The Good Post Gallery

[opebo]

Why in God's name would you pay someone $15 or $20/hour to flip burgers?

otherwise way too much of their labor is being stolen.

How exactly does burger flipping warrant anything close to $15/hour?

how does sitting on your ass warrant a stock dividend?

[opebo]

The whole political compass/axis thing is a fraud propagated by libertarians.

[opebo]

These deficits are not perpetual, though.  They're only during times of economic distress.  If we planned on running a deficit for the next 100 years solid, then yeah, we'd probably be heading toward a default.

WHAT? We've been running a deficit virtually ever single year over the past half century! Our debt is over 100% of GDP now. Your attitude was fine in 1970-something, but we are way past that point.

I'm not talking about deficits in general.  I'm talking about deficits in excess of 5% of GDP, which is what you were complaining about.  The federal budget never needs to be balanced, but it does need periods where it is outpaced by growth of GDP.

Thank you for bringing up the 1970s.  1950s-70s we ran deficits virtually every year, but our debt declined because our GDP grew to the point where that debt was chump change.

You are correct that 5+% of GDP deficit perpetually will lead to default, because the GDP will never grow 5% perpetually, in fact it rarely does in a single year.  However, the federal government can run deficits infinitely if it keeps it around and below that threshold.  A deficit locked in at 2.5% of the GDP can last for an eternity without ever being balanced.  The nominal number that is the national debt can be $20, $50, $100 trillion dollars, as long as we have a GDP of $21, $51, $101 trillion.  We'll be okay.

Right now, we're about $1 trillion behind on nominal GDP with our nominal debt (15.6 to 16.6).  The debt is expected to grow to $18.4 trillion by the end of 2016.  If we grow our nominal GDP by 18% over the next four years, guess what? We'll be back in the green at 18.45 trillion GDP and thus a shrinking Debt-to-GDP ratio, and we won't have a debt problem.

Think that's impossible?  Our nominal GDP grew by 12% over the last four, during "economic malaise."  18% nominal growth over a four year period can be done, in fact it will be.  Now, after 2016 the debt will start rising at a ridiculous pace again, but we don't need to start slashing entire programs to fix that.  All we have to do is move things around to bring down below growth.

This is why it is not a myth but FACT that booms lower the debt.  The debt was shrinking by the early 90s, not just when the surpluses happened, and parts of the mid-1980s during the Reagan deficits because the Debt-GDP ratio was declining aka the REAL debt.  The surpluses just switched things into turbo drive.

And if we get some minor spending cuts done, such as to the military, it'll make the goal GDP even smaller.

[opebo]

...you know what the difference is between Jews and Baptists?  The Jews commit major fraud, and the Baptists commit petty fraud.

[opebo]

If they become more sensible they will come to recognize the failure of extreme positions. If they don't, then the Republican Party eventually becomes little more than the default for people who simply dissent with the incumbent Democrat or hold minority positions.

Disenfranchisement does not happen until the GOP gets all three branches of the Federal government and the majority of State Houses and governorships. Then they might put discriminatory clauses in electoral qualifications such as requirements that people own property or have at least five years' residency at the same place. Or they might establish 'classes' of electors, with some people being allowed to vote but whose votes are somehow rendered invalid. Or they might allow employers to direct how their employees vote.

The Republican Party cannot now win a majority nationwide with the agenda that it now has without some shenanigans.  Such include denying the vote or -- worse --  taking away meaningful choice by a voter. Remember -- even North Korea and Zimbabwe have the right to vote, but obviously voters have no meaningful choice.

[opebo]

Moving to the center on social issues won't help the GOP. It'll just send their white working class voters into the hands of the Democrats, who actually would do a better job representing them anyway, at least on pocketbook issues. If the Republicans want to make themselves electable and make inroads with minorities, they don't need to move to the left on social issues. Rather, they need to stop being the elected patrons of plutocratic privilege.

