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Biden Approval WTF

JiggaJonson says...

I did. And I'm happy with the way things are going generally. At least, regarding Joe Biden.


Big picture: there's a lot of terrible things happening in the world. My own half-assed-survey based on personal experience: most people don't follow passing laws and what the executive branch really does with any kind of seriousness. They may self-proclaim they "like reading the news" But most people who say things like that are content with a surface understanding of what's happening.

I mean, you know inflation is up AROUND THE ENTIRE PLANET right? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/15/in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world-inflation-is-high-and-getting-higher/


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Besides Israel, other countries with very large increases in inflation between 2020 and 2022 include Italy, which saw a nearly twentyfold increase in the first quarter of 2022 compared with two years earlier (from 0.29% to 5.67%); Switzerland, which went from ‑0.13% in the first quarter of 2020 to 2.06% in the same period of this year; and Greece, a country that knows something about economic turbulence. Following the Greek economy’s near-meltdown in the mid-2010s, the country experienced several years of low inflation – including more than one bout of deflation, the last starting during the first spring and summer of the pandemic. Since then, however, prices have rocketed upward: The annual inflation rate in Greece reached 7.44% in this year’s first quarter – nearly 21 times what it was two years earlier (0.36%).

Annual U.S. inflation in the first quarter of this year averaged just below 8.0% – the 13th-highest rate among the 44 countries examined. The first-quarter inflation rate in the U.S. was almost four times its level in 2020’s first quarter.

Regardless of the absolute level of inflation in each country, most show variations on the same basic pattern: relatively low levels before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the first quarter of 2020; flat or falling rates for the rest of that year and into 2021, as many governments sharply curtailed most economic activity; and rising rates starting in mid- to late 2021, as the world struggled to get back to something approaching normal.

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The pattern of rising and falling inflation happened because that flu that "will just go away like a miracle" ended up affecting the whole world's economy in a somewhat predictable pattern when it comes to inflation. Maybe the people who only casually glance at the news when they are flipping channels don't know better, but come on - you know that inflation rates in the United States are not specifically Joe Biden's fault right?


You still think they are? OKAY - HOW? Exactly. Point to legislation passed or not passed and the timeline of inflation in the United States.

Something like "Here you can see inflation beginning to spike, and it's the result of XXXXXXXXX that Joe Biden did, here's exactly how what he did affects inflation in this way."


Who wants to bet $20 that I'll get some response like that? What should the odds be set at if I am 100% certain all I'll get is just some snarky bullshit from an old bullfrog.

bobknight33 said:

This administration and its party are destroying the American pocketbook.

What a fuckstick voted for this frail old man?

Religion, in a nutshell

Greece meets ... something unexpected

simonm (Member Profile)

Student - D'Souza to convince him life starts at conception

newtboy says...

Sorry.

I'm calling him pathetic because he gave two pro choice arguments believing they are anti choice arguments.

I don't believe a thing that breaths liquid is a human being. A child, imo, must have taken a breath to be a living human child. Until then, it's only a potential human requiring an actual human to be it's life support system and sustenance. That's worse than any other form of slavery.

I'm so pro choice, I support 7th trimester abortions, like Spartans. In ancient Greece, it wasn't a human until it was a year old, and killing it wasn't murder until then.

At 6 weeks, it's indistinguishable from a chicken or newt, so not a human. It must evolve completely before I grant it that status. Until live birth, it's just a parasite.

Sagemind said:

Personally, I am Pro Choice for women to make their own decision on the gestation of biological cells growing in their own bodies up to a certain age of the fetus.

What I don't understand is, are you calling this man pathetic because he "gave two arguments FOR pro choice"? - based on principals laid out by Lincoln in his example?
Or because
Pro Choice doesn't align with your beliefs?

Sorry, you wrap your words up in several ways but you don't come out and say what side you're arguing for so I can't tell the tone or nature of your comments.

I personally don't feel the entity, the biological growth of cells is a person just because it has a heart beat. Does it have consciousness? Is it a thinking being with self awareness? Because I don't remember anything from when I was a fetus. In fact, I don't think the brain is developed at all ...

"not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first electrical brain activity begin to occur." ~'The Ethical Brain' - The New York Times.

And even then, it's still in development and not a an organ that can contain consciousness.

Recortadors practice the art of bull leaping

We explain "Nordic Socialism" to Trump

Mordhaus says...

It doesn't work because there is an intrinsic group think personality in the Nordic region. Most people in that region that were born and raised there are very sensitive to profit making and ostentatious displays.

