Displaying comments 1 to 50 of 357
MeFi post:
Oh my God! (but distinctly not yours!)
Nothing really to say other than it saddens me that 50%+ of this country are such outright idiots.
"A Gallup poll released Monday said that while the country is about evenly split over whether the theory of evolution is true, Republicans disbelieve it by more than 2-to-1.
Republicans saying they don't believe in evolution outnumbered those who do by 68 percent to 30 percent in the survey. Democrats believe in evolution by 57 percent to 40... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 1:08 PM on March 8, 2008
MeFi post:
Oil Tops Inflation-Adjusted Record Set in 1980
that the pissier they are about keeping prices high the less likely the world will be to give a shit when someone finally does take it.
now if only there were an asymmetric approach to fighting back.
One thing I realized rather early on with the PV producers is that alternative energy is not going to lower energy prices significantly.
When OPEC is happy to sell all they can produce at $150, and you can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:38 AM on March 7, 2008
MeFi post:
Ten Years in Jail for Selling Lightbulbs
heh, that dredged up distant memories of door-to-door lightbulb salesboy ads I used to see in comic books in the 1970s. Seemed like a pretty good business model . . .
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 12:44 PM on March 6, 2008
MeFi post:
Swimming upstream.
The people of Chile and Nicaragua have been shit on by the CIA to an amazing degree and they aren't strapping explosives to themselves
While radical islamic tenets of jihad, fatwa, and the paradise thing feed into the cycle of violence, the people of Chile and Nicaragua have nothing to gain by targetting the US (anymore).
The continued existence of Israel and the mighty big footprint the US has in the mideast presently are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 10:44 AM on March 5, 2008
What evidence is there to a faithful Christian that God doesn't exist?
Faith is a filter of doubt and that is the core of the issue.
Scientologists, Mormons, JWs, Wiccans, that overwhelmingly demonstrate that people are willing to "put faith" in damn near anything religion-related and that it is this mental exercise of faith itself that is reality-denying.
It was my exposure to other devout... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:07 AM on March 5, 2008
I agree its painting with too broad a brush to categorically "dismiss" the religious / people of faith as "unreasonable".
Certaintity is just a conscious mental state, and IMV the brain is rather not limited in its abilities to gin up any mental experience (cf. deja vous) regardless of the actualities.
Organized faiths, however, have institutionalized this manufacturing of arguably false certainty.
The... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:58 AM on March 5, 2008
is an outlier, the fundamentalist literal God
the recent Pew survey showed that the largest bloc of believers in this country, at 26%, are the [largely] fundie evangelicals.
Fundies were the outliers in the US of the 1950s and 60s, perhaps, but no longer.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:54 PM on March 5, 2008
klangklangston, my counter-opinion is that evangelicals, by their very aggressively "outreach" nature, have been growing by leaps & bounds since the Graham Ministries gave them critical mass durn the cultural counter-reaction to the "God Is Dead / More Popular than Jesus" 1960s.
IME the evangelical worldview is one if simplifed "repent or you're going to hell" and consists of decidedly non-liberal theology concerning church/state... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 6:31 PM on March 5, 2008
kk, I know what it means -- the literal Greek roots and their history in this country -- but the evangelical megachurches I have been taken to have all been fundie. My point is that the modern evangelical movement has largely been outcompeted by the SBC and parts of it have shifted its polar moment to more closely match the ongoing success of the SBC.
There is indeed an Evangelical left; that is the church I grew up in. But I don't see much of it these days, and that is,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 7:03 PM on March 5, 2008
MeFi post:
HP -1
I've only spent a dozen or three hours in the AD&D environment, but the time there was cetainly some of the highest entertainment and camaraderie that I've experienced.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 1:42 PM on March 4, 2008
MeFi post:
James Hewitt Jr
Well, it was his grandmother's army. I don't really see the big deal.
not really snark
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 2:13 AM on March 3, 2008
why doesn't The Treasury avail itself of every opportunity to raise sorely needed funds?
because, historically, Her Majesty's Government has been exactly that.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 9:59 AM on March 3, 2008
MeFi post:
1 in 99.1
of all people who are black are incarcerated we also have a viable candidate for president who is also black
Not really, in the sense that Obama is a not a product of the "Black/African-American" sub-culture.
There are, arguably, "African-American", secular politicians that could have achieved similar success -- JC Watts, and others that I am aware of tangentially -- but Obama himself is something of an odd... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 12:53 PM on February 28, 2008
MeFi post:
Hoping for a new voodoo?
