CIA Spokesperson: "We never saw it coming!">> ^rkone:

"If I had 29 dominos, the last domino would be as tall as the Empire State building"
Enjoy your ticket to Guantanamo.

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The last domino would have to be approximately 0.67x the size of the Empire State Building>> ^TheSluiceGate:

Someone build those 29 dominoes please....

Someone build those 29 dominoes please....

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"If I had 29 dominos, the last domino would be as tall as the Empire State building"

Enjoy your ticket to Guantanamo.

Domino slow-mo music is the same as an 80's movie scene when a hot chick enters the room apparently.

>> ^eric3579:

dead


Fixed and thanks.

>> ^NetRunner:

Uhh, so acknowledging that the argument is dividing along right/left lines, while decrying the fact that it has done so...is perpetuating it?

I think you went beyond acknowledging when you made a statement on behalf of The Left™. I think there are a lot of people trying to make this partisan politics because they get an automatic support base if they succeed, but I also think the people who are doing that are a loud minority at this point. Most people, even the self-appointed judge/jury/executioners I mentioned before, have not allowed politics to shape their opinions IMO.

>> ^NetRunner:

Here's the rub, what are those investigations aimed at achieving? An investigation of the local police, and whether they conducted their side of things properly, or an investigation that might result in charges against Zimmerman? From what I've heard it's the former, not the latter.

I'm not sure it's plausible to get a new local investigation without showing some sort of negligence or wrong-doing in the first one. I also can't help but wonder if, even after all the investigations are complete, the case will be tossed out because SYG does protect Zimmerman here. Whether the law is right or wrong is a separate trial. It may be that this case is the first domino that starts the repeal of SYG, but it also may be that Zimmerman goes free because it was the law at the time. I'm not saying I'd be happy about that; just that it seems like a possibility.

>> ^NetRunner:

That's the most generous of my theories, but I don't really think it's that. The things they're pushing back against aren't the handful of people saying calmly "this is why the Stand Your Ground law is bad policy", they're pushing back hardest against the people who're suggesting this was some sort of racially motivated murder. They've apparently lost all sense of reason and proportion when it comes to defending white guys who get accused of being racist.

There are absolutely some weird reactions in all this which are based on race. I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference whether Zimmerman is a racist or not. I guess it could make the difference between murder and a lesser charge, as it could be used to establish motive, but here and now it's a minor issue for me. Whether or not he is a racist will not effect this stage in the process. That won't come into play until a trial begins.

>> ^NetRunner:

I agree, there's a real danger of the "Zimmerman needs to be charged" camp making it impossible for Zimmerman to be tried in an impartial manner. Most of the stuff I see though is people collecting evidence of one type or another that suggests the shooting wasn't in self-defense, as a way to demonstrate the need for a trial. Case in point, the video up top showing Zimmerman looking uninjured and unmolested some 20-30 minutes after the altercation with Martin.

It seems to me like that's what you need to do if you want to convince people that there needs to be an investigation and a trial -- you cast doubt on the story that Zimmerman told the police, which was the reason they released him without further investigation.

Truth is, I think it's going to be hard to build a solid case against Zimmerman at this point, mostly because the opportunity to collect the evidence that could've convicted or conclusively exonerated him is gone now. That's why the police's refusal to conduct an investigation in the immediate aftermath of the shooting feels so criminal to a lot of people.

I've not heard anything about evidence collected from Martin's body though. Perhaps there's something there that would be able to definitively establish what happened.

I worry that the "public investigation" ruins the eventual trial if it goes too far. This video seems like extremely weak evidence. The poor quality could easily be hiding cuts and bruises. I'd put more weight in police documentation and hospital records (or the lack thereof) than this video to establish whether Zimmerman had injuries.

I agree that a lot of evidence has been lost to time now. Examination of the gunshot wound can probably still tell us a lot about the altercation, fortunately. Showing who was on top of who at the time of the shooting will probably go a long way toward telling the real story by itself.

>> ^Trancecoach:

Seems to me that the People need to vote with their dollars and stop, for example, buying Dominos Pizza, once they learn that it's profits support anti-gay campaigns, or Snapple once they learn that it's owned by Rush Limbaugh, and so on.>> ^Stormsinger:
Capitalism is virtually guaranteed to become state-sponsored, over the long run, especially in a democracy (or republic, there's little effective difference). When the government has no built-in opposition to the capitalist class, sooner or later, it gets bought.
The big question is how do you build in a negative feedback loop to limit the power of the oligarchs.


That's effectively the situation today...and we see how well that's been working. If it worked, this video wouldn't exist.


