Livemike

"The crash and the slump should have ignited a sense that government is often all that stands between us and disaster, but the foghorns of the right succeeded in blaming government more than runaway financiers." Yeah because as we know the government had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster, there wasn't any problems with the central bank. Time and time again I conclude that that left is all about pretending they didn't cause problems. They don't care about the money or power any more, they just want to explain how the consequences of their actions aren't the consequences of their actions.

I don't get it. Who thinks of terrorism only in terms of economic damage? Isn't it the loss of life that's more the issue? I'm not saying this to justify or argue against the policies. I'm just not getting how focusing on it in purely economic terms makes any sense. If analysed in terms of lose of life it's arguably even worse. The number of people killed by terrorism is small compared to those killed by the War on Drugs (assuming even 10% of AIDS deaths are due to dirty needles, which would be practically unknown with the WOD). But death is simply another unfortunate outcome that can be expressed as an ecomomic cost. How much would people pay for these deaths not to happen? Obviously not an infinite amount, nor zero, so it's economically quantifiable. Just like you wouldn't pay 10 trillion dollars to have no road deaths this year and therefore said deaths are worth less than $10T so you wouldn't pay less than $X to prevent all the terrorism deaths. It's just another cost.

Does the $75 billion include the value of time wasted at the airport, in school during "Lockdown' drills etc? Because if it doesn't it's WAY underestimating things.

Well clearly in most cases it's neither. When someone decides that the benefit of their particular group within a country (occupational, social, racial or any other type) trumps the interests of all over groups they clearly care neither for their country or the vast majority of the rest of humanity. I would estimate this happens upwards of 99% of the time.

I'm not sure the terms "false self" and "mental illness" are actually useful. If you do something that's you doing it noisome "ghost in the machine". Now you might do something to hide facts about yourself (say denigrate others to avoid the appearance of weakness) but that's you doing it. You are the person who responds to the situation that way. "mental illness" assumes that one way of living is "healthy" but that depends on what values you want to pursue. Even if we assume your own happiness is the goal of a "healthy" psyche an "unhealthy" one could be evolutionarily beneficial. Evolution doesn't care if you're a happy parent only if you're a grandparent.