Actually, equity is OK, but only if it's a non-growth stock that distributes corporate earnings currently.
I'm paying 40+% taxes all total on my present annual income. I'll get some of that back via SS retirement benefits but let's not pretend that the 40% taxation level is confiscatory.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:08 PM on February 26, 2008
^ It is entirely the point. You implied that 40% taxation is "not OK" above. I was correcting you.
Removing the distinction between investment income and regular income would result in the change plexi is proposing above.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:21 PM on February 26, 2008
Why not tax things that allow people to become and remain wealthy without laboring, like land . . .
ah, The LVT!.
If land rents are taxed fairly I can maintain no great degree of enthusiasm for taxing capital returns.
Capital puts people to work, in return it demands its interest.
Land rents just take from people, charging access for the ground space that was originally already... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 7:36 PM on February 27, 2008
MeFi post:
It's Official.
The MOST CERTAIN WAY to drive Independents over to Nader is to resurrect the urban myth that he secured the election for Bush.
Nader didn't do shit. It was Nader voters voting for him in NH and FL that bear their proportional share of responsibility -- not blame -- for the results of the 2000 election.
We can (and do!) argue about the degree of that proportion, but at the end of the day (Nov 7,2000) the vote totals in Florida... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 2:15 PM on February 24, 2008
>Some people here have a real contempt for democracy.
frustration, gsb, frustration. There's a lot of idiots running around in this country, doing a lot of stupid things.
American Democracy isn't the problem, we is. Libertopians dreaming of The Revolution should remind themselves the day after the revolution we'll stlll have tens of millions of rather helpless people fucking things up on a daily basis.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 2:22 PM on February 24, 2008
There is a direct causal relationship between Nader's decision to be an asshole and the results of the 2000 election
Sure, but it's a free country and you're looking at indirect causals. The direct causal was people not voting for Gore in FL, NH, OH etc.
This group of people consists of disaffected voters not voting at all, people getting confused by the butterfly ballot, progressives doing the protest vote, etc. etc.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 2:57 PM on February 24, 2008
^Do you guys who are blaming Nader for everything the Bush administration did
We have the government we collectively deserve, yes.
This is NOT a structural defect of the political system as laid out in the Constitution; parliamentary systems are no panacea either, from my experience observing that form of government functioning (or not) in Japan.
The bottom line is that every 4 years we have a choice... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 3:35 PM on February 24, 2008
oh, and Thomas Paine, being an avowed atheist as he was, would today get about half as far as Howard Dean got in 2003/2004.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 3:39 PM on February 24, 2008
it only applies if you voted in Florida
And NH.
Blaming disaffected voters
From what I've seen, The Blame Game is more of an accusation thrown out by people seeking to justify their vote, or non-Gore voting in general. I don't hear too many NH and FL Nader voters defending/rationalizing their decision to vote 3rd party.
11/7/2000 showed us that each of our... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:29 PM on February 24, 2008
If Ralph Nader is really as irrelevent as half the people here are saying
Nader is irrelevant, but the Nader voters showed they were not, at least in 2000.
This kiss-my-ring kingmaking power is sometimes seen in parliamentary maneuvering, too. Hell, the arch-conservative LDP in Japan aligned with the quasi-commie JSP old farts to put a JSP old fart in as PM in the 90s.
Politicians have to appeal to a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:36 PM on February 24, 2008
bokane: vote as you will. If you are happy with eg. McCain/Huckabee taking over for Bush as a result, more power to you.
Let's just hope that Justice Stevens has another 4 years in him.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:40 PM on February 24, 2008
So that diverse competing political interests have to publicly and openly compromise and form an alliance to get into power?
The dynamics of politics just means the outliers eventually get stripped though; fat lot of good Parliamentary gov't has done for the Liberals in the UK. Plus there are the deleterious effects of whackjob minorities gaining disproportional power through temporary alliances.
IMO the best policy to reform... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 5:11 PM on February 24, 2008
MeFi post:
Don't Stop Believin'
heh, before listening to their cover I hadn't noticed that Dennis DeYoung had the correct (mis)pronounciation of "Mistah Roboto".
But can Steve Perry do Jim Morrison . . . or John Bon Jovi . . . Kurt Cobain . . . Deep Purple . . . Geddy Lee :)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 1:48 AM on February 23, 2008
^ never mind about the roboto thing ? (. .
