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opebo
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« Reply #100 on: June 19, 2012, 02:47:50 PM »

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Grumpier Than Uncle Joe
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« Reply #101 on: June 19, 2012, 03:01:06 PM »

I'm surprised Tender Branson didn't get whacked with some death points for that......prudish environment we are in......
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opebo
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« Reply #102 on: June 19, 2012, 03:10:34 PM »

I'm surprised Tender Branson didn't get whacked with some death points for that......prudish environment we are in......

Perhaps I should delete my accolades, but not before saving that link!  Wow!
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Just Passion Through
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« Reply #103 on: June 19, 2012, 10:54:26 PM »

Ron Paul's support of civilian massacres is disgusting.

That's an extremely small sided view, realizing that America shouldn't involve itself in every humanitarian/strategic conflict or civil war doesn't mean you advocate civilian massacres. If anything it just signals that you understand countries and their people should be able to handle their own affairs without some outside power implementing a "Non oppressive" pro American government.

Your post just reeks of "America needs to be the police of the world" because other countries can't be left to handle their own affairs.
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« Reply #104 on: June 21, 2012, 07:31:44 PM »

This is the attitude at my university as well. Almost everyone taking a science/math/commerce/engineering degree treats anyone in the liberal arts as a second-class student. I would just, for once, like people to admit that the different fields are different, not that any one area of study is better than another. (Although in terms of creating a well-rounded individual, I almost think the liberal arts is better--you're encouraged to focus on developing ideas and finding connections, whereas some of these other programs are exceptionally theoretical and numbers-based.)

I honestly think the problem has some big roots in frosh week programming. Your introduction to the university is basically comprised of "we are segregated" or "engineers have a crazy frosh week because they work harder." Beyond frosh week, I understand that the very nature of the programs makes it difficult for the faculties to interact... but I think more could be done to foster a united sense of school spirit. As it stands right now, my school might as well be in a perpetual civil war.
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tmthforu94
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« Reply #105 on: June 27, 2012, 12:40:17 AM »

A really nice post by a friend, Winfield:

The Republicans practically "owned" the Presidency in the 1920s, and look how that worked out.

So, to say the Democrats have a lock on the Presidency makes no sense.  To say any party has a lock on the Presidency makes no sense.

History changes, sometimes on a dime, sometimes as the culmination of a series of great events.

At this point in time, yes, the Democrats have an advantage, but certainly not a lock.  The campaign, and the course of events, will determine the outcome of this election.
[/quote
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Napoleon
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« Reply #106 on: June 28, 2012, 04:32:28 PM »

What krazen is to the left wing- there are 5 liberals on this board who are the same to us

Is Krazen is to the right-wing what certain liberals are to the left-wing (Is he the Beck or Maher of his respective wing; is he the person who you really want to say "Okay, that's nice, now go draw on your chalkboard so we can argue rationally")? Or is he just of the sort who's tolerated (probably like a few of those liberals) because he annoys the rightists/leftists?

Hell, I'd even say Krazen is more moderate and cvil then many of his left wing counterparts on this forum.

This is the guy who stopped just short of calling a member of Congress insane for being gay and constantly uses the phrase 'of course' like some sort of talismanic charm to repel his own repressed sense of humility.

Of course, I consider the probability that you characterized his statement accurately at about 0.1%. Why don't you share the alleged quote?

The entirety of his argument and demeanor in the thread for the most recent Rasmussen poll on the Wisconsin Senate race. You can find it where you'd expect to find threads on that. I think it's really sweet that you're defending your special friend and all but I haven't slept in a calendar day and I'm not going to go hunting for the link for your benefit.

What krazen is to the left wing- there are 5 liberals on this board who are the same to us

After most elections there are folks whom are happy if the Democrat wins, and there are folks whom are happy when the Republican wins. I would put Krazen1211 strongly in the second camp, and numerous posters here in the first camp. Surely, I strongly suspect that he took as much pleasure in the victory of Scott Walker as I did. That said, I have not noted him as being a particularly strong conservative ideologue. There seems to be a strong streak of prejuidice in this forum that equates being Republican with being "right-wing" and "extremist."

