Was the guy expecting to hear Mittens continue with: "Yeah, I'm against it, but don't you worry, punks like you can continue to get away with doping yourself while you leech off the system."

Errr, no.

So don't vote for the guy. He's not your party, so end of story.

Interesting idea. Personally, I believe that there is an even bigger issue affecting the rise of unemployment. It has to do with efficiency as it applies to production and the roll that technological progress plays in axing blue collar jobs. I strongly believe that the vast majority of people do want to work, and not `leech off the system` as conservatives say, but the need for unskilled labor is declining as technology matures.

I think part of the problem is that there's a whole lot of people out there who can't quantify how much wealthier the people feeding them the "Creating Jobs" stuff are. See: http://videosift.com/video/Most-Americans-Unaware-of-Growing-Concentration-of-Wealth at the 1:40 mark. Everyone thinks they are middle class that's a 29k avg neighborhood and 140k neighborhood, 3:30 repeats it again....they think the majority of Americans are middle class.

I'd venture to say that many people in that crowd are there, not because they understand that the people working on wall street dwarf their salary probably by a factor of 4 or 5 in the lower paid white collar jobs and up into the 100+ factors when they get into the upper positions. They are there because they want what they had back, and they can now see that Wall Street or at least the mentality of Wall Street has in a very short period of time affected many aspects of their lives.

If they could still afford a place to live, food, and have a decent job, they probably would have never noticed the long term erosion of the system by those with the money and power...twisting it so they took more of the pie and left the middle and lower class to figure out how they will afford their house (debt which in turn shifts more money up the ladder).

I mean most people who have jobs right now, the only information they care about on unemployment is when it comes from someone they know who they consider to be a "useful employee" and not their stoner brother, etc. And even then it's probably "These things happen, you'll find another job." until they are still unemployed 6 months later....maybe they were just lazy. 12 months rolls around and they are still unemployed? Now it starts to scare the living shit out of people, especially when another friend or family lost their job a month or two back. When it looks like it might affect them personally is when they care, and by that time it's been 1-2 years of people they know going unemployed at various times...working at McDs or Walmart because there's nothing out there.

http://videosift.com/video/Food-Speculation-Explained

Showing another way the Wall Street mentality is just giving us all a good screwing. Instead of these folks taking their talents to create something, they leech off of the people doing the work and drive up costs while creating massive uncertainty for everyone involved.

http://videosift.com/video/Elizabeth-Warren-The-Coming-Collapse-of-the-Middle-Class

Shows that people were experiencing bankruptcy more often that you would assume, but were able to hide it. Plus the general fixed costs being increasingly higher over the years with no overall salary gains to offset them.

http://videosift.com/video/Paul-Krugman-Income-Inequality-and-the-Middle-Class

Showing that they have been on the union bust kick for 30 years now at least, and it's something unique to the US because Canada in a similar global economy still has the level of unionized work force as the US had 30 years ago. Education has nothing to do with the income disparity. And the income disparity was fixed by policies put in place during the 1930s and early 40s. Which have been removed layer by layer since then, with increasing frequency in more recent history. And he points out in the video that the highest paid hedge fund manager makes more in a single year than 88000 NY teachers do in 3 years, my recounting of it might be off a little it's near the end of the video.


http://videosift.com/video/Multi-Millionaire-Rep-Says-He-Can-8482-t-Afford-A-Tax-Hike

Then you have this knucklehead talking about 200k to feed his family and how he can't afford a tax hike because it will prevent him from investing in store improvements and openings (that make him MORE money, so yeah..). Jon Stewart covered this in a much more funny way and how stupid the argument being made is. I'll re-iterate my take on this though. If they can't create jobs with the money they have coming in now after all the other tax deductions over the years, and all the opportunities before this day to do.....they will not do so. It's a fool's bet to depend on some guy who can't demonstrate how he has created jobs in the last 2-4 years in some meaningful way and how those low taxes make it possible to do so. Taxes would pretty much force him to reinvest in his business because if he tried to take it in profit he'd be paying a chunk of it out in taxes.




I think the most profane thing about this country right now is that people who want to work can't find work. And those who are working, especially blue collar jobs have a bunch of white collar guys speculating on their production....every thing that blue collar guy makes/produces probably has 10 or more white collar guys trying to make a buck off of it. It's like a house of cards, except the support structures are the very few people who still put out useable materials. It's crazy how something like that was let run wild, with more and more of the regulation taken away so they could stack even more cards onto the mess. The money isn't to be had in production, it's made in speculating/futures/etc...and it's just massively crazy to realize that all the middlemen are allowed to drive up the costs of oil/food/etc instead of cutting that shit out through regulation.

