Sort of related.....

https://videosift.com/video/Seinfeld-The-Car-Reservation

Not true.
The treasury borrows money from those with money to invest, other nations, and corporations by issuing and selling treasury bonds...interest bearing IOUs. That's why, when Trump suggests defaulting on them, it's a disastrous suggestion. If we even hint we won't pay on our debt, no one will buy bonds anymore (they aren't a great investment, but are considered "safe" as is, but not if we default) and our government grinds to a halt with no cash and no credit.

The federal reserve is not the only agency to lend money, the treasury prints more of it for the government, making every dollar worth less, but creating the numerical dollars needed to pay for our debts without actually collecting any. This is actually a flat tax, because it takes the same amount of every dollar that exists with no loopholes or escape for anyone with a dollar. If we want to stop this type of taxation, we need to return to the gold standard and stop playing fast and loose with the value of a dollar....imo.

The only private company that lends $ is the Federal Reserve. And by all accounts America should stop this and start printing its own $ and indicated by its constitution.


Other than above what companies and rich folk "lent" the government money?

This guy is BS.

@transmorpher
then i mispoke,or you didn't understand.
i was addressing large swaths of history,so if it appeared i was making 'all things are fair,and equal" argument.

i apologize.

how about this:
at this point in history,it is islam that is by far the greatest threat to liberal democracies across the globe.they are threat to the process of democracies,and an even greater threat where they hold positions of political power.

the impetus and motivations that help promote,and therefor create a religious form of an echo chamber,which exponentially increases populations vulnerable to fundamentalist interpretations.either by force or fear,must be challenged.

always,and without reservation.
because to sit back and do nothing.....
/points to the dark ages.

that better?

i have no fear of drawing MO,nor calling out bad theosophy and even worse politics.

i am a man of faith,and my faith dictates my politics.

so i hoped i cleared that last bit up,and was clearer with my words.
goodnight man,i am whooped.

so i have been watching this argument over the "ban" all over my facebook.people really like their little "memes" that offer no real criticism,nor any context,they simply display that persons particular bias.the discussion over this "ban" was not my issue.my issue was with the utter lack of depth of understanding.the evident laziness of those who got up on their little soapbox and sanctimoniously,and self-righteously moralized over a situation that they maybe..maaaybe..spent a total of five minutes on.

until finally my head exploded,and i went into hulk-mode.this was my rant,that i now share with you all:

jesus fucking christ...am i reading these comments correctly?

ok,lets put a little clarity into the mix,shall we?

first of all its not actually a "ban" but an extension to vette refugees further.

sounds reasonable right?

but what is NOT mentioned is that the majority of these refugees have already BEEN vetted,and the process has taken up to two years already.

so stop wetting your pants over brown people who happen to be muslim.

secondly,
let us take a look at the countries whose refugees are being "banned".

notice anything?

each and every one of those countries the american military is deployed in.the CIA has been fighting a proxy war in syria for five fucking YEARS.obama expanded operations into:sudan,somolia,yemen,syria and jordan (another proxy war executed by our radical saudi arabia buddies,who just happen to hate america and promote the most radical of muslim interpretations:wahhabism.they spend BILLIONS of their oil money to open madrasas across the region to light the match of radical islam)

so we,along with russia,turkey and other nations,are bombing the SHIT out of these countries,therefore creating the refugee crisis in the first place,and then we turn around an slap a "ban" on them.

oh,i'm sorry,not really a ban,just an extension to vette them further,because god knows we need more than two years to find out if someone is radicalized.

hypocrisy much america?

thirdly,
and this should make us all VERY nervous,but corporate media has YET to address this little turd nugget.a federal court slapped an injunction on this "ban",because it was not done through the proper channels,but rather through executive order.

and DHS ignored the injunction.
IGNORED it,because who needs "checks and balances" right?
who needs an institution,which was put in place to uphold the law and to restrict a sitting president from over-stepping his authority?
right?