You haven't noticed him being a 'particularly strong conservative ideologue' for the same reason that I don't notice people being 'big into early modern Japanese literature'.

All this being said, it's difficult to argue for banning the guy under the terms of service. It just ought to be equally difficult to actually defend the content of what he posts, at least without extreme shame.
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Napoleon
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« Reply #107 on: June 28, 2012, 09:23:46 PM »

Excuse me for interjecting. I attend a Catholic school, and throughout middle school and early high school, the ideas of evolution were clearly explained and whatnot. Hell, they were probably accepted as fact or close to it by the teaching, and probably as fact by the teachers. And that was in a Catholic school. The job of a science class is to teach theories as theories, not to get into a huge debate. The fact that almost no one in my school today believes in the religion is much more the fault of bad religion teachers than anything else. Point is, you want religion, you send your kid home and talk to them at the dinner table, or you send them to a religious school. Evolution is the dominating scientific theory on the creation of life and should be taught as such.
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Just Passion Through
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« Reply #108 on: July 02, 2012, 04:16:32 PM »

Paul continues to be an asinine ideologue.

The idea letting Assad's regime stand would be better for Syrians is ridiculous and embarrassing to anyone who suggests it.

The idea is that it's better for America if Americans do not die overseas.

The idea is that it's better for America, and the world, to not have innocent people be slaughtered by a dictator. Your phrase is idiotic. It's like suggesting that had we known about the Holocaust we shouldn't have intervened because "Americans might die". Don't tell me that was different. Is there some number of people killed at which point some switch turns on and an intervention becomes acceptable? Nonsense. We have a moral obligation as a nation with the means to help those in Syria to help them. Every nation with the means to do so does. It's simple human decency.

You can save your "moral obligation" for when we're running surpluses, like during the 90's and everyone was screaming that Clinton should have helped Rwanda. The simple fact of the matter is, we can't afford to continue investing in military operations that don't actually enhance our national security. 

How would we finance action in Syria? Would we continue to to build on our trillion dollar budget deficits, and print more money to sustain those deficits? It doesn't matter whether it's Syria, Somalia or Pakistan , you can only use budgetary tricks for so long, to maintain foreign investments but eventually you can do it no more.  Johnson tried to use the same budgetary tricks to finance the War on poverty and the Vietnam war at the same time, he ran huge deficits and printed billions of dollars , because to maintain a war and not massively raise taxes you have to run deficits; once you raise taxes opposition for a war increases, every time. What did he do? He started the rapid printing of money, that would continue well into the 70's. The Hungarians tried the same budgetary tricks to finance world war 2 and the resulting hyperinflation caused the collapse of their currency all together.

There's always gonna be another if we intervene in Syria, I know because there was always another after Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, Germany ext , there will always be another call for the Us to intervene. Unfortunately until we have a budget that's decreases our long term debt and our budget deficits any more intervention will just inch us closer to a complete financial collapse.

Why did France signal a complete withdraw from the middle east? Because they can't afford it.
Why can't America ever understand that you have to be fiscally responsible before you involve yourself in the affairs of of other countries.

You're not "disgusting", for realizing something that's obvious by just looking at the current state of the US economy.

Actually if it means people will wake up and realize that our current interventionist foreign policy isn't sustainable fiscally then I'd gladly be labeled "Disgusting" right besides the Ron Paul's/Gary Johnson and the rest of the anti interventionist in this country.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #109 on: July 06, 2012, 08:31:39 AM »

I appreciate Nathan's input, and would like to say that I wasn't alleging that the "new" (a problematic concept by itself, as it is in a way the result of a strong trend that can be traced back to 1890 at least) sexuality model is superior to others.  Neither, for that matter, was Foucault, whom I was drawing on, who disagreed with the modern sexual model in two major ways:

A. people tend to fool themselves into viewing sexual expression as an act of rebellion and liberation when they are, in fact, playing into the "rebellion" dialectic and actually further ensnaring themselves.  By thinking of frank discussion of sex as a rebellion, they actually reinforce its status as a taboo.  By transgressively "breaking the taboo" they are in fact reinvigorating its existence. 

