Comments Posted By angulimala
Displaying 1 To 10 Of 10 Comments
KOPECHNE AS MARTYR TO KENNEDY'S FAILED AMBITION
Yeah, that was ridiculous.
She DIED. He LIED. And continued to LIE as any good liberal is wont to do. She is dead
Yeah Gayle, because I'm sure a "Conservative" politician would just have fessed up to drunk-driving a young woman somewhere on a quest to commit adultery.
Lying is something that politicians, liberal AND conservative, are wont to do.
Comment Posted By angulimala On 28.08.2009 @ 16:44
THE LOGICAL FALLACY OF SOME SLIPPERY SLOPE REFORM ARGUMENTS
1) Why do people who believe in entrepreneurship fight for a system that obstructs it by artificially raising the risks of leaving non-entrepreneurial employment?
2) Why do so many people seem to believe that a public option is both going to cost obscene amounts of money -AND- refuse all care to anyone whose treatment would be remotely expensive?
3) What is conservative about disputing the notion that, if forced to choose between life-saving surgery for an 80 year old and an 18 year old, it should probably be given to the person who still has a chance at a long life and raising a family?
Comment Posted By angulimala On 11.08.2009 @ 18:22
Are you a comment-masochist?
Comment Posted By angulimala On 11.08.2009 @ 10:29
BIRTHERS vs. TRUTHERS: WAR OF THE LOONS
Who was it that said, paraphrasing: “When the citizens realize that they can vote themselves money that will be the end of our republic.”
Just because someone said this doesn't mean it's true.
Name one historical, empirical example of this happening. Name one republic/democracy that was ended by the people voting themselves money. Rome? No. Athens? No.
Seriously, are there any examples of this at all or is it just a theoretical prediction that has never actually come true in the history of Democracies?
Comment Posted By angulimala On 6.08.2009 @ 05:00
IT'S PAST TIME TO INOCULATE CONSERVATISM AGAINST THE BIRTHERS
All I want to see is the ACTUAL and factual BHO document, you know, the one with 23 information blocks filled in, including the name of the Doc and the name of the hospital and Mom’s signature!
And which of those magic 23 pieces of information can birthers not claim to be forged in the event that he does produce it?
Seriously, don't half-ass this stuff.
It's not like he's going to hand you the actual certificate in person. Anything you will see is going to be, at best, a reproduced copy. In reality, the best you personally will ever get is a digital picture of a reproduced copy. You still won't have "proof" that the picture, or the underlying reproduced copy, hasn't been tampered with.
If you already believe his parents (handlers?) can fake announcements from across the Atlantic, destroy all documentary evidence of his supposed Kenyan birth, forge a certificate of live birth that lists his birthplace as Honolulu, and get Hawaiian officials to vouch for having seen the actual, long-form, certificate, then you can also believe that he faked whatever long-form certificate you actually get to see.
Comment Posted By angulimala On 24.07.2009 @ 19:07
Some perspective might be in order.
Why the quick assumption that this was the product of leftwing political appointees and not simply career gov't staff?
Why no recognition of the basic fact that violence is more likely from extremists of the opposition party?
Finally, why so paranoid that "rightwing extremists" is Obama-code for "mainstream conservatives"?
Comment Posted By angulimala On 14.04.2009 @ 16:58
Considering the fact that Malkin called two people at DHS who defended the report, one must come to the conclusion that either;
1. The report is real; or
2. You’re a nincompoop.
Yes, but she hasn't yet peeked through their windows to see what their counter-tops are made of.
Comment Posted By angulimala On 14.04.2009 @ 13:02
THE POST MY DETRACTORS WISH I HAD WRITTEN ABOUT THE TEA PARTIES
bsjones,
Im not going to pretend that I have all the answers but here's a small list.
1) Let's go back to the fundamentals re: "Deregulation". "Deregulation" started off as the rightminded attempt to reduce the level of governmental "micro-management". It has since morphed into the wrong-minded attempt to dismantle even those basic small core of regulations that are absolutely necessary for the free market to function properly.
The "Free Market" requires a certain baseline level of trust among participants. A pseudo-Free-market system where fraud and gross material deceit are tolerated won't function because investors will be wary of trusting their money to people who might just steal it or con us into making a bad investment just to make themselves a quick buck off the trade. When "deregulation" began to mean a desire to eliminate even those rules whose primary purpose was to check against fraud, and cripple the ability of the relevant agencies to actually enforce the rules against it, we lost footing in practical reality and set ourselves up for something like this.
