issues that accompany their version of racism.

Rich white racism: "Those people are beneath me."
Poor white racism: "Those people are taking my jobs."

I disagree that racism is what put Trump into office. More like conservative white backlash against liberal flagship issues like Obamacare and gay marriage. You've been watching too much television, Flighty. Just because the media has suddenly acted as if racism is a huge problem in this country doesn't mean it actually is. If I were an employee, I'd prefer to be black. Black people have all the advantages in the modern workplace, up to and including the tax break employers get for hiring them in the first place, not to mention the ever-present spectre of "racism" in a situation where they weren't the right person for the job and someone wants to fire them or pass them over for promotion. It's a great time to be a black worker in the USA.

Seems to me you're looking at the more vocal outliers of the Republican Party and making an assumption there's a lot more of them than there actually are. The so-called "White Supremacist Vote" is a few thousand people, a tiny drop in a great big bucket of voters.

Now I HAVE had conversations with a few of my fellow middle-aged, middle class white men, many of whom are PRAGMATIC racists. They don't have a problem with black people but they will always vote against Democrats because they consider the black advantage in the modern workplace to be too great. Any whiff of Affirmative Action will send their vote in the other direction. I'm not sure if this qualifies as racism, or if it's just reactionary self-preservation. Either way, yeah, for sure that's out there too.

Far as some of the police violence against blacks, I've seen the same videos you've seen. In the vast majority of them, the perpetrator in question is resisting arrest, reaching for a weapon, fighting the police, etc. Now and then I see a case of real racial injustice. But then again, I've also seen plenty of white people treated unjustly by the police.

What I think is that, because of our nation's past with slavery, we should treat the political complaints of our black citizens with a sense of hyper-consideration, and what I mean by that is this: If they make a good argument, we should consider it a great argument and treat it with exigence. If they make a borderline argument we should give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a good one.

But a shitty argument is always a shitty argument, and the argument that there is systemic racism in the USA is a shitty argument. If anything "The System" favors being black.

[Nick Danger]

This is not a documentary, it is a collection of YouTube videos made by mostly anonymous cowards, not one of whom went to Newtown to interview anyone in the town but have cobbled their evidence from archive footage. The film's tone is set with the brief reference to Fairfiled Hills psychiatric hospital (1931-1995), the Newtown hospital that has 'fearsome tunnels' which really are just tunnels connecting different parts of the building. The 'macabre' medical procedures that were carried out there were standard procedures at the time whatever you think of them now.

The parents are actors and musicians -proof that Sandy Hook was staged? MRSTOSH314 make much of this, as if to prove these men and women were recruited to act in the 'Sandy Hook Massacre Drama' -what it fails to do is establish as a mundane fact that across the USA, millions of mums and dads are involved in amateur dramatics, and some even make films in which they sing children's songs.

The segment by FreeRadioRevolution also attempts to smear Gene Rosen because he too was a part time actor. Well guess what, when I was 9-11 years old I acted in plays that were put on by the church I went to. It happens all over the world, but here's the other thing -I would never call myself an 'Actor'. It was just fun. As for the dads who play the guitar and sing their own songs -er, YouTube has more examples of them than I care to list. So mums and dads who act and play guitar really are just mums and dads who act and play guitar, they are not on the payroll of Murder Inc.

Tosh also makes the claim that Veronique Pozner is also Veronique Haller, when the most basic research shows this to be false -

"The “researcher” claims that Veronique, the mother of Noah, is an anti-gun Swiss diplomat. Now, this is not new, earth-shattering speculation by the hoaxers. This hypothesis has been around since shortly after the shooting. In fact, I never touched on the topic because I’d thought that most of the hoaxers had realized early on that this suggestion was ludicrous. Veronique Pozner, the Connecticut RN, and Veronique Haller, the Swiss diplomat, are two completely different people. Let’s take a closer look at the compelling research this hoaxer presents to establish these woman are the same person."
https://sandehook.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/a-tale-of-two-veroniques/

I could go on -Adam Lanza stole his brother's ID on the day so the first reports based on the ID first responders found claimed the shooter was Ryan Lanza. Others claim nobody attempted to call or talk to Lanza's father Peter, and (on one of the imdb reviews of the film) continued to claim this even after Peter Lanza gave an interview to the New Yorker, as reported here-
https://www.today.com/news/adam-lanzas-father-i-wish-he-had-never-been-born-2D79346468

As for the fundamental driver of this staged event, what was the point of massacring children to force Congress to introduce new gun control measures, when they did no such thing? And when a phone call to Mitch McConnell was all that was needed to confirm that he would not support such measures?

It is simple, Nick -you have stepped out of the world of reason, and into the world of faith, where you can believe anything you want to believe, that the world is flat, that Elvis is still alive, that Black People were not born on planet Earth but arrived here on a spaceship from another planet, and so on.

You embarrass yourself at one level, but on another level you are a mendacious creep who cares nothing for the lives of ordinary Americans slaughtered by extraordinary lunatics. You cling to bogus theories because thse theories suit your template of a world of corrupt politicians profiting from your ignorance, but do so by ignoring veriifiabe facts that prove you to be wrong, because you choose lies over the truth.

In most cases, you are just another crank without a shaft, but when you become part of a movement designed to replace a Liberal Democacy with Anarchy, you become accountable to your fellow Americans who bear arms against a Republic they claim has betrayed them, seeking a Utopian America where there are no laws, no government, no taxes, and where a free citizen can do anything he or she wants.

You hang your pathetic, childish fantasies onto Sandy Hook because your are crippled by a self-doubt that you transform into an absolute certainty, when most people are in normal times possessed of enough reason to distinguish fact from fantasy, even as they know they don't know everything.

You have proven nothing other than your own stupidity, just as you lack the courage to go Newtown and talk to the people who saw what happened, because you are a coward.

Wow, Stavros, that's good stuff. The appeal to emotion in your argument is so strong it almost distracted me from the fact that you didn't actually make an argument.

Let's START from the fact that this was a staged exercise. Any dipshit can watch the video of the so-called parents attempting to muster tears unsuccessfully, laughing when they think the cameras are off, generally being very POOR actors, and see that it's a drill. So that's what you actually HAVE, as a media consumer - video of an obviously staged event.

Immediately following the incident, when all the world had to go on was the video, numerous polls conducted by various media on all points of the political spectrum showed that the MAJORITY of people thought the entire thing was staged.

Of course that's when the media got to work in earnest.

So let's say that the burden of proof is on you, the true believer, to prove that this was not a staged event, but a real mass murder that actually happened. Where would you begin, Stavros.

Normally you'd show photos of the victims. Tasteless as it might seem, this is news we're talking about. It's unprecedented for EVERY SINGLE PHOTO of EVERY SINGLE VICTIM to be 100% redacted. But okay, this is a very unusual situation. The parents felt very strongly about protecting the privacy of their dead children by insisting the photographs be institutionally protected from ever being seen by anyone. They weren't interested in sympathy from the masses (even though their entire lives now revolve around sympathy from the masses), they just wanted to make sure those photos didn't get seen.

So what's your next option? Photos of the crime scene. The blood, that's the evidence right there, you're not going to have a massacre of 26 people without an ugly crime scene riddled with bullets and soaked with blood stains.

But alas, no such photos can be viewed. Redacted. By the state legislature. But WAIT - The Mirror (UK) managed to get ITS hands on photos from inside the school. HERE'S your evidence: https://www.mirror.co.uk/incoming/gallery/sandy-hook-evidence-released-2966707 . Or if that's not enough, what about THESE "chilling photos" from the New York Post - https://nypost.com/2013/11/25/chilling-photos-of-sandy-hook-gunmans-lair-released/

Oops.

I guess we'll have to settle for the video of the covered bodies of children being removed from the school as our evidence that anything at all happened in that school that day. But wait, what's this? They left the bodies rotting in the school all day and then removed them under cover of darkness? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sandy-hook-victims-identified-bodies-removed-from-school-overnight/

Now that's...odd.

Well, lacking video or photographic evidence of a mass murder, we can simply take the word of media and law enforcement that the thing DID happen. These are the people we trust! It wasn't just a drill even though that's what it looked like, because they said so. And really, a simple perusal of the birth and death certificates of the murdered children will should be sufficient evidence for anyone who has a modicum of trust in America's institutions.

LOL REDACTED! I shouldn't laugh. I just think it's hilarious that anyone can look at this huge steaming pile of horseshit and mentally block out the irrefutable evidence of media foreknowledge, the unlikely scenario that not a single parent thought it might have been a good idea if someone armed had been at the school to stop this 80-pound commando from carrying out his evil mission (every single parent, pro-gun control, even after losing a child in a scenario where armed educators or even a security guard would likely have saved their child), the laughable video of people walking in circles at the firehouse, the gun control advocation history of the participants, the utterly abysmal acting, the immediate institutional cover-up, the video evidence that there was no evacuation of the school, and ALL THE OTHER EVIDENCE THAT THIS WAS STAGED.

Also, Stavros, Gene Rosen wasn't vilified because he's a shitty actor, though he is. He was vilified because of the multiple inconsistencies in his story from one telling to the next, and the fact that he was caught on video rehearsing his lines.

You ain't too clever, Stavros. Not as clever as I thunk you were. This case does not come down to multiple Veronicas, it comes down to multiple mistakes made by the not-so-clever people who were trying to fool us, and who succeeded vs. those of us incapable of critical thinking.

1298434

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1958320]

Wow, Stavros, that's good stuff. The appeal to emotion in your argument is so strong it almost distracted me from the fact that you didn't actually make an argument.

You have decided it was a staged event, and everything you observe proves your point. It matters not that Veronica Pozner is a reistered nurse and not a Swiss gun control advocate, because it ruins one aspect of your fantasy. You want to see explicit photos of murdered children at a blood-soaked crime scene, photos which are rarely if ever shown of any crime scene, be it Oklahoma, 9/11, Parkland, Las Vegas, and so on -but the question is why do you want to see such photos? And, on the basis of the views you have shared with us, even those photos you would dismiss as fake, and must be because you claim it never happened.

We can go on and on, and you can go round and round in circles, always asking the same questions which have only one answer which proves your point, just as the fundamental point that the gun control laws that were supposed to follow this and the other massacres never happened, but you don't ask, or explain why.

You treat the truth with contempt, just us in a recent post you demonstrate such an ignorance of the way Race has shaped American history, politics and society, I wonder if you live in a bubble, or a hole in the ground. What is clear is that you have stepped out of the world of reason, to live in a world of make-believe, and you have every right to make stuff up and stick with it even when it makes a fool of you.

But do you have a right to insult the victims of Sandy Hook? What do you achieve when you do that?

You are a disgrace to American society, and I for one will no longer respond to your posts because the stink is as universal as it is unwelcome.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

[Nick Danger]

You have decided it was a staged event, and everything you observe proves your point. It matters not that Veronica Pozner is a reistered nurse and not a Swiss gun control advocate, because it ruins one aspect of your fantasy. You want to see explicit photos of murdered children at a blood-soaked crime scene, photos which are rarely if ever shown of any crime scene, be it Oklahoma, 9/11, Parkland, Las Vegas, and so on -but the question is why do you want to see such photos? And, on the basis of the views you have shared with us, even those photos you would dismiss as fake, and must be because you claim it never happened.

We can go on and on, and you can go round and round in circles, always asking the same questions which have only one answer which proves your point, just as the fundamental point that the gun control laws that were supposed to follow this and the other massacres never happened, but you don't ask, or explain why.

You treat the truth with contempt, just us in a recent post you demonstrate such an ignorance of the way Race has shaped American history, politics and society, I wonder if you live in a bubble, or a hole in the ground. What is clear is that you have stepped out of the world of reason, to live in a world of make-believe, and you have every right to make stuff up and stick with it even when it makes a fool of you.

But do you have a right to insult the victims of Sandy Hook? What do you achieve when you do that?

You are a disgrace to American society, and I for one will no longer respond to your posts because the stink is as universal as it is unwelcome.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

Like I said, Stavros - it's EXTREMELY difficult to hold the official version of events up under the cold hard light of truth. Kudos for stepping up to the plate, even though you struck out.

Suit yourself on the stink thing. I've run off worse knuckleheads than you by fanning the stench of reality in their direction.

[Nick Danger]

BTW let me just say that ANYONE who wants to take up the mantle of the official story about Sandy Hook is welcome to do so, and I will gladly field your argument. Or if you're a sensitive soul instead of a leathery old virtue-signaler like Stavros, I'll go as easy on you as you please - even so far as to not reply at all if that's what you want. I realize that some people might want to say something insulting to me because I'm treating the Sandy Hook victims as the perpetrators they really are instead of the victims they're pretending to be. That's okay, I'll let you run me down as a sorry sack of shit, I am not sensitive about this matter at all.

Just say your piece and state you don't want a reply, and I'll leave you alone and let your argument stand. THAT'S how certain I am that no case can be made that this rank abomination of a false flag effort to take guns from law-abiding American citizens actually happened.

We are ALL Sandy Hook victims.

[filghy2]

f I were an employee, I'd prefer to be black. Black people have all the advantages in the modern workplace, up to and including the tax break employers get for hiring them in the first place, not to mention the ever-present spectre of "racism" in a situation where they weren't the right person for the job and someone wants to fire them or pass them over for promotion. It's a great time to be a black worker in the USA.

Some advantage. Average black income in the US is about 40% lower than average white income.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-financial-inequality/index.html

They are also more likely to be unemployed, live in poverty, have various health problems, get murdered, shot by police, etc, etc. If you would prefer to be born black if you had your time over that would seem to be a very strange decision.

Even if we compare people in the same job, with the same qualifications and experience, white people earn more than blacks on average. https://www.payscale.com/data/racial-wage-gap

The idea that black people are getting some unfair advantage is just classic white grievance stuff, not based on any evidence.

[filghy2]

I disagree that racism is what put Trump into office. More like conservative white backlash against liberal flagship issues like Obamacare and gay marriage.

That doesn't explain why they went for Trump more enthusiastically than they have for more conventional Republicans. Did Trump have a stronger position on Obamacare and gay marriage than any other candidate?

[filghy2]

As for the fundamental driver of this staged event, what was the point of massacring children to force Congress to introduce new gun control measures, when they did no such thing? And when a phone call to Mitch McConnell was all that was needed to confirm that he would not support such measures?

This is the problem with most conspiracy theories - the link between the supposed conspiracy and the supposed goal is pretty tenuous. Given the large number of mass killings that have occurred in the US with no effect on opposition to gun control, why would anyone expect one more massacre to make the critical difference?

There is also another obvious plausibility problem. Such a conspiracy would have had to involve a large number of people, with a very high probability that eyewitnesses outside of the conspiracy would have seen something suspicious, either at the time or later. Newton is a town of 28,000 people, which means a large number of potential connections to anything involving the school. Yet all the alleged evidence seems to be highly circumstantial. Are we supposed to believe that the entire community was in on the conspiracy and none have had second thoughts? Or are we supposed to believe that the conspirators were so clever that no eyewitnesses spotted anything incriminating, but at the same time so careless that they left lots of evidence for internet sleuths to find?

[Nick Danger]

Some advantage. Average black income in the US is about 40% lower than average white income.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/black-white-us-financial-inequality/index.html

They are also more likely to be unemployed, live in poverty, have various health problems, get murdered, shot by police, etc, etc. If you would prefer to be born black if you had your time over that would seem to be a very strange decision.

Even if we compare people in the same job, with the same qualifications and experience, white people earn more than blacks on average. https://www.payscale.com/data/racial-wage-gap

The idea that black people are getting some unfair advantage is just classic white grievance stuff, not based on any evidence.

I didn't say I'd prefer to be born black, I said I'd prefer to be black if I were an employee. Obviously there are cultural disadvantages to being born black that lead to many blacks existing on the periphery of the workforce or never entering it at all. Some segments of black culture disdain education, some segments encourage racism against whites, and in some segments of black culture, gang membership is mandatory if you want to survive. People like Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, who have climbed to the top of the cultural ladder on their own merits, are viewed as "sellouts" or Uncle Toms by some segments of black society. Those same segments tend to hold murderous gangsters like Snoop Dogg or Wu-Tang Clan up as icons.

If we're being totally honest, the failure of Example Black Person to prosper in the workforce can often be attributed to his personal failure to adapt to the predominant culture. Whether that's his fault, the fault of his upbringing, or the fault of society-at-large is a question to be asked, but asking the question doesn't affect the outcome.

I don't have the solution, all I'm saying is that we've tried to affect this outcome by offering blacks advantages in education and the workplace - by replacing the merit-based system with a quota-based system. The advantages are real, they're still with us, and based on Biden's recent tendency to use the word "equity" instead of "equality" when talking about combating white supremacy, are about to be expanded. So I dunno, let's see what happens. I think a failed approach is a failed approach but maybe we simply haven't gone far enough in that direction.


This is the problem with most conspiracy theories - the link between the supposed conspiracy and the supposed goal is pretty tenuous. Given the large number of mass killings that have occurred in the US with no effect on opposition to gun control, why would anyone expect one more massacre to make the critical difference?

There is also another obvious plausibility problem. Such a conspiracy would have had to involve a large number of people, with a very high probability that eyewitnesses outside of the conspiracy would have seen something suspicious, either at the time or later. Newton is a town of 28,000 people, which means a large number of potential connections to anything involving the school. Yet all the alleged evidence seems to be highly circumstantial. Are we supposed to believe that the entire community was in on the conspiracy and none have had second thoughts? Or are we supposed to believe that the conspirators were so clever that no eyewitnesses spotted anything incriminating, but at the same time so careless that they left lots of evidence for internet sleuths to find?

The reason people don't see the direct cause-and-effect of the Sandy Hook hoax is pretty simple - Republican control of Congress. Obama tried. Hard, at the federal level, but he was unsuccessful and unsuccessful efforts are forgotten.

Here's a Wiki page that lists ALL of the Democratic efforts at gun control legislation behind Sandy Hook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_after_the_Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School _shooting

Frankly I'm not sure how it is the Democratic Party became identified with gun control, probably just a natural progression from its constituents' other beliefs, but that's how it is now.

Connecticut, New York, and Maryland, all blue states, DID succeed in introducing additional gun control legislation behind Sandy Hook.

To this day, the Sandy Hook "parents" are like a rock band out on tour, and I'll give you one guess which same old song they're playing over and over again.

Don't forget, there have been a lot of real school shootings. But Sandy Hook is still "the deadliest."

As for the plausibility problem, yes, there most certainly is one, Flighty. The entire event is totally implausible. Why has no one stepped forward to say "This was a hoax?" Could be the millions of dollars in bribes, Flighty. It could be that. On the other hand, the makers of that video We Need To Talk About Sandy Hook say they were threatened about going forward. With death! So there could be that happening too.

I personally don't think there were that many people involved. The parents. The police. Elements of the media. A small government coalition. All united in their sacred cause to disarm the citizenry. Oh, and become millionaires in the process.

[Nick Danger]

That doesn't explain why they went for Trump more enthusiastically than they have for more conventional Republicans. Did Trump have a stronger position on Obamacare and gay marriage than any other candidate?

I think Trump's actions regarding Obamacare speak for themselves. Far as gay marriage, that was never an issue Trump addressed, but it was a very divisive issue for Christian Democrats, many of whom abandoned the party in 2016. In general, gay marriage becomes a more divisive issue the lower you go on the income scale, which goes a long way toward explaining why Hildawg lost 10% of the usual Democratic poverty vote to Trump.

