>> ^Doc_M:
"You're beating your chest as if the cons are going to take over in 2010 or 2012 and fix everything, and it's PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THEM and the people who support them--that's why we're in this mess."
Psh. What has the completely Democrat-dominated government done? Nothing. Unemployment is higher than it's been in almost 30 years, the deficit is staggeringly enormous, and we're still at war... This "change" has failed by every measure of the word.
"Fix everything?" Unlikely.
Okay, let's recap:


You support Democrats being kicked out of office, to be replaced by Republicans, because after less than one year, Democrats haven't fixed all the major, catastrophic problems Republicans have caused over the last decade?

Add to this that you are having a back and forth in the first place because you smugly voiced support for the filibuster primarily because it is effectively blocking Democrats from instituting real reform?

Accountability, Republican-style:

1. Run a campaign to take over a nuclear plant based on sticking to the highest standards of safety
   
2. Once hired, skirt all safety restrictions for years until the plant melts down
   
3. Once fired, do everything in your power to sabotage your replacement's cleanup efforts
   
4. Run a campaign to take over the cleanup because your replacement hasn't cleaned up your mess fast enough
   

>> ^RedSky:
@NordlichReiter
The dollar is only really down to levels it was pre-financial crisis. Taking your reference point at the height of the global financial crisis is unfair because everyone was buying up US treasury bonds and over inflating the currency.
The fact that countries are considering moving away from the US dollar as the reserve currency, the currency they trade in, and which they keep as foreign reserves is a good thing in the long term. This has kept the US dollar overvalued for decades, and has contributed significantly to the unsustainable consumption and housing binge, and was obvious a major catalyst for the global financial crisis. A rebalancing would put the onus further on factors of GDP such as investment as a contributor to economic growth.
To say that the economy is in recovery is not disingenuous. They're simply using leading indicators such as stock price or inventory levels, which are generally good predictors of economic recovery and in this case a pending fall in unemployment. The scale of that is anyone's guess though, as is how much of the economy was spurned by returning business confidence in the private sector rather that purely government stimulus and specific programs such as first home buyer's grants and cash for clunkers.


Cash for clunkers was the biggest waste. The other parts of your arguments I cannot find fault with.

Taking assets that can be modified, recycled reused, and even melted down for metals and destroying them and leaving them in a dump yard is a waste. Why would you destroy something that has re-usable parts and resources?

Differential gears, transmission parts, bearings, four wheel drive parts, pinions, springs, headers, skid plates, hubs, disks, and shoes. Instead they put sodium silicate into the engines. All because the government doesn't want the cars traded in being re-sold back into the market.

I would argue that having a hulking dump of cars, like I see on the side of the Highway is worse than seeing a repaired 78 Volkswagen van that runs on diesel, or electricity.

^ Agreed, if your afraid of the hood, there is always eBay.

The real problem is that most of the gold is probably stolen and the police are never able to recover any of it before its melted down.

^ I see, but then you aren't talking about overpopulation, that is a more technical term. What you mean is overcrowding, and that is still avoidable (many rural areas left in the world). What isn't is the places the we knew and loved changing into something else. The world is a testimonial to change, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, tectonic movement, asteroids becoming crashed into us...you can't stop change, even if it isn't something you like.

Of note, I watched an interesting video the other day (TED) on the Siberian frost melting down in east Russia, and as a result, massive tracts of farm-able land being reviled, like farm land the size of the US. Should be interesting to see what this phase of the earth with entail for humanity.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^potchi79:
So you start a pulse jet with a leaf blower?

Mostly yes, the idea behind most jets is to compress incoming air with fuel. No spark is needed as the compression causes heat. The problem is you need the air already moving to start. The same is true of turbofan engines of most jet airplanes. In my day they used electric motors to start the fan blade spinning. Once they are up to speed, they feed enough air fast enough into the combustion chambers to keep it going. A leave blower is a lot easier to add to a project then an electric motor. If you look up DIY jet engines in youtube, you will see it as the staple for home brew jet starters.
Jets are much more "simple" then combustion engines as they are mainly self sustaining when up to speed. They are very complex in other ways though, like how to not melt down under extreme heat and such. A flame out at low speed typically spells doom for a jet...engine restarts when careening downward is not as experience you want in life.
One thing I have never understood about a pulse jet is how to ramp your speed up. With a turbofan, you just up the fan speed or fan blade pitch...with a pulse just I have no idea. Add more fuel maybe? If that were the case, then the max speed would be dictated by the explosion maximum. If your explosion is to great, you risk vibration annihilation or destruction of your combustion chamber...or you spit the hot air out the back end before the pulse can bring it back for re-ignition? Or perhaps it has to do with pulse modulation and changing how long you wait till your open the valve. The longer you wait, the more thrust you get before the next cycle? Dunno, pulse jets were always more of a curiosity than an area of study.
Edit: Jets are very similar to diesel engine as there is no spark needed...all the heat is gained through compression. Hope that isn't TMI at this point


than

Though your knowledge of jets is impressive. Let's really try to stomp this sign of the internet generation out, shall we?! Who's with me!?