B.  By obsessively classifying people based on their sexual tastes, it transforms that into an immutable part of someone's identity.  The label "homosexual" becomes an inescapable prison in a way the Medieval sodomite never was: "sodomy" is an act one does, and one could (and did) abandon the label by ceasing the act.  A "homosexual" isn't defined by what he or she does, but by what he or she is, and it limits their courses of action.  Similarly for a heterosexual, the sheer act of definition based on sexual tastes ends up forcing one into a limitation of attraction to  50% of the population.  This concept, that one should only be attracted to one of the two sexes, was unknown in the Greek world, and Foucault (and, frankly, I) think that the latter attitude is preferable to the modern liberal attitude of "It's OK to be gay/whatever."  Gay rights as it was framed ends up leading to imprisoning people with a label that reduces them to only having access to lovers of one sex, whether the same or the opposite, and actually increased boundaries between the two: "gay" and "straight" become non-overlapping categories.  It's the reason why Foucault himself never considered himself gay and fiercely opposed the word in general, despite his love of many men.



Getting to Nathan's point, I agree that shame does, in fact, have a real place in sexual discourse, and one that has too often been denigrated by people that worship the discourse of sexual liberation.    Sexuality, when it becomes too loud or too boisterous, can become an actively harmful habit.  How many people dismissed the allegations against Dominique Strauss-Khan by saying things along the lines of "that's just how the French are, they have more sophisticated notions of sexuality" etc.?  People did, in fact, try to defend alleged rape (that particular case, of course, didn't happen the way originally portrayed, but remember that this is before we knew that) as somehow akin to Mitterand's affairs and whatnot.  People defend the systematic misogyny prevalent in, say, the attitudes of a Berlusconi as an example of virile womanizing, then condemn the same tawdry conduct in Egypt.

My main point is that one of the biggest problems regarding sexual discourse is the liberation trap.  People who think that they are flouting a societal taboo by talking about sex and do so for the racy thrill of transgression are themselves constructing said taboo every second.  The attempts to "shock" and declare proud opposition to cultural taboos are like a fly in a spiderweb: by struggling, you only get yourself more and more trapped.  There is no such thing as "liberation," sexual or otherwise.  This is by far the most valuable lesson in Foucault, IMO, and one of the reasons he ended up becoming such an enthusiastic supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini in the end...so many people dismiss that chapter in his life as out of place with his message when it really is the culmination of his message.  Stop struggling against "repressive" discourse and settle down and the cessation of struggle will help free you.

Granted, I wouldn't advise going that far.  Tongue
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Oakvale
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« Reply #110 on: July 06, 2012, 06:32:32 PM »

Marokai's post in that driving thread reminded me to find this and post it here.

The tangent Vosem is taking this thread on is the perfect example of what is wrong with the Republican Party right now. 

I have no problem with people taking conservative stances on issues, but recently it appears conservatism is supposed to be some sort of lifestyle where you take conservative stances on everything.  They invent a "conservative side" to every fact whose author might have voted Democrat at one point in his life.

There is no reason to debate Vosem on the "issue" of the morality of caps on campaign fundraising because it is not an issue.  There is no right or wrong side.  There is the fact that the campaign fundraising system is broken due to corporate spending and SuperPAC influence.  There is no opposite side. 

On campaign financing, like on all the subjects, the Republican vs. Democratic debate should be on how best to fix these loopholes. 