I don't think it's possible for people who live their entire lives outside of religious circles to fully grasp the magnitude of the gay marriage issue to people who believe that God considers homosexuality an "abomination." I have some very religious people in my family so I got to witness it.

[filghy2]

The reason people don't see the direct cause-and-effect of the Sandy Hook hoax is pretty simple - Republican control of Congress. Obama tried. Hard, at the federal level, but he was unsuccessful and unsuccessful efforts are forgotten.

Here's a Wiki page that lists ALL of the Democratic efforts at gun control legislation behind Sandy Hook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_after_the_Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School _shooting

Frankly I'm not sure how it is the Democratic Party became identified with gun control, probably just a natural progression from its constituents' other beliefs, but that's how it is now.

Connecticut, New York, and Maryland, all blue states, DID succeed in introducing additional gun control legislation behind Sandy Hook.

To this day, the Sandy Hook "parents" are like a rock band out on tour, and I'll give you one guess which same old song they're playing over and over again.

Don't forget, there have been a lot of real school shootings. But Sandy Hook is still "the deadliest."

As for the plausibility problem, yes, there most certainly is one, Flighty. The entire event is totally implausible. Why has no one stepped forward to say "This was a hoax?" Could be the millions of dollars in bribes, Flighty. It could be that. On the other hand, the makers of that video We Need To Talk About Sandy Hook say they were threatened about going forward. With death! So there could be that happening too.

I personally don't think there were that many people involved. The parents. The police. Elements of the media. A small government coalition. All united in their sacred cause to disarm the citizenry. Oh, and become millionaires in the process.

Democrats have favoured gun controls legislation since the 1930s, so it's hardly a new position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_United_States

If that is their position then obviously they will try to push for tighter controls after any mass killing by guns. That how things work with every other problem. It doesn't require a conspiracy to explain.

Why they take this view is not some arcane mystery. The US has a much higher rate of gun deaths than any other developed country. It also has a much higher rate of gun ownership and the laxest gun laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

If you think it's so obvious that Sandy Hook was faked, how about you explain to us how exactly it worked, How exactly was it possible to stage the fake deaths of 27 people with numerous witness, keep them out of the public eye for 8 years, and manage to fool a town of 28,000 (particularly if they were obviously bad actors as you claim). Perhaps you could refer to this to avoid any inconsistencies or omissions, such as leaving medical workers out of the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting

While you're at it you might explain why it's implausible that every parent of murdered children should favour gun control, but it's not implausible that every one of a much larger group would keep quiet for over 8 years.

Contrary to your 'gotcha' claim about "unprecedented" redaction of victims' details, it appears that was in line with state law applying to all murder victims. In fact, restrictions of this kind exist in many states. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0364.htm The reason is obviously to protect the privacy of victims' families, including from unwanted harassment by arsehole conspiracy theorists.

[Nick Danger]

Democrats have favoured gun controls legislation since the 1930s, so it's hardly a new position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_United_States

If that is their position then obviously they will try to push for tighter controls after any mass killing by guns. That how things work with every other problem. It doesn't require a conspiracy to explain.

Why they take this view is not some arcane mystery. The US has a much higher rate of gun deaths than any other developed country. It also has a much higher rate of gun ownership and the laxest gun laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Whether we have a high rate of gun deaths is irrelevant to the gun control debate. Yes, you read that correctly, I said "irrelevant to the gun control debate." Because the crux of the debate is actually the government's ability/inability to enforce gun control measures. As a law-abiding citizen, I could easily say, "Yes, it's a good idea if no one but the police and military have guns." I'd never say that but let's say I felt that way. So I vote accordingly, others do likewise, and eventually a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic president are able to push through (after a series of progressively more and more restrictive laws) comprehensive overhaul of gun laws, the final nail in the coffin for American gun ownership.

That day, I dutifully report to the local police station and turn in all my guns. Perhaps I receive a cash payout! That's gonnna look good on the old bank statement. That night I go home and turn on the television, which is alive with news coverage of America turning in its guns. There's a knock on the door. I answer it, and much to my surprise, there's a fellow standing there pointing a gun at me!

"Good evening Sir," says the armed stranger. "I'm here to take your belongings."

"My belongings? I didn't request anyone. And hey, what's with the gun?"

"It's not by request Sir. I represent a group of armed criminals who didn't turn their illegally-obtained guns in today. We are making the rounds and taking the belongings of the law-abiding citizens who turned their legal weapons in today. It's a shame we won't be able to steal your guns, but we will take everything else please."

"Very well, come on in I guess."

The fact is that Americans are pretty evenly divided on citizen gun ownership. A recent Pew poll shows 46% favor it, and 46% are against it (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/01/10/division-over-gun-control/). There are, however, some periods of time when that percentage shifts heavily in favor of "against." Guess when that is, Flighty. Immediately following a school shooting. Of course, a quick poll of the Sandy Hook "parents" shows 100% in favor of gun control and 0% against, which bucks the national trend a bit.


If you think it's so obvious that Sandy Hook was faked, how about you explain to us how exactly it worked, How exactly was it possible to stage the fake deaths of 27 people with numerous witness, keep them out of the public eye for 8 years, and manage to fool a town of 28,000 (particularly if they were obviously bad actors as you claim). Perhaps you could refer to this to avoid any inconsistencies or omissions, such as leaving medical workers out of the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting

While you're at it you might explain why it's implausible that every parent of murdered children should favour gun control, but it's not implausible that every one of a much larger group would keep quiet for over 8 years.

I never would have thought it possible. I admit, I totally underestimated how mouth-breathing stupid some people are.

Personally I don't think anyone really believes it. I think you lock any American who knows all the facts about Sandy Hook in a room with a master interrogator, they're gonna admit they see the steam rising off the shit. But there are a few factors that keep an essentially-disbelieving public in line about Sandy Hook.

1. The Audacity. The audacity to claim 27 dead people in a hoax. You're probably familiar with the Joseph Goebbels quote on lying to the public. Here's the entire quote: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.” It's the size of the lie that scares people away from recognizing it. The potency of the big lie comes from the fact that if you disbelieve it, you have to disbelieve virtually everything else that holds you in your comfort zone. If you accept that Sandy Hook was a hoax, what else was a hoax? By far the easiest way to contend with a lie this audacious is simply to swallow it whole. As you've done, Flighty.

2. The Cult of Personality. "Barrack Obama believes Sandy Hook happened. Or at least, he seems to. I trust and respect Barrack Obama, and he obviously has more information at his disposal than I do about this matter."

3. Sentiment. Most people are good people, by which I mean they know the difference between good and evil and view themselves as good. "So the media is showing me this incident, and there are parents there who allege to have lost children but don't seem too upset about it. It gives all appearances of being a staged event but what if it's not? If I believe what my eyes and brain are telling me, but I'm wrong, then I'm really hurting the feelings of these already-grieving parents. My eyes and brain aren't reliable enough to go there." (MY eyes and brain ARE reliable enough to go there, Flighty).

4. Good Old-Fashioned Censorship. The latest strategy of the Sandy Hook parents is to sue people who are famously saying publicly that they're full of shit. Alex Jones was shut down by this strategy - though frankly, if I had a bullshit story I wanted people to believe and Alex Jones was nice enough to pick up the opposition, I'd probably just let him run with it. Another guy in Wisconsin had to pay $450,000 to millionaire celebrity parent Lenny Pozner for writing a book about the hoax. It's not illegal to talk about the hoax. But it will cost you plenty to do it publicly.

The argument that Sandy Hook was a hoax pretty much makes itself, Flighty. I could go through the entire timeline in this thread with you, but all that information is freely available and I've already summarized the bulk of it in previous posts. Sandy Hook was a hoax. Start from there and prove it wasn't. While you're trying to do that, unsuccessfully, think about how easy it would be to prove that ANY EVENT THAT REALLY HAPPENED actually happened. Want to prove that the 1893 Chicago World's Fair happened? Gravy. Prove 9/11 happened? No problem. Want to prove that Cheap Trick played the Boston Garden on Feb. 28, 1981? It can be done. What you can't prove is that anyone was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.

Far as how they did it, well, a handful of people who's life work is gun control got together and decided to get their hands dirty. Is it really so hard to believe that people who feel strongly about an issue like this could go over the top to support their cause? I mean, you live in a country in which 39 people killed themselves in 1997 because they thought their souls were going to be taken aboard a spaceship and hauled to Heaven. Considering how wealthy the Sandy Hook "parents" have become out of all this, what could possibly motivate them to step forward? The truth, their conscience, a sudden change of mind about gun control, what? Do you think they'd get to keep their share of the Sandy Hook millions if they blew the whole ship out of the water now?

Again, I think the only people involved were "the parents," elements of the Newtown city and Connecticut state police, a few folks in the media, and a few folks in government - not even high-ranking government officials and I'll tell you why I think that. Airspace. If there was involvement at the highest levels of government they could have shut down the airspace above Sandy Hook and saved themselves the trouble of explaining a lot of VERY disturbing video. As it was, the best they could do was cut off ground access at the firehouse to all but insiders.


Contrary to your 'gotcha' claim about "unprecedented" redaction of victims' details, it appears that was in line with state law applying to all murder victims. In fact, restrictions of this kind exist in many states. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0364.htm The reason is obviously to protect the privacy of victims' families, including from unwanted harassment by arsehole conspiracy theorists.

Are you aware "all murder victims" was added to the law of which you speak because they couldn't get it passed in the legislature if they only applied it to Sandy Hook victims? But that was the original legislation that was introduced - just the Sandy Hook "parents" requesting that no evidence ever be available that this event happened. The entire law was made in response to Sandy Hook, and it was passed immediately after the event; certainly that is "expedited" by legislative timeframe standards.

And what kind of law is this? Who gave government the right to decide which public documents can and can't be released to the public, it's unconstitutional AF. If you had a crime, fine, we'll send the police, the fire department, medical services, helicopters, we'll do whatever we as a society can do to help you in your time of need. But after that, the incident becomes a matter of public record. We'll be wanting to know what our money paid for. You want to keep something to yourself, don't ask for taxpayer assistance.

I get a kick out of these so-called victims complaining about all the people who still don't believe their bullshit years after the fact. If it's so emotionally distressing for them, maybe they should reconsider "protecting the privacy" of their long-dead children and let the public see the evidence. Ask me why I know this will never happen, Flighty.

There's no aspect of the Sandy Hook event that isn't highly suspicious. Take one or two suspicious angles of an event and run with them, maybe you're a conspiracy theorist. But when every single element of an event is questionable, suspicious, or even outright impossible, the conspiracy theorist isn't the problem. The conspiracy is.

[broncofan]

Another guy in Wisconsin had to pay $450,000 to millionaire celebrity parent Lenny Pozner for writing a book about the hoax.
I decided to save myself the aggravation and not engage in an argument about Sandy Hook or 9/11. But I do find it amusing that being wealthy or rich is venerated until it's someone you don't like who has the money. Then it's suddenly a question of motive why a rich person would want to sue someone for a fraction of their net worth as though it doesn't happen all the time.

Also, millionaire is not the distinction it was in the 1980s. Likewise I could say having a million pesos is not the same as having a million 2021 dollars. Perhaps your pockets aren't as deep as you want us to believe:)

[Nick Danger]

I decided to save myself the aggravation and not engage in an argument about Sandy Hook or 9/11. But I do find it amusing that being wealthy or rich is venerated until it's someone you don't like who has the money. Then it's suddenly a question of motive why a rich person would want to sue someone for a fraction of their net worth as though it doesn't happen all the time.

Also, millionaire is not the distinction it was in the 1980s. Likewise I could say having a million pesos is not the same as having a million 2021 dollars. Perhaps your pockets aren't as deep as you want us to believe:)

You're a smart man, Bronco, it would indeed be aggravating to have that conversation with me. But I'll address just the point you're making here and try not to drag you into it against your will.

The fact that a 2021 millionaire isn't on the same eliteness level as a 1980 millionaire isn't part of my argument. A million dollars is still a lot of money. What's even more money is $93 million - the low-ball estimate for the amount taken in by Sandy Hook parents from the taxpayers and donations since the debacle.

I don't recall ever trying to convince anyone on this board that I have deep pockets, but I don't mind letting people know that I'm financially stable. It's all part of the program. "Work hard and live responsibly, children of the Millennium." Best I can do for them, I'm not going to feed them.

But ill-gotten gains are ill-gotten gains. When it's taxpayer money, moreso.

[filghy2]

I don't recall ever trying to convince anyone on this board that I have deep pockets.


But me, I am going to kick back and watch my bank account grow for the next few years while the big boys play their little games. As a counterpoint to your statement, "Americans are not about to get rich under this President," I can only tell you that I am already getting rich under this President.

You are far too modest

[filghy2]

Whether we have a high rate of gun deaths is irrelevant to the gun control debate. Yes, you read that correctly, I said "irrelevant to the gun control debate." Because the crux of the debate is actually the government's ability/inability to enforce gun control measures. As a law-abiding citizen, I could easily say, "Yes, it's a good idea if no one but the police and military have guns." I'd never say that but let's say I felt that way. So I vote accordingly, others do likewise, and eventually a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic president are able to push through (after a series of progressively more and more restrictive laws) comprehensive overhaul of gun laws, the final nail in the coffin for American gun ownership.

That day, I dutifully report to the local police station and turn in all my guns. Perhaps I receive a cash payout! That's gonnna look good on the old bank statement. That night I go home and turn on the television, which is alive with news coverage of America turning in its guns. There's a knock on the door. I answer it, and much to my surprise, there's a fellow standing there pointing a gun at me!

Funnily enough, that sounds a lot like what they did in Australia after somebody massacred 35 people in 1996 (and under a conservative government). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_of_Australia
And guess what? There have been no further massacres, no upsurge in violent crimes, citizens are not living in fear and almost all are pretty happy with the laws.

In any case, it's a straw man because I don't think anyone in a position of influence is seriously proposing to do that in the US. What they mainly want is to stop people buying military assault weapons that can inflict mass casualties very quickly. The real mystery about gun control in the US is why the NRA and it's Republican servants have been so fanatically opposed to this. Why is this necessary for self-defence?

I'm not going to respond to the rest of your diatribe because it's your usual mixture of evasion, distortion and bluster, but it is bizarre that you equate defamation suits to censorship. You seem to be ignorant of the fact that truth is a defence against defamation suits in the US. If people have had to pay damages that clearly shows they have been unable to establish the truth of their claims in court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law

[filghy2]

The argument that Sandy Hook was a hoax pretty much makes itself, Flighty. I could go through the entire timeline in this thread with you, but all that information is freely available and I've already summarized the bulk of it in previous posts. Sandy Hook was a hoax. Start from there and prove it wasn't.

I have to chuckle at the sheer chutzpah of this piece of circular reasoning. It's a neat trick. Even though you've offered no concrete proof (and none has been forthcoming in the defamation suits), nor any plausible explanation for how it could have been done without anyone in the community noticing anything, you simply assert is was a hoax and demand others prove it was not. Yet you refuse to except any evidence from government or the media because they are part of the hoax. You also claim the local people can't be trusted because they've either been bribed, intimidated or hoodwinked. I guess that means you can never be wrong.

[filghy2]

Alex Jones was shut down by this strategy - though frankly, if I had a bullshit story I wanted people to believe and Alex Jones was nice enough to pick up the opposition, I'd probably just let him run with it. Another guy in Wisconsin had to pay $450,000 to millionaire celebrity parent Lenny Pozner for writing a book about the hoax. It's not illegal to talk about the hoax. But it will cost you plenty to do it publicly.

You may have missed it, but Alex Jones admitted in a sworn deposition to the court that the hoax claim was false, and blamed it on a "form of psychosis". Perhaps you should schedule a few sessions with a psychiatrist, given you seem a little fixated on this 'conspiracy'.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/31/18289271/alex-jones-psychosis-conspiracies-sandy-hook-hoax

[filghy2]

I decided to save myself the aggravation and not engage in an argument about Sandy Hook or 9/11. But I do find it amusing that being wealthy or rich is venerated until it's someone you don't like who has the money. Then it's suddenly a question of motive why a rich person would want to sue someone for a fraction of their net worth as though it doesn't happen all the time.

It's a common form of one-eyed blindness. If George Soros uses his money to finance liberal causes that is sinister. If the Murdochs, Kochs and Mercers use their money to finance conservative causes to advance their own self- interest they are just exercising their rights.

It's also interesting that the same person getting all righteous about the families supposedly benefiting from this has been indifferent about Trump and his cronies misusing public office for their own advantage. It seems a curious exception to his general amoral position that it's a crooked world and you can only expect people to take advantage if they can.

It's also notable that he responded to your comment, which related to a private defamation case, with a complete non sequitur about taxpayer money.

[Nick Danger]

You are far too modest

Modesty is for young girls and politicians. I'm doing quite well. Can't seem to buy enough silver now that the Democrats are back in power but I'm trying.


I'm not going to respond to the rest of your diatribe because it's your usual mixture of evasion, distortion and bluster...

Well, thanks for responding to everything else, Flighty. BTW I think that's the Martin Bryant mass shooting you're talking about? Perfect example of a false-flag shooting that disarmed an entire continent.


I have to chuckle at the sheer chutzpah of this piece of circular reasoning. It's a neat trick. Even though you've offered no concrete proof (and none has been forthcoming in the defamation suits), nor any plausible explanation for how it could have been done without anyone in the community noticing anything, you simply assert is was a hoax and demand others prove it was not. Yet you refuse to except any evidence from government or the media because they are part of the hoax. You also claim the local people can't be trusted because they've either been bribed, intimidated or hoodwinked. I guess that means you can never be wrong.

Eh, I'm pretty sure I made my argument, Flighty. But I'll summarize a few key points of it for you again, I think you'll enjoy the itemization.

EVIDENCE THE SANDY HOOK MASSACRE WAS ACTUALLY THE SANDY HOOK NOTHING:

1. The parents, emotionless automatons immediately bringing gun control into the post-massacre conversation. Have you ever seen a REAL mass shooting, Flighty? I mean, just the video. Columbine is a good example of one that actually happened, and there's plenty of real on-the-scene video of that. People are crying, Flighty. People are SCREAMING. Parents are being held back from rushing into the school. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, best friends, are ripping their clothes, gnashing their teeth, and are absolutely and utterly inconsolable.

Now, maybe it's because the families of the victims at Columbine didn't have the prospect of becoming stinking rich on the horizon, but not so much grief at Sandy Hook. Not a single tear. An overriding sense of serene acceptance from the parents. Calm, composed, and ready to talk to the media about gun control within hours of losing their children

Sorry, Flighty. Ludicrous.

2. The kid couldn't do the shooting. Not a single survivor, Flighty. Everyone the non-existent Adam Lanza shot died. Not even a close call, not one single person barely holding onto life, needing medical attention, needing to be rushed to a hospital. Not one.

If this country could have fielded a single battalion of "Adam Lanzas" in Vietnam, we'd have won that goddamn war. Incredible really. No, incredible is not the word. The word is "unbelievable."

3. The immediate cover-up. They didn't wait even two days to begin the process of introducing legislation that would complete this devil's bargain - cutting the public off from every piece of information relating to the event. Why? The children's privacy? They're dead, they have no privacy, they are ex-children, statistics. They have no need of privacy, but the public does have need of information relating to this shooting in order to find out if a bunch of gun-control fanatics just pulled the wool over our eyes or not. Outrageous.