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 2:07 AM on February 23, 2008
MeFi post:
Subprime Artistry
If you're going to call the banks greedy, you should really call the mortgage customers greedy too
and that's where you go wrong in your thinking. People go to financial institutions expecting they have fiduciary responsibilities, even if these are implicit. If the bank thinks a strawberry picker in Watsonville is good for a $750K loan, who is he to tell them otherwise?
But the problem isn't "government" OR... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 1:52 PM on February 17, 2008
Is the "mortgage broker" lying to the bank somehow about the buyer's poor credit?
Ayup. Wells Fargo stopped taking loans from the brokers earlier this decade, and everyone else has essentially closed down their lines to brokers.
How does a bank "get rid of" a loan?
Assuming it's too big or doesn't meet Federal guidelines (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), the banks... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:29 PM on February 17, 2008
How about "I make 50,000$ a year, and I'm buying a 600,000$ house." Is that not supposed to arouse some kind of basic, primitive, financial alarm bell?
The most rational players, eg. if *I* had decided to play the game in 2004-2005, if I couldn't refi into another teaser / neg-am mortgage after 2-5 years of free rent I could unload the house and pocket the 10-30% PA appreciation. After all, real estate only goes up, right?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:37 PM on February 17, 2008
As the brokers got paid at the start, they didn't care too much about the future
actually, there's another dynamic present here too -- brokers were selling boomerang products that FORCED the borrowers to come back to them.
Kinda like 1960s Detroit with their 5-year "planned obsolescence" cycles.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 4:39 PM on February 17, 2008
They knew (or should've known) that the needed financing would only be available if their houses had significantly appreciated.
This is incorrect. People roll debt (at favorable terms) over all the time, even if the underlying asset doesn't appreciate. Who could have known (or on the blogs I read, "hoocoodanone?") that prices would decline 30% so quickly. Hell, this time last year we were still arguing whether or not prices were going to go... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 6:14 PM on February 17, 2008
There was no reason to think that real estate could only go up. There was nothing rational about that position. Real estate had lost value in the past, as anyone who had done even the slightest bit of research would discover
GMAFB. The entire media was in the tank with the REIC ("real estate industrial complex") not to mention the Feds and State governments in blowing up this asset bubble. 95% of the so-called economists featured in the mass... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 6:20 PM on February 17, 2008
(....sorry rant completing thought follows...)
got anything contrary into the public mind.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 6:21 PM on February 17, 2008
CNN pimps Harvard Study in mid-2006; mentions Lawrence Yun of the NAR, before he rose to their "Chief Economist", Yun probably fed that story to the CNN reporter.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 6:49 PM on February 17, 2008
wasting everybody else's time when they're just trying to get some work done. I'm usually pretty good about reading contracts through and making a fuss about parts I don't like
plus when most people come to the closing table they're basically fully committed to the deal, eg. have their stuff in a moving van heading to the new place, etc. etc.
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 10:16 PM on February 17, 2008
Free marketers are about as relevant as anarchocommunists in this discussion.
I disagree; I believe the corporate fraud present this decade from Enron to FGIC is a Class A example of how unbridled free marketeerism works here in the real world.
In a world without external oversight and redistribution -- let's call this "the State" -- the economic actor -- the Millikens, Skillings, Mozillos, and their minions -- only... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:09 AM on February 18, 2008
I don't understand the ire that ARMs create in US homebuyers.
Widely available affordability products artificially push up prices. They serve the bankers not the borrowers in the end.
ARMs would not be a problem if banks qualified people on the back-end "taser" rates not the front end "teaser" rates. (Banks are actually required to do this now, one of the first rule changes to come in the aftermath of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 11:13 AM on February 18, 2008
MeFi post:
Independent Kosovo? Why Not Vermont?
Kosovo will exist as an independent country only as long as the U.S. and NATO are willing to defend it.
This is, I agree, how the world works, until history brings its weight to bear and the balance of power and tradition changes in that region of the world.
As mentioned above, similar dynamics are in play with Israel and, of course, Taiwan.
Kuwait was an artful creation of the Kuwaiti emirs who... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 8:13 PM on February 17, 2008
MeFi post:
A Solar Grand Plan
Because anti-war people who turned out to be right about Iraq like to rub pro-war peoples' faces in it
If I could interrupt the resident rightists' pity party going on here, I think the issue goes a little deeper than that. There are a group of people in this country -- for lack of a better term, let's call them Present-Day Conservative Republicans, who "turn out to be" WRONG about damn near every public policy issue this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by panamax
at 2:07 PM on February 17, 2008