Which means that people are glad to simply 'get by'. There is not a mass drive to be better than your neighbor or own more toys than them. Of course there are outliers, but the bulk of Scandinavians are very used to the accepted norm. They are more willing to accept massive tax rates because they know they will be taken care of by the government. They aren't necessarily concerned about 'getting rich'.

Contrast that to other areas, especially the USA, and you will find out that it would never work here because we are an individualistic nation. Even the bluest liberal wants to be rich here. It's more cutthroat, more selfish, than you will find in a Scandi nation.

Another huge reason it would never work is that they do not spend anywhere near the percentage of their budget on defense that we do. Denmark spends about 20 billion per year on defense. Norway, an oil rich Scandi nation that is considered one of our most important NATO allies, spends about 6 billion. Less than 1.2% of their GDP. This is one thing that Trump was actually right about. We spend around 700 Billion, roughly 3.5% of our current GDP.

"Half the alliance — 16 of the 29 countries — don’t even spend 1.5 percent (of gross domestic product) let alone 2 percent that we all agreed on four years ago (at a NATO summit) in Wales,” Michael Fallon, who served as secretary of state for defense from 2014 to 2017, said. In 2017, only the U.K., Greece, Poland and Estonia reached the 2 percent target.

Whether that level of spending is needed is another argument altogether. I personally think we overspend way too much on defense, but regardless it is a huge factor as to why we can't offer the same level of 'socialism' that the Nordic nations do. If we spent the same percentage as Norway, we would be saving close to 460 billion dollars a year that could be applied to other programs. Such as paying for college for qualified students or trade school for ones that are not college minded. Or providing benefits to new mothers that we currently don't.

Ickster said:

Why wouldn't it?

I can think of material reasons why what works in Denmark wouldn't work in other countries, but basic population doesn't seem important (once you have a basic population big enough to support the services, it seems like they'd scale just fine).

Easter Sunday celebrations in Greece get a bit out of hand

siftbot says...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Easter, Greece, Fire' to 'Easter, Greece, Fire, molotov cocktail, road, destruction, fireworks' - edited by Eklek

b4rringt0n (Member Profile)

mark blythe:is austerity a dangerous idea?

radx says...

15:05-15:30: you tell Mr and Mrs Front-Porch that your loonie of 1871 cannot be compared to your loonie of 2013 (year of this interview). You went off the gold standard in '33, you abandoned the peg in '70, and your currency has been free-floating ever since. Yes, the ratio of debt to GDP has some importance, but so does the nature of your currency. Just look at Greece and Japan, where the former uses a foreign currency and the latter uses its own, sovereign, free-floating currency.

Pay back the national debt -- have you thought that through?

First, the Bank of Canada is the monopolist currency issuer for the loonie, so explain to me in detail just how the issuer of the currency is supposed to borrow the currency from someone else? If you're the issuer of the currency, you spend it into existence, and use taxation as a means to create demand for your currency, and to free resources for the government to acquire, because you can only ever buy what is for sale.

Second, every government bond is someone else's asset. An interest-bearing asset. A very safe asset, in the case of Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, etc. "Paying back the debt" means putting a bullet into just about every pension fund in the world that doesn't rely exlusively on private equity or other sorts of volatile toilet paper.

There's a distributional issue with these bonds (they are concentrated in the hands of the non-working class, aka the rich), no doubt about it. But most of the other issues are strictly political, not economical.

What if the interest rate rises 1%? The central bank can lower the interest rate to whatever it damn well pleases, because nobody can ever outbid the currency issuer in its own currency. Remember, the central banks were the banks of the treasuries. The whole notion of an independent central bank was introduced to stop these pesky leftists from spending resources on plebs. That's why central banks were often removed from democratic control and handed over to conservative bankers. If the Treasury wants an interest rate of 2% on its bonds, it tells its central bank to buy any excess that haven't been auctioned off at this rate. End of story.

What if the market stops buying government bonds? Then the central bank buys the whole lot. However, government bonds are safe assets, and regulations demand a certain percentage of safe assets in certain portfolios, so there is always demand for the bonds. Just look at the German Bundesanleihen. You get negative real rates on 10 year bonds, and they are still in very high demand. It's a safe asset in a world of shitty private equity vaporware.

But, but.... inflation! Right, the hyperinflation of 2006 is still right around the corner. Just like Japan hasn't been stuck near deflation for two decades, and all the QE by the BoE and the ECB has thrown both the UK and the Eurozone into double-digit inflation territory. Not! None of these economies are running near maximum capacity/full employment, and very little actual spending (the scary, scary "fiscal policy") has been done.

But I'm going off track here, so.... yeah, you can pay back your public debt. Just be very aware of what exactly that entails.

As for the poster-child Latvia: >10% of the population left the country.