4. The video evidence of...a LOT of inconsistencies in the official story. According to the video, there was no evacuation of the school. According to the video, no medical personnel ever entered the building. According to the video, the police were chasing some unknown suspects in the woods near the school - people whose names and reason for being there we still don't know. According to the video, people were walking in circles into and out of the firehouse, constantly, for hours, for...unknown reasons. Gene Rosen is caught on video rehearsing his lines. Robbie Parker is caught on video making jokes with reporters before stepping up to the podium, consciously changing his facial expression to that of a guy who might have just lost his favorite beer huggie, quick try for tears, no luck because second-rate actor, so right into talking about daughter murdered yesterday. None of it makes a bit of sense.

5. The money. LOTS of money. From the government - since when does the government pay victims of crime? Truly unprecedented.

A lot of people have uncovered a lot more evidence that the thing was a hoax but I really don't even need it. I don't care for arguments like the one Stavros was trying to start about "The Two Veroniques." I'm quite content to concede those points and call it a hoax based strictly on the 5 items I've listed above. If you care to dispute any of those directly, feel free, Flighty.


You may have missed it, but Alex Jones admitted in a sworn deposition to the court that the hoax claim was false, and blamed it on a "form of psychosis". Perhaps you should schedule a few sessions with a psychiatrist, given you seem a little fixated on this 'conspiracy'.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/31/18289271/alex-jones-psychosis-conspiracies-sandy-hook-hoax

LOL - so you don't think he might have said that to save himself millions of dollars in a lawsuit? Ya think he always thought it was a hoax but as soon as a lawsuit was filed he suddenly decided it wasn't? Okay, Flighty. Uh, good point? Frankly, you're the one who seems fixated, I said everything I had to say about this thing many posts ago but you're like that one kid in class who won't stop raising his hand with stupid questions.

[filghy2]

BTW I think that's the Martin Bryant mass shooting you're talking about? Perfect example of a false-flag shooting that disarmed an entire continent.


I only raised it to see whether you would respond with some inane comment like this. Thanks for obliging.

While we're on this theme, what's you view on the Christchurch massacre?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

[Nick Danger]

I only raised it to see whether you would respond with some inane comment like this. Thanks for obliging.

While we're on this theme, what's you view on the Christchurch massacre?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

My view? Like, was it real or not? Haven't really studied it much. I will say that if it was a false flag, which I know some people say it was but I'm not educated enough about it to have an opinion, at least they went to the trouble of shooting some people. There were bodies, horrific injuries, survivors, medical crews on the scene, people being life-flighted to hospitals - just like you'd expect at the scene of an (actual) mass shooting.

[broncofan]

Modesty is for young girls and politicians. I'm doing quite well. Can't seem to buy enough silver now that the Democrats are back in power but I'm trying.

If you would like to join Mar a Lago, it's a 200,000 dollars initiation fee and 14,000 dollars a year. I think there's also a 2000 dollar a year food requirement. I'm not sure whether you need sponsors but if you tell them you're a mechanic from St. George Utah it should be fine. Mr. Trump would be happy to have you there.

I'm not sure if it's an equity membership or whether you're just flushing the money down the toilet to play golf with a bunch of crooks but it says on their website you get reciprocal benefits at a bunch of Trump properties that need refinancing. Maybe you can lend to them also I don't know. Glad things are going well.

https://www.maralagoclub.com/membership-opportunities

[filghy2]

Mr. Trump would be happy to have you there.

Would you have to play golf with him?
https://golf.com/lifestyle/celebrities/how-why-president-trump-cheats-golf-playing-tiger-woods/

[Nick Danger]

If you would like to join Mar a Lago, it's a 200,000 dollars initiation fee and 14,000 dollars a year. I think there's also a 2000 dollar a year food requirement. I'm not sure whether you need sponsors but if you tell them you're a mechanic from St. George Utah it should be fine. Mr. Trump would be happy to have you there.

I'm not sure if it's an equity membership or whether you're just flushing the money down the toilet to play golf with a bunch of crooks but it says on their website you get reciprocal benefits at a bunch of Trump properties that need refinancing. Maybe you can lend to them also I don't know. Glad things are going well.

https://www.maralagoclub.com/membership-opportunities


Would you have to play golf with him?
https://golf.com/lifestyle/celebrities/how-why-president-trump-cheats-golf-playing-tiger-woods/

I can visualize it. Me, The Donald, Rudy G, maybe Tom Brady to round out the foursome and Don Jr. driving the cart, playing skins for 50 large a hole. 10/10 supermodels in floss bikinis serving us margaritas mixed with the blood of infants while the U.S. Naval Academy Choir follows us around the course singing black gospel standards.

The Donald: "This is the life, eh gents?"
Rudy G: "Aliens. In my butthole. And not the friendly kind."
Tom Brady: "Fuck this, I'm going to Disneyland."
Me: "Keep 'em comin', doll-face, but more infant blood next time."

[filghy2]

I always thought you'd modelled yourself on this character, though I guess whale skin hubcaps and chucking styrofoam containers out the window are far too mild by today's asshole standards.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgpZ0fUixs

[broncofan]

Nick, I actually appreciate that you will argue the right-wing point of view, with the exception of the stuff I consider conspiracism. While I can't stomach the Sandy Hook stuff, I'm happy to talk Trump's loans and other stuff here.

I know a bit about business and know some people in commercial real estate. I guess I am a bit reluctant to share too much. You're right that people threaten bankruptcy to get better loan terms. They present the best aspects of their personal finances to get loans and for tax purposes present a softer picture.

I am a lawyer and although you said everyone hates us some people like me. While tax accounting is different from financial accounting there are limits to what people can do when representing income to investors.

All of this is to say, I would know a lot more if I saw Trump's disclosures to Deutsche Bank. You think it will be consistent with playing the game or on the edge of legality. I'm not sure but by the time anything comes of it we'll get a sense of whether it is normal industry practice or fraud.

[broncofan]

I said solvency but you're saying liquidity is more important. That's fine. I have a feeling Trump's casinos were facing insolvency and not a liquidity crisis but I don't know.

There's a difference between negotiating a bank loan for real estate and people buying business inputs or even inventory. If they are buying something that's a staple of their business the relationship is ongoing and those goods are often bought on credit anyway. But that is a relationship where there's give and take. Trump is in the commercial real estate business so I imagine he has a closer relationship with banks than the average person.

BUT when banks lend money to people it's not supposed to be a super risky investment. They get near certainty of payment but a capped upside. That's the nature of debt. I doubt the re-negotiation was only over the timing of Trump's payments. It may have been in the nature of "you can either accept smaller payments or you have to run these casinos that are losing money and since you're not in the business of running casinos....."

All of this is to say, maybe he lied to get his more recent loans or maybe he got money from a shady source or some kind of shady transaction generally.

[broncofan]

I said solvency but you're saying liquidity is more important. That's fine. I have a feeling Trump's casinos were facing insolvency and not a liquidity crisis but I don't know.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-business-failures-were-very-real

"They show that, between 1985 and 1989, a period when the economy was forging ahead and Trump was busy portraying himself as a billionaire with the Midas touch, his core businesses—apartment buildings, hotels, and casinos—somehow managed to lose $359.1 million. That was only the beginning. As the economy weakened, in 1990 and 1991, Trump’s core businesses racked up losses of $517.5 million. And, between 1992 and 1994, as the economy recovered, they lost another $286.9 million."

[Stavros]

"They show that, between 1985 and 1989, a period when the economy was forging ahead and Trump was busy portraying himself as a billionaire with the Midas touch, his core businesses—apartment buildings, hotels, and casinos—somehow managed to lose $359.1 million. That was only the beginning. As the economy weakened, in 1990 and 1991, Trump’s core businesses racked up losses of $517.5 million. And, between 1992 and 1994, as the economy recovered, they lost another $286.9 million."

I think we can agree that there are people like Trump who are barely literate, but are good with numbers. But when he boasts about knowing more about the tax system than anyone else, he is really paying trbute to the lawyers who have helped him 'game the system'.

The point is that if you create a successful business, then it stands to reason that the more revenue and profit you make, the higher the tax bill, though the point of having tax lawyers is to whittle down the IRS demand to as low as possible- Joseph Stiglitz has argued that whatever the official Corporate Tax rate is, large corporations rarely pay more than 10%. But such are the bankruptcy laws in the US, it can pay to fail, as has been pointed out here-my emphasis in bold

"Since the 1970s, bankruptcy law has developed in a contradictory fashion in the US: while laws and norms against individual and national bankruptcy (also known as default) have grown more stringent and punitive, norms and laws governing corporate bankruptcy have become more lenient. Famously, in the US, one cannot default on student loans, but it is common for corporate leaders to walk away from business failure at a profit.
For decades, we have lived in an era of “strategic bankruptcy” which allows management to file for what is called “Chapter 11” to default on contracts and promises without foregoing leadership of the company itself. Bankruptcy is less a private apocalypse than a canny business move."
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xLInyBSrcNMJ:https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2020/12/donald-trump-once-more-walking-away-failure-profit+&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

It is hardly ironic that a man who claims to be a business success may have made more money on tax rebates than he may have made creating a successful business, but as long as the law privileges failure then it is there to be exploted. The reality is that Trump may be worth $3 billion in his own estmation, but that is a calculation of total assets rather than performance, and to get a more realistic figure one would have to deduct the money he owes in loans, mark up the chronic losses of his 15 golf courses, his numerous hotels and apartment blocks, to leave him making money from trademarks.

And, because he knows how the law works, he can spin the legal cases out for years on the assumption that his adversaries will eventually give up in exasperation and 'make a deal'. The most vulnerable, as I see it, are the payments made to the porrn stars, though I doubt it leads to gaol time.

If you have a system that rewards failure, don't be surprised if a giant failure exploits it to present himself as its opposite, just as there are many other brands than Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and only a complete idiot would apply for a job citing a degree from 'Trump University' -he is a shameless con-man, and not enough people care to remove him from political life, and make him pay his debts.

[Nick Danger]

Nick, I actually appreciate that you will argue the right-wing point of view, with the exception of the stuff I consider conspiracism. While I can't stomach the Sandy Hook stuff, I'm happy to talk Trump's loans and other stuff here.

I know a bit about business and know some people in commercial real estate. I guess I am a bit reluctant to share too much. You're right that people threaten bankruptcy to get better loan terms. They present the best aspects of their personal finances to get loans and for tax purposes present a softer picture.

I am a lawyer and although you said everyone hates us some people like me. While tax accounting is different from financial accounting there are limits to what people can do when representing income to investors.

All of this is to say, I would know a lot more if I saw Trump's disclosures to Deutsche Bank. You think it will be consistent with playing the game or on the edge of legality. I'm not sure but by the time anything comes of it we'll get a sense of whether it is normal industry practice or fraud.

I had you figured for some kind of professional, just like I have Flighty figured for either a Chippendale dancer or just possibly, Tipper Gore.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if you know more about the business world than I do. I know how to run my business, and I know how a few other people run theirs.

So we can say you're right. Still, Trump has obtained business loans. Large ones. From professional lenders at prestigious institutions. And I'd be surprised if there were any criminal irregularities there that have been overlooked.

But the stories I've heard about the way Trump does business are not about banking. They are mostly about contracting. I've heard he will hire a contractor to, let's say, carpet the foyer of one of his buildings. Then when it's time to pay for the work, he will find something wrong with the work - frayed edges, not the exact color he wanted, loose corners, too thick, whatever. He will then offer the contractor less than the agreed amount, claiming the work isn't up to snuff, and threaten to take the contractor to court if he doesn't accept the lesser amount. The contractor, being in no position to battle Trump's army of lawyers for years over a few thousand dollars, ends up accepting the lower amount, and Trump gloats all the way to the bank.

Is that illegal? No. Immoral? Certainly a very dingy gray area of the moral spectrum, but the saying "All's fair in business" comes to mind. Is it clever? Not really, anyone with balls, money, and lawyers could do it. Profitable? Probably very much so. Is it true? Wouldn't surprise me if it is but it could also be an exaggeration of true stories about borderline contractors.

The question arises though, why do people still work for Trump? I mean, you tell me. There must be someone, somewhere, making money by working for Donald Trump, or no one would do it. I wouldn't build a turbocharger for a guy with a reputation like that, let alone undertake a huge contract for him. But people do. So why?


I said solvency but you're saying liquidity is more important. That's fine. I have a feeling Trump's casinos were facing insolvency and not a liquidity crisis but I don't know.

There's a difference between negotiating a bank loan for real estate and people buying business inputs or even inventory. If they are buying something that's a staple of their business the relationship is ongoing and those goods are often bought on credit anyway. But that is a relationship where there's give and take. Trump is in the commercial real estate business so I imagine he has a closer relationship with banks than the average person.

BUT when banks lend money to people it's not supposed to be a super risky investment. They get near certainty of payment but a capped upside. That's the nature of debt. I doubt the re-negotiation was only over the timing of Trump's payments. It may have been in the nature of "you can either accept smaller payments or you have to run these casinos that are losing money and since you're not in the business of running casinos....."

All of this is to say, maybe he lied to get his more recent loans or maybe he got money from a shady source or some kind of shady transaction generally.

Obviously my business is small potatoes relative to Trump's empire. Liquidity is what drives my billing cycles sure, but I feel my view of liquidity encompasses all levels of business. Basically, the longer I have your money, the better for me, and I'm pretty sure that holds true right up the line. Within reason. While I'm holding your money, someone else is holding mine. I've been brushed off for 6 months at a time before, by HUGE corporations, but I've never, ever put any of MY creditors off for 6 months. Like I said, I'm a business bottom. I'm the little guy, I certainly do not have an army of lawyers at my disposal. I have one, and he's pretty good, but to say he's "at my disposal" would be to ignore the fact that he has about a dozen other clients.

But you know, it all comes down to leverage. I'm a good actor. Whatever threats I might make or imply are just that, threats. But you cross a guy like Trump and you will find yourself in an actual courthouse.

And again, you're saying banks don't make super-risky investments, and I absolutely agree with that. So why do they lend to Trump? I guess what you're saying is, you suspect he does something illegal to obtain the loans. I suppose we'll see about that soon enough, according to Trump, the New York DA is looking at every single transaction he's ever made. I just find it very difficult to believe that if there's truly all this dirt out there on Trump, it hasn't been dug up before now.


https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-business-failures-were-very-real

"They show that, between 1985 and 1989, a period when the economy was forging ahead and Trump was busy portraying himself as a billionaire with the Midas touch, his core businesses—apartment buildings, hotels, and casinos—somehow managed to lose $359.1 million. That was only the beginning. As the economy weakened, in 1990 and 1991, Trump’s core businesses racked up losses of $517.5 million. And, between 1992 and 1994, as the economy recovered, they lost another $286.9 million."

Well, the guy can't keep losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year and still afford those suits, can he. He's got to be making money somewhere, even if he's losing it elsewhere. "How rich is Trump?" is certainly a question, but "Is Trump rich?" isn't.

[broncofan]

Nick, this aspect of the conversation is fun because we get to chat about business and the Trump empire. I'll get back to this later, but I do think Trump is a billionaire. I'm not saying he isn't rich. I think he needs to get his loans re-financed which is the case for everyone in real estate because of the way commercial loans are structured. Many I've seen are 25 years amortization 10 year term, or importantly a longer amortization schedule than term and a balloon payment. Investors avoid the balloon payment by refinancing.

So just to clear that up, I don't think he's underwater. I think not getting re-financing would shake up his business a lot but I think he should be able to find it somewhere. But that somewhere is the question and how and on what terms.

[broncofan]

This isn't to our main point but I'll just say I think the stuff with contractors is unethical. In contracts, there is the concept of substantial compliance. It means that you don't get to claim breach and withhold payment if there is something trivial about the difference between the end product and what is specified in the contact. The requirement of "consideration" in contracts is actually there to prevent people from trying to re-negotiate contracts while their terms are being met. If the person did sue Trump later, and Trump claimed the person agreed to a contract modification by accepting the lower amount of money, the court may hold the modification did not to satisfy requirements for a new contract because Trump didn't offer anything obtain this modification. But as you say these are people who can't afford counsel and our system is not a loser pays legal system like they have in the UK. For cases like this certainly you wish it were.

In your paragraph about having an incentive to hold money for a longer period of time, that's actually the essence of most tax planning. I only took two tax courses, but before I took them I always thought tax planners were able to reduce taxable income overall. While that sometimes is the case, much of the game is to defer recognition of revenue, accelerate recognition of deductions. This is to take advantage of the time value of money. It's better to pay 500,000 to the irs over 5 years than in year 1 because of what you can do with the money in the meantime. For corporations this difference is worth millions of dollars.

[broncofan]

I suppose I just don't understand why it's so important to your political arguments that you're doing well. It reminds me of when Bill O'Reilly was telling everyone how nobody had it harder than him coming up and they found out he went to private school or was middle class. There's actual data on economic and social mobility in this country. If you've done something it doesn't mean anyone can. These anecdotes always end up favoring your argument too which is easy to happen. I've thought of things that have happened to me and it's easy to finagle a version that makes poor people seem lazy or sick people seem weak or negligent. Or the opposite. It's also easy for the anecdotes to relate to real events but what if you're in the foreground or the background or it's kind of hazy because alcohol does that. You remember James Frey?
In case there have been too many thoughts, here is the last one. It's not that I'm that skeptical about everything though I have doubts about whether you're telling us these things objectively. I have doubts about its relevance to any political argument. That's where we are.

[Nick Danger]

In case there have been too many thoughts, here is the last one. It's not that I'm that skeptical about everything though I have doubts about whether you're telling us these things objectively. I have doubts about its relevance to any political argument. That's where we are.

I don't know why you argue politics on the internet, Bronco. I'm not saying you do it poorly or do it well (occasionally you give me a nice sensible chuckle) but I don't know why you do it. Since your motivation is a mystery to me, your arguments hold less weight than if I knew from whence they arise. Oh I'll still argue with you. But unless you startle me with some insightful clarity that hadn't previously occured to me, you're not going to change my mind about anything.

I argue politics to win. I WANT to convert liberals to conservatives. I'm in business. Not only am I in business, but my business goes the way of the economy. I sell a luxury item that's not even a luxury for wealthy people, it's a luxury for teenagers and the working class. You think if John Q. Public is struggling, he's debating with his wife over whether to get that turbocharger for his late-model used Mustang or paying that month's mortgage. Uh-uh, more like he's not thinking about that turbocharger AT ALL.

So I'll tell you who I am and why I know what I'm talking about. Because I want to win the argument. I know winning an internet argument isn't going to happen like, "Oh shit, that's true, I guess you win." But if I say something that rings true, and someone reads it, they're going to remember it, and it's going to factor into their decision-making at some point. Or at least that's the hope.

I read an interesting story about cereal recently - OH SORRY, before I start that story let me answer your question about my anecdotal evidence! Does the story fit the argument, or is the story MADE to fit the argument is the question on your mind, yes? They fit. I don't know how else to tell you that my stories are all 100% truth, with some occasional artistic license taken for literary effect. It just so happens that I'm old and I've led a moderately interesting life. It was MUCH more interesting when I was irresponsible BTW. But the way it usually happens is these stories just occur to me mid-conversation - something you say reminds me of something that happened. You're welcome to take them with a grain of salt if you want, I'm not writing an autobiography here. I mean, you told me you're a lawyer. I could say, "I don't believe you, you sound like an inventory clerk." Or I could just do what I have done, which is to simply take you at your word unless you start accidentally spouting a bunch of obvious inventory clerk jargon.