and the fact that the DHS,which is under the DoD,outright ignored a direct order from a federal judge to cease and desist,because trump had overstepped his authority by attempting to use executive orders to circumvent the law.,and this was just an injunction,which really just means "stop!until we further review"...the DHS ignored the injunction.

lets ignore the fact that trump gutted the very agency that would have been the first to challenge his executive order "banning" these refugees.trump literally gutted all the high ranking officials at the state dept.

his press secretary said,and this is fucking laughable..they resigned..ALL of them?
all of them just stood up and resigned?

so it came down to a judge to hold trump accountable,which he did by injunction and an entire dept ignored that federal judges ruling.

now let us look at the countries left off that list.

notice anything?

well well well...would you look at that.
not only do they all purchase large amounts of weapons and military apparatus from us.not only do have they have large reserves of oil that our american companies make a shit ton of money from,but lookie here..trump has business in every singly one of those countries.

coincidence?

oh,and lets not overlook the fact that by executive order trump opened the door to have steve bannon on the national security council!
an unqualified,and with zero experience white nationalist is now on the national security council.

this is unprecedented!

but who cares right?
who needs those protocols,or checks and balances right?

trump is slowly creating his own tiny cabal of extreme loyalists and you people are wetting your pants over some brown people who lost everything,and have spent TWO FUCKING YEARS to find refuge?

this isnt the behavior of a president.
this is the behavior of a king.

yes,other presidents have implemented bans.
this is not a new thing.
what IS new,and some of you nimrods are either willingly,or unwittingly ignoring,is that THOSE bans were in direct response to the US being threatened by a particular group,and THOSE bans had the approval of congress..not a fucking piece of paper that king trump signed.

does america need to reform it's immigration policies?
yes,most certainly.

do we need to have an system in place to help assimilate refugees from syria beyond vetting?

of course,all we have to do is look at germany and see what happens when you allow refugees into your country without proper preparation and a system in place to see just how horrible it can get.

does this mean that every muslim refugee is somehow a terrorist?

well,just look at dearborn michigan.the largest muslim community in america and tell me how many terrorist came from that city? how many muslims were radicalized in dearborn?

is radicalized islam a problem?
yes,of course,who would deny this?

but the causes of radicalization are well understood,and have been well documented,and it is NOT only muslims who engage in terrorism.

really folks,before you start making declarations of certitude without having even the most basic knowledge how our government functions,you need to shut the fuck up.

and for FUCK sakes pick up a book once in awhile,and stop being a gaggle of fucking bed wetters.
jesus...you little fags piss yourselves every time a muslim is even mentioned in conversation.

oh,and before one of you tough guys even think about talking shit to me.
1.i am ex military.so go fuck yourself.
2.my JOB is to debunk bullshit stories and research politics and offer analysis.

so you better think twice before you go off half cocked,because my comment hurt your wittle feewings.your comments are ignorant and they are so lacking in the basic understanding of how this government operates that the only feeling you should having right now is:SHAME.

*edit:this is not directed towards anyone in particular here,but this single focus on trumps ill-thought "ban",and how he did so in such a broad,and general wave of a pen stroke that affected even those HAD gone through the process to get their green cards,visas etc etc is simply buying into the corporate narrative.

and then NOT consider the implications of a gutted state department,the loss of the attorney general and the defiant,disobedience of the DHS in regards to a federal judges injunction.

is unforgivable in it's ignorance.

the implications ALONE should make us all worried.
very very worried.
because it appears trump is reshaping our government into his own little fiefdom of loyalists,willing to defy the everyday governmental operations of checks and balances.

trump is consolidating and concentrating his power by creating his own little cabal of loyalists.that motherfucker has ALREADY put his candidacy on the ballot for 2020.now accepting donations to the highest bidder! feel free to purchase your own piece of the american presidency!

on sale NOW! so act fast! positions are limited!
*prices may vary according to your status and where you reside on the class scale.poor people can simply fuck off.

i realize this speculation on my part,
and i could be wrong.
god..please let me be wrong.