Here's a different poster-child instead, with the hindsight of another 4 years of austerity in Europe after this interview: Portugal. The Portuguese government told Master of Coin Schäube to take a hike, and they are now in better shape than the countries who just keep on slashing.

On a different note: Marx was wrong about the proletariat. Treating them like shit doesn't make them rebellious, it makes them lethargic. Otherwise goons like Mario Rajoy would have had their comeuppance by now.

PS: Blyth's book on Austerity is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in its history or its current effects in particularly the Eurozone.

Mark Blyth: Globalization and the Backlash of Populism

radx says...

*doublepromote

Mark's been on the money since about the time he wrote "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea", but there have been two significant developments in Europe that he seemingly didn't see coming: Portugal and the UK.

The Left Alliance in Portugal has basically been giving Schäuble the finger for two years now, with their unilateral end to austerity. How dare they defy the master of coin?! If Schäuble says you need another round of austerity, by God, you better tighten your belts, even if they are already around your neck.

Unsurprisingly, everyone going along with austerity without having a completely export-dependent economy is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, those pesky Portuguese actually managed to massively reduce unemployment, despite running a deficit that is entirely too small for their current situation. But that's a different story.

And then there's the UK. There's Corbyn. Tribune of the Plebs. Managed to get the youth voting by offering actual left-wing policies (the "radical youth", as the NYT likes to call them, while claiming that the warmongering, Constitution-shredding, wage-depressing, ecosphere-destroying "centrists" are not the real radicals). Managed to turn quite a lot of UKIP voters around as well. Within striking distance of the Tories, despite the media running 24h a day of drivel like "Jezza's Jihadi Comrades" -- Goebbels would be ashamed of the crudeness of the propaganda campaign by the Sun/Daily Mirror/etc.

The populist left is back, bitches. Corbyn and Sanders are the first steps past the neoliberal warmongers of the Third Way. The Obama experience of a corporatist disguised as a left populist may have given us The Orange One, but it also put another nail into the coffin of neoliberalism.

Antonio Gramsci, founding member of the Italian communist party, who was killed by the fascist regime of Mussolini, gave us the appropriate description of our time:
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

That's your Trump. That's your opioid epidemic. That's the EU's austerity program in Greece, doing twice as much damage as the German occupation in WW2.

Bernie Sanders shows support for aims of Jeremy Corbyn

newtboy says...

Nope, those traits are antithetical to business too, probably why no one does business with him twice.

Paris accord, purely voluntary based on goals we set ourselves. Clearly he didn't understand it at all. It only costs us money if we want it to, and it only asks us to do what we ask of ourselves, with no enforcement at all. Interesting to note that the word "coal" is not in it, contrary to what someone seems to have told Trump...that it forces us to abandon coal while other countries can continue to adopt it.

You know Trump wants to leave NATO, probably because Putin wants him to so it will not be able to stand against more aggressive Russian expansion. Is a Soviet Europe cheaper than paying a bit more to NATO, or should we dismantle it just because Greece can't pay and ignore the consequences?

Europe no longer sees us as the leaders of the free world. For all your b.s. about Obama, Trump has ruined our international reputation in under 6 months more than even Fox claimed Obama had in 8 years.

bobknight33 said:

Rude, pig headed and lacking personal skills only in a political sense. Business man sense - shrewd- All those hard line positions are only starting negotiating positions. Time will tell If he can pull it off.

Paris accord- A joke and a money pit for America-let alone a false narrative. Trump did the right thing pulling out of it.

Asking European countries to step up and pay their NATO fees was a right think to do. American are sick of cheep ass lazy NATO partners who wont pay their bills.

Governor of Washington Slams Trumps over Muslim Ban

newtboy says...

So, no answer to Greece, eh? They kind of blow your stance out of the water, don't they? No country has seen more refugees pass through, and not a single attack. Hmmmm.

It couldn't be that they are attacking countries that have recently attacked their countries, could it?

transmorpher said:

If people joined extremists groups because they weren't helped by some countries, then shouldn't the extremists at least not attack the countries that are now helping them?

Governor of Washington Slams Trumps over Muslim Ban

newtboy says...

After 2 years of a difficult application process completed in a refugee camp, we have a duty to those who successfully completed our process. The same goes for non refugees who completed the process. That was the deal we made with them, and they've completed their part. No, becoming hostile won't help public opinion, but why would they care? Public opinion of them is already terrible when they've done nothing wrong, and that same opinion mirrored in Trump has cost them dearly. Now, imagine you're a pissed off displaced teenager who's just escaped war and gone through the lengthy application process with their surviving family in terrible conditions the whole time, you are accepted, and then some guy just says "nope, you escaped the wrong war torn country, Fuck off"....would you be pissed at them? Maybe pissed enough to do something stupid? Now imagine there are numerous organizations looking for people just like you who convince you to act on your adolescent anger. Do you not see how blocking those people creates terrorists where acting honorably and keeping our promisses would create allies?