Of course that will never happen. The Republicans have been in plutocracy's grip since 1876, and every time they nominate a reformer (T.R., Ike) they ultimately get outmaneuvered by the bone-headed business elites that want to drag the country back into the Gilded Age. If by some miracle the GOP could move to the center on economics, or even the center-left, they'd have a good shot at rebuilding themselves as a mass party, conservative social positions or not.

Correct, and this, coupled with the possibility that the Democratic party could someday move left due to the browns makes me anticipate some form of (further) anti-democratic alteration of the State - as our own pbrower has often predicted.

I'd say that's more likely than most people assume. The wealthy aren't just going to allow the Democrats to waltz in and start redistributing their piles of cash. We're already seeing the champions of cheap labor mobilize to deny the poor the vote again in the South and the periphery regions they control by implementing Voter ID and trying to change the rules that govern the electoral college to make it even less representative than it already is.

That, and they already own the courts. That much is obvious. The United States Constitution is the greatest ally the plutocrats have, as it breaks up and divides power without democratizing it. And they own the media and the universities, contrary to conservative ballyhooing about the "left" owning the media and the academy.

There are a lot of ways that the plutocrats can conspire to limit the impending Democratic majority. They've already gerrymandered the House to be their's for at least until 2020. They're deliberately sabotaging the economy in hopes of taking the Senate in 2014. Should they gain control of the White House in 2016, they'll be ripe to prevent that Democratic majority from ever emerging by passing such awful things like a national right-to-work bill, national voter ID, means-testing everything, and expanding the influence of globalization in the American economy.

tl;dr -  Don't get cocky, Democrats. Even with the public scared sh**tless at the moment by the GOP doesn't mean that the GOP will become completely unelectable and unable to win, even while remaining on the far-right. They'll just do as they always have - change the rules to continue the domination of American society by a plutocratic elite.

[opebo]

Jmfcst's banning is an objective negative mark on our moderators' records.  Other bans upset fanboys and were controversial, but ultimately right IMO. 

Jmfcst is different.  He is the only member who was objectively banned for no good reason other than his political beliefs.  He was an abrasive poster, but we have plenty of abrasive posters.  His crime was being anti-gay.  There's no way you can dispute it, especially now that we have threads started by our mods (afleitch) going back into the archives ridiculing non-supporters of gay marriage.  At the very least, it put him under a microscope for scrutiny.

It was a petty political ban.

[opebo]

FDR: Better
Truman: Better
Eisenhower: Better
Kennedy: Better
Johnson: Better
Nixon: Worse
Ford: Worse
Carter: Worse
Reagan: Worse
Bush I: Worse
Clinton: Neutral
Bush II: Worse

Neoliberalism marches on.

[opebo]

Is that you again jmfcst?

Yes, Admiral Motti, it is I.  Do not be too proud of your Moderator terror.  The ability to ban a poster is insignificant next to the power of Truth.  You can infract, but the weakness of your illogical Rebellion against God's word remains exposed for all to see.  And it nags at you day and night.  Why else would you bother distorting the word if the word doesn't bother you? 

And, BRTD is no different.  Even though it has been demonstrated Jesus' statements can't possible be meant to serve as an exhaustive definition for sin (since Jesus mentioned neither bestiality or witchcraft), BRTD still dishonestly brings out that same failed argument. 

But, hey, the absence of logic within both of your arguments will not cause anyone to be deceived, rather your willingness to continue to cling to arguments already shown to be illogical is a result of deception.  Likewise, the acceptance of gay marriage will not cause the downfall of marriage, rather the acceptance of it is a result of a society that already has lost respect for marriage.  For instance, nearly half of babies in the US are now born to unwed mothers. 

[opebo]

huge swaths of the country are moving towards living conditions resembling something between a 2nd and a 3rd world country.  not that poverty doesn't exist in the liberal urban centers, but rudiments of civilization, the rule of law, and literacy do in large part exist.  not so for the deep and now peripheral South.