So I read an interesting story about cereal recently. It was talking about the huge role cereal played in changing the culture of advertising in this country. Apparently, back in the Civil War era when cereal flakes were invented somewhat by accident, they quickly became a hot business. They were easy to make, easy to sell, and high-profit. At one point, there were 70+ brands of corn flakes on the grocery shelves of the USA. And if we're being honest, one corn flake is pretty much as good as the next.

In a business like that, advertising was going to be the key to success. The two people who rose to the top of the cereal business approached advertising in different ways. Charles Post hired a young Walt Disney to create eye-catching cartoon characters on his packaging, and sold a lot of corn flakes that way. Dr. John Kellogg, on the other hand, advertised his history as a renowned surgeon and health guru to sell essentially the exact same product.

The reason that's relevant to what I'm saying is that I can't draw cartoons. So instead, I have to tell you who I am - a business owner with skin in the game.

[broncofan]

I mean, you told me you're a lawyer. I could say, "I don't believe you, you sound like an inventory clerk." Or I could just do what I have done, which is to simply take you at your word unless you start accidentally spouting a bunch of obvious inventory clerk jargon.
.
I was debating someone here a few years ago and the person said that they're a lawyer. I said I also am. Their first reaction was to suggest I was making it up and then they told me they passed the bar on the first try. I didn't have to question whether they were really an attorney because I met someone once who said that to me and I remembered thinking "this person actually thinks it's noteworthy that he didn't fail the bar." Some smart people have failed the bar but it shouldn't happen that often. He was one of these guys who when he made an awkward comment would snap his fingers and clap his hands as though he said something cool. My point is that there are a lot of law schools and most people who take the bar pass it.

It's a lie that wouldn't profit anyone to tell given that lawyers aren't held in high esteem, that if anyone assumes lawyers are usually smart they're wrong, and being a lawyer still means that if a random area of the law comes up there is a greater than 90% chance that it's not something I know off the top of my head. In fairness I went to a highly ranked law school (I get to say that after running down the significance of being a lawyer) but we all get licensed by a state bar and share the same profession as Sidney Powell or Michael Cohen.

What you're talking about is argument by authority though. Yet it IS possible for a non-lawyer to be right on a legal issue and for me to wrong. Fred41 corrected me on a criminal law issue a bunch of years ago and sheriffs deputies didn't show up at my door to revoke my license.

[broncofan]

Correction: Michael Cohen was disbarred. But at one point he was a lawyer. He went to a school called Cooley Law School, which has an average lsat score of 145. I am not being elitist or indirectly complimenting myself but if anyone thinks it's difficult to become a lawyer they can buy an lsat practice book and find out how hard it is to miss enough questions to get a 145. Yes, Cooley graduates still have to pass the bar and the school temporarily lost its accreditation because not enough of them did in one year.

Top list of lies I'd tell if I were inventing a profession (ala George Costanza with the architect thing)
1. Microbiologist
2. Cardiac Surgeon
3. Dermatologist
4. Chemistry Professor
5. Pornstar

This is just off the top of my head.

[broncofan]

double post;

[Nick Danger]

I was debating someone here a few years ago and the person said that they're a lawyer. I said I also am. Their first reaction was to suggest I was making it up and then they told me they passed the bar on the first try. I didn't have to question whether they were really an attorney because I met someone once who said that to me and I remembered thinking "this person actually thinks it's noteworthy that he didn't fail the bar." Some smart people have failed the bar but it shouldn't happen that often. He was one of these guys who when he made an awkward comment would snap his fingers and clap his hands as though he said something cool. My point is that there are a lot of law schools and most people who take the bar pass it.

It's a lie that wouldn't profit anyone to tell given that lawyers aren't held in high esteem, that if anyone assumes lawyers are usually smart they're wrong, and being a lawyer still means that if a random area of the law comes up there is a greater than 90% chance that it's not something I know off the top of my head. In fairness I went to a highly ranked law school (I get to say that after running down the significance of being a lawyer) but we all get licensed by a state bar and share the same profession as Sidney Powell or Michael Cohen.

What you're talking about is argument by authority though. Yet it IS possible for a non-lawyer to be right on a legal issue and for me to wrong. Fred41 corrected me on a criminal law issue a bunch of years ago and sheriffs deputies didn't show up at my door to revoke my license.

I don't think there's a right or wrong in political debate. People sometimes get facts wrong but it's essentially a philosophical debate, which is always an argument from authority.

The two opposing philosophies in American politics really boil down to one question when all the bullshit is set aside - is it better to give money to the poor, or to force them to become better citizens by not helping them?

I know a guy, perfectly good American citizen, able-bodied, able-minded, no criminal record, who has been on unemployment since the pandemic started. He was in the repo business but the company he worked for folded under the pressure of the pandemic, so he started out as laid-off but now is for real UNemployed. I asked him not long ago how the job search was going and he told me he's not looking anymore, said he'll start looking again in SEPTEMBER! Reason: Because he makes more money on unemployment than he did repo'ing cars, and his unemployment benefits just got extended to Sept. 30.

He's not a bad guy, I even consider him a friend. But look at him now. Sucking government tit for as long as they'll let him. Pitiful. He's lost my respect and probably a lot of other people's, but that's not as important to him as the fact that he doesn't have to work anymore.

Point being, you give people the opportunity to sit on their ass all day and they'll take it. Real conservatism squashes that option. Guaranteed that if this guy wasn't getting $900/week of taxpayer money, he'd be working at something productive, contributing to the GDP instead of sucking it down.

I get that this is a unique situation, the pandemic. Still doesn't change the fact that this guy could be working but is choosing not to, for no better reason than that he doesn't have to.

And that's where the philosophical argument begins. I guess some people are just fine with that - people who haven't given the matter enough thought, people who can't do simple math, people who don't understand how the economy works and/or doesn't, people who don't realize that human nature is a real thing. You know, Democrats.

[Nick Danger]

Correction: Michael Cohen was disbarred. But at one point he was a lawyer. He went to a school called Cooley Law School, which has an average lsat score of 145. I am not being elitist or indirectly complimenting myself but if anyone thinks it's difficult to become a lawyer they can buy an lsat practice book and find out how hard it is to miss enough questions to get a 145. Yes, Cooley graduates still have to pass the bar and the school temporarily lost its accreditation because not enough of them did in one year.

Top list of lies I'd tell if I were inventing a profession (ala George Costanza with the architect thing)
1. Microbiologist
2. Cardiac Surgeon
3. Dermatologist
4. Chemistry Professor
5. Pornstar

This is just off the top of my head.

The Bellamy Brothers had a few good ideas -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFpuupelHLg

Couldn't find an official video, maybe there isn't one.

[filghy2]

Point being, you give people the opportunity to sit on their ass all day and they'll take it. Real conservatism squashes that option. Guaranteed that if this guy wasn't getting $900/week of taxpayer money, he'd be working at something productive, contributing to the GDP instead of sucking it down.

I get that this is a unique situation, the pandemic. Still doesn't change the fact that this guy could be working but is choosing not to, for no better reason than that he doesn't have to.

And that's where the philosophical argument begins. I guess some people are just fine with that - people who haven't given the matter enough thought, people who can't do simple math, people who don't understand how the economy works and/or doesn't, people who don't realize that human nature is a real thing. You know, Democrats.

As usual you are basing an argument on selective anecdotes rather than actual data. If your argument was correct there should have been less unemployment in the times before unemployment benefits. In fact, the highest recorded unemployment rate in the US was in 1933, and unemployment insurance only started in 1935. The unemployment data only go back to 1929, but it's clear from other data that recessions were more severe before 1935 than they have been since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_insurance_in_the_United_States

[Nick Danger]

As usual you are basing an argument on selective anecdotes rather than actual data. If your argument was correct there should have been less unemployment in the times before unemployment benefits. In fact, the highest recorded unemployment rate in the US was in 1933, and unemployment insurance only started in 1935. The unemployment data only go back to 1929, but it's clear from other data that recessions were more severe before 1935 than they have been since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_insurance_in_the_United_States

Flighty, are you seriously going full Grapes of Wrath on me here? I'm pretty sure this is the second time you've used Great Depression-era statistics to try to make a point about modern economics. I'd be willing to bet that the VERY worst unemployment in American history was in the 1600's. Of course back then, we didn't have a country and nearly all of us were illiterate, so the statistics are unreliable, but here's a photo I found of a soup kitchen from the era -

1306315

You do realize there's a very specific reason recessions in the USA have never again sunk to the level of the Great Depression, right? WAR. We discovered, in WWII, that war is highly profitable. And that we're pretty damn good at it. So we've basically been at war somewhere on the planet ever since. That's the unspoken secret to American economic strength. Everybody kinda knows it, but nobody ever lets it climb up from their brain cellar to eat dinner with the cerebral cortex.

The New Deal didn't end the Great Depression, all it did was begin the Welfare State. World War II ended the Great Depression. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that, Flighty, pretty sure a lot of people agree. Maybe even you agree. Which is why I wonder why you would consider pre-War Economy statistics as relevant to this discussion.

[filghy2]

The Great Depression is very relevant because that was the last time the economy was run in the way you want it to be run now, which minimal government intervention. The New Deal only started 4 years into the Depression.

Your war economy argument is nonsense, but I assume you know Defence is a government department, so what you are really saying is that US economic prosperity depends on government spending. Why would government spending be great if it's done by the Pentagon, but ruinous if it's done by any other department?

Your argument would imply that the US economy should have fallen into a hole after WWII, and should have been mostly on a slide since the Korean War. That didn't happen. Defence spending was reduced a lot in the 1990s, which was also a period of economic prosperity.1306326

You also seem to be unaware than many countries are economically prosperous without spending nearly as much on defence as the US, and many countries that do spend a lot are not prosperous. According to your logic North Korea should probably be one of the world's strongest economies.

[Nick Danger]

The Great Depression is very relevant because that was the last time the economy was run in the way you want it to be run now, which minimal government intervention. The New Deal only started 4 years into the Depression.

Your war economy argument is nonsense, but I assume you know Defence is a government department, so what you are really saying is that US economic prosperity depends on government spending. Why would government spending be great if it's done by the Pentagon, but ruinous if it's done by any other department?

Your argument would imply that the US economy should have fallen into a hole after WWII, and should have been mostly on a slide since the Korean War. That didn't happen. Defence spending was reduced a lot in the 1990s, which was also a period of economic prosperity.

You also seem to be unaware than many countries are economically prosperous without spending nearly as much on defence as the US, and many countries that do spend a lot are not prosperous. According to your logic North Korea should probably be one of the world's strongest economies.

So because some countries are prosperous without spending as much on their military as us, that means that WE are not a war-dependent economy. Never ceases to amaze me how stupid you think people are, Flighty. I don't even recall what type of logical fallacy that is but rest assured it is one.

Fact is we spend 3 times more on "defense" than the #2 spender, China, and more than 10 times as much as #3 India. Nearly 1/3 of all the military spending on the planet is done by the USA. Military spending comprises 20% of our annual federal budget if you include veteran spending. That's currently around $800+ billion being rerouted from the taxpayers directly back into the economy, annually. The only thing we spend more on is healthcare for the poor, nothing else even comes close.

Of course those figures don't apply to this year, since the Democrats have decided to donate $1.9 trillion to the flu.

But my point is that if you take that 20% out of the economy, we'd crumble - the Great Depression itself represented only a 30% loss of GDP. Not to mention we'd all be speaking Chinese within a decade or two but that's not relevant to this discussion.

So the answer to your question, "Why would government spending be great if it's done by the Pentagon, but ruinous if it's done by any other department?" is painfully obvious - because of the SIZE of their portion of the budget.

[broncofan]

Help me think through the claim that military spending drives our economy. If we develop something and it provides some value then we can say we're better off because of it. If we develop something and trade it for something that has value, then we've used it to barter for something useful.

I don't understand the argument that the U.S. economy is strong because of military spending unless it is really a subsidy for people to work in that sector. Wouldn't it be better though to subsidize work that provides something useful, like food, or services, like healthcare? The other possibility is that our development of military technology is exported and helps us in that way. But I don't think that's what you mean. It sounds like you support economic stimulus measures but you want them to be symbolic displays of our might rather than directed towards things people need.

[Nick Danger]

Help me think through the claim that military spending drives our economy. If we develop something and it provides some value then we can say we're better off because of it. If we develop something and trade it for something that has value, then we've used it to barter for something useful.

I don't understand the argument that the U.S. economy is strong because of military spending unless it is really a subsidy for people to work in that sector. Wouldn't it be better though to subsidize work that provides something useful, like food, or services, like healthcare? The other possibility is that our development of military technology is exported and helps us in that way. But I don't think that's what you mean. It sounds like you support economic stimulus measures but you want them to be symbolic displays of our might rather than directed towards things people need.

Bronco I'm sure you're familiar with the term "Planned Obsolescence" when it comes to manufacturing, yes? If not, what it refers to is the practice of designing a product so the consumer will have to buy a new one on a regular basis. One of the most notorious perpetrators of this practice is Apple, of course. There's no reason for them to put out a new model of the iPhone every year, the improvements are always quite nominal, a new model every 3 or 4 years would be much more reasonable for the fashion-conscious consumer. But they do it anyway because they know people will have to buy them if they want to be cool.

A more sinister version of planned obsolescence is the engineering of specific parts to be unrepairable. One example of this I remember is a particular refrigerator in which the wiring was buried so deep in the insulation that it was virtually impossible to find, so if you got a short, which you eventually would, you'd have to replace the entire unit instead of simply splicing a wire. Some dryer manufacturers now fuse the bearing and drum together, so that if a bearing goes out (normally a very simple and cheap fix), you have to replace the entire assembly at 10 times the cost - meaning that actually, with the cost in time and effort to carry the dryer to be repaired and bring it back home, you're probably going to be better off just buying a new dryer. With automobiles, it's a simple matter of discontinuing the manufacture of certain parts that are known to wear out within 5-10 years.

These are just examples, it's a pretty common practice, and a hugely profitable one. The difference in you spending $200 for a car repair or being compelled to buy an entirely new vehicle is huge for the manufacturer.

But what if there were an industry in which planned obsolescence wasn't even necessary? What if there were an industry in which the consumer himself literally DESTROYED THE PRODUCT ON PURPOSE! Possibly within days of its purchase.

There is just such a business - arms manufacturing. The most profitable business in the history of mankind.

Not only does the consumer destroy the product, the product becomes obsolete very quickly even if it isn't destroyed. You won't catch American soldiers marching into combat with outdated gear. Won't find 10-year-old technology in our missile silos or on our combat aircraft. Even our oldest aircraft carriers (10-15 billion dollars each) were built no earlier than the 1990's. We are at the forefront of military technology at all times. Military R&D is a neverending process and actually, the American public is fine with it. Most of them wouldn't have it any other way.

Of course this money could be used effectively elsewhere. But it never will be. Democratic administrations and Republican administrations have always been in agreement on one thing - massive military spending. Next year there will be more arms industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill than this year. More still the year after that. The American arms industry is the most resourceful industry on the planet. And the most low-profile. They don't advertise. At all.

Ultimately all this money finds its way back into the economy. Arms manufacturers are job creators, raw material consumers, investors, lobbyists, and taxpayers.

But we're addicted to this industry. Nothing can replace it and there's no will within the proletariat to do so anyway. That's what I mean when I say we are a war-dependent economy, Bronco.

[filghy2]

The logical implication of what you are arguing is that if we blew up all our buildings and infrastructure every few years and forced people to build new ones that would be the route to national prosperity.

The seem to be a bit confused about the whole purpose of the economy. The point of the economy is not production as an end in itself. Production is just a means to the end of allowing people to get things that they want. Maybe they don't always really need them (like those new iPhones) but it still makes them feel better.

Of course it's possible to replace the military's role in the economy - it's importance has already fallen by more than half since the 1950s. Industries decline all the time and get replaced by other industries. For example, farming used to account for most of the economy - now it's just a small percentage.

The USA doesn't need to spend as much as it does for self-defence purposes. All that military capacity just means that you keep getting sucked into wars that don't achieve anything, like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It feeds the illusion that every problem can be solved by military might.

[filghy2]

But my point is that if you take that 20% out of the economy, we'd crumble - the Great Depression itself represented only a 30% loss of GDP. Not to mention we'd all be speaking Chinese within a decade or two but that's not relevant to this discussion.

Your maths is a bit out. 20% of the federal budget is not 20% of the economy. The latest figure I can find is 3.4% of GDP, and nobody's talking about reducing that to zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

[filghy2]

So because some countries are prosperous without spending as much on their military as us, that means that WE are not a war-dependent economy. Never ceases to amaze me how stupid you think people are, Flighty. I don't even recall what type of logical fallacy that is but rest assured it is one.

I've no idea what you have in mind, but there seem to be two logical fallacies behind your argument.

The first is spurious correlation: the US is one of the most prosperous economies, it also has the highest military spending, therefore military spending must be the cause of prosperity. Correlation does not imply causation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

The second is the lump of labour fallacy, which is the idea that there is only a fixed amount of work in the economy, so that any source of work that is lost can't be replaced.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2020/11/02/examining-the-lump-of-labor-fallacy-using-a-simple-economic-model

[Stavros]

The curiosity of the US economy is that the majority of people in work, pre-Covid- were employed either directly by the Federal Government and its agencies, or State and local Government agencies, or worked for companies that had been contracted by those same Governments, just as the evidence shows that most job creation is generated by non-defence related expenditure.
https://www.brown.edu/news/2017-05-25/jobscow

And it should be clear that much of the 'defence' spendng is in fact spent on arms manufacture as an export business, rather than the defence of the USA. Saudi Aabia has one of the largest defence budgets in the world after the US, Russia, China and India, though other than its aerial bombardments of the Yemen, its armed forces are all but useless in the field. Given that it has spent over a trillion dollars at least since the al--Yamama deal, one wonders if they ever ask themselves if they have had a good return on their expenditure.

[Nick Danger]

I've no idea what you have in mind, but there seem to be two logical fallacies behind your argument.

The first is spurious correlation: the US is one of the most prosperous economies, it also has the highest military spending, therefore military spending must be the cause of prosperity. Correlation does not imply causation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

The second is the lump of labour fallacy, which is the idea that there is only a fixed amount of work in the economy, so that any source of work that is lost can't be replaced.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2020/11/02/examining-the-lump-of-labor-fallacy-using-a-simple-economic-model

Well Flighty I'm glad you took the time to look up the names of my alleged logical fallacies, I only bother to point out that yours ARE fallacies.

I told you why military spending is causal to American prosperity and it wasn't because "Duh we're prosperous so that must be why."

I also didn't say that the arms industry is a huge employer, though they are a big one. The Department of Defense, on the other hand, is the USA's largest employer, by factors.

As usual you have missed my point. My point is, military spending is inevitable. You speak as if it's just another option that we consider. We are fully committed to a war economy, there's no turning back. We're the schoolyard bully. If we show up in a wheelchair one day, we're gonna get curb-stomped by the whole school.