They ARE angry at them, irate, but they are war refugees, not mercenaries. Most able to fight them already did, and we're killed by them, Assad, or Russia.

When doing everything right by our standards at great expense gets you a nice "Fuck off and die" , why would a sane person continue?

I think they get the brunt because 1) they don't stop refugee migrations and terrorists just walk in with refugees, a problem we don't share, and 2) because of their foreign policies, an issue we do share. Their populations, and even governments are becoming more xenophobic.
Also, I haven't heard of any terrorist acts in Greece, a country that's arguably helped the refugees the most.

transmorpher said:

If I don't want to help you because I fear that you might be hostile, then you actually becoming hostile is not a convincing way to get my help or trust. And further it's justified my initial fear that you are indeed hostile, so now I'm definitely not inclined to help.

Rather than get angry at people who refuse to help them (out of fear), a more reasonable reaction would be for refugees to direct their anger at the small minority of terrorists and extremists - i.e. Be hostile at the actual people that are responsible for the xenophobia existing in the first place. To agree with them and join them is only going to undermine any efforts to stop xenophobia.

The other thing is, the countries that have helped the refugees most, seem to be the ones that are getting the brunt of hostilities from extremist groups. So it goes to show that this hostility not originating from xenophobia, and it seeing this happen gives other countries little reason to want to help.

Do you consider the film Die Hard a Christmas movie? (User Poll by eric3579)

JustSaying says...

Man, I'm suuuper late to this party....
Anyways, Die Hard is and is not a Christmas movie at the same time. And it depends on your definition what makes a Christmas movie.
I'm gonna take an insane detour here that'll make sense.
Is Star Wars Episode 4 a science fiction movie?
That setting is futuristic, sure, must be sci-fi then. Lasers, Spaceships, Robots, the works. The checklist is done. Sci-Fi.
But what are the themes it touches upon, what is the story?
A young farmer's boy (naturally an adoptred orphan) named Luke is dragged into a rebellion against an evil king (Palpatine) by accident. When the boy get's hold of a pretty princess' (RIP Carrie Fisher) message to an old ally and menthor (Obi) through the fault of her two comic-relief servants (Robot-slaves), he decides to seek the adventure he's yearning for. He finds the old man (by fucking up) and both seek the next harbor to board a ship to join the resistance. The hire smuggler/pirate/bandit/nerfherder Han and his foreign friend Chewie and cross paths with the black knight Lord Vader, the evil kings enforcer. Hijinks ensue, princess rescued, the magic castle/ship/train of the evil king get's destroyed and everyone gets a medal.
What's exactly sci-fi here?
That could play out in medieval times. Or ancient greece. Or the wild west. Or on Christmas.
The setting and the genre are two different things and both determine what you'll label a story with.
Alien is a horror movie, a slasher. Aliens is a war movie. Alien³ is a horror movie of the animal-gone-maneater kind. Alien: Resurrection is a disaster movie (hihi).
They're all sci-fi, like Star Wars. Because of the setting.
Now look at Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 Episode 9 'The Measure Of A Man'.
Lasers, spaceships, robots, the usual. What is it about?
A Robot who's so sophisticated that he has to go to trial to prove he's not property but a real boy. Sure, you'll say, I've seen Pinocchio and I can see african men argue the same stuff in the 18th century. The point of the story is not only that is humanity is questioned, the point is he's an artificial lifeform. The question is not only 'What makes you a person?' but also 'When does artificial intelligence become an artificial person?'
That shit won't work in a setting without spaceships and robots. That's sci-fi because of its story.
So, setting and story are both what makes you label a movie a certain way but they're not the same.
Die Hard. Happens on Christmas. Could be Thanksgiving too. Setting interchangeable.
Story? Doesn't contain any christmas-related themes beyond two estranged family members become closer again. That could happen at a funeral as well.
I'm in my mid-thirties and I love Die Hard. It's one of the best 80's action movies. I can watch it anytime and I've seen it at least 20 times (noit joking here). But mostly in the summer. But I understand the question and its diverse answers perfectly well.
Die Hard is a christmas movie if it feels like one to you. For me, Lord of the Rings (especially Fellowship) feels like a Christmas movie to me. I've seen them all in theatres in December, I watched them on VHS and Blu-Ray only in December so far. They have fuck all to do with the occasion but this year was the first one I didn't watch any of them in December. And I feel I missed something this year. I'm not sure I can watch them at this time of the year.



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