In order for that approach to be effective, it requires a change in normal human behavior...such that
many people would willingly inconvenience themselves for principles that don't immediately affect them.

If we can change human nature, we don't need any other answer. Let's just change it so capitalism (or communism, or objectivism) works well without regulation. They all work fine if those pesky humans would just do what the various Utopians think they should.

Seems to me that the People need to vote with their dollars and stop, for example, buying Dominos Pizza, once they learn that it's profits support anti-gay campaigns, or Snapple once they learn that it's owned by Rush Limbaugh, and so on.>> ^Stormsinger:

Capitalism is virtually guaranteed to become state-sponsored, over the long run, especially in a democracy (or republic, there's little effective difference). When the government has no built-in opposition to the capitalist class, sooner or later, it gets bought.
The big question is how do you build in a negative feedback loop to limit the power of the oligarchs.

While certainly no substitute for a good, traditional, and/or wood oven pizza, this intrigues me. I'd like to actually try one for myself, might even be better than Pizza Hut or Dominoes, but that's hardly an accomplishment.

>> ^mgittle:

If the bank in your latest example can't satisfy withdrawal demands, it probably borrows money from a commercial bank, which can request money from the Fed to cover the difference.

Change the word "request" to the word "borrow" and that's correct.

>> ^mgittle:
So, yes, the bank is not literally creating the money on its own, but it seems to me that banks granting loans for more money than they possess at any given time is the most significant reason for the Fed to have the ability to increase the money supply.

Again, banks aren't granting loans for more money than they posses. In the example above, they have $1,000, they can loan out $900, because they're legally required to hold 10% reserves.

Now, their balance sheet shows the following:

+$100 cash on hand as reserves
-$1000 owed to depositor
+$900 in debt owed to them by borrower
+$X in interest on debt owed to them by borrower

Which nets out to +$X interest in net worth.

There are two big risks with this arrangement:

#1: The depositor wants to close his account before the loan matures. The bank doesn't have the money to cover the withdrawl, and will need to borrow funds from another bank. If the borrowing costs are higher than the expected return from its loan, the bank is insolvent, and is gonna die. On conventional banks, the government will step in and cover the depositor's accounts up to some arbitrary dollar amount (I think it's still $250k), but the bank owners will be fired, and they'll seek out someone else to buy the bank and take over future operations.

#2: The borrower defaults on his loan. Since we're talking about only 1 depositor and 1 borrower, this single failure is the equivalent of 100% of the bank's borrowers defaulting at once. This too will result in the government stepping in, covering depositor's accounts, and restructuring the bank and selling them off.

What happened with the US financial crash was that a big, non-insured bank (Lehman Brothers) got hit by scenario #2, and since it was not a traditional, FDIC-insured bank, they just let it go bankrupt, and let the investor accounts get wiped out.

That started a panic, and led to lots of people pulling money out of other similar banks, leading to widespread cases of #1 happening, which had the effect of making banks default on loans they'd taken out with other banks, starting a new wave of #2...

That's why this system is fragile, and none of this has anything to do with monetary policy yet. This is all fiscal and regulatory policy.

What happened was that even after TARP stopped that domino effect of #2 leading to #1 leading to #2 again, banks were worried that all debt was much risker than they'd formerly believed, and so they raised the costs of borrowing (the interest rate) to sky-high levels, which severely curtailed the amount of people borrowing money to invest in real-world business activity.

That drop in investment led to a drop in production, which led to a drop in employment, which led to a drop in consumer demand, which led to a drop in production...

So now, the Fed is stepping in with monetary policy, and trying every trick in the book to stuff the banks with reserves, so they'll lower interest rates. They've had some success, but it isn't really doing the whole job, because unemployment is already so high, and consumer spending is so low, nobody wants to invest in expanding their business, no matter how cheap borrowing costs are...

That's what monetary policy is really about, stabilizing the interest rates and the overall flow of goods and services in the economy. When the economy slows, the Fed pumps money into the economy to try to make it go again. When it starts overheating (and leading to inflation), it siphons money out of the system to slow it down a bit.

Fiat currency doesn't really depend on growth -- if anything, growth depends on fiat currency, and the application of good monetary policy.

THIS IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT TO COVER UP A CRITICAL BLUNDER THAT WAS MADE BY THE CONSPIRATORS WHEN THEY IMPLOADED THIS STRUCTURE. A CLEAN DOMINO COLLAPSE IS NOT CAUSED BY FIRE BUT BY CALCULATED PLACEMENT OF EXPLOSIVES AND DETONATION IN A TIME CHAIN OF COMMAND.