[opebo]

Let me be clear.  I am not a sociopath.  I am not a horrible person.  I am not mentally handicapped or mentally challenged in any way.  I am not a thief.  I am not an idiot.

[opebo]

The Adventures of Hobo Orgy Guy and Blondie

[Blondie sits in front of a campfire inside his dog house.  A hobo steps through the dog house doorway, and joins him at the fire.]

Hobo: I hope you don't mind if I take shelter in here?

Blondie: I'm just a dog.  Who am I to complain?

Hobo: Fair enough.

Blondie: But if you really want shelter, you should knock on the door of the adjacent mobile home.  You know, a mobile home for humans.  This is a dog house, genius.

Hobo: The Bushie family?  I can't stand them.  You see, the kid in that family, BushOklahoma, had abandoned his house, and it turned into a great location for group sex for myself and my associates.  However, we were found out, and the police got involved, and the whole thing was a mess.  BushOK actually moved back here from out of state, and began regular patrols of the property.  I mean, he started driving by the house for a few minutes at least once a week.  How are we supposed to ensure our privacy when he's harassing us like that?  Ever sense then, I've been trying to kill him, or at least maim him, by dropping rocks off of nearby buildings.

Blondie: So, you know the Bushie family as well?  I've actually been adopted by them.  It's a rather unfortunate state of affairs though.  I show up here a few weeks ago, looking for food and shelter.  I figure I was owned by some other family, but I don't know.  I was only a six week old puppy.  What the hell do I know?  Can you remember what happens from one day to the next when you're six weeks old?  Anyway, I show up, figure they'll return me to my owner.  Seems like they make a halfhearted attempt to find my owner.  Next thing I know, I'm being left out here in the heat all day with minimal shelter and very little human companionship.  On top of that, they start calling me J.J. for no good reason.  I'd already learned that my name was Blondie.  You're going to confuse a puppy like that?  So they won't let inside their mobile home, and they only come out briefly each day to throw a ball for me to retrieve.  Sometimes the old man walks me, but it's not much.  It's gotten worse, since BushOK left for his week in Kenya.  Hope he comes back soon, and makes a real effort to find my original owner.

Hobo: I see.  Sounds like we both have reasons to hold a grudge against the Bushie family.

Blondie: Indeed we do.......Can I ask you three more questions?

Hobo: Sure, no problem.  I've got all the time in the world.

Blondie: OK, well, I'm not sure I know how to put this.  But how do you explain what's happening to you right now: a talking dog, a campfire inside a dog house which should not logically be large enough to fit a camp fire, a dog, and a human?

Hobo: Oh, yeah.  That.  Well, I'm pretty high right now, so nothing would surprise me.  In any case, if I can't explain it, can you?  What's your explanation for how you can talk, and why the dog house is so big on the inside, like the Tardis or something?

Blondie: Don't know.  I'm just a dog.  How am I supposed to know how the world works?  Anyway, my second question is: What's your name?  I told you mine was Blondie.  How about you?

Hobo: I don't actually know my real name.  I have amnesia.  That is, everything before about 2008 is kind of a fog.  Tried to find out who I was, but I lost the will to keep looking for clues, became destitute, and found release in the orgies I participate in.  Anyway, the only name I know is the one I've taken on for myself, Hog.

Blondie: Well Hog, nice to meet you.

[Blondie puts out his paw to shake, and Hog takes it and greets him.]

Hog: So what's your third question?

Blondie: You asked if you could take shelter in here.  Well, shelter from what, specifically?  Just an "I'm homeless, and I need some place to sleep" kind of shelter, or are you taking refuge from something in particular?

Hog: You mean you don't know?  There's a tornado coming.  Can't you hear the winds?  You're a dog, so I thought you'd have super hearing or something.

Blondie: A tornado?!?

[Blondie starts digging furiously in the dirt, which sprays onto the fire, and puts it out.]

Hog: What are you doing?