We're currently leading an arms race that started thousands of years ago. You think war is just going to go away, Flighty? You think it's "just another industry" and we can start spending that money elsewhere? You think we have some decisions to make about whether we want to keep maintaining our military power or start spending that money to feed the poor? Don't be obtuse. War is THE industry. Realpolitik is a real thing; some might say the ONLY real thing. And military weakness is never going to be an option for the USA.

Now I could get all philosophical about that. I'm ex-military but I'm not pro-war. Some wars need to be fought, others are fought for pretty shaky reasons. I still have no idea what the fuck we were thinking in Afghanistan. Or Vietnam for that matter. Those were wars we fought just because we need to keep fighting wars. If anything those pointless wars are evidence that I'm right.

On the other hand, it's been quite some time since we've had a serious terrorist attack on American soil. I think the message has been sent - if you blow up one of our buildings, we will carpet bomb you back to the Stone Age. Along with every country where you might be hiding, everyone who looks like you, and everyone in the vicinity who has oil. Collateral damage be damned.

And hell, this isn't history. This is ongoing, we're still getting mileage out of 9/11 in the Middle East, we just bombed Syria last week! And Iran is next, mark my words.

This is not even a liberal vs conservative issue, Flighty, Obama didn't lose a step behind Bush when it came to war policy, and Biden ordered the Syria strike. Trump was actually the most peaceful President of the modern era, much as you will hate to admit that.


Your maths is a bit out. 20% of the federal budget is not 20% of the economy. The latest figure I can find is 3.4% of GDP, and nobody's talking about reducing that to zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

What, you can spin numbers but I can't? Good catch, Flighty.


The logical implication of what you are arguing is that if we blew up all our buildings and infrastructure every few years and forced people to build new ones that would be the route to national prosperity.

The seem to be a bit confused about the whole purpose of the economy. The point of the economy is not production as an end in itself. Production is just a means to the end of allowing people to get things that they want. Maybe they don't always really need them (like those new iPhones) but it still makes them feel better.

Of course it's possible to replace the military's role in the economy - it's importance has already fallen by more than half since the 1950s. Industries decline all the time and get replaced by other industries. For example, farming used to account for most of the economy - now it's just a small percentage.

The USA doesn't need to spend as much as it does for self-defence purposes. All that military capacity just means that you keep getting sucked into wars that don't achieve anything, like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It feeds the illusion that every problem can be solved by military might.

Pie in the sky, Flighty, pie in the sky.


And it should be clear that much of the 'defence' spendng is in fact spent on arms manufacture as an export business, rather than the defence of the USA. Saudi Aabia has one of the largest defence budgets in the world after the US, Russia, China and India, though other than its aerial bombardments of the Yemen, its armed forces are all but useless in the field. Given that it has spent over a trillion dollars at least since the al--Yamama deal, one wonders if they ever ask themselves if they have had a good return on their expenditure.

We do export a lot of armaments, that's right, Stavros. And in fact, "Department of Defense" could easily be considered Orwellian doublespeak, since we have never defended American soil since that department was created, but have gone on the OFFENSIVE quite a lot.

Planet Earth is not a peaceful place. Never has been, never will be. If anything, war is entirely normalized at this juncture of history, it's simply understood. So any talk of spending the USA's military budget elsewhere than on our war machine is just talk. Nobody in Saudi Arabia is wondering whether they've spent too much on armed forces. What they are wondering is how they can get nukes.

[filghy2]

I don't know why you argue politics on the internet, Bronco. I'm not saying you do it poorly or do it well (occasionally you give me a nice sensible chuckle) but I don't know why you do it. Since your motivation is a mystery to me, your arguments hold less weight than if I knew from whence they arise. Oh I'll still argue with you. But unless you startle me with some insightful clarity that hadn't previously occured to me, you're not going to change my mind about anything.

I meant to raise this before, but now you are just repeating yourself on the other issue I can come back to it.

Why would knowing a person's motivation make their argument more convincing? Doesn't it normally work the other way - if you know somebody has a motive for what they saying shouldn't you be less likely to believe them? Or do you mean you would be more likely to listen to him if he had some personal story behind his arguments?

People approach things differently. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of thinkers.
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-abstract-and-vs-concrete-thinking/

Concrete thinkers like you tend to think about issues only in terms of their personal experience. They tend to focus on how things affect them, and only perceive the most direct linkages between things.

Abstract thinkers, on the other hand, think about things more in terms of general concepts. That is what tends to interest them, rather than just their own experience. Abstract thinkers are better at seeing more complex linkages and thinking about things from different angles.

I think this is the reason for your misunderstandings on economics. You only see the most direct linkages between things. You also think only in terms of your personal experience and what would benefit you as a business owner - what's good for Nick's Turbos must be good for the country. They have a name for that fallacy as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

[filghy2]

I told you why military spending is causal to American prosperity and it wasn't because "Duh we're prosperous so that must be why."

I don't want to keep going over the same ground, but you might want to read this book some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_Powers

"Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for."

"As military expenses grow, this reduces investments in economic growth, which eventually leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities, and weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defence."

[broncofan]

I find the issue of bias and motivation to be a distraction most of the time. Often when people say "there is no evidence" for some proposition you have to be careful what their definition of evidence is. The confusion is that they seem to think something must be sufficient proof before it is evidence but what they probably mean is it's weak evidence. Something is evidence if it makes a relevant fact more or less likely. This legal definition might not apply to other fields but it makes intuitive sense.

Bias might be evidence that someone should not be believed. I can think of a personal situation that can bolster credibility but I don't think it's what Nick proposes. If someone says something against his interest, maybe we're more likely to believe them. But biased people can be truthful or they can be right or wrong based on frailties of perception and reasoning that have nothing to do with honesty. There is also the fact that when enough facts are brought to bear about a subject matter, the interests of the parties asserting their viewpoint is less and less relevant and at some point becomes irrelevant.

[Stavros]

In light of this week's controversy in the UK, via the USA and Oprah Winfrey, the issue of bias in the media is of most concern. Is it a reporter, or a journalist's job to tell you what they know, or what they think? I can understand the Me being emhasized in Media if it is a one-man show for whose opinions people tune in, but if he or she doesn't offer an alternative to those views, Piers Morgan being a notorious example, why bother? But when it is the News, be it politics, crime, culture, sport, etc, is the truth not the main event? Can you imagine on 9/11 a News Anchor declaring 'allegedly, an aeroplane has been flown into the Pentagon, which claims there are many casualties'? Or, 'The Twin Towers in New Yorrk City have collapsed, but we don't know why or how this happened' -?

There may be unconcscious bias in news reporting, but the open use of lies or innuendo to demean a person or raise doubts about a story which has facts is surely damaging to news as a business and a service; coverage of your elections in the US is clearly an issue here. I doubt the Fair Broadcasting regulations will be revived in the US, but we have them here, and we don't see reguation a as a barrier to free speech.

[Nick Danger]

Concrete thinkers like you tend to think about issues only in terms of their personal experience. They tend to focus on how things affect them, and only perceive the most direct linkages between things.

Abstract thinkers, on the other hand, think about things more in terms of general concepts. That is what tends to interest them, rather than just their own experience. Abstract thinkers are better at seeing more complex linkages and thinking about things from different angles.

I think this is the reason for your misunderstandings on economics. You only see the most direct linkages between things. You also think only in terms of your personal experience and what would benefit you as a business owner - what's good for Nick's Turbos must be good for the country. They have a name for that fallacy as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

I'll certainly take a swing at this one, Flighty, it's right in my wheelhouse.

I want to know someone's motivation because I want to know two things - do they have a reason to be full of shit, and do they have enough real-world experience to even be making their argument.

Far as abstract versus concrete thinking, that's a false dichotomy. I'm perfectly capable of both, and I think most of the guys who post here are as well, including you.

I'm currently watching my 11th presidential administration run this country, Flighty. LBJ was President when I was born and JFK had not long before shuffled off this mortal coil. I'm a KEEN observer. And I've seen the real issues from both sides of the political spectrum and from multiple stations in life. I have no need to evaluate politics in the abstract, I've seen the ins and outs in black-and-white and color. I've no need to evaluate business in the abstract, I run one. I've no need to evaluate the U.S. military in the abstract, I was in it. I realize there are abstract economic concepts, but frankly I'd rather rely on the fact that I've lived and died financially within the U.S. economy for 55 years.

And you say, "argument from authority," right? Wrong. Have you ever heard me say or even imply, "You should agree with me because I'm the only swinging dick here who knows what the fuck he's talking about." Of course not. Have I claimed to be a doctor, a scientist, highly educated? No. Have I ever attacked you personally, implied that you don't know what you're talking about because you haven't told me what you do for a living? Absolutely not, I address your arguments point-by-point. If they happen to be a giant load of horseshit, I address them with a shovel. If you make a valid point, I give it to you.

But people who read my posts on this board know I run a business. They know I'm middle-aged, have done a few things, been a few places, taken a few hard knocks and given a few. People know I've got some life experience under my belt, and that I'm not afraid to let my opinions go where others fear to tread. If they want to take that into account as I make my points, well, then everything is working as intended.

Hell Flighty, I'll freely admit that I let my ego roam freely on this board. A conservative participating in a political discussion with a board full of liberals is the equivalent of a 22-year-old school teacher walking into a classroom full of unruly teenagers - they're not going to settle down and listen until he earns their respect or their fear. Whether you'll admit it or not, I've earned a little of both here.

I don't have the luxury of "general concepts," Flighty. General concepts are for college students and other people who don't have to produce results or suffer the consequences.

Bronco, Stavros, I'm HIGHLY interested in the conversation you're having about the media. I don't have time to reply right now, I'm taking my father to get some blood work done this afternoon, but I will catch you later.

[Nick Danger]

I find the issue of bias and motivation to be a distraction most of the time. Often when people say "there is no evidence" for some proposition you have to be careful what their definition of evidence is. The confusion is that they seem to think something must be sufficient proof before it is evidence but what they probably mean is it's weak evidence. Something is evidence if it makes a relevant fact more or less likely. This legal definition might not apply to other fields but it makes intuitive sense.

Bias might be evidence that someone should not be believed. I can think of a personal situation that can bolster credibility but I don't think it's what Nick proposes. If someone says something against his interest, maybe we're more likely to believe them. But biased people can be truthful or they can be right or wrong based on frailties of perception and reasoning that have nothing to do with honesty. There is also the fact that when enough facts are brought to bear about a subject matter, the interests of the parties asserting their viewpoint is less and less relevant and at some point becomes irrelevant.

For some reason I'm reminded of FDR and the New Deal. Not sure how much you know about FDR, Bronco, but he was born elite. I mean at the highest level, his family were old money from the days when New York was called New Amsterdam.

So when he proposed the New Deal, he was EXCORIATED by his peers. "Give money to the poor?! Balderdash and poppycock!!" It was unheard of. Did you know he was kicked out of his country club over it? They voted out the President of the United States because they felt so strongly that government charity was economic suicide.

I don't bring that up to debate the New Deal or government charity, it just occurs to me that when you find out something like that about a man, you can no longer question his integrity. He believed he was doing the right thing, strongly enough to do it despite the outcry from his contemporaries. So if someone were debating FDR on the subject of liberal economics, impugning his motives would be out of the question.

You know, man, on the internet, you could be talking to ANYONE. Me, if I'm going to take time out of my day to verbally abuse liberals, I want them to know that I'm not some Republican Party shill. I'm a real guy talking about some real shit.

For all I know, though, the liberals I'm talking to are teen moms who cobbled together their political ideals from MTV and family court. And unless someone convinces me otherwise, that's kinda how I view them. You know, time goes on in a forum like this, and I'm aware by now that the guys I'm constantly arguing with here are at least sincere in their misguided beliefs. Which is why it bothers me a little when someone like you or Flighty questions MY integrity after I've given you everything but my dick size and phone number.

I'm telling you I'm no altruist. I'm telling you I'm looking out for #1. And the whole crux of my argument is that everyone needs to go and do likewise, instead of weeping for the unmotivated masses. My favorite line from Apocalypse Now is Willard's narration of the Saigon motel room scene - "Everyone gets everything he wants."


In light of this week's controversy in the UK, via the USA and Oprah Winfrey, the issue of bias in the media is of most concern. Is it a reporter, or a journalist's job to tell you what they know, or what they think? I can understand the Me being emhasized in Media if it is a one-man show for whose opinions people tune in, but if he or she doesn't offer an alternative to those views, Piers Morgan being a notorious example, why bother? But when it is the News, be it politics, crime, culture, sport, etc, is the truth not the main event? Can you imagine on 9/11 a News Anchor declaring 'allegedly, an aeroplane has been flown into the Pentagon, which claims there are many casualties'? Or, 'The Twin Towers in New Yorrk City have collapsed, but we don't know why or how this happened' -?

There may be unconcscious bias in news reporting, but the open use of lies or innuendo to demean a person or raise doubts about a story which has facts is surely damaging to news as a business and a service; coverage of your elections in the US is clearly an issue here. I doubt the Fair Broadcasting regulations will be revived in the US, but we have them here, and we don't see reguation a as a barrier to free speech.

The media is a problem, Stavros. Maybe the worst problem America has ever faced.

I'll tell you why I believe the media is controlled by a very small, unfathomably wealthy group of American industrialists. It's coincidental that we have recently been discussing some of America's pointless wars.

What happened to anti-war sentiment in the USA? Where is it, are all the anti-war folks from the '60's dead already? Does that even matter when you consider that there was a mass rekindling of anti-war sentiment in the mid-to-late '00's, as America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to be dragging out for a suspiciously long time? I know those activists aren't dead yet. And we're STILL at war in those countries. But it doesn't even qualify as water-cooler talk anymore. Why?

Because public sentiment is controlled 100% by what the media covers. And they've simply stopped covering those wars. Completely. Oh sure, every now and then you'll hear something about a troop reduction. "Look honey, we just pulled 2500 troops out of Iraq." "We're still at war in Iraq?" The next evening: "Look honey, Joe Biden's not going to send a letter with the stimulus checks but Donald Trump did." "Well, that just proves that the New York Times was right about Joe Biden being a noble and wonderful human being and Donald Trump being a horrible person." Meanwhile in Iraq...

People are not smart enough for news. I'm not saying people are stupid, I don't believe that, I think the vast majority of people have the intellectual capacity to think abstractly and follow a chain of reasoning. But I also think the vast majority of people are intellectually lazy.

You give people hard news, they'll nod their head, take it in, then casually discard it as soon as the next "big important thing they must know about" drifts into their transom. But if you give people hard news AND simultaneously tell them what it means to them personally, they'll base their life choices on it.

The George Floyd incident is a perfect example. The video was inflammatory. But frankly, Americans are accustomed to seeing video of cops beating people down. The Rodney King video was much more inflammatory than the George Floyd video - a whole crew of rogue cops beating an unarmed black man with nightsticks until he stopped moving. The only mitigating factor was that Rodney King didn't die. Yet this didn't result in nationwide rioting, just some localized trouble in Los Angeles black communities. Because in 1992, the media didn't paint a picture for the American public of all police as murderous thugs.

The NEWS about George Floyd's death was, he was under arrest for committing an actual crime, he resisted arrest, he was a big dude, the cops had to hold him down, and they appeared to hold him down for so long and in such an awkward position that he died of asphyxiation.

What might have also been reported was that this is a standard police hold that specifically does not cut off a person's air supply, but that was never mentioned. What might have also been reported is that George Floyd swallowed his stash of fentanyl while trying to escape the police, but that fact only came to light very slowly as the conservative media started pushing back. The facts didn't matter to the liberal media, they saw an opportunity to damage Donald Trump's presidency with that video and they took it. And fuck America.

Because you see, Donald Trump had stood up to them. He called them out for "fake news" even as he was throwing his hat into the ring for his presidential run. He basically said "Fuck the media" and he got a lot of Americans on-board with that.

But he badly underestimated how low they were willing to go to fuck him back.

That's an example of how the media controls the lives of Americans. If the media isn't talking about something, it must not be very important. If they're talking about it every day, it's the most important thing happening. People aren't intellectually energetic enough to figure out what's important for themselves, so they use this media guideline exclusively and for the most part subconsciously.

The media hasn't talked about war, or provided any coverage of anti-war sentiment in the USA, for a very, very long time. Oh, we've BEEN at war. That's news, right, 20 years of non-stop war in the Middle East and Central Asia? But the simple act of not covering it for the last 10-12 years has pushed those wars completely out of the American conversation. There's been almost zero coverage of America's dirty little wars since the 2008 recession.

So my question to anyone who cares to take a stab at it is this - how does that happen? How does news become "not news anymore?"

In my opinion that kind of marginalization of important events can only be accomplished behind the scenes at the highest levels. A publisher contacts his editor. "We're suppressing Afghanistan." Ace Reporter files a story on Afghanistan the next day, finds it on page 3 instead of the usual page 1. Files another story a few days later, finds it on page 10. Another the next week, and now it's on page 18 of the International section. So he finds something else to cover, it's that simple.

The provocative question, Stavros, is who is the publisher answering to?

[filghy2]

And you say, "argument from authority," right? Wrong. Have you ever heard me say or even imply, "You should agree with me because I'm the only swinging dick here who knows what the fuck he's talking about."

Yes, below is a prime example


In any case, I have a slight advantage on John Q. Public because I was in the Air Force. Not only was I in the Air Force, I was actually the civilian press liaison at a large stateside SAC base. I know for a fact that the public is fed a constant stream of misinformation and disinformation, because I used to feed it to them. I was quite literally trained in the fine art of the cover-up, and participated in more than one. Here's a hint: Military cover-ups don't involve MUCH lying; they are more about stonewalling the press or insisting on a certain level of coverage ("Well Below Saturation" and "Single Touch" are two terms that will probably be part of a handshake agreement between a millitary commander and a newspaper editor during an exchange of sensistive information) from behind closed doors. But they certainly will lie if it becomes necessary - they will have a meeting, they will decide which lie is best, they will brainstorm all the various ways the lie might be discovered, and then they will pick up the phone and lie, lie, lie.

I'm sorry to disturb your reverie with truthiness, Bronco. I could easily say that it's disturbing to me that so many people are so easily deceived, but fact is, I don't much care what people believe. I certainly don't anticipate ever living in a country in which too-big-to-fuck-with liars are unable to manipulate public opinion at their leisure. I'm even aware that to a great degree, most people prefer being lied to rather than having to contend with the ramifications of the truth.

There is some incredibly shady shit going on at the very highest levels of government and media, Bronco. Most people don't have the stomach to hash it all out or the intellect to read between the lines even if they did. Doesn't make them bad people. Weak, maybe. Brainwashed? Definitely. Stupid? I don't think most people are stupid. But I will hearken back to that classic Tommy Lee Jones line from Men In Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

As far as what the Republican Party might become, I think it is what it is. It makes perfect sense to me that the Repubican Party would be home to more conspiracy theorists than the Democratic Party, for the same reason that it's home to the more affluent, intelligent, and responsible members of society. It takes at least a little intelligence to align oneself with the party that's moved beyond "Give everyone everything they want."

[filghy2]

The media hasn't talked about war, or provided any coverage of anti-war sentiment in the USA, for a very, very long time. Oh, we've BEEN at war. That's news, right, 20 years of non-stop war in the Middle East and Central Asia? But the simple act of not covering it for the last 10-12 years has pushed those wars completely out of the American conversation. There's been almost zero coverage of America's dirty little wars since the 2008 recession.