I agree, our culture is barbaric, and getting more so. We're already discarding our culture's core pillar, that citizens have the right to believe in any religion they want....or none. I fully expect atheists to be the next targeted group, we're easy, a small (by comparison) group with little political power, and we're distrusted by the right, but not supported fully by the left, and we're an acceptable target for ridicule and distrust by almost all religious people. I ain't goin to no camp.

We (Americans) hold our prejudice tightly, and are worried about anyone different from ourselves, seemingly ignorant of the fact that we are (almost) al immigrants, and that our nation is built on the idea that different cultures together are stronger than any one.
We let Irish in while the IRA called for death to Brittan and tried to give it to them, without any extra vetting. What's different about these people....hmmmm? A different culture that, in your words, is barbaric? I guess you have an incredibly short memory, because until the mid 90's, terroristic barbarism was mostly reserved for Christians, yet no one suggested halting Christian immigration or extra vetting. Historically, Christian culture is far more barbaric and anti-intellectual.

Nope, me neither.

Which is sort of the point. It's unheard of that all of these agencies came to the same conclusion on a specific matter. Some may take this as an indicator of how damning the evidence really is, others see this as an indicator that the "assessments" were made on hierarchical levels reserved for political appointees.

The absence of dissent supports the second point of view. No group of analysts in their right mind would create a report without also strongly pointing out contradictory facts, inconsistencies, and separating fact from interpretation. That's what Hersh is referring to. This is not an NIE, it's an opinion piece. This memo by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (wierd name) goes down the same route:

As you will have gathered by now, we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the “intelligence” evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact “certitude” – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Now, an opinion piece might be sufficient if it came from credible institutions and had a moderatly important subject. But this is throwing serious accusations at a sovereign nation in times when diplomatic relations are stressed as it is. And that's not going into the credibility problem of many of these agencies, who have a very dubious track record on these issues.

Ian Welsh had a piece the other day on the CIA vs Trump, and his take on intelligence agencies is pretty close to what mine has been since I learned about the Stasi some 20 years ago:

The CIA and NSA are not the friend of any left-wing worth having: they are innately anti-democratic, anti-privacy, and anti-rights. Secret agencies are anathema to any open government. At an existential level, intelligence agencies are at best a double edged sword, and by their nature, they always wind up serving the interests of the few, against the interests of the people.

Further to my post above, the back and forth, left vs right, petty bickering all serves to perpetuate the existing problems.

For instance, here in Canada statistics do clearly show that aboriginals are over-represented in crime statistics. Simply observing that statistic though already marks me as a racist in most circles and conversation/debate is supposed to shut down and your not supposed to talk about it.

The trouble is that the disproportionate crime rate isn't because skin colour influences the probability you'll become a criminal. Things like poverty and environment though absolutely do. The reality in Canada is that Aboriginal reserves have conditions that are much worse then comparable municipalities. The system of segregation of Aboriginal people on reserves has created a disparity and this disparity is at the root of the problem.

As I stated though, people aren't even supposed to discuss the issue because it's racist to say most of what I just did. The worst part is that refusing to talk about the problem, let alone working on resolving it, is allowing the continuation of a systematic disadvantaging of Canadians based upon their race.

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

Welp, here we go. I don't believe in forbidden words, but we do have a rule against hate speech - lest we turn into a Youtube comment thread.

There's a reason why VideoSift has at least slightly more intelligent commentary than Youtube - we do care about what you write here and always want you to consider that there are humans hanging on the ends of keyboards writing comments.

VideoSift is also akin to a club, a very loose one (we let anybody in) but we reserve the right to kick you out if you violate our rules.

Gman, although I would say you have contributed a great deal of controversial but worthwhile commentary to this community, the line has been crossed.

VideoSift is not your venue for free speech. We have rules and we live by them.

With much deliberation and consideration, I hereby ban Gorillaman from VideoSift. May Siftbot have mercy on your soul.