Blondie: [Blondie continues to dig as he responds.]  Digging.  If there's a tornado on the way, we have to get to low ground.  There's nowhere around where there's low ground.  So we make some low ground by digging.  I mean, I'm a dog.  It's the only good response I have in a crisis like this.

[Hog peers out the dog house door at the approaching storm.]

Hog: It's too late for that now.

[Moments later, the dog house is swept up by the approaching winds, and launched high into the air.  Blondie and Hog hang onto the house for dear life.

As they're sucked into the vortex, they look out at the debris flying through the air.  They see mobile homes, and what look like human bodies, both dead and alive.

Nearby, they see what looks like Inks riding a bicycle in the air.  It slowly morphs into an image of Inks riding a broomstick and cackling.  It looks remarkably like the 3:08 mark in this clip, but with the human characters as male rather than female.

Finally, the dog house, with Blondie and Hog inside, crashes to the ground, and Hog loses consciousness.

An undetermined amount of time later, Hog wakes up to Blondie licking his face.]

Hog: What are you doing?

Blondie: Waking you up.  Sorry for the crude method, but I'm a dog.  It's the only way I know how.

Hog: No sweat.  [Hog stands up and looks around.]  How long was I out?

Blondie: Don't know.  But look!  [He points.]  The dog house is still in relatively good shape.  And the tornado's gone.  Looks like it wasn't as destructive as we thought.  And we haven't even been displaced that far from our original location.  The Bushie family trailer home is right there, just 100 yards or so away.

Good morning.

[Bushie appears behind them.  Blondie and Hog are startled at Bushie's surprise appearance.  But Hog quickly picks up the nearest rock and tosses it at Bushie's head.  The rock miraculously flies right through Bushie's head and he's unharmed.]

Oh, throwing rocks at me won't hurt.  I mean, I know you're my friend and you're just looking out for me, even though you just tried to kill me.  It doesn't bother me though.  I don't take it personally.  But you can't hurt me because I'm not really here.  I'm a holographic projection from the future, and can only communicate with you through these text boxes.  I've come here from the future so I can help you.

TO BE CONTINUED....

[opebo]

More moralistic new left nonsense that can be safely ignored, don't worry.

[opebo]

Guys, keeping a dog outside isn't going to kill it. Do you think dogs didn't exist before air conditioning? As long as she has shade and plenty of water, she will survive 105 degrees let alone 95 degrees. Hate to burst your upper middle class bubble, but there are plenty of people who survive in those sorts of temperatures.

[opebo]

Yeah, the ridiculous thing about Inks' position is that he wants to punish people for making a choice that they don't have. All this diet stuff is largely decided by corporations and government policies; individuals have very little say in it unless they make a concerted effort. Food corporations spend millions and millions of dollars developing addicting, unhealthy foods, and then additional millions in advertising and marketing convincing people to eat them. And once a kid's palette develops, based on fatty, sugary, high cholesterol foods, as we've seen with Bushie, even normal foods like salad are disgusting and inedible.

[opebo]

I love this post.  TNF you're exactly right and thanks for sharing.

I was born when my parents were young'uns. We lived in a trailer until I was four years old, and moved out of it largely because my dad landed a job at a plastics plant and joined the United Steelworkers of America. So I guess you can say that my pro-union positions are largely a response to seeing first hand how unions make it possible for someone to go from living in a trailer to living in a decent sized home, and because of that union (and my mom's union) I've been able to go to the doctor my whole life, been able to get through college entirely debt-free, and been able to have a car and all that. People who say unions are outmoded or do nothing for their members are ignorant or kidding themselves. If it weren't for my parents' unions, and if it weren't for the labor movement, I would be a completely different person with a completely different history.

Much of my family is in some way involved with the labor movement. My grandfather, uncle, and great uncle are/were all members of the United Association of Pipefitters and Steamfitters, which helped move them (especially in my grandfather's case, he grew up rather poor in the 1950s) and into the middle class. My mom is a member of the Kentucky Education Association (KEA) as am I, and I plan on sticking with the union (or if I move elsewhere, the AFT) until the day I die.