>> ^potchi79:
So you start a pulse jet with a leaf blower?


Mostly yes, the idea behind most jets is to compress incoming air with fuel. No spark is needed as the compression causes heat. The problem is you need the air already moving to start. The same is true of turbofan engines of most jet airplanes. In my day they used electric motors to start the fan blade spinning. Once they are up to speed, they feed enough air fast enough into the combustion chambers to keep it going. A leave blower is a lot easier to add to a project then an electric motor. If you look up DIY jet engines in youtube, you will see it as the staple for home brew jet starters.

Jets are much more "simple" than combustion engines as they are mainly self sustaining when up to speed. They are very complex in other ways though, like how to not melt down under extreme heat and such. A flame out at low speed typically spells doom for a jet...engine restarts when careening downward is not as experience you want in life.

One thing I have never understood about a pulse jet is how to ramp your speed up. With a turbofan, you just up the fan speed or fan blade pitch...with a pulse jet I have no idea. Add more fuel maybe? If that were the case, then the max speed would be dictated by the explosion maximum. If your explosion is to great, you risk vibration annihilation or destruction of your combustion chamber...or you spit the hot air out the back end before the pulse can bring it back for re-ignition? Or perhaps it has to do with pulse modulation and changing how long you wait till your open the valve. The longer you wait, the more thrust you get before the next cycle? Dunno, pulse jets were always more of a curiosity than an area of study.

Edit: Jets are very similar to diesel engine as there is no spark needed...all the heat is gained through compression. Hope that isn't TMI at this point

Your video, Birther Melts Down On MSNBC, Blames MSN "Brownshirts", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
All the content is still here. The videos, comments, playlists and people are all still standing in the face of today's syftopianfuture. It's not the end of the colander. If we let this bring us down, then the errorists have truly won.
Long live the sift and it's awesome citizenry!


It might be that simple for some, but not for others. I'll share something here I hadn't posted publicly yet in all the time I've been here. This is why I'm so hung up on the prison system and the drug war in general. I shared it with one person in private but so far I've always just said it isn't relevant in public posts.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=216&topic_id=3703&mesg_id=3722

I wrote that on request for someone who thought it might help them with something, wouldn't have put it on record otherwise but there it is. I do what I do so we'll stop making new people like me.

I've spent much of the last 20 years fighting this stuff, full time the last 10 or so and part time in increasing amounts before that. For personal reasons I can't do it anymore and I've posted that here before, it's all getting closer to the surface again and I can't do this like that. The loss of the post "cops say legalize drugs" is something I'll probably never be able to reproduce and the only reason it got as many votes as it did was the debate, not the post itself.

For some it's the loss of some status and some votes. For me it was the loss of one of the few records I had of the last few years and it's a reference that's still posted in other places. Going to look pretty pathetic as a reference the way it is and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it.

Yeah, I'm pretty depressed too.

>> ^oxdottir:
I use this site for work. I play videos in class sometimes. The way I do it is by sorting by votes. Those votes meant something in terms of reactions of many, many people. All that is gone. Now, if you look for all the videos ever submitted in the pets channel, does sorting them by votes mean anything? Could a person ever look at a representative sample of the hundreds of pet videos? It might as well be youtube in terms of information overload. The sift part of videosift is gone.


I do hope that it will be back at some point, but for now, ya, it's gone.

>> ^oxdottir:
I use this site for work. I play videos in class sometimes. The way I do it is by sorting by votes. Those votes meant something in terms of reactions of many, many people. All that is gone. Now, if you look for all the videos ever submitted in the pets channel, does sorting them by votes mean anything? Could a person ever look at a representative sample of the hundreds of pet videos? It might as well be youtube in terms of information overload. The sift part of videosift is gone.


You're right about that part. But there is always something to gain. Many excellent videos are missed because people concentrate on what is grabbing the most votes.

>> ^gwiz665:
mauz, who the hell are you to say votes aren't important? I think they are. They are the premise the whole site runs on. We are very lucky that no more than those were lost, because I have no doubt that many would abandon ship in that case. This is not the end of the world, but that doesn't mean it's not fucking important.
oxdottir, I was where you are last night. It sucks, but things are shaping up now. You can be in my clique? hug


who the hell are you to think they are? that type of question goes nowhere.

Read my post again. I did not say they were not important. To focus on votes as if they were the ultimate factor is fallacious. If I cared that much about votes I would not have posted many of the videos I have posted.