So my question to anyone who cares to take a stab at it is this - how does that happen? How does news become "not news anymore?"?


I think the answer is pretty obvious. Nothing that happens in Iraq or Afghanistan affects Americans, other than the families involved. Troop numbers are now fairly low, so there are no mass casualties. Nothing much has changed for a long time - it's still the same confused mess. I don't think you need a conspiracy to explain why they are forgotten wars - they are no longer newsworthy because there is no new story that would interest many Americans.

[Nick Danger]

I think the answer is pretty obvious. Nothing that happens in Iraq or Afghanistan affects Americans, other than the families involved. Troop numbers are now fairly low, so there are no mass casualties. Nothing much has changed for a long time - it's still the same confused mess. I don't think you need a conspiracy to explain why they are forgotten wars - they are no longer newsworthy because there is no new story that would interest many Americans.

Well how's this for an argument from authority, Flighty? Coverage of the War in Vietnam never slowed down, despite progressive reduction in troop numbers, despite lack of mass casualties, despite it being the same confused mess for nearly the exact same length of time. How do I know this? Because I was there. No, not in Vietnam, in a much more important place from which to view the media coverage of the war - sitting in front of the television.

My personal opinion is that Vietnam is when the fabled Military-Industrial Complex realized they were going to have to buy the media if they wanted to keep their profits up.

[filghy2]

Which is why it bothers me a little when someone like you or Flighty questions MY integrity after I've given you everything but my dick size and phone number.

I assume you know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If people are sceptical about your personal stories it's because you have a history of making exaggerated claims.

This is the internet. The only thing any of us really know about other people is the words they write, and the only thing we can really judge is those words on their own merits. Liars always claim to tell the truth, so the only proof is not what people assert but what they demonstrate by the way they conduct themselves generally.

Even if the personal details you share are all true, that only tells us that you know something about the things you have done. If I wanted to know about cars or how to run a small business I might trust your advice, but that is no reason to trust your advice on how to run the economy, which requires spending time learning how the economy works. If you had a health problem would you seek advice from something with no medical degree? If you had a legal problem would you seek advice from someone with no legal degree? Why would the economy be different?

Here's some advice from personal experience. I used to write things for a living, so I know a bit about written communication. The key thing I learnt was that you need to be able to sum up your message in 3-4 not too long paragraphs. If can't do that it means you haven't clearly thought through what you are trying to say.

[Nick Danger]

I assume you know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If people are sceptical about your personal stories it's because you have a history of making exaggerated claims.

This is the internet. The only thing any of us really know about other people is the words they write, and the only thing we can really judge is those words on their own merits. Liars always claim to tell the truth, so the only proof is not what people assert but what they demonstrate by the way they conduct themselves generally.

Even if the personal details you share are all true, that only tells us that you know something about the things you have done. If I wanted to know about cars or how to run a small business I might trust your advice, but that is no reason to trust your advice on how to run the economy, which requires spending time learning how the economy works. If you had a health problem would you seek advice from something with no medical degree? If you had a legal problem would you seek advice from someone with no legal degree? Why would the economy be different?

Here's some advice from personal experience. I used to write things for a living, so I know a bit about written communication. The key thing I learnt was that you need to be able to sum up your message in 3-4 not too long paragraphs. If can't do that it means you haven't clearly thought through what you are trying to say.

Me: Argues from authority
You: Argues from authority that I'm arguing from authority

So your professional advice about writing is that I'm doing it wrong and you're doing it right. Gotcha!

It's funny because I've always viewed your writing as a stream-of-consciousness thing. I mean I enjoy it but I always thought it was more like performance art than an attempt to form an argument.

[filghy2]

It's funny because I've always viewed your writing as a stream-of-consciousness thing. I mean I enjoy it but I always thought it was more like performance art than an attempt to form an argument.

That's an odd thing to say given most of your posts are way longer than mine.

Let me put it in a way you might understand. Suppose someone comes to you with a serious car problem. You spend some time working out what the problem is and how much it will cost to fix. When you explain this to the guy he dismisses your advice and claims that he knows cars better than you because he's been driving them for 30 years. What would your reaction be?

[Nick Danger]

That's an odd thing to say given most of your posts are way longer than mine.

Let me put it in a way you might understand. Suppose someone comes to you with a serious car problem. You spend some time working out what the problem is and how much it will cost to fix. When you explain this to the guy he dismisses your advice and claims that he knows cars better than you because he's been driving them for 30 years. What would your reaction be?

I appreciate you bringing it down to my level, Flighty.

So what you're saying is that because my information is pulled from life experience, and your information is pulled from "sources," that your information is more...should we say important, or accurate?

World's full of sources, Flighty. While you're scrambling around the internet trying to piece together some kind of cohesive philosophy out of what other people think, I'M telling you what I think. And why I think it.

I read too, Flighty. I read everything, fiction, non-fiction, conservative propaganda, liberal propaganda, tech manuals, and I LOVE books about theoretical physics. It might surprise you that the most recent book I read was A Promised Land by who? Barry Obama. Great book, insightful and thoughtful, highly recommend it. I read and re-read Bill Faulkner, Ernie Hemingway, I've got half a shelf full of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, all the classics. I've read the Bible cover to cover; I have an EXTREMELY expensive leather-bound, gold-leaf copy with a bronze clasp on it from the 1860's that includes the apocryphal books. I didn't buy it to collect it, I bought it to read it, though it does look good on my coffee table. Hell, I was the kid who actually DID read the articles in Playboy, and not just because they were the only pages that weren't stuck together. Stephen King is my favorite author, and his politics make me cringe.

But to answer your question, even though it is obviously a rhetorical one, what I would say to the guy who's been driving for 30 years is that driving a car doesn't qualify a person to work on cars in the same way that operating a business in the USA qualifies someone to have an opinion on the U.S. economy.

You go right ahead with your little 3-4 paragraph summaries of other people's thoughts, Flighty. Mine are a bit more expansive than that.

[Nick Danger]

@ Stavros

What do you think of this piece?

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/03/12/last-night-is-why-joe-biden-won-the-presidency-492086

Written for Politico by this smug bootlicker -

1306970

...a UC BERKELEY grad (/facepalm) who has written for ONLY the liberal media his entire career - NYT, WaPo, GQ, Esquire, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the Atlantic. Not to mention that he has the illustrious distinction of being a Senior Political Analyst for...wait for it...CNN.

My thought about it is, well first, what a ridiculously biased piece of garbage journalism. When he branched off about the "unique pastoral role of the presidency" I threw up a little in my mouth. But secondly, does this pretty much put to rest the theory that "journalist" is still a profession? In 2021, you're either a liberal mouthpiece, or a conservative one.

[broncofan]

I have said this before but UC Berkeley is often a sort of code for liberal because it's in San Francisco, which is a very liberal city, and it attracts mostly liberal students. It's liberal and it's a great institution. You can't wave away Nobel Prize awards by its professoriate or accomplishments by its students simply because they're liberals. I don't know Ryan Lizza but clearly this piece insulted Trump and was complimentary of Biden.

But let's examine it. Trump said things in the last year that were senseless and ego driven and got people killed. Other mistakes I've seen by public health officials have tended to be reasonable given the state of the knowledge. Telling people the verdict is out on masks in August is not excusable, saying the virus will disappear is idiotic, and frankly the list is very long.

When Trump lost the election fair and square, he had almost nothing to say about the pandemic while he was hawking conspiracy theories about the vote on an hourly basis. There is no objective way to frame his actions that is not negative. He showed no respect for the value of people's lives. He said things that did not help anyone and got people killed.

On the other hand, I can post a story by Fox News that has experts weigh in on Biden wearing two masks after receiving a vaccination. The author wonders: are two masks needed? Does wearing two masks send the wrong message? The man is in his late seventies and vaccines are highly effective but not perfect. The CDC recommends that people continue to wear a mask after being vaccinated and two masks, if they are sealed properly, are believed to be more effective than one. That story by Fox has the foreseeable effect of creating and sustaining a cult of ignorance.

The story about Biden praises him and denigrates Trump. It includes Republicans who have tended to show some sense of duty and decency. Trump is not among them.

[broncofan]

I read and re-read Bill Faulkner, Ernie Hemingway,
You're doing that thing where you abbreviate the author's name to show your familiarity with them. Someone on this forum was talking about Freddie Nietzsche. Someone else told me I didn't know anything about Shakespeare because "Bill" may not have even written his plays, even though this person didn't know about any of the alternative theories, which are weak.

Come on now Nicolai the Dangerman, Mr. Achtung Peligro the third, what's going on here?

[Nick Danger]

You're doing that thing where you abbreviate the author's name to show your familiarity with them. Someone on this forum was talking about Freddie Nietzsche. Someone else told me I didn't know anything about Shakespeare because "Bill" may not have even written his plays, even though this person didn't know about any of the alternative theories, which are weak.

Come on now Nicolai the Dangerman, Mr. Achtung Peligro the third, what's going on here?

Oh Bronco, don't you know me by now? There are about 3 layers of irony in my use of familiar first names for those writers and you missed them all.


I have said this before but UC Berkeley is often a sort of code for liberal because it's in San Francisco, which is a very liberal city, and it attracts mostly liberal students. It's liberal and it's a great institution. You can't wave away Nobel Prize awards by its professoriate or accomplishments by its students simply because they're liberals. I don't know Ryan Lizza but clearly this piece insulted Trump and was complimentary of Biden.

But let's examine it. Trump said things in the last year that were senseless and ego driven and got people killed. Other mistakes I've seen by public health officials have tended to be reasonable given the state of the knowledge. Telling people the verdict is out on masks in August is not excusable, saying the virus will disappear is idiotic, and frankly the list is very long.

When Trump lost the election fair and square, he had almost nothing to say about the pandemic while he was hawking conspiracy theories about the vote on an hourly basis. There is no objective way to frame his actions that is not negative. He showed no respect for the value of people's lives. He said things that did not help anyone and got people killed.

On the other hand, I can post a story by Fox News that has experts weigh in on Biden wearing two masks after receiving a vaccination. The author wonders: are two masks needed? Does wearing two masks send the wrong message? The man is in his late seventies and vaccines are highly effective but not perfect. The CDC recommends that people continue to wear a mask after being vaccinated and two masks, if they are sealed properly, are believed to be more effective than one. That story by Fox has the foreseeable effect of creating and sustaining a cult of ignorance.

The story about Biden praises him and denigrates Trump. It includes Republicans who have tended to show some sense of duty and decency. Trump is not among them.

Unless I'm mistaken UC Berkeley is a school noted for two things - its achievements in scientific research, and a student body that refuses to allow conservative speakers to even drive onto the campus. Certainly NOT noted for any achievements in educating journalists.

But imagine for a moment this fictional scenario, Bronco: Trump wins the election. He makes a speech yesterday and in it he says, word-for-word, EXACTLY what Biden said, and does EXACTLY what Biden does. Ryan Lizza covers it for Politico.

What do you think Lizza would have to say about Trump pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket and checking the current covid-19 death toll? Would he paint it as a historical presidential moment on par with Reagan's speech after the Challenger disaster or Bill Clinton memorializing the Okalahoma City bombing victims? Or would he say something more to the effect of, "It's incredible that we actually have a president who doesn't know the covid-19 death toll." Would he gently correct Trump for misquoting Ernie (;)) Hemingway? Or would he crucify him for it?

Pretty sure it woud be the latter in both cases.

Anyway my point is not about what a shit-tier propaganda artist Ryan Lizza is. My point is that this is what we're stuck with in the way of journalism these days. It's impossible for Americans to get hard news now. You can get it with spin, you can get it slathered in misinfo or disinfo, or you can get it sauteed in opinion. But no matter how you get it, it's never going to taste like the truth again.

Fox News is no less guilty of the same type of spin in the opposite direction, you won't catch me defending them. Their coverage of the speech concentrated on Biden's lack of vision, and they didn't hesitate to throw "literally and figuratively" in there.

[broncofan]

To be fair and make the analogy work, Trump would have to have behaved like a thoughtful person for the last year during the pandemic, won the election fairly, and given that speech. I'm stuck on trying to imagine Trump behaving like a thoughtful person. Some people's nature is so fixed that thoughtfulness would have to be an act and a reversion to previous form inevitable.

I don't know what Berkeley's journalism program is like. I was simply saying it's a good school. The irony eluded me but only because the only book I've read by Hemingway was a book about an old guy and a marlin and arm-wrestling. I don't know that I read it because it was simply a school assignment. Maybe I'll read it again as I lay dying.

[filghy2]

But to answer your question, even though it is obviously a rhetorical one, what I would say to the guy who's been driving for 30 years is that driving a car doesn't qualify a person to work on cars in the same way that operating a business in the USA qualifies someone to have an opinion on the U.S. economy.

Lol, you understand the economy because you are part of it? I guess you must also understand the mysteries of the universe because you are part of that as well. Guess what - everyone else in the country is part of the same economy, so why is your understanding superior?

I'm surprised you haven't given us one of your anecdotes - maybe about the time you chatted with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and he said you knew more about the economy than all of the PhDs who worked for him.

I didn't see any economics books on you reading list. Have you ever read anything on economics?

Smart people make use of the knowledge of others who have spent time building that knowledge. Smart people don't think they don't need sources because they know everything already. You really are a classic American blowhard - equal parts arrogance and ignorance. All piss and wind, as they say.

[filghy2]

You actually have a much better chance of changing MY mind about something than practically anyone else you've ever argued with on the internet, Flighty. If someone presents a solid argument to me, it doesn't matter where it falls on the political or moral spectrum, I will respect the argument itself. I'm WIDE OPEN to new information.

As you are a man with anecdotes for every occasion, perhaps you could give us one as an example of of where someone was able to change your mind on an issue. An open-minded person like you must have many examples to choose from.

I don't mean something trivial like the population of Australia. I mean something that mattered where you previously had a definite view that you were persuaded was wrong.

[Nick Danger]

Lol, you understand the economy because you are part of it? I guess you must also understand the mysteries of the universe because you are part of that as well. Guess what - everyone else in the country is part of the same economy, so why is your understanding superior?

I'm surprised you haven't given us one of your anecdotes - maybe about the time you chatted with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and he said you knew more about the economy than all of the PhDs who worked for him.

I didn't see any economics books on you reading list. Have you ever read anything on economics?

Smart people make use of the knowledge of others who have spent time building that knowledge. Smart people don't think they don't need sources because they know everything already. You really are a classic American blowhard - equal parts arrogance and ignorance. All piss and wind, as they say.

Flattery will get you nowhere, Flighty.

You remind me of a kid I knew, Doug M. Good buddy of mine from my pre-pubescent years. Doug knew EVERYTHING about baseball, you could name a player and he'd tell you every team he ever played for, his current batting average, his jersey number. He knew all the strategies, loved to talk about the suicide squeeze or the slap bunt, and he was smart too. We'd be watching a game and he'd say "Why aren't they shifting the infield left?" then sure enough the batter would send one screaming down the 3rd-base line. He was a young baseball super-fan.

I played Little League but Doug didn't. I think it was because he was kinda fat and embarrassed to put on those stretch pants but for whatever reason he never played ball. And one day, we were like 12, and Mike from the neighborhood came by on his bicycle while we were shooting basketball in Doug's driveway and said they were getting a game together up at the high school. I was game and Doug came along kinda reluctantly. We picked sides, had about 15 guys, and Doug, poor kid, made a complete fool of himself on the field. It was a catastrophe of epic proportions, grounders all went right between his legs, he misjudged a couple of fly balls badly, struck out every time he stepped up to the plate. He was awful at baseball.

Now there's a lesson in there for you somewhere, Flighty. But I'm gonna let you figure out what it is for yourself.

[Nick Danger]

As you are a man with anecdotes for every occasion, perhaps you could give us one as an example of of where someone was able to change your mind on an issue. An open-minded person like you must have many examples to choose from.

I don't mean something trivial like the population of Australia. I mean something that mattered where you previously had a definite view that you were persuaded was wrong.

Sure Flighty.

Condoleezza Rice changed my mind about women in politics. I was pretty blatantly sexist until I saw her give a speech about democracy in Egypt in the mid-'00's, and I suddenly realized I was quite proud she was representing the USA.

I used to do my own taxes until my friend Pat sat me down one day and showed me that I was a complete moron and needed to start trusting professionals.

Mark Zuckerberg changed my mind about investing in IPO's.

Steph Curry changed my mind about professional basketball. I'd stopped watching it for decades until I saw him play, now I'm a fan again.

Barrack Obama's book A Promised Land changed my mind about Michelle being transgender, and also gave me a lot of insight into the value of building the self-worth of the people around you.

The Willie Wonka machine at the Sahara changed my mind about playing slots, haven't touched them since I lost a c-note on it in about 10 minutes.

Change is good, Flighty. You should consider changing it up some, your passive-aggressive behavior is holding you back.

[broncofan]

You really are a classic American blowhard - equal parts arrogance and ignorance. All piss and wind, as they say.
One of my closest friends in college was a guy from New Zealand who decided to stay in the U.S. after college. Coincidentally enough he texted me about two months before the pandemic hit even though I hadn't heard from him in more than 10 years. We exchanged a few texts and he said he'd be in touch if he was in Pittsburgh. That was it but I've often wondered what was going through his mind as the pandemic hit (he's now in Florida) given that he's in one of the big hotspots and New Zealand is a model for public health. I realize I could text him back or call him but it's sometimes awkward to catch up.

Anyhow, he told me that living in the U.S he didn't really see the whole "loud American" stereotype that much but when he was back home Americans stuck out like a sore thumb. Complaining about how things should be done, making a scene, calling attention to themselves. I know you probably anticipate that some fit the mold and some don't. When I was in Australia I noticed probably one out of a hundred people would have their panties in all kinds of a twist about "arrogant yanks" and take it out on me. It was easy enough to tell them to fuck off unless they were bigger than me in which case I'd say, "good luck with that." (I don't assume New Zealand and Australia are that similar, except close geographically and the accent is kind of similar)

Nick is one of those dudes that if I invited him to Jewish passover he'd tell us the crackers would rise if we added some yeast:).

[Stavros]

Nick is one of those dudes that if I invited him to Jewish passover he'd tell us the crackers would rise if we added some yeast:).

Anyone who for a moment thinks Michelle Obama is transgendered is a bagel short of a good breakfast. I assume you can get bagels in Pittsburgh -fresh ones, not the ones that are wrapped in plastic with 'New York' on the label as if that was the imprimatur of quality. (Note: Montreal, allegedly makes the best in the world).

[Nick Danger]

Nick is one of those dudes that if I invited him to Jewish passover he'd tell us the crackers would rise if we added some yeast:).

LOL! Well first of all I'd decline that invitation, Bronco, but if I did go you might be right. I'm a pragmatist, and not necessarily by choice, I was just thrown to the wolves at a young age and I had to learn how to contend on my own.

Flighty's one of those guys who thinks you can learn everything you need to know from textbooks. He's no dumbass but he's not nearly as think as he smarts he is. Christ, I could tell some stories about skullduggery, thievery, corruption, extortion. But I think I'll tell this one because it just came to me. My father told me this story a long time ago and he swears it's true but it really sounds too awesome to be true.

Guy my dad (allegedly) knew was driving down the street and saw a near-new Mercedes convertible sitting in a driveway with a For Sale sign on it. He was in the market so he knocked on the door, and a nice-looking well-dressed woman answered. He asked if he could take the car for a test drive so she handed him the keys.