1) i'd like to know what unskilled labor jobs the government pays 100k/yr

I'm happy to expand your mind.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/overpaid-federal-workers

Keep in mind that the bulk of these jobs are make-work jobs and bureaucrats who serve no function except to warm a chair and internacinely war for budget share of the federal pie. There's tons more. Teacher union administrators, the construction worker supervisor who stands around 90% of the day, and on and on and on. Even a cursory google search will bag you thousands on thousands of federal and state employees that are unskilled, overpaid leeches on the economy.

2) the solvency of pensions/health care is quite well documented

Supply the data proving that. The Postal Service is due to collapse in November because it can't pay its operating costs AND keep up the retirement benefits of its retirees. Social Security isn't solvent. Medicare isn't solvent. Medicaid isn't solvent. The benefit programs of federal employees is banked entirely on debt spending. "Solvency" is when the program is in the black.

i know you've been led to believe that only private business could figure out a way to make it work, but who instituted these services in the first place?

Private companies. Long before 'government' ever came along, private individuals performed these tasks for money or goods. Government apes private companies - not the other way around. And 99 times out of 100, government does a lousy job at them because they don't operate logically. Case in point...

the education thing just BLOWS my mind

Yes - I have no difficulty believing that a person steeped in leftist theory would have a hard time understanding the concept that education can take place quite easily and well without government subsidies. The best colleges are private, and people who go to private shools (or are homeschooled) do just as well (or better) than students in public schools. And our public schools do such a good job, don't they? Regardless, I don't have a problem with government providing a "School". I have a problem with government meddling in cirriculum, and the associated teacher's union. Have the government provide the 'school', and then get out of the way.

its CLASS WARFARE when the victim speaks up and demands justice

First - there's no victim here. Second, it is class warfare when pinheads like Obama and his supporters talk out both sides of their mouths, lie, and deceive on this issue. Buffet didn't pay 'less than his secretary' on his income - he paid MORE - but he and Obama are lying and equating capital gains as income as a means to raise taxes NOT on "millionaires", but on the middle class. THAT is class warfare.

"Bailing out the rich". Pht - what a crock. Obumma is only wanting to bail out government, which has overspent and overpromised and he wants to sock it to the middle class. If he was serious then he's freeze all government spending today to 2011 levels and keep them there until the system was in the black. Then he'd pass a balanced budget ammendment and everyone would praise him as the greatest president ever. But no - he's a leftist idiot and all he wants is to raise taxes in a recession - which even he said was a stupid thing to do. Stupid is as stupid does - and the stupid people that agree with it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'mark fiore, founding fathers, leeches, wooden teeth, slaves' to 'mark fiore, founding fathers, leeches, wooden teeth, slaves, Samantha Schoech' - edited by hpqp

@ChaosEngine

The only one out of those that doesn't use prior material is islam, and the creation story from the quron is just a rip off of Genesis, so I don't think it really counts.

As far as the age of the Earth goes, there are plenty of evidences to indicate a young earth just in the fossil record. You have polystrate fossils all over the place, which traverse multiple layers that were supposedly laid down over hundreds of millions of years. You have fossils supposedly millions of years old found with intact DNA, which has a max decay rate of 20 thousand years. You have fossils like these: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wiltshire/8208838.stm

Radiometric dating is also not proven reliable. It is predicated on a number of assumptions (guesses), such as a constant rate of decay, the amount of the elements, etc. Particularly, it must be assumed to have been within a closed system. Since there is no such thing on planet Earth, there is no way of telling what the original condition of the rock was. Whether it was contaminated by heat, or groundwater, or leeching etc. That makes all such measurements extremely problematic. The different methods used also almost never agree with eachother. Frequently, they provide a wide range of dates which the scientist will cherry pick from to match his particular theory. Radiometric dating has also been proven to be inaccurate by testing on samples that have known ages. Tests run on rocks known to be a few hundred years old will come back with estimates ranging from a few million to over a billion years old. If you can't get reliable results on known ages, how can you trust results on samples with unknown ages?