Secondly, you are not taking the context of this blog into consideration. The guy is saying he feels like his videos died because the votes are gone. Do you agree with that? The effort is not lost because people enjoyed his contributions and the content is still on the site, and many are not seeing that because they are focused on votes and ranks. I was ranked 25 at one point, then came back after months of being absent to a 120 rank and a 3rd of my videos (and consequently votes) gone because of that old system of killing the video if the person did not fix it in 3 days. So what? I did not focus on that, I only continued to sift things I considered worth sharing. THAT is the whole premise the site runs on. The votes are the tool used for that premise.

Imstellar,

As always you misinterpret data to fit your perceptions.

Real GDP growth has doubled from 1970 to 1990 check BEA, national debt has only increased larger then a fraction of total GDP from 1980 to 1990, with massive debt growth from 1990 to 2000. These levels however are still below levels of World War 2.

Your example really however applies when it comes to the recent so called growth from 1997 to 2007, as real wage increases were nonexistent, so was real stock market growth on the S&P 500. So instead of the economy expanding the US economy has been fueling growth with borrowing. At the same time credit card debt started overtake real wages, with massive increases from 2003Q1.
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/02/the_failure_of_1.html

Your idea that private enterprise can solve these issues is again wrong, given that the Progressive movement brought government intervention to sustain fair markets and competition which lead to break ups of monopolies. Bringing forth agencies like the FDA, FTC and the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Federal Reserve was created to control tariffs and antitrust cases. All these agencies came about in the 1900s and were responses to citizen requests after laissez-faire economics in the 1800s, they also paved the way for the roaring 20s. Before you start complaining about the the government extending the great depression a recent study showed that only 20% of professional economists hold that view, and even then they claim that they Fed should have been the one to instigate change by reducing interest rates and allow credit back in the economy but this is in hindsight with development of Monetary policy in the 50s and 60s.

Furthermore, I never advocated for socialism in the US because it is not going to happen, what I said was socialistic policies, the capitalistic component is not being removed from the US unlike what you seem to believe. Its called a Mixed economy for a reason. There is no pure capitalistic or socialistic economy in the world bar Cuba and some failed states, the closest capitalistic state in the world is actually Singapore.

You keep saying '2%' unemployment.

The unemployment problem is far more severe, but you are underestimating its very nature, the stimulus package was created to save or create 3.5 million jobs, the unemployment figures currently place it at 4.4 million (half of this in the last 4 months) since the start of the recession.

With levels spiking to 8.1 as I mentioned earlier in single month, the highest level since 1983. This strikes at consumer confidence, and further reduces consumption and aggregate demand, not to mention that it means that more foreclosures are coming. Consumption is already taking a hit as confidence plummets and expenditure is being relegated to essentials (however I think the electronics sector will still thrive, especially the video games market, it has been shown to be fairly recession proof unless EA goes crazy and starts to buy up other companies).

Not only are layoffs large but there is increasing firms that are simply coming out of entire market sectors. The Labor department has stated that Unemployment benefits will not recover lost jobs but more must be spent on actual job retraining to realign the US economy with trend factors over the last 10 years, 4.5 billion is in the stimulus package for job retraining. That is still too low as in current dollars $20 billion a year went to job training in 1979, compared with only $6 billion last year.

This recession will fundamentally rebuild the economy, even with unemployment benefits and a sudden resurgence in consumer confidence there is not enough credit available to allow a short term return to employment. Which again necessitates the large fiscal policies we are seeing enacted.

Education will also play a vital role in this, am an advocate of centralized educational standards. I disagree with educational avenues in the US, which usually require graduates to graduate with massive debt which they repay for several years afterward. Not to mention that systems like the SAT and No Child Left behind have only created a system where children learn more about test taking then actual acquisition of knowledge. But this is another debate entirely which I don't really feel like expanding on right now.

Finally. Again to reiterate what I said about the 'let them fail' ideas with regards to the banking system. The Treasury still has not made up its mind how it will cover the toxic debt, the Fed let Lehman Brothers fail and see what happened, the entire finical sector melted down and dragged several other big firms with it. There is talk of letting Citigroup fail, that is a huge bank, and the actual cross exposure is not clearly relevant if its allowed to fail. It could drag the rest of the financial sector with it. However there is clear rallying right now as Citigroup posted a profit, with markets perking up.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You're so right MINK - Lucky and I are making it just like Guantanamo around here.

Why don't you go the full Godwin - VideoSift is just a digital Auswitch really. I'm looking forward to melting down all of your virtual gold fillings and cashing in.

>> ^MINK:
quote dag:
"Lucky and I are but two people. We rely on the community to bring problems to our attention. We act on what we are told or what we see."
for further information see: Guantanamo Bay.

I smoked it quite a few times but I never was affected by it; yet I would watch my friends melt down on the same stuff! Several times, I saw people reduced to drooling on themselves. Oh, high school..

The high only seems to last for a few minutes, but I have heard people describe it as feeling much longer.

I thought karaidl was long gone. I know that at the very least he must've missed choggie's melt down. In all fairness I think he should be allowed to remove the content he posted. It sucks for the community but we don't have any rules against it (maybe we should).