But there are no "hows" to compare.  The problem with the Republican Party is that they've turned politics into a series of Yes or No questions.  There's no option A or option B.   That's where things went south for me in my ability to support the party.   

On Obamacare, the debate was never "which plan is best suited to give our populous universal health care coverage?"  The debate was "do you believe the populous has a right to universal health care coverage?" That's a ridiculous question; a question where I'm forced to say yes because no is such a stupid response and therefore support the Democrats not because I believe in their plan but because it's the only plan.

Yeah, that's my moderate rant.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #111 on: July 06, 2012, 06:44:20 PM »

I'm pretty sure this has already been posted here (and very deservedly so, I must add).
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20RP12
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« Reply #112 on: July 06, 2012, 07:19:52 PM »

Wow that's the first time I've ever really seen King talk about his politics.
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« Reply #113 on: July 07, 2012, 07:57:31 PM »

The quality of its political leaders is not something you can separate from the appreciation of a country.

Perhaps. I like to believe if more of my fellow countrymen were better informed, or just cared enough to pay a little more attention, they'd be eager to vote for people who'd fix things.

As someone who studied in the US... and was, honestly, horrified by how myopic so many Americans were, I think a broader perspective is definitely needed.

A friend of mine who's a teacher in IL, is really disturbed by how they teach the American Revolution as purely, democracy vs tyranny... rather than be honest, that it was actually incredibly complex and doesn't go into the background as to why Britain did what it did etc etc...

America is a great country, full of really good people, the story about American social mobility is increasingly a myth, America is as strata-fied as any European or Western Country for that matter. I think what might irritate people abroad is the idea that the US is the pinnacle of democracy... last time I checked... most western countries have free and fair elections... freedom of the press etc etc...

Just because you're flawed, as all countries are in their own ways, doesn't mean you aren't great... you're just not the best at everything... some countries do do things better than you... but you do other things better than them... it's not a contest.


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Marokai Backbeat
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« Reply #114 on: July 07, 2012, 11:52:22 PM »

I'm pretty sure this has already been posted here (and very deservedly so, I must add).

It is certainly one of the best summations of the American Right at this point in time, and one of the biggest reasons our political system is hopelessly f***ed.
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H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
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« Reply #115 on: July 08, 2012, 03:47:03 PM »

[inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks]
[inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks]
[inks] [inks] [inks] you guys.
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opebo
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« Reply #116 on: July 09, 2012, 03:59:42 PM »
« Edited: July 10, 2012, 01:45:30 PM by opebo »

A spanking for WhyteRian from our worthy King:

Making irresponsible sub-prime loans was hugely profitable for companies.

You're right, but think about this:  In a free market, doesn't this sound crazy?

"Making irresponsible sub-prime loans was hugely profitable for companies."

We all know the REASON why the "irresponsible sub-prime loans were HUGELY PROFITABLE", but it seems we can't face it:  The irresponsible government guarantees.

Actually, no, government guarantees had absolutely nothing to do with the major profit system of the subprime market.  It was entirely a private enterprise.   There's a huge public misconception about it because it's made out to be incredibly complicated, but really it's not.  It's, in effect, a life insurance scam.  And I hope you read this, WhyteRain.

First off, you start off with the subprime lenders, guys like Countrywide.  Contrary to popular belief, they really aren't players here.  They are manufacturers for the real players: investment banks and insurance companies, or best yet investment/insurance companies.

So, let's say you're Countrywide and you manufacture $750 million in terrible sh**tty loans.  You know that these loans are highly likely to fail.  In a normal, regulated loan system this would be a path to bankruptcy.  $750 million in loans and likely only $50 million worth of them will end up paying them back.  How does one profit here?  Simple, they sell the debt.  

In comes our first player, the investment bank.  Countrywide has $750 mil in terrible loans and needs to find some way to make a profit and so they go to Goldman Sachs and say, hey, we will sell you this $750 million in loans for $1 billion.  Goldman says yes and Countrywide profits $250 mil for making terrible loans.  But why Goldman Sachs buy these?  In a normal, government regulated loan system, Goldman would end up losing even more money than Countrywide, with $950 million in losses.  But this isn't a normal system, because in comes the next player.