In "Iraq: a decade of hell" Stef made a great case against the war. But at one stage he blamed "patriotism" for it. In this his views are less solidly based. There is a great effort to convince you to be "patriotic", that is to put your country above your own interest. This is not the same as jingoism, the automatic cheerleading of whatever imposition of force your State promotes or appears to want to indulge in. Being "patriotic" is presented as an absolute moral good and a normal thing to do. While nobody believes that everyone puts their country first most people will say that at least a significant proportion of your nation do this fairly regularly. Most people believe more patriotism would be a good thing. If you feel bad about the fact that you usually don't put your country first in your dealings, I am here to deliver that most precious of things, more precious than "gold or honour", an excuse. It's the old one, "Everyone else is doing it.". Everyone else is putting their own interests, the interests of their family, community, workplace, and class ahead of their country. The most obvious sign of this is government trade and industrial policy and who supports which parts of it. Any individual will either seek to advance that policy that is best for the country as a whole, or the policy that is best for them and their group. If they seek to advance the policy that is best for the country then they could be wrong. However such a mistake would not tend to lead them to support the policy that is good for them. Take for instance a worker/entrepeneur in an uncompetitive industry whose lobbyists seek tariff protection. If this suceeds then he will continue to be employed/not go bankrupt and perhaps get a raise/more profits. His own interest is clear. If he knows nothing about economics then it will not be clear to him what is best for the country. Many people believe tariff protections are good for the country in general. However anyone really concerned with finding the best policy for the country and supporting it will encounter views on both sides. Having encountered both sets of arguments someone truly seeking the best policy will have the same probability of supporting tariffs whether or not their own interest is affected. Only if interested parties put their interest before that of the country are they more likely to support tariffs. Yet politicians from affected areas, businessmen and union leaders in the industry will all support them. There are virtually no cases of people in an industry benefitted by a government policy arguing against that policy. Try to find a real estate developer who argues against loose monetary policy, or a plumber who argues against licensing or well, fill in the blank. While substantial underrepresentation of views which go against a group's interest can be expected in a group, what we see is practically NO representatio of such views. It could be argued that of course plumbers are in favor of licensing plumbers, they mostly talk to other plumbers who believe in it. But surely know that the policy favors these people and thus that they are biased. Anyone genuinely interested in discovering and supporting the policy best for the nation would talk to people who don't have a conflict of interest. Plumbers wouldn't talk to only car makers in order to judge whether car tariffs are a good idea. Nor would car makers talk only to real estate developers talk about monetary policy. No, patriotism demands an actual investigation into what is good for the country. You can't claim to love something and then make no effort to find out what in it's interest. Nor can you claim to love something, find out what is in it's interest and then keep silent for fear of offending those you love less. It's just not credible. So maybe the car makers, real estate speculators developers, and union leaders are all unpatriotic scum. Maybe the patriots are all in that temple to patriotism the military. Surely the "Semper Fi" crowd are just brimming with patriotism? Well not so much. Consider the "Kill Team" scandal. A group of soldiers started killing civilians and making it look like they defended themselves against insurgent attacks. This does not proves nothing about the patriotism of the military, you can't judge by the worst of an organisation. What you can judge by is the oirganisation's response to the worst amoungst it. From the start their commanding officer suspected, yet nothing was done until one of those involved spilled the beans. Even though apparently the rumours of civilian murders went right thought the unit, nobody thought to call for help in determining whether they were true. Nobody called the military version of CSI to determine if what the soldiers said about those deaths were true. That's perhaps because they weren't told their number. Nobody in the chain of command was trained to detect whether their troops were committing war crimes or knew the procedure for contacting those were. Yet the US military has known for DECADES that war crimes against unarmed civilians are strategically a bad idea. The whole "hearts and minds" thing isn't exactly new. The idea that atrocities are the best recruiting agent for the enemy goes back to Vietnam AT LEAST. So the miltiary knew that atrocities might happen, knew that said atrocities would act against the interests of their country, and yet did literally nothing. Not even a paragraph in the manual saying "If you suspect a war crime by your own troops this is how you contact a special section of the MPs". Nor is this an isolated incident. Consider the purchase of the F-35. It's been clear for YEARS that this is disasterous for the US state, yet there have been no protests about it from serving members of the military, let alone resignations. Instead various military officers have cheerlead for this useless and expensive vechicle in hopes of a fat contractor/lobbyist job later on. A less patriotic occurance could not be conceived. Oh wait it could, that would be the V-22 Osprey. The F-35 at least hasn't killed anyone yet. The Pentagon hasn't been audited for years despite clear indications that there is massive waste. Clearly massive damage in the billions (or trillions, I don't know) of dollars is happening to the US, yet the military is doing nothing about this. Stef managed to issue audited accounts for his business every year it was in operation*, yet the "patriots" in the US military couldn't manage to do it even once in the last decade. One accountant attempting to chase down $300 million was asked why he cared so much about it. The obvious answer is "it's $300 million" but the patriotic answer is "because that money is supposed to be for the good of the country". But that's only a factor if there is a scintilla of patriotism in the military, and there isn't. If anyone can think of an area of society where people act patriotically in general, please reply. Business, "public service", banking, even charity work. Please prove me wrong. * I know because he's not in JAIL.

It's progress that they made a film where they had to cover their ass. Remember when every film had to celebrate the actions of the brave defenders of freedom?