Driving your own car will soon be seen as archaic and frowned upon. Soon after it will be reserved to certain service vehicles as manually driving a regular fast moving heavy object is seen as dangerous (which it is). Tesla is the first wave towards real automation out in daily life, and thank the maker it's coming.

I'm torn.
On the one hand, more Blade Runner would be awesome.
On the other hand, these god damn member berries keep getting their disgusting sticky juice all over my childhood memories.
I'll reserve judgement on this particular nostalgic 'redux', but I really fear that's all it will be. Hollywood is completely devoid of independent thought or original storytelling these days. Part of me hopes this movie loses $200000000 so they'll quit rehashing classics.
I totally expect another Treasure of the Sierra Madre to come out in the next few years with way more explosions, more grisly deaths and action, and everything that made the original great missing.

The problem is that you can't immediately execute, because we have decided that an irreversible ultimate punishment should be reserved for crimes that have been proven more conclusively than by a single trial in a system we all know can make mistakes. That means numerous automatic appeals, which account for a majority of the expense in executions. If we insist on executions, I think that's proper, do our utmost to be sure we only execute people guilty of what they're convicted of....even then we make mistakes.

I would think that those prisoners that require solitary for 'safety' should be closely examined for mental defects, as they likely belong in maximum security mental institutions rather than prisons, especially when you consider the effects of solitary on 'sane' people. Subjecting a mentally ill person to something that causes psychosis then releasing them is almost guaranteeing they not only re-offend, but escalate in the damage they do. It's cheaper and more moral to properly treat these people than it is to imprison and/or execute them....even if you never release them.

I'll reserve final judgment, but it sure looks like another all flash, no story type of memberberry movie like the last StarWars. I'm getting pretty tired of Hollywood raping my childhood for money.

I would say that Stalin, the Kin Jong's, Various African Tribal Genocides, and Pol Pot might disagree with your account of wholesale slaughter being reserved for the 'white' Europeans and their descendants. That is just to name a few. Also, what is a 'white' European? I mean the southern Europeans have quite a bit of Moorish blood in them, do they still count as 'white'?

All sarcasm aside, your argument is extremely flawed. Conquerors tend to lay waste to the societies they conquer, not always in terms of total lives lost, but in terms of cultural death. The reason why 'white' people are vilified for this lately is because for the past several hundred years they have been the ones expanding and taking over the regions you speak of. This is not exclusive to a skin color or originating locale, it is absolutely a core of our human nature.

I gave some examples earlier of non-European conquerors, but they are fairly recent. If we look in history at other groups, we find the same meme. The Steppe Horse Tribes were BRUTAL to cities and countries that did not capitulate. Look up "Measuring against the linchpin". That saying came from the fact that if you resisted Mongol rule, they would slaughter every male taller than the linchpin of a wagon wheel. The Aztecs and Mayans ruled southern American empires through great brutality, including human sacrifice for 'religious' purposes. Recent discoveries even indicate that it was considered a good omen if the sacrifices were crying in pain before they were to die. Remains recently found showed "All shared one feature: serious cavities, abscesses or bone infections painful enough to make them cry."

Slavery originated as early as human recorded history, if not sooner. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations. Mass slavery requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Although slavery in some form or another existed in most European countries, it wasn't until after contact with the Arabic African slave traders that it soared in the 15th and 16th centuries.

tl;dr

You are referring to recent history to make an example while completely ignoring THOUSANDS of years of similar history. All humanity is flawed, narrowing it down to a singular group with cherry picked data is not going to persuade anyone with a brain.

I live in Chicago, and as a result, have a pretty good idea where those fireworks are coming from in relation to Wrigley Field, and I can only think, "Wow. It's November 2, and you have illegal fireworks laying around, presumably left over from the 4th of July when you got too drunk to finish setting them off."

Or there's the very real possibility that they had a strategic reserve of fireworks on the off chance that the Cubs ever won the World Series, which, if true, is more astonishing that any went off.