I think the earliest thing I can remember my grandfather telling me as a kid, concerning politics, is that the Democrats were for the workingman and the Republicans for the wealthy. With a bit of nuance I understand that's not always the case, nor has it ever been, but the association of the Democratic Party with American labor, and the continued (if limited) influence labor wields within the party has largely prevented me from abandoning the Democrats, even if I otherwise have grown to detest the average liberal in someways more than I detest conservatives. I was an unapologetic Obama apologist for the duration of last year and I really regret that, as the whole of 2013 has been nothing but an endless assault by the administration on the underpinnings of the American social welfare state, high minded rhetoric aside. Given the option, I'd go back and cast my 2012 ballot for Jill Stein a second time around, though by no means am I ideologically committed to the 'green movement' in its current incarnation.

I consider most issues subordinate to the question of economic dignity, but on those issues too, I think my background has had an important role in shaping my beliefs. I am strongly opposed to gun ownership regulation, in spite of a slip-up earlier this year into Obama apologism, and have been growing more opposed to the notion of gun ownership regulation in response to the increasingly mafia-like organization of the state itself, with it's naked alliance with business and financial interests and willingness to spy on and deny due process to American citizens for flimsy reasons. I feel those who are unilaterally pacifistic or non-interventionist, or even oppose the use of violence for political reasons are naive and misread history -- those willing to use force to achieve their aims are largely those who have written history. I am not saying that I am in favor of armed force by [insert group here], rather that the threat of force has always been the driver in rapid social or economic reform. If you don't believe that, I would suggest checking out all of human history at your local library.

I consider myself an egalitarian and am strongly antiracist, antisexist, etc. I believe in the eventual abolition of marriage and generally take a libertarian stance on state power outside of the economic realm; I would consider this a reflection, a reaction, really, to my upbringing as a devout Southern Baptist, a worldview I now reject wholeheartedly.

[opebo]

It should be doubled for starters, indexed to increases in worker productivity and inflation, and firing should be made illegal unless you aren't doing your job. Also the work week should be gradually reduced to 32 hours, the closed shop brought back, and scabs banned from being used during a strike.

[opebo]

What is Catchon's idea of freedom? His idea of freedom, you ask? It is, simply, the freedom to sit and shoot the breeze at the lake; to sit in smoky bars watching the nightly news on the monochrome TV; to not have to think (more out of a desire for perceived simplicity than out of malice) about too much to do with race and sex and class; to have a good, probably industrial or managerial job, well-protected in some way or another but probably not through the presence of a strong union; to go to a good, solid, apolitical or vaguely center-right and culturally conservative working-class Catholic parish; to drive powerful cars and drink bitter beer and fire off guns in the woods when he so pleases; to live, in other words, in Michigan as it could be, Michigan as it is perceived to once have been, Michigan as it is dreamed it might be again, the Michigan that has verily opened the door to the new world, withdrawing from the general concourse of humanity's sad history like Hara Setsuko, a Michigan defined by freedom from insecurity and uncertainty and particular types of change, The Michigan That We Dreamed Of.

[opebo]

Technological advancement is always a good thing as long as we embrace it properly.  In recent decades Americans have got it in their head that the arbitrary 40 hours is the only way to be a full time worker.  That needs to change.  The future of full time work is less hours at higher wages

[opebo]

The people who think the House can't flip have their heads in the sand over demographics changes. An awful lot of elderly Republicans are going to die this decade, and the voters replacing them in the 18-28 age bracket are incredibly liberal -- and far less white.

You simply cannot be as unpopular as the GOP is, for the length of time the GOP has been, without serious and ugly long-term consequences.

[opebo]

He'll probably be paroled in ten years or so, which would be an appropriate punishment. At the end of the day, things like this need to be illegal, or else the country can't really function at all.