28 NEGOTITATION! The most important skill you can have. 29 Critical path analysis and other management skills.

A cell, if it is alive is necessarily resisting the universal pull of gravity. Gravity pulls everything, even if you are out in orbit. Flames? I understand that in normal usage, we can use flame as a noun, but physically, fire is a process of oxidation. "Flames" do not move in reality, only objects such as oxygen and carbon molecules move. These carbon/oxygen molecules do not suddenly propel themselves against gravity. A physical interaction between the carbon/oxygen which we call oxidation is responsible for the lift of air molecules, these air molecules do not move themselves by any stretch of the imagination. Was your response serious? It seems kind of like a joke to me. No, a cell is not necessarily resisting gravity just because it's alive. Unless it's actively changing it's movement from what it would otherwise be given gravity (and not all living cells can even do that!) it's not resisting gravity. Now go away you living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Hell yes there are degrees of sociopathic personality. Even some death camp guards had SOME empathy. That's why so many of them were drunk all the time, they were trying to beat the last remnants of their conscience/empathy into submission/death with a bottle of schnapps. Most soldiers have to be propagandised into thinking of their foes as not human. They don't then lack the reluctance to kill people on their own side (mostly obviously some do). People who will make decisions that lead to thousands of deaths (e.g. building unsafe factories like the ones in Bangladesh) can't necessarily kill people they can see in front of them. Take someone who wants to bomb Iran flat and votes for the politician they think is most likely to do that. Do you think that person could shoot. a 7 year old right in front of them? The more sociopathic the person the more obvious the spin and suffering they inflict has to get before they stop doing it.

Bear in mind that solving a "public goods problem" is an exercise in cooperation, and we happen to belong to most successfully cooperative species in the known universe. It shouldn't be THAT hard. Certainly simpler than solving the problem (itself a "public goods/collective action problem") of making the state behave decently.

"What is true, however, is that the years since we turned to austerity " Which years would that be? There hasn't been a reduction in government spending in ANY of the countries that he mentions. So he's clearly lying (again).

The thing is that the Stuebenville case wasn't about "rape culture" it was about "impunity culture". Certain people were allowed to act badly with impunity because they were good at throwing balls around. If they had beaten a man with a rubber hose so it didn't bruise they would have got away with it just as much. This is what happens when someone identify with a group and identifies the interests of a group with winning arbitrary contests. That person therefore equates value/virtue with particular abilities and justifies all that those with those abilities do.

"I am shocked, shocked, to find tax dodging going on here.".

So if you say something bad about French workers the government takes a closer look at your taxes and other reasons to arrest you. Lovely. So much administering the law without fear or favor.

http://ozziesaffa.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/have-russians-already-quietly-withdrawn.html "We all know that Russian oligarchs had around $31 BILLION (maybe more) invested in Cyrus banks, which was set to be force-donated to the EU. When the EU deal outlining the seizure of all deposits over €100 000 in two of the main Cyprus banks was announced, everyone expected Russia to go apesh!te. Never happened. Why? Well it appears that while the Cyprus government and the EU banksta's were plotting to get their grimy hands on the oligarchs money, the oligarchs were quietly transferring their money out of the banks via other countries. It appears that the EU shonksters were so focused on closing the Cyprus banks to stop any raids that they forgot people could transfer money from outside the country. The stealth withdrawals by Russians of course means that the two megabanks are now utterly drained of capital, and that it will probably mean that ALL deposits will be wiped out, not just those over €100 000. However, no one is saying anything about the Russian withdrawals to avoid a huge run on the banks, now that the Cyprus government has re-opened the banks."