He drove it and it ran like a dream. He came back and said, "So, how much?" She said, "Oh I need to get at least $500 for it."

He said, "Seriously?" She said, "Yes, $500." So the guy wrote her a check for $500, she signed the title and the car was his.

That night the guy had a serious bout of conscience and couldn't sleep. The next day he went back to the lady's house and knocked. She came to the door and he said, "Listen maam, I've been thinking about this car deal and I think maybe you've made a big mistake."

She said, "There's no mistake, the car is yours."

He said, "Maam, do you know how much that car is worth?"

She said, "Of course I do, that car is worth about $40,000."

He said, "Well okay then, why did you sell it to me for $500?"

She said, "My husband thinks I don't know he's in the Bahamas with his mistress. Yesterday I got a telegram saying 'Sell my car and send me the money.'"

So you know man, there go hundreds of years of Flighty's "economic theory" out the window. I sometimes wonder if his textbooks ever touch on the CIA practice of issuing loans to Central American countries that they know can never be repaid, then taking over their industries one by one. I wonder if he has the textbook answer to what to do when the United Fruit Company shows up in your midst and starts bribing officials and exploiting workers? Do you go full Keynesian on that ass? Or do you put them on their heels by bombing their transport ships with the Efficient Market Hypothesis?

Frankly I'm fine with people like Flighty theorizing and hypothesizing. I'm fully aware that figuring out how economics works on a macro scale is a full-time occupation. But when they try throwing around their textbook answers as if they know it all, all I can think is, "What about all the other guys with DIFFERENT theories who think THEY know it all?"

I mentioned I love theoretical physics. But I hate math, Bronco, fucking hate it. That would be problematic for me if there weren't so many people who love math doing the legwork for me, so I can just enjoy their results. I take my Quantum Field Theory well-done, with no calculus and a side of explanatory condescension. But I like my economics raw.

[Nick Danger]

Anyone who for a moment thinks Michelle Obama is transgendered is a bagel short of a good breakfast. I assume you can get bagels in Pittsburgh -fresh ones, not the ones that are wrapped in plastic with 'New York' on the label as if that was the imprimatur of quality. (Note: Montreal, allegedly makes the best in the world).

Well, she's got EXTREMELY broad shoulders for a woman, Stavros. And there's a video floating around on the internet showing her coming out of a townhouse in a hurry and what appears to be a possible penis bulging out the front of her dress. Then there's Obama's unprecedented championing of LGBTQ rights. So it certainly got me to thinking. But I'm now convinced she is definitely the mother of his children, which of course couldn't be the case were she trans.

You're pretty judgmental for a guy who actually thinks Sandy Hook happened, I mean who's really missing a bagel here?

BTW I know, I KNOW, you're just dying to reply to me. But as a man of honor who has already said he won't do so anymore, you're kinda stuck now. I just want to say, I won't hold it against you if you go back on your word. I mean I'm provoking you, so it's extenuating circumstances.

If not, feel free to continue talking about me as if I'm not even here.

[Nick Danger]

@ Stavros


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbSaCKonhAM

[broncofan]

Anyone who for a moment thinks Michelle Obama is transgendered is a bagel short of a good breakfast. I assume you can get bagels in Pittsburgh -fresh ones, not the ones that are wrapped in plastic with 'New York' on the label as if that was the imprimatur of quality. (Note: Montreal, allegedly makes the best in the world).
I've heard that about Montreal. There are some good bagel places in Pittsburgh but I don't know if they've survived the pandemic. I'll have to ask around. I'm trying to think of Nick's version of the four questions;

I'll be with you later Nick. Declining invitations and such!

[filghy2]

Anyhow, he told me that living in the U.S he didn't really see the whole "loud American" stereotype that much but when he was back home Americans stuck out like a sore thumb.

To be fair, the great majority of Americans I've met have been pleasant and normal people, though there's obviously quite a few of the other kind. I've always assumed that the kind of Americans who travel were less likely to be the narrow-minded kind.

I'd say Australians and New Zealanders are more similar to one another than people in different parts of the US are.

[filghy2]

So you know man, there go hundreds of years of Flighty's "economic theory" out the window.

And what exactly is the economic theory that story is supposed to disprove?

FYI, there is a perfectly good economic theory that covers what you described. It's called the principal-agent problem, which occurs when somebody charges another person to act on their behalf, but that other person has different motives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem

[broncofan]

To be fair, the great majority of Americans I've met have been pleasant and normal people, though there's obviously quite a few of the other kind. I've always assumed that the kind of Americans who travel were less likely to be the narrow-minded kind.

I'd say Australians and New Zealanders are more similar to one another than people in different parts of the US are.
I thought it was a possibility but I didn't want to have assumed that as I haven't been to New Zealand and have met a total of two New Zealanders in my life.

I'd also assume those traveling are less likely to be narrow-minded but there is a possibility that for a subset something comes across when they're a fish out of water. An American not surrounded by other Americans maybe has expectations about the way things should be done that really caught his eye. Or he was just trying to explain why he was happy living in the U.S. but had seen some ugly Americans at home and so it was just rationalization.

Nick does illustrate some basic concepts with a few of his anecdotes. There was another anecdote where he discovered the time value of money. I'm only talking about Nick in the third person because I know he appreciates that;

[broncofan]

-Once I didn't buy insurance because I considered myself a low risk.

-Once I was selling lemonade and I raised the price but people started buying a lot less so I reduced it again.

-Someone I know bought insurance and seemed to take more risks because he knew he was covered.

-One time the interest rate went up and my friend Bill, a pudgy baseball player who knew a lot but was uncoordinated, decided it was a better time to save than consume.

A friend of mine got one of the first licenses to sell medical marijuana in the state. The state was issuing very few such licenses and he was the only seller for miles and miles. It seemed like he could sell his medical marijuana for almost any price he wanted because nobody was there to undercut him.

[broncofan]

-A good buddy spent 9,000 to fix his car and it still wouldn't work. He was so disappointed. When it was pointed out to him that he only had to spend 1,000 dollars more to get it working he said, "I have to spend 10,000 dollars to get my car working?"

I pointed out to him that he's already spent the 9,000 whether he walks away or not. The 9,000 dollars is irrelevant to his decision about whether to spend 1,000 if he knows the 1,000 will get his car working. After all the 9,000 is sort of ummm not floating anymore. I'm gonna name this fallacy the "that money is already wasted" fallacy.

[Nick Danger]

You really are a classic American blowhard - equal parts arrogance and ignorance. All piss and wind, as they say.


To be fair, the great majority of Americans I've met have been pleasant and normal people, though there's obviously quite a few of the other kind.

Personal insults - the last refuge of the out-argued.


And what exactly is the economic theory that story is supposed to disprove?

What I've basically been saying all along without coming right out and saying it is that NONE of your theories stand up when the cold, hard light of business corporeality shines in their face with the blinding intensity of a thousand suns. If economics could be broken down formulaically, we'd have no need of economists anymore, would we. But economics becomes pseudo-science when confronted by corruption, salesmanship, unscrupulous investment devices, war, dishonesty, inefficiency, or even the fury of a woman scorned.

There are a few common sense principles we've followed over here in Blowhardistan that have resulted in your country being subservient to ours, Flighty. Wherever you are, we Americans work harder than you, longer than you, and with more diligence.

Why? Because of the uber-capitalist nature of our society. The rewards are larger, and when government is done right here, the financial safety net is smaller-to-nonexistent. Common sense - Americans HAVE to work to survive, and if they want the lifestyle that's constantly being shoved down their throats as the acceptable standard by both the media and their peers, they have to work harder and smarter. HAVE to. In other first-world countries, you have...other options. The British dole system, for example. Socialized medicine - in the USA, if you get sick or hurt, you better damn well have a job because that's probably the only way you're going to have medical insurance.

Of course liberals will try to convince you that this is an unfair system. They don't have to convince me, I KNOW it's unfair. Therein lies its strength. In the USA, we're not going to lower the common denominator to the level of the majority, we're going to keep elevating it as high as we can, and it's up to the individual to either keep up, or become a loser. We throw the word "loser" around over here with abandon, it's the worst thing you can be in the USA. Even criminals are above losers, at least they're doing something to advance their position.

So yeah, we're a pretty abrasive lot in general, Flighty. I personally don't know anyone running a business, or even managing someone else's business, who isn't perfectly capable of getting downright nasty with someone if they're doing business like a scrub. That kind of hardass attitude gets reflected into other areas of society. If you want to find the kind-hearted, sentimental portion of our population, you'll find them in school, or at home vacuuming the living room and scrapbooking the last holiday get-together. Just don't be around when their husband gets home, because he's going to be in a shitty mood already.

[Nick Danger]

A friend of mine got one of the first licenses to sell medical marijuana in the state. The state was issuing very few such licenses and he was the only seller for miles and miles. It seemed like he could sell his medical marijuana for almost any price he wanted because nobody was there to undercut him.

If you happen to live in Nevada, Bronco, I bet I know your friend.


I thought it was a possibility but I didn't want to have assumed that as I haven't been to New Zealand and have met a total of two New Zealanders in my life.

I'd also assume those traveling are less likely to be narrow-minded but there is a possibility that for a subset something comes across when they're a fish out of water. An American not surrounded by other Americans maybe has expectations about the way things should be done that really caught his eye. Or he was just trying to explain why he was happy living in the U.S. but had seen some ugly Americans at home and so it was just rationalization.

Nick does illustrate some basic concepts with a few of his anecdotes. There was another anecdote where he discovered the time value of money. I'm only talking about Nick in the third person because I know he appreciates that;

I do appreciate it. Or more to the point I don't mind it, especially when Stavros does it. I can just visualize him sitting in some tiny darkened room in backwoods England somewhere, reading my replies all red-faced and regretting his commitment to not setting me straight ever again.

I haven't had any experience of the whole "Ugly American Abroad" phenomenon. To be frank, my friends are all reasonably sophisticated and polite and would never act abominably under any social circumstance. When I travel I'm hyper-conscious of the social expectations of the place I'm visiting, I do the reading. And in the real world, I'm actually a very quiet person, I rarely speak unless spoken to.

But this thing must happen or it wouldn't be a thing. So all apologies, we really wear people out over here and they get very few vacations. Of course, we have our own problem with this sort of thing in the USA. Can't count the number of times I've gone to a convenience store and found out I couldn't get a cup of coffee because there's an entire bus full of Japanese tourists standing in line for cigarettes all at the same time. But that's easy enough to forgive, there's another store down the street.


-A good buddy spent 9,000 to fix his car and it still wouldn't work. He was so disappointed. When it was pointed out to him that he only had to spend 1,000 dollars more to get it working he said, "I have to spend 10,000 dollars to get my car working?"

I pointed out to him that he's already spent the 9,000 whether he walks away or not. The 9,000 dollars is irrelevant to his decision about whether to spend 1,000 if he knows the 1,000 will get his car working. After all the 9,000 is sort of ummm not floating anymore. I'm gonna name this fallacy the "that money is already wasted" fallacy.

Not sure what the name of that fallacy is either but it falls into the category of sending good money after bad. Maybe your friend wasn't so confident that the next $1,000 was going to get the job done if the first $9,000 didn't.

Your friend's best option there, if he needed the car back, would have been to go ahead and pay the $1,000 and write "paying under protest" on THEIR copy of the repair order. Then he would have been good to go ahead and take them to court. Another option would be to submit a letter (and retain a copy of course) to the repair shop that he is disputing the bill. They would keep the car but they aren't allowed to sell it while the dispute is ongoing.

[broncofan]

Of course I screwed up the sunk cost fallacy example. I was doing it based on memory but I still think the example illustrates the general principle which is that a decision should only be based on what you have to gain or lose by the prospective expenditure when past expenditures can't be recovered.

Most examples I just saw show people wanting to spend more money as a way to protect a bad investment which is irrational and probably the more likely mistake. If the money they spent is gone, then their new decision is justified or not by what they have to gain prospectively.

Blah. In the example I came up with, they wasted 9k and didn't want to spend 1k more because they had already wasted money even though they had assurance the additional expenditure would solve the problem. If the previous expense says nothing about their chance of getting the car fixed with the 1,000 dollars, then the decision should rest on whether the new expense is worthwhile. I am exiting the Viper Room and having a beer at a local pub bc I screwed that one up.

In PA there are a bunch of medical marijuana retailers and growers but the licenses are somewhat limited. Although it's unlikely to occur the federal government could prosecute any one of these people for violation of the controlled substance act. At least that's my understanding of it. The DOJ will probably never go after these people but it's enough of a threat that I know of several people who didn't want to risk it.

[broncofan]

There are a few common sense principles we've followed over here in Blowhardistan that have resulted in your country being subservient to ours, Flighty. Wherever you are, we Americans work harder than you, longer than you, and with more diligence.

Seriously, you're embarrassing me. In Pittsburgh we have yinzers and even they don't talk like this. They will say yinz guys goin to the stillers game? They may not know what to do with the second person plural (neither do I but yinz is not the answer) but they're not assholes. We're an abrasive lot? We work hard? Trust fund kids don't work at all. Their great grandparents did. Our society has all kinds of problems and to the extent anyone believes the crap you just said it's worse than I thought.

If you cobbled together the funds to travel abroad you would stick out like a sore thumb. I'm pulling your application to Mar a Lago. The Donald wants your vote but he doesn't want you hacking up his golf course and hitting on his daughter (that's his job).

[Nick Danger]

Seriously, you're embarrassing me. In Pittsburgh we have yinzers and even they don't talk like this. They will say yinz guys goin to the stillers game? They may not know what to do with the second person plural (neither do I but yinz is not the answer) but they're not assholes. We're an abrasive lot? We work hard? Trust fund kids don't work at all. Their great grandparents did. Our society has all kinds of problems and to the extent anyone believes the crap you just said it's worse than I thought.

If you cobbled together the funds to travel abroad you would stick out like a sore thumb. I'm pulling your application to Mar a Lago. The Donald wants your vote but he doesn't want you hacking up his golf course and hitting on his daughter (that's his job).

LOL - you must run with a different crowd than I do, Bronco. I don't know any trust fund kids. Even the handful of obscenely wealthy people I do know are self-made.

Speaking of which, I thought you said you were Australian. Now apparently you're in Pittsburg. Did I misunderstand you or are you an Australian in Pittsburg?

[filghy2]

-Once I was selling lemonade and I raised the price but people started buying a lot less so I reduced it again.

Is that when you realised you'd be better off working as a lawyer and buying your lemonade from someone else?

The better sunk cost fallacy example for Nick would be the gambler who has lost $1000 in the casino but decides to keep gambling because he has to get the money back.

I wonder if Bill, the pudgy uncoordinated baseball player, is now making more money than Nick.

Now I'm also talking about him in the third person, so he'll be even happier.

[filghy2]

What I've basically been saying all along without coming right out and saying it is that NONE of your theories stand up when the cold, hard light of business corporeality shines in their face with the blinding intensity of a thousand suns. If economics could be broken down formulaically, we'd have no need of economists anymore, would we. But economics becomes pseudo-science when confronted by corruption, salesmanship, unscrupulous investment devices, war, dishonesty, inefficiency, or even the fury of a woman scorned.

There are a few common sense principles we've followed over here in Blowhardistan that have resulted in your country being subservient to ours, Flighty. Wherever you are, we Americans work harder than you, longer than you, and with more diligence.

I think it's time you admitted that your real occupation is a writer of trashy novels.

It's funny that you spend so much time rubbishing economic theory when you seem to have little idea what it is. I'm sure that for every aspect of human behaviour some economist has come up with a theory for it. They've even come up with a theory that fits your characteristic behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect

It's also odd that you subscribe to political views that assume the market is efficient even though you are obviously familiar with the many ways in which it is not efficient. I think you to have been reading too much quantum physics. Just as something can be simultaneously a particle and a wave, you seem to believe the market can be simultaneously efficient and inefficient.

If you still haven't worked out where I'm from you are obviously not a writer of detective novels.

[filghy2]

So yeah, we're a pretty abrasive lot in general, Flighty. I personally don't know anyone running a business, or even managing someone else's business, who isn't perfectly capable of getting downright nasty with someone if they're doing business like a scrub. That kind of hardass attitude gets reflected into other areas of society.


I haven't had any experience of the whole "Ugly American Abroad" phenomenon. To be frank, my friends are all reasonably sophisticated and polite and would never act abominably under any social circumstance. When I travel I'm hyper-conscious of the social expectations of the place I'm visiting, I do the reading. And in the real world, I'm actually a very quiet person, I rarely speak unless spoken to.

More quantum physics, or is it just performance art?

[Nick Danger]

I think it's time you admitted that your real occupation is a writer of trashy novels.

It's funny that you spend so much time rubbishing economic theory when you seem to have little idea what it is. I'm sure that for every aspect of human behaviour some economist has come up with a theory for it. They've even come up with a theory that fits your characteristic behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect

It's also odd that you subscribe to political views that assume the market is efficient even though you are obviously familiar with the many ways in which it is not efficient. I think you to have been reading too much quantum physics. Just as something can be simultaneously a particle and a wave, you seem to believe the market can be simultaneously efficient and inefficient.

If you still haven't worked out where I'm from you are obviously not a writer of detective novels.

Strip away all the personal insults and aspersions on my character and integrity from your posts, I guess what you're saying is two things, Flighty:

1. There are names for all the economic principles I'm expressing in more vivid terms, and you're able to google them.

2. Economies prosper when the government gives away money.

I guess you win, Flighty, I concede both points. With one caveat on point #2 - not for long.

[broncofan]

Is that when you realised you'd be better off working as a lawyer and buying your lemonade from someone else?

I wonder if Bill, the pudgy uncoordinated baseball player, is now making more money than Nick.

Now I'm also talking about him in the third person, so he'll be even happier.
:D Well yes. I got so good at the lawyering that I was able to buy three quarts of lemonade and still afford some porno at the end of the month.

So I never saw the movie Moneyball but because I like baseball I was aware of the plot. The plot involves a baseball team that hires an economics graduate from Yale to help them recruit players relying on a more advanced statistical modeling technique (sabermetrics). Not to body shame Jonah Hill who plays the main character, but he has struggled with his weight a bit, so he kind of is like Nick's friend.

He might be doing very well indeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball_(film)


Hey Nick, I grew up in California, have lived in a bunch of places but am permanently in Pittsburgh, PA now. I never lived in Australia, but I visited it twice and since filghy is from Australia I tried to show my knowledge of two or three phrases I've heard. That's it.

Here is my anecodote of the day:

I don't know what it says about me but I've known a ton of trust fund kids. My undergraduate degree was at a private school that was a reservoir for wayward young adults whose parents had money. About 30% of the students went there to do schoolwork and there were some athletes on scholarship who were serious but the school was a who's who of third generation money and its effects.

I was there because I didn't know if I wanted to go to college at the time and thought it would be a fun place to go to school. It was but you've never seen such spoiled, ridiculous behavior. Twenty year olds who somehow got to college and couldn't write complete sentences, kids who wore lacoste shirts with the collars up, and expensive cars. Anyhow, if you think this is a country of self-made people or that only self-made people have money you're crazy (data might be better than either of our anecdotes;).

After college I spent a year in NYC and it took me five months to find a job. I had good grades and internships on my resume. I ran into a kid who used to wear a trucker hat and was about as dumb as dumb can be and he gave me his card. He was a senior finance something or other at a firm. There is no chance he had some hidden talent or charisma or anything other than family pull.