^THIS.

if you feel invested in the power system, that leeches off us all, feel invested in its fuctioning, that is.  Tolstoy said, in The Law of Love/Law of Violence, if you all want to put all these young males into militaries, and arm them, and have them kill people, and treat the wounded, and all of it, go do it yourself, don't drag me into it.  that's how I feel -- that's why I say, there is no national interest.  when the US murders Pakistani and Yemeni kids that doesn't represent me, that's not in my interest, that's not my country.  nothing about the US foreign policy occurs with my consent beyond my implicit consent of paying taxes, (which I don't because I earn almost no money), and so it goes.  I'm not invested in the whole game.  nobody who is acting on my behalf was exposed by Bradley Manning.  so God Bless him.  if Lief feels otherwise, that's his deal, his responsibility to justify it.

[opebo]

"loving on" is not an intimate action.  It is caring for, talking to, playing with, or just spending time with someone and show them that they are loved.  It should not be an unusual phrase and anybody with an understanding of real love should know it is nothing of intimate or sexual connotations.

[opebo]

I think Colorado is the most politically interesting state right now. For one, it has become a presidential bellwether state. It is closely connected in its statewide margins to Virginia, since 1996, which was the best bellwether for Elections 2008 and 2012 (which left Colo. to rank Nos. 3 and 2 over the last two cycles). In fact, Colo.'s gender-voting outcomes from 2008 matched the national percentages of support for President Obama by both males (49) and females (56). No other state did that! (From 2012, the exit-polled state which best matched up was the nation's most-recognized bellwether, Ohio. It was No. 2 for statewide-vs.-nationwide in its margin.)

While much has been said of California has been true, that it is a trendsetter, I can see a common denominator in the two states. And Colo. deserves plenty attention.

Just look at how Colo. voted last year. The ballot-proposal passage for marijuana that is not just medicinal but also recreational. That state's voters embraced this before Oregon, regularly in the Democratic presidential column since 1988, and before a whole host of blue presidential states. And Colo.'s voting electorate flipped the state House to the Democratic column.

The way Colo. is heading, it's probably going to get marriage equality in its state before a number of other blue presidential states, like my home state Michigan (which has Republican majorities via the midterm wave of 2010 and a state Democratic party which has rested on their supposed laurels for much too long that it made a switch with the chairmanship). And given that the Colo. state legislators went for civil unions, which is not the solution but was an improvement, before Mich. and many other presidential blue states, I think that state is worthy of plenty discussion. California brought marriage equality to the U.S. Supreme Court, so to speak, and Colo. is one state that is amongst the first to bring marijuana (recreational along with medicinal) to the national conversation about the freedom to personally use a substance that does not harm anywhere on the level as does alcohol.

There was also the 2012 vote, by the Colorado electorate, on fracking. For more of a report about the 2012 vote in Colorado, I'll give this link: @  http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/progressives_win_big_in_colorado/ .


There is a thread where one person tries to argue that state of Pennsylvania is going in the direction of the Republicans by phrasing it as "the right." No. That is a base state for the Democratic Party, and has a blue tilt since after the 1940s. With Colo., and with its 2012 voting, it's become a presidential bellwether state which produces margins tightly connected with the national numbers. And Coloradoans are saying, "Go left!"

That contradicts with the national policies of both the two parties (both in a Washington, D.C. bubble for what seems an eternity); they have a comfy bubble in which they live. Great money. Great benefits. Great payoffs. But it's becoming more and more apparent that social and political policies, by voters, are telling this country to go in the direction of the left. Trendsetter states California and Colorado are helping to lead the way.

[opebo]

Do we charge people and send them to prison for coughing in public while suffering from influenza?

There was no malicious intent.  15 years per victim is a crime in and of itself and this will only serve to further stigmatize those living with HIV.

Be honest, be up front, USE A F**KING CONDOM.  But seriously... watch the prudes make this guy out to be some monster now in 3...2...1...

[opebo]

Gays have one huge advantage: their target group also wants sex.