From "Nation of Change" http://www.nationofchange.org/gun-background-check-pentagon-1362926192 Stringent “background checks” are central to many proposals for curbing gun violence. The following is a background check on the nation’s largest buyer of firearms: The applicant, U.S. Pentagon, seeks to purchase a wide variety of firearms in vast quantities. This background check has determined that the applicant has a long history of assisting individuals, organizations and governments prone to gun violence. Pentagon has often served as an active accomplice or direct perpetrator of killings on a mass scale. During the last 50 years, the applicant has directly inflicted large-scale death and injuries in numerous countries, among them the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan (partial list). Resulting fatalities are estimated to have been more than 5 million people. For purposes of this background check, special attention has been necessarily focused on the scope of firearms currently sought by Pentagon. They include numerous types of semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles as well as many other assault weapons. Continuing purchases by the applicant include drones and cruise missiles along with the latest models of compatible projectiles and matching explosives. Join NationofChange today by making a generous tax-deductible contribution and take a stand against the status quo. Notable on Pentagon’s shopping list is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This “bunker buster” weapon -- with a weight of 30,000 pounds, set for delivery by a B-2 stealth bomber -- is for prospective use in Iran. While considering the likely outcomes of authorizing Pentagon to purchase such large-scale assault weapons, past lethal recklessness should be viewed in context of present-day mindset. A meaningful background check must include a current psychological profile. Despite the abundant evidence of massive carnage made possible by past Pentagon acquisitions of firearms and other weapons, the applicant is unrepentant. This indicates that the applicant is sociopathic -- unwilling to acknowledge, let alone express any semblance of remorse for, pain and suffering inflicted on human beings. The unrepentant character of Pentagon is reflected in continued use of the alias “Department of Defense.” This background check strongly indicates the prevalence of a highly functional yet psychically numbed institutional personality disorder, with reflexive denial and perennial insistence on claiming victim status even while victimizing others. In addition, Pentagon has used guns of all types to fire on countless civilians including young people. The ongoing threat to children posed by weapons in the hands of the applicant, therefore, is grave. Grim evidence emerged with the unauthorized release of the three years ago by WikiLeaks. That video, filmed in 2007 in the district of New Baghdad, showed a callous disregard for human life as 30 mm cannon fire from Apache helicopters caused the deaths of nearly a dozen Iraqi adults while wounding two children.In a deeply sociopathic mode, Pentagon -- rather than expressing remorse or taking action to prevent such tragedies in the future -- has sought retribution against those shedding light on many of such terrible actions. Pentagon has subjected whistleblower Bradley Manning to protracted inhumane treatment and relentless prosecution. By sharp contrast, in the last few days alone, tens of thousands of people have expressed their admiration, love and support by signing an online letter to Thank Bradley Manning. Meanwhile, Pentagon is seeking approvals for items ranging from new firearms to F-35 jet fighters, recently dubbed by Time magazine “the costliest weapons program in human history.” Even a cursory background check on the applicant must conclude that augmenting Pentagon’s vast stockpile of guns and other weapons would be unconscionable. If background checks are to be a meaningful tool for curbing gun violence, they must apply to individuals and institutions alike, without fear or favor.

is it just me or does the infant with Chavez think he's going to eat her?

There's no way the bank would care, but it's possible your grandmother not living there would mean the interest wouldn't be tax deductible. Even then what's the chance they would check the last name but not the first? Of course your mother was trying to hide the facts from child services. Of course they would care. You were being repeatedly assaulted. That one therapist didn't get the hint doesn't mean that they would all have been clueless. A users and the people who cover up for them know to minimise the contact the victim has with outsiders, which is exactly what your mother did. Regarding confronting your brother to get him to admit fault, I was remiss not to tell you to do it in a very public place. Preferably where there are a lot of men around, ideally string ones. A cafe near a gym or something. I'm betting he isn't violent when people of equal strength are around. He clearly wants something from you. Make it clear, he doesn't get it until he admits what he did. Otherwise any relationship will be essentially parasitic and disingenuous. I hope this helps.