The brains behind the operation is the second player, the investment/insurance bank--most famously played by AIG.   They know Goldman is running around with $1 billion in toxic assets that they bought from Countrywide and like any good insurance company, they know that all cars will crash, all people will die, and all homes will burn down eventually; and there's money to be made in the meantime.  AIG comes to Goldman with proposal: for a premium of $10 million per month, AIG will give Goldman a $2 billion insurance policy on those assets, if they were to fail.  In normal, regulated government system, this offer would be illegal.   There literally was a line in our US code that prevented this deal in the books until 1998, Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act allowed insurers and bankers to do business with each other.

The hugely profitable, totally irresponsible, entirely free market, system was now place.  AIG would profit $15 million a month (when combined with other similar deals billions a month) until an asset failed.  Goldman would sit and wait HOPING for loans to default so that way they could make the $1 billion profit of the insurance payout, which trumped any profits off mortgage interest.  At the same time, they would be ORDERING Countrywide to give out more bad loans for them to buy, hoping that they would default faster and they could collect AIG's money.  Everybody sees profit.

AIG would hope that they wouldn't default soon, or better yet, like life insurance systems, the annual profit from the premiums would outweigh the payout of a few $2 billion plans here and there.   The problem was in the housing bubble, the defaults all happened at one time: 2008.  AIG ended up owing Goldman Sachs some $150 billion in the end and Goldman wasn't the only insurer they worked with during this time.  That is why Goldman famous posted profits during the financial collapse.  They were the company all that bailout money was owed.  

So you see, it was the free market that created this profit motive.  In fact, the free market is far more efficient in these matters of risky bad business than the government, as violent economic swings are always hugely profitable.
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20RP12
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« Reply #117 on: July 09, 2012, 05:23:20 PM »

[inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks]
[inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks] [inks]
[inks] [inks] [inks] you guys.

Bless your soul.
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« Reply #118 on: July 11, 2012, 07:57:25 PM »

An old post from a poster who has moved on to bigger and better things in life, but worth the reading:

If we wanted to be a serious religion we would let people know if you join another religion you go to hell and start excommunicating people for abortions and stuff

YEAH, that's a great idea!  Why don't you guys just go back to the Middle Ages, when you brutally tortured anyone who so much as tried to think for himself? 

I'm sure that will really boost the Church's worldwide membership.

That's my point exactly, a church should be about practicing what you believe.  It's not politics, you should not be pandering to attract new members.  So in my opinion that is a great idea.

Join a Protestant Church then. I don't believe the Catholic Church has ever been truely about following a creed. It has been for most of its existance a grouping of people with quite diverse theological views that have come together under one roof, especially since the Renaissance and subsequent liberalizing of both the entire Western world and of the Church itself. While you might not consider this completely holy, or right in the sense of papal superiority and the superiority of cannon law, it is the truth. Even with Church organizations you have a wide variation between groups like the Jesuits and Opus Dei or the Franciscans. I doubt that you would not consider any of these groups not Catholic but they have widely varying beliefs about the mission of the Church and the goals of spreading the gospel.

The thing is the Catholic Church isn't pandering to anyone it has 1 billion people that it considers its members, that's one sixth of the world's population. If you try to create a Church that is as conservative or "theologically pure" as your fundamentalist or conservative Protestant sects then you have a major problem since I doubt since I doubt that Kwando Akembe in Nigeria is going to care about the same issues as an upper class conservative Catholic in New Jersey or a liberal Catholic in the Netherlands.

Also you have to consider that in many ways in many countries Catholicism has gone beyond just being a religious entity but has become a part of the culture in much the same way as Judaism connects the world's Jewish population both spiritually and as a cultural entity.