You have the problem of the geologic column being a complete mess, where layers appear in different places in different parts of the world, sometimes in reverse order. You also have the circular logic of the fossils dating the rocks and the rocks dating the fossils. You have human and dinosaur tracks in the same strata. You even have ancient artifacts found which show human/dinosaur interaction and even domestication.

http://www.mondovista.com/dinostone.ica2.html
http://www.mtblanco.com/ForSale/2006/ICAStones.html

There are many reasons to think that the scientific timeline is grossly inaccurate, and these are just a few of those reasons.

Nope, but the GOP isn't any better.

>>> Perhaps slightly better, which ain't saying much.

Also, your comments on "employers" are overly simplistic. Firstly, take an employer who draws a reasonable salary and makes sure his company pays taxes. Now take an employer that takes tens of millions of dollars in bonuses and benefits, just because they can, and attempts to get laws passed which reduce his companies tax rate to basically nothing.


One of these employers is beneficial to the economy, the other leeches from the economy so I think it is unfair to lump them together.

>>> I'll accept the accusation of being "overly simplistic" in this case, because despite the abuses by large corporations (including MS-DNC, who last year made 15 billion in profit but because they shill for obama, paid nothing in taxes) even they aren't hiring or expanding.


Also, what's the deal with calling them taxocrats, don't you guys have some of the lowest rates of taxes in history right now?

>>> Lowest tax rates compared to whom? Our corporate tax rate is 2nd or 3rd highest in the world. Real unemployment is 22%. We are 14 trillion in the hole. And despite the massive government fraud, waste and abuse no one cares about, the left wants to raise taxes. It's their knee-jerk response to everything.

Nope, but the GOP isn't any better. Also, your comments on "employers" are overly simplistic. Firstly, take an employer who draws a reasonable salary and makes sure his company pays taxes. Now take an employer that takes tens of millions of dollars in bonuses and benefits, just because they can, and attempts to get laws passed which reduce his companies tax rate to basically nothing.

One of these employers is beneficial to the economy, the other leeches from the economy so I think it is unfair to lump them together.

Also, what's the deal with calling them taxocrats, don't you guys have some of the lowest rates of taxes in history right now?

>> ^quantumushroom:

Does anyone still believe Taxocrats "care" about "working people?" At least more than the other side?
Taxocrats take more money from Wall Street "donors" than Republicans. Taxocrats caused the housing crisis via bad loans to people who they knew would never repay.
Evil rich people have a second identity the left doesn't like to mention: "Employers." Taxocrats cause employers to do nothing and wait out the reign of financial instability fomented by confiscatory threats; no one is going on a hiring spree only to have Taxocrats slam them with a bill for socialist medicine.
Not that Maddow doesn't have a point. It's possible even those RINOS now realize The SS Obama is a sinking ship. Welcome to politics.

Yeah I, definitely wish I could mount cameras on my car for this very reason, to upload it to police in the case of an accident or just to report some asshole being a shitty driver. Everyone drives slow and safe when the cops are around, then proceed to drive like an idiot when they arent. Cameras on everyones car would help with that IMO.

But I agree, this video reeks of someone using an accident to leech internet fame off of it

What a fucking leech. Palin the Parasite!

If you want to grow the economy then perhaps a simple understanding of the word grow might help. A tree doesn't have branches appear in the air, then as years go on, it moves to the ground and eventually establishes roots. One doesn't build an economy from the top down, just like you don't suspend a mast in the air then build a deck, then a framework and then the hull. No building things and growing things go from the bottom up. Help the people who spend money, the poor and working class, and when they spend money those businesses soon have to hire more people to help with the increased customer base. Those workers now have more money and they spend money and the cycle starts. Now suppliers and transportation need to ramp up their work force. This puts even more people to work and more people spending. Now we need more manufacturing to keep up with demand. This builds things even more. Giving money to the rich who only horde it does nothing for the economy. Simple logic... this is of course why the Republicans want to cut education, the more ignorant the populace the more willing they are to accept BS lines like that GM quoted. Even though that is exclusively about federal income taxes and not taxes as a whole. The rich stop paying their share of Social Security at about $106,000.
During the past 30 years of this trickle down/supply side economics, the rich have got richer while the middle class has gotten poorer. 10 years of the Bush tax cuts and the job rates have gone down and the rich get richer. Of course facts never got in the way of real policy, a gullible Fox News public believes that all poor people are poor because they are lazy bums, all of whom just want to leech off society. The Fox News public believes that critical thought is evil and leads people away from Jesus, never mind that they ignore their Bible lessons of Jesus wanting to help the sick and the poor, of reaching out to the sinners of his age and hanging with them and condemned the religious zealots of his time, and they want to smite the sick and the poor and condemn the sinners of our age and hang out with the religious.
Of course 98% of the Democrats give in as well. They refused to stand up and fight for the people they say they care about (oddly the Republicans don't even pretend to hide their pure hatred for the working class and poor and favoritism of the rich and the Fox News public still love them, even though they are the very people the Republicans make a very vocal point of hating)...
Just getting myself upset thinking about it all and the lack of care for their fellow man that the right has...