First thing, tell your brother that it's not his fault his mother got pregnant and had to marry his father. Because that's what happened, not the bizarre mortgage situation they claimed. Seriously what bank bothers to check if there is a Mr. or a Mrs. on the cheque as long as it clears? I'm sure if someone else had told you this story as an adult you would have spotted the obvious flaws. I'm pretty sure he knows it too. Another thing you might not have caught on to was that her keeping you locked in a room wasn't because she thought you might get in trouble. It's because you might have got her in trouble, specifically with child services. If they had gotten involved it would have been obvious how badly she was allowing your brother to behave. As for communicating with your brother, tell him he has to take responsibility for the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, the manipulative fake suicide threats (really, bloody thumb prints? what a drama queen) which were obviously designed to get sympathy from you so you wouldn't inform the authorities. Oh and tell him "talking behind his back" is another way of saying "warning everyone how bad he is" and that's a good thing. Mif he doesn't want you saying bad things about him, he as to stop being evil. It's that simple. If he doesn't want to acknowledge his fault then fine, you lose nothing if you lose this relationship. Ask yourself "if this wasn't my brother and he had treated someone else like he treated me, would I want to associate with him?". Next time you meet you might want to say something about how child sex abuse doesn't have a statute of limitations (not sure if that's true). I bet he starts treating you real nice then. That's. the real reason he keeps putting you down of course, so you don't have the courage to tell people how vicious and abusive he is. Look up the concept of de-FOOing on these boards. It's your best option IMHO.

Ok I think you're worrying about what you lack and what you think she thinks you lack, instead of focusing on what you have that she wants. What you have is more significant than what you lack in this context. The proof of that is you're together. Therefore you spend less time worrying about whether you're perfect for her. You're not. If she rubbed a magic lamp before she met you she could have got a better boyfriend than you, and if you had you could have got a better girlfriend than her. Neither of you are smart as EInstein, fit as Usain Bolt, sexy as Brad Pitt in his prime, nice as whoever the nicest guy in the world is, as good around the house as Bob Vila, etc. etc. . Me neither. So what does her occasional comment on another man's sexiness imply? Nothing other then that she is non-lesbian. It doesn't mean you lack physical attractiveness compared to the men she says are physical attractive. Even if it did, so what? On balance she still prefers you. I think it is disrespectful to insist your girlfriend pretend she doesn't find other men attractive. If I didn't know you had a girlfriend and I said "So-and-so is very attractive. " would you feel obliged to lie about whether you agreed? Even if you knew your girlfriend would know the truth anyway? I think what we're dealing with is your own insecurities. I could tell you that you have no need to feel insecure, but the truth is she's already told you that by being with you in the first place. Whoever gave you the impression that you need to be worried about more attractive men taking your girlfriends you should start ignoring them. Not easy I know but worth it. Good luck.[/font]

http://m.youtube.com/index?&desktop_uri=%2F#/menugrid Just saw this, where Krugman claims the failure of the Euro, a fiat currency that had absolutely no mechanism for fiscal discipline, proves the Gold Standard, a commodity money with a good mechanism for fiscal discipline, is worthless. And people actually pay this guy to comment! I mean they're just the same really, except for being completely the opposite I every way I can think of.

Are you attracted to women other than your girlfriend? I'm going to assume yes. Do you think that means the relationship is somehow weak? Do you think that means you're going cheat on her, ignore her to spend time with other women or otherwise trat her badly? Of course not (I hope). So why do you assume that she is going to do something similar? That she expresses perfectly natural appreciation for an attractive man doesn't reflect on your relationship, you or anything you should feel bad about. I think the solution to your problem is to imagine the reverse situation. If you told your girlfriend that you rented "Gia" in part because it had a nude scene with Angelina Jollee should she be sad or jealous? Or course not. Reassure yourself you need not feel insecure merely because every few weeks she mentions that she finds Brad Pitt attractive. My father found Goldie Hawn attractive for over a decade didn't seem to hurt his marriage (40+ years).

Indian reservations are concentration camps in the original sense of the words. Concentration camps were invented by the British to "concentrate" the Boer population during the Boer War. The Boers were very dispersed since of course many of them were In rural areas. They could easily slip away from their farms grab some guns hidden in a cache and kill a few of the occupiers. To prevent this the Brits rounded them all up and put them into big camps where they were easy to watch and control. They were completely isolated economically from land, capital and markets leaving them entirely dependent on government "generosity". So far it sounds like the reservations to me.

Designating a group a terrorist organisation because of it's views rather than anything it did, that's not going to set a precedent that will backfire on the left at all.