That's just my opinion I don't really think that you could start excommunicating people for abortion or not going to Church or whatever and unless you want to see all that great 19th century anti-Catholicism come back the Church shouldn't destroy the good relations it has forged with it's Protestant bretheren.

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« Reply #119 on: July 11, 2012, 07:58:05 PM »

An old post from a poster who has moved on to bigger and better things in life

is this known, or just a kind cliche?
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« Reply #120 on: July 11, 2012, 08:00:33 PM »

An old post from a poster who has moved on to bigger and better things in life

is this known, or just a kind cliche?

Well clearly Colin Wixted has found better things to do with his life than post on this forum.  

which assumes anyone who leaves voluntarily does so because they are doing better things; which begs the question, what is the fundamental defect of those who continue to post?
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« Reply #121 on: July 12, 2012, 12:08:39 AM »

There's really no point in picking on DWTL now, especially for things he said five years ago, but I did find the "we would let people know if you join another religion you go to hell" bit quite amusing since that's not even Catholic teaching (even if the statement is taken literally and not defining "another religion" as "another Christian denomination" which is what I think he meant.)
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opebo
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« Reply #122 on: July 12, 2012, 07:18:14 AM »

An old post from a poster who has moved on to bigger and better things in life

is this known, or just a kind cliche?

Well clearly Colin Wixted has found better things to do with his life than post on this forum.  

which assumes anyone who leaves voluntarily does so because they are doing better things; which begs the question, what is the fundamental defect of those who continue to post?

In point of fact continued posting is a good sign - of reasonable prosperity (internet access, a computer, enough food and drink to be cognizant) and health (the poster has not died or become to ill to post).  Nowadays most people who cease posting can be assumed to have fallen into poverty, living under a bridge, or to have died due to aneurism or other troubles.
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RI
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« Reply #123 on: July 12, 2012, 08:35:57 PM »

There's really no point in picking on DWTL now, especially for things he said five years ago, but I did find the "we would let people know if you join another religion you go to hell" bit quite amusing since that's not even Catholic teaching (even if the statement is taken literally and not defining "another religion" as "another Christian denomination" which is what I think he meant.)

Yeah, Catholics have a pretty open door policy on heaven. You have to really go out of your way to become "hellbound" unlike some (though certainly not all) Protestant churches.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #124 on: July 15, 2012, 08:19:25 AM »

Yes, Obama's attacks on Romney's record at Bain are unfair. No, the fact that a company Bain Capital invested in outsourced jobs isn't especially important.

But none of this would hold water as much if Mitt Romney weren't basing his entire campaign for president on the idea that he "knows how to create jobs" - something which sounds even weirder when GOP doctrine suggests government can't create jobs.

It's worth remembering that the bulk of Mitt Romney's career was spent not as a private equity partner, but as a management consultant. It's being overly generous to place management consulting in the rough-and-tumble part of the business world. Management consultants are people who are paid a fee to give advice to companies; in that sense, it's really more like being a doctor or a lawyer than being an entrepreneur or a manager.

Romney's private equity record likewise says nothing about his ability to create jobs. It says much about his ability to generate profits. But anyone with a decent understanding of management knows that one of the quickest ways to increase a firm's profits is to eliminate jobs. No one starts a business to create jobs; they start a business to generate a return on their investment. Any jobs created are incidental. There shouldn't be anything wrong with this; I don't think "You make too much money" is a very salient insult. Liberals don't understand that. But conservatives need to dispense with the starry-eyed vision of people who sit in offices and say "Let's see how many jobs I can create today."

Mitt Romney was a good management consultant and a good private equity investor. But he hasn't done a good job of explaining how any of that entails he will be a good president. If anything, his management consulting experience would seem like a more logical jumping off point - many of the organizational problems companies experience have analogues in government agencies. Someone who knows how to make a major corporation run more efficiently could probably do the same for a Cabinet-level agency. But there will probably be layoffs involved.
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