Now, we're complaining about homeowners who took out loans they didn't have a realistic chance of paying back if the market turned, but ignoring the bankers who promised to pay insurance policies on the mortgage-backed assets that totaled hundreds of times their market capitalization. There was NO WAY these banks like Lehman Bros could pay back even a fraction of their obligations if the market turned. They were simply betting that they would never have to pay back the obligations (after all Lehman Bros will never go under)s and so they sold as many of them as they could as fast as they could. This was as irresponsible behavior as any deadbeat homeowner who simply bet that he could always "roll-over" his mortgage, with amounts of money that DWARFED the money we're talking about with the homeowners, and we have NOTHING to say about it?!?!?! No wonder our protests about personal responsibility fall on deaf ears! We're blaming the small fish (the deadbeat homeowners) and ignoring the big fish (the deadbeat bankers who irresponsible with much larger amounts of money).
I'm not an economist, so correct me if I am wrong, but I understand they were able to do this because they didn't have to tell ANYONE how much their outstanding obligations were! They were able to promise, in secret, to pay back multiple parties in total amounts far exceeding their actual ability to make good on their promises. A simple regulation requiring them to disclose to the people buying these CDOs how much their already had in outstanding obligations would probably have kept the bubble from getting as bad as it did because it would have allowed CDO buyers to know, before they bought the CDO, if they really had a decent shot of getting paid if/when they had to call it in. As the size of the outstanding obligations grew, investors would have been more and more wary of trusting the bank to be able to pay off an additional obligation, and demand for the CDOs would have tapered off. This kind of publication regulation hardly seems like odious business-stifling micro-management to me. The banks didn't oppose it because it was an undue burden on them. They opposed it because they didn't want to do anything to dam the river of cash flowing into their pockets. The were making good short-term profits on the irrational exhuberence and they didn't want investor to know any information that might make them action more rationally. We investors who aren't masochistic lemmings, do want to have the information necessary to act rationally.
We have nothing to say about the incestual relationship between the banks and the ratings agencies? Banks paid big money to have their securities rated. The ratings agencies gave them AAA ratings. Now we find out that they are objectively FAR from AAA in their actual degree of risk. I can't be the only non-lefty to smell quid-pro-quo and want to know if this wasn't a f***ing con-job on the investors!!!
For God's sake! We're the "Law and Order" and "Personal Responsibility" people and, in the middle of the biggest financial screw-up in history, with more stories of outright fraud, irresponsibility, and incompetence coming out every day, we are bitching about the people responsible for only a fraction of the total problem. We look petty and vindictive and like we are more concerned with making sure our neighbor doesn't get to keep the new kitchen he got with a second mortgage than with the people who made millions putting us in this mess ("I get clock radio. He cannot afford. Great success!").
Maybe a good place to start rebuilding some credibility is to take the lead in both investigating and punishing any fraud and deceit that contributed to this and earnestly looking for a system to keep this from happening again without succumbing to the liberal desire for governmental micro-management. Personally, I think good disclosure rules allow investors to act more rationally and reduce the need for odious intervention.
What certainly won't help us is pretending that this massive wasteful blunder by the private sector isn't going to make a serious impression on the average person and simply repeating the same lines about Government wastefulness. People already know Government is wasteful. The problem for us is that they are beginning to question if the private sector isn't worse. We need to stop treating Private-sector superiority as a simple dogmatic truth and realize that it requires certain conditions to be true on the ground. If these conditions are not met, then it is not more necessarily more efficient and can be just as inefficient as the stupid commies. As long as we tout the virtues of the Free-Market but neglect to foster the conditions under which those potential virtues become actualized, we are going to have a hard time convincing people we are serious
Comment Posted By angulimala On 28.02.2009 @ 23:17
I'm going to side with Rick and say that snark is exactly the right response.
We have spent decades telling the public that the private sector allocates money & resources better than the public sector and yet we have just seen the private sector engage in one of the most massively incompetent misallocation of resources in history.
I still think we are right, but as a rational person I understand how others might be be, however misguidedly, questioning this idea.
Comment Posted By angulimala On 28.02.2009 @ 13:13
HATE TO RUIN YOUR WEEKEND, BUT...
Sum = 12.57 Billion.
12.57/800 = 1.5% of the money we are spending.
This is government spending. There will be waste. This is small potatoes compared to other examples of waste.
Partial list. Click the link, lazy.
ed.
Comment Posted By angulimala On 14.02.2009 @ 17:39