[broncofan]

Strip away all the personal insults and aspersions on my character and integrity from your posts,
In filghy's third post on this page he has quotes from two consecutive tweets you made. The two posts really do like they were written by a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde. I also think you've been inconsistent about the existence of market failures but it also seems like your tolerance of corruption as just a way of doing things depends on who the corrupt party is.

[Nick Danger]

In filghy's third post on this page he has quotes from two consecutive tweets you made. The two posts really do like they were written by a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde. I also think you've been inconsistent about the existence of market failures but it also seems like your tolerance of corruption as just a way of doing things depends on who the corrupt party is.

Eh, "tolerance" is an odd word to use when it comes to corruption. Corruption just is. On the odd occasion, it's worked to my advantage, but mostly it's something to contend against. I'm much more tolerant of it when it's conservatives who are corrupt. Liberal corruption strikes me as much more hypocritical considering their altruistic platform.

It's also odd that yinz guys seem to read my posts like the New York Times fact-checking department. All I was saying in your so-called Jeckyl & Hyde "tweets" is that Americans are abrasive, but I personally have not witnessed any of us being assholes in other people's countries. Let's talk about THAT for 5 posts!

In any case, I am driving back to Utah today, Bronco, leaving in about 4 hours. Time to get my share of all that stimulus money. The western USA is going to be teeming with hot-rod teenagers who suddenly have $1400 burning a hole in their pockets, so you assholes may be an asshole light for a while. No worries though, just argue amongst yourselves.

[broncofan]

It's also odd that yinz guys seem to read my posts like the New York Times fact-checking department. All I was saying in your so-called Jeckyl & Hyde "tweets" is that Americans are abrasive, but I personally have not witnessed any of us being assholes in other people's countries. Let's talk about THAT for 5 posts!

If I say tweets when I mean posts maybe I lose the right to nitpick but those two posts strike an odd contrast even if you can reconcile them.

I am upvoting your post for the correct use of yinz. Made me laugh but I thought what filghy thought when he quoted both and I've taken your explanation into account. I'll think about it.

[filghy2]

I also think you've been inconsistent about the existence of market failures but it also seems like your tolerance of corruption as just a way of doing things depends on who the corrupt party is.

To sum up Nick's worldview in one sentence: everyone lies and cheats as much as they can, but that's how capitalism works so the government should just stand back and let it happen. That seems a long way from the free market ideal that self-interest serves the public interest because businesses are all competing to provide the best product.

[filghy2]

Anyhow, if you think this is a country of self-made people or that only self-made people have money you're crazy (data might be better than either of our anecdotes;).

There some data here. It looks like an American's lot in life is more likely to be influenced by their parents' income than in most other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States
https://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-mobility-us

[filghy2]

2. Economies prosper when the government gives away money.


That's a gross over-simplification, as usual. There are three main rationales for government spending:
1. To support the economy when private spending is weak.
2. To supply public goods that the market can't or won't provide.
3. To redistribute income more equitably.

[broncofan]

There some data here. It looks like an American's lot in life is more likely to be influenced by their parents' income than in most other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States
https://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-mobility-us
Thanks. I'm glad you found the data because Nick and I would be more likely to post the yelp reviews for some restaurant. My sense is that the "self-made" men that Nick knows would be less likely to benefit from Republican tax and spending plans than the very wealthy trust fund kids I've met along the way.

First, the estate tax in this country doesn't even kick in until the estate is worth more than 10 million dollars. Second, I've said this before but a big part of estate planning is advising older clients not to sell property because of the step up in basis. Basically, income tax on unrealized gains for property vanish at death for the decedent and the heir gets the property at a reappraised value and basis. Third, many tax exemptions and deductions that are in the code are very helpful to large investors in real estate, many of whom have high net worth are going to be passing on this wealth in the form of property to the next generation.

It's not surprising that this is the case. We don't provide health care and we have more medical bankruptcies than any other developed country. College is expensive and lobbying allows certain key industries to hold onto wealth and create dynasties.

[broncofan]

Basically, income tax on unrealized gains for property vanish at death for the decedent and the heir gets the property at a reappraised value and basis.
Just in case any readers don't know how this works here's an example. In 2005, grandma buys a piece of property for 1 million dollars. In 2015 grandma dies. When the property is passed to her grandkid Billy it is reappraised at 5 million dollars. In 2018 Billy sells the home for 6 million dollars. He has taxable gain on the property of 1 million dollars instead of 5 million dollars. Grandma was never taxed on the unrealized gain of 4 million dollars because gain must be realized to be taxable under our income tax code.

The estate tax is separate from our income tax but if she and her husband had a combined net worth under 23 million dollars*, no estate tax is paid.

* I made my argument weaker than it should have been. I forgot that in 2018, the individual exemption was doubled, and the exemption is indexed for inflation.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-estate-gift-and-generation-skipping-transfer-taxes-work

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2020/10/26/irs-announces-higher-estate-and-gift-tax-limits-for-2021/?sh=59bb132b459e

Would it be unfair to tax estates that are less than 23 million dollars?

[broncofan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_tax

I'm curious how much inheritance taxes contribute to dynastic wealth. I'm sure it's not everything. You can see in this link that some countries don't impose inheritance taxes but they also make sure the decedent pays tax on their full estate and doesn't get to avoid taxes for unsold assets. The combination of not taxing unsold assets and giving a very large exemption is a pretty good cushion.

Edit: I'm not certain but I think what Australia and possibly other countries call "crystalising action" is similar to how we require realization before anything is taxable.

[Stavros]

Just in case any readers don't know how this works here's an example. In 2005, grandma buys a piece of property for 1 million dollars. In 2015 grandma dies. When the property is passed to her grandkid Billy it is reappraised at 5 million dollars. In 2018 Billy sells the home for 6 million dollars. He has taxable gain on the property of 1 million dollars instead of 5 million dollars. Grandma was never taxed on the unrealized gain of 4 million dollars because gain must be realized to be taxable under our income tax code.

The estate tax is separate from our income tax but if she and her husband had a combined net worth under 23 million dollars*, no estate tax is paid.

* I made my argument weaker than it should have been. I forgot that in 2018, the individual exemption was doubled, and the exemption is indexed for inflation.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-estate-gift-and-generation-skipping-transfer-taxes-work

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2020/10/26/irs-announces-higher-estate-and-gift-tax-limits-for-2021/?sh=59bb132b459e

Would it be unfair to tax estates that are less than 23 million dollars?

Broncofan, I find your remarks about tax an important way of understanding that it is not the headline figures that matter, or the 'we're gonna cut taxes' or 'they're gonna raise taxes' slogans i politics, but the layers of definition that comprise the tax code, or codes. As Stiglitz argued in the Price of Inequality, corporations use these layers and layers of codes to reduce the headline figure of corporation tax so that in effect, whatever the headline figure is, they rarely pay more than 10%. And, as I think you probably know better than most on HA, Trump has made most of his money with the help of tax lawyers, which is why they are, with Medical, Intellectual Property, and Corporate (in General terms) the best paid lawyers in the US.

But is the tax system fair? And how would you even answer that question?!

[broncofan]

Broncofan, I find your remarks about tax an important way of understanding that it is not the headline figures that matter, or the 'we're gonna cut taxes' or 'they're gonna raise taxes' slogans i politics, but the layers of definition that comprise the tax code, or codes. As Stiglitz argued in the Price of Inequality, corporations use these layers and layers of codes to reduce the headline figure of corporation tax so that in effect, whatever the headline figure is, they rarely pay more than 10%. And, as I think you probably know better than most on HA, Trump has made most of his money with the help of tax lawyers, which is why they are, with Medical, Intellectual Property, and Corporate (in General terms) the best paid lawyers in the US.

But is the tax system fair? And how would you even answer that question?!
I think the answer to those questions depends on what people believe the government should provide for its citizens. In the UK you have the NHS whereas in the U.S. we have record numbers of medical bankruptcies and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military. So one way to frame the question is, is it fair for someone to go bankrupt because they're underinsured and have cancer or heart disease or diabetes while someone else inherits 20 million dollars that is not only tax free, but includes property whose appreciation in value up until the decedent's death will never be taxed?

Like you imply the tax code is so granular and includes so many carve outs and provisions that only lobbyists and a select group of tax attorneys and accountants know about that it is difficult for the public to be informed. If you asked the average person on the street even something as straightforward as what amount of money is exempt from estate tax, the people most likely to have the answer are estate planners and people whose net worth is close to 20 million dollars or greater.

I have never studied corporate tax unfortunately (just federal income tax for individuals) but I'm sure it is an area that includes tons of complex planning to avoid taxes or defer them.

Tax policy is a very interesting subject because for every provision of the tax code we're revealing what our priorities are as a society. And the code incentivizes and discourages different economic behavior in ways that probably isn't always easy to predict.

[filghy2]

Edit: I'm not certain but I think what Australia and possibly other countries call "crystalising action" is similar to how we require realization before anything is taxable.

Yes, capital gains are taxed only on realisation at half the owner's marginal income tax rate (except for the main residence, which is exempt). There's no estate tax, so the inheritor would pay tax only if they sold the property.

Conservative philosophy seems to be as follows:
If a person has no money the government should not give them any because that would reduce their incentive to work.
But if a person inherits millions the government should not tax any of it because that would reduce their incentive to work.

[broncofan]

Yes, capital gains are taxed only on realisation at half the owner's marginal income tax rate (except for the main residence, which is exempt). There's no estate tax, so the inheritor would pay tax only if they sold the property.

Conservative philosophy seems to be as follows:
If a person has no money the government should not give them any because that would reduce their incentive to work.
But if a person inherits millions the government should not tax any of it because that would reduce their incentive to work.
I agree with you and think even without seeing the contradiction neither statement is true. People who have been crushed by poverty may be demoralized. I hope that isn't the cue for an anecdote about someone's remarkable fortitude in the face of overwhelming odds.

When I started to look at the link on inheritance tax there were a lot of societies that don't have nearly the wealth inequality the US has that don't have an estate tax. Of course when I randomly chose countries to look at I found instances where the characterization wasn't inaccurate but the situation was more complicated. For instance, Austria doesn't have an inheritance tax but there is a 3.5% transfer tax on real estate that is inherited. That's not huge but it can add up and if the bulk of the estate is real estate I'm sure it forces a sale in some cases.

Probably more important is that these are also societies that struck different compromises. The U.S. is (I think) such an anomaly for having a weak social safety net, poor healthcare system, relatively low upper income tax bracket, tons of tax avoidance strategies that aren't closed off, step up in basis on inherited property, and huge estate tax exemption that contributes to this.

Stavros, one way I'd distinguish reasonable tax planning from some of the shadier stuff we see is like this: If a tax planner tells a client what the tax consequences are of different courses of action, the client can make an informed decision that considers potential taxation as another cost of doing business. On the other hand, if the tax planning creates "sham transactions" that are intended to re-characterize what is being done to get a tax advantage, I think it's at least unethical.

For instance, if one state has a tax rate of 6% and another state has a tax rate of 3%, then someone should take it into account when they decide where to locate. For states this might lead to a race to the bottom but it's a legitimate consideration. But many tax avoidance strategies involve complex sequences of transactions that are only intended to avoid taxes and do nothing to advance any business purpose.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=broncofan;1962032

For instance, if one state has a tax rate of 6% and another state has a tax rate of 3%, then someone should take it into account when they decide where to locate. For states this might lead to a race to the bottom but it's a legitimate consideration. But many tax avoidance strategies involve complex sequences of transactions that are only intended to avoid taxes and do nothing to advance any business purpose.[/QUOTE]

Sounds like Delaware! Shall we email Joe about it?

[broncofan]

Sounds like Delaware! Shall we email Joe about it?
It's worth a try;

[Stavros]

It's worth a try;


You first, comrade. The only other thing I know about Delaware is that one George, betraying another, was painted crossing the River by boat, albeit, historians have believed, in the wrong direction. Over to you.

[filghy2]

Wherever you are, we Americans work harder than you, longer than you, and with more diligence.

Why? Because of the uber-capitalist nature of our society. The rewards are larger, and when government is done right here, the financial safety net is smaller-to-nonexistent. Common sense - Americans HAVE to work to survive, and if they want the lifestyle that's constantly being shoved down their throats as the acceptable standard by both the media and their peers, they have to work harder and smarter. HAVE to. In other first-world countries, you have...other options. The British dole system, for example. Socialized medicine - in the USA, if you get sick or hurt, you better damn well have a job because that's probably the only way you're going to have medical insurance.

Of course liberals will try to convince you that this is an unfair system. They don't have to convince me, I KNOW it's unfair. Therein lies its strength. In the USA, we're not going to lower the common denominator to the level of the majority, we're going to keep elevating it as high as we can, and it's up to the individual to either keep up, or become a loser. We throw the word "loser" around over here with abandon, it's the worst thing you can be in the USA. Even criminals are above losers, at least they're doing something to advance their position.


Probably more important is that these are also societies that struck different compromises. The U.S. is (I think) such an anomaly for having a weak social safety net, poor healthcare system, relatively low upper income tax bracket, tons of tax avoidance strategies that aren't closed off, step up in basis on inherited property, and huge estate tax exemption that contributes to this.

The US is peculiar in that it seems to value freedom to maximise financial accumulation over virtually every other consideration. I have to say that Nick's description does not make it sound like a pleasant place. What's the point of having somewhat more money if the price is never-ending work, stress, insecurity and all the other ills of uber-capitalism. Are people who focus excessively on money and always having to be a winner actually happier?

[broncofan]

You first, comrade. The only other thing I know about Delaware is that one George, betraying another, was painted crossing the River by boat, albeit, historians have believed, in the wrong direction. Over to you.
Those are the things worth knowing though!

This is the anecdote thread so I'll share that whenever my cousin wants to cancel something that is important in his business and doesn't want the other person to claim they didn't get the message he uses four means of communicating it. He will call and leave a message. He will email (or scan and email). He will fax. And he will then send the document by mail. I asked him if he wanted carrier pigeons so he could have a fifth layer since the Pony Express doesn't operate any more.

But my point is maybe I will email Joe but also hire some skywriters.

[broncofan]

The US is peculiar in that it seems to value freedom to maximise financial accumulation over virtually every other consideration. I have to say that Nick's description does not make it sound like a pleasant place. What's the point of having somewhat more money if the price is never-ending work, stress, insecurity and all the other ills of uber-capitalism. Are people who focus excessively on money and always having to be a winner actually happier?
More anecdotes:) Of two self-made people I've known who are very wealthy, one was bitter and unhappy and one relatively well adjusted. The unhappy one talks like John Malkovich's character in Burn After Reading but is somewhat short and super angry. He became a partner in a corporate law firm at a young age and is a verbally abusive person who threatens to "sue the shit out of" people and thinks everyone is a loser.

The happy person is someone who has a very successful business that he's grown over twenty years. He is the type of person who has a few close friends but also has hundreds of acquaintances. He will walk into a place and just happen to know four or five people who walk by. He is philanthropic and easy-going and an incredibly shrewd business person. I'm sure he can be unpleasant if someone is trying to steal from him but not as a power trip or a flex but because it's necessary. He seems happy.

Anecdotes only go so far though but on something subjective like the happiness of rich people maybe they're okay.

The other thought I have is that when people say they love their country, there are many levels of meaning to that. Seinfeld made a joke about how when you root for your sports team and they trade everyone away pretty soon you are rooting for your team's laundry (or uniform) over another team's. While I'm not going to figure out exactly what delineates love of country from betrayal, we know it's possible to dislike things about your country without failing to be loyal to it. I think there is that ethos about the individual having freedom to pursue selfishness that I don't like and I think it extends beyond the purely economic. I keep obsessing about healthcare but that's where I hear people say things that kind of shock me. About cancer patients who need treatments they can't afford.

I'd be careful about Nick's interpretation being the definitive view but we know it's a pervasive and troubling part of the cultural milieu here. His descriptions end up sounding like a diagnosis of the problem.

[Stavros]

More anecdotes:) Of two self-made people I've known who are very wealthy, one was bitter and unhappy and one relatively well adjusted. The unhappy one talks like John Malkovich's character in Burn After Reading but is somewhat short and super angry. He became a partner in a corporate law firm at a young age and is a verbally abusive person who threatens to "sue the shit out of" people and thinks everyone is a loser.

The happy person is someone who has a very successful business that he's grown over twenty years. He is the type of person who has a few close friends but also has hundreds of acquaintances. He will walk into a place and just happen to know four or five people who walk by. He is philanthropic and easy-going and an incredibly shrewd business person. I'm sure he can be unpleasant if someone is trying to steal from him but not as a power trip or a flex but because it's necessary. He seems happy.

Anecdotes only go so far though but on something subjective like the happiness of rich people maybe they're okay.

The other thought I have is that when people say they love their country, there are many levels of meaning to that. Seinfeld made a joke about how when you root for your sports team and they trade everyone away pretty soon you are rooting for your team's laundry (or uniform) over another team's. While I'm not going to figure out exactly what delineates love of country from betrayal, we know it's possible to dislike things about your country without failing to be loyal to it. I think there is that ethos about the individual having freedom to pursue selfishness that I don't like and I think it extends beyond the purely economic. I keep obsessing about healthcare but that's where I hear people say things that kind of shock me. About cancer patients who need treatments they can't afford.
.

A few points -in my experience, companies function better when the employees feel they are part of a team with a sympathetic manager, rather than one who barks orders and expects instant and constant obedience, although I accept there are some workers who need 'direction'.

Maybe the point about taxes and Delaware, and indeed, patriotism, is why companies do all they can do avoid paying taxes and other costs in their state, hence Delaware as a 'Registration Destination' much as merchant ships are flagged and registered in obscure African countries to avoid liabilities. I am not sure what proportion of rich Americans shift their money into the Caribbean or other tax free bank havens, but if you wanted reform of the tax system, again it may not be the headline figures to focus on, but the layers and layers of conditions that become the bread and butter of tax lawyers whose only aim is to lift the burden, rather than supervise its payments. Indeed, if all the tax that is due from business was paid, your Federal and State Governments could probably create a nation-wide health service free at the time of need; urban transport using green energy cheaper and more efficient than cars, while going some way to dealing with issues in education and housing.

As for pigeons, they are smart birds -some from the UK were decorated for their service in time of war. They are not just fox food. Respect the Pigeon!

[broncofan]

I have nothing to add to your last post as I agree word by word and think it sums up the issues perfectly. One problem with our tax system is similar to what plagues our healthcare system which is that it's easier to pass piecemeal changes through Congress when a complete overhaul is needed. A change to the tax code might address a couple of provisions and likewise the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) didn't replace all of the existing laws. What you get is increasing complexity but also inconsistency and all sorts of gaps. More ambitious plans face challenges to pass and even constitutional challenge so we don't end up with coherence.

I'm sure this is true with other areas of the law, though I can also think of areas of the law where augmenting an existing system doesn't create as many problems.

In other news, Mar a Lago is running into its own problems. It looks like they are having trouble following local ordinances and also there's been a Vanilla Ice sighting there.

https://apnews.com/article/mar-a-lago-partially-closed-covid-19-outbreak-32a7a9694c1f738eef6af6d3fc6e5aa1

[Nick Danger]

You guys miss Trump yet? Anyone ready to admit I was right all along?