The lamestream media didn't quite follow Murrow's/Moyer's advice. They abandoned all pretense of objectivity when they went to work for His Earness's election campaign in 2008, but still totally deny their bias.

Moyers certainly has a right to express his views, except when he leeches off taxpayer-funded "public" television to spread his foul gospel of class envy.

The day one of these socialists admits government meddling on behalf of "the poor" fks up the economy as bad or worse as aiding the evil rich, I'll eat my hat, and I see no reason to buy a hat for eating in the next 20 years because what I just wrote will never happen.

Why do informative videos never inspire comments and debate? QM is amazingly quiet on actual thoughtful videos.

Is it better to try to save the US empire or let it fall to make way for a new empire? Or even to have no empires at all?

As a Canadian none of these options are good ones. Our economy is so tied to the US that its fall would take us down too. But the influence of US politics is ruining our culture and changing our political culture to one of secrecy and lies. But Canada has always leeched off empires and defined itself by emulating the empire and rejecting it at the same time. So without an empire to follow Canada has no identity.

While most people don't give shits about Canada I'm sure we are not the only country that will have to redefine itself after the US empire ends.

Come one people, join the discussion. Tell me I'm full of shit (which is hardly new). This is where opinions can actually matter.

>> ^Fantomas:

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
Actually, while the sodium and caffeine in cola and similar beverages may have a (very, very) slight diurectic effect, you still retain more water from the beverage than the caffeine takes from your system. The same is true even of beer, though it's even more difficult to get people to believe that.

Sodium is not a diuretic, quite the opposite, it makes your body retain water. The added sodium in your bloodstream is counteracted by water flowing into it from your cells, your cells are then water deficient and send messages to your brain: "Drink Water!".


Ok ok, not diuretic. But you still take in more water than the sodium makes you lose. The sodium draws water form your cells, I'll grant you - but you've just had a drink, so as long as you've taken in more water than the sodium leeches from your cells you're fine.

>> ^Skeeve:

I'd like to see some stats on the amount of scientific research done by atheists as opposed to research done by religious people. We already know that the majority of people in academia are non-religious, does that carry over into the research? In that case, I think it would show that the religious people are really the parasites.


Yeah, the vast majority, 'today' being the key word. It seems only correlative though. I don't see how its relevant except in the kook's eyes. Playing to that game, the vast majority of scientific discoveries throughout history were made by people who HAPPENED TO HAVE HAD religious beliefs and would only further strengthen his bizarro logic. Its just not relevant at all. Progress is made in spite of this vile shit, not because of it.

Speaking of parasitism, something something about tax-exempt status in America while demanding even more special privileges and contributing virtually nothing. Not enough? How about Ultra-Orthodox Jews who dedicate their lives to Torah study in Israel basically being on payed state-welfare for their entire lives? The only group who holds such a privilege in the entire country; these fucking nutters who think Armageddon can't come soon enough and are purposely trying to steer the Middle-east towards conflict. All the while trying to erode/undermine the remaining secular values their government guarantees and that the normal every-day WORKING folk there pay for, not these fucking leeches scratching and clawing to hold on to their remaining power as it increasingly slips through their fingers.

Hypocrisy is basically a prerequisite if you want to be a part of their club. I have to live with this ignorant crap everyday, family dinners are a fucking ball and a half! It really disturbs my family for them to know that they're related to a "Nazi", err I'm sorry, a "Natzi". Do these idiots not realize the similarities in rhetoric they share to a certain someone who basically sought to eradicate them completely, not too long ago? Have they no sense of decency/self-respect, no sense of history?

These people are out there in droves. America is in for some rootin' tootin' good times if these people are genuine about their desires for "revolution". Tea-baggers fucking disgust me. Big surprise that they also scare the ever-living shit out of me and most other sane, rational folk. Its impossible to argue with these people in good faith, stop by for dinner with the family if you doubt me.

/toggle ramble off