patrick.net

Straw Man says

The funny thing is: WalMart won't lose a penny - it will all be paid back to
them by government. So I'm not sure what exactly are you celebrating here: if
you're a taxpayer, you're paying for this party.

Holy shit. You mean the American taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the extra $1000 in food??? Stop the presses. The $1 Trillion budget is going to be killed by this nefarious activity.

What I think, when I see that memorial closures are the thing that gets conservatives in the streets, is that movement leaders and rank-and-file activists alike cannot be counted on to identify and take on the most serious issues facing veterans, or the most serious threats to liberty. Instead they spend their time seizing on symbolic issues that promise to result in the best optics for a given news cycle — World War II veterans traveled to Washington and can’t visit the memorial dedicated to them!

Think what victory would mean in this instance: the barricades would come down, which will happen anyway as soon as the government reopens. In other words, there’s no substantive upside for this particular rally, whether you’re concerned about benefiting veterans or safeguarding liberty. It was held so that Cruz and Palin could aggrandize themselves, so that conservatives could revel in their self-image as liberty loving patriots who honor veterans, and so that the Obama Administration would look bad. Protests are nothing more than political theater for these people. Or if they actually intend to effect change, their strategy verges on nonsensical.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-wwii-memorial-protest-a-big-fuss-about-almost-nothing/280542/

Bigsby says

errc says

Now that's a good one! Walmart will turn down their life blood?

A rent seeker, turning their backs on a rent tap?

THAT'LL NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN

Which is why these companies shouldn't be left to their own devices.

Not sure what you mean by left to their own devices. Care to elaborate?

I'm enjoying this stuff: it takes me back to the Lincoln Bedroom outrage days.

Of course, GW Bush proceeded to sell access to the Lincoln Bedroom throughout his Presidency, but AM radio did not carry the story, for some reason.

Call it Crazy says

And 3/4 of American's get their news from left leaning news sites.... What a surprise....

Nice McCarthy tactic. A clever ploy used whenever the right is wrong and has nothing in their pockets except the blame the "Liberal media" while ignoring the fact that the LARGEST cable news network is a right-leaning network.

Call it Crazy says

Hey Eddie.... Took your advice and read some polls.... tell me what you think:

Nice. Except that WASN'T the Poll I was talking about. The Poll I was discussing was over what percentage of the general population blames the GOP for the government shutdown. BTW... GW hardly ever has as high of an approval rating as Obama has for most of his presidency so far.AverageBear says

Only a sad, sad man would put up barricades to 'close' 'open-air' monuments, huge sections of ocean, and small, privately owned businesses, alongside a national park. Deny veterans access one day, but allow illegals/La Raza, etal, to use the same areas the next day. (I guess every day is vote-buying day in "Obama-Land".....

What a small, petty man our president is...

Repeating the same crap over and over doesn't make wrong accusations anymore correct than they were the first time. your beloved GOP were responsible for shutting down the government. So if you want to cry a river over it, place blame where the blame belongs.

HydroCabron says

I'm enjoying this stuff: it takes me back to the Lincoln Bedroom outrage days.

Of course, GW Bush proceeded to sell access to the Lincoln Bedroom throughout his Presidency, but AM radio did not carry the story, for some reason.

I'm sort of finding this entertaining as well. All of the millions and millions of Tea-Party dollars spent on behalf of that fake grass root's corporate benefactors will soon, if not already realize that shutting down the government will have negated all of that spending seeing as how the general public is dropping the GOP like a hot potato. The best part? They did it to themselves! All of the crap they've done for the last few years to try and get their way will have all been for naught.

Poor, poor GOP...

The problem is the system. You let people take advantage and they will. No one has moral restraint anymore these days.

That looks like a drop in the bucket of the national problems we are facing.

errc says

Bigsby says

errc says

Now that's a good one! Walmart will turn down their life blood?

A rent seeker, turning their backs on a rent tap?

THAT'LL NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN

Which is why these companies shouldn't be left to their own devices.

Not sure what you mean by left to their own devices. Care to elaborate?

They have little compunction to do the right thing when faced by the demands of share holders. Profit is the motivator and people and the environment get abused as a consequence unless laws are introduced and enforced to counter that. What the major companies do in Asia they'd do in Europe and the US if they had the opportunity. What do you think has contributed to them not being able to do the same anymore?

HydroCabron says

What harm could patriots carrying Confederate Flags possibly do during a staged GOP anger-generation event?

I am grateful to you for telling me I should be livid over this vague, mild symbolic outrage.

What else has Rush told you to seethe about lately?

Hydro,

Thanks for playing, and projecting. I'm just stating that it's a sad day, when Obama goes out of his way to shut out veterans (and tourists) from open-air monuments, but the next day allows the same 'monument' to be accessed by La Raza. I don't know about the confederate flags waving. Other than sports, I don't watch much TV, but get most of my info off the 'net. It sounds like you watch Fox more than I do, and that's pretty funny.

You'd imagine that w/ 3+ years to design, plan and implement Obamacare and its 'delivery' via web, that it would 'work'. Instead, it doesn't (on the scale of 'massive failure'), and is being handled by folks with arrest records. nice. Puts the warm and fuzzy feeling into my heart, that with these immediate results so far, the same retarts are now controlling 1/6th of economy, yet intrusive more than ever.

I can sum up Obamacare in one sentence: "Shit in, shit out"....

AverageBear says

I don't watch much TV, but get most of my info off the 'net.

Where on the 'net?

HydroCabron says

This is heueuge - could be the final blow to the Obama dictatorship.

Everywhere I go, people are seething over the IRS scandal, Benghazi!, and the Long Form.

Once they are told by Roger Ailes to be angry about this, it's the end for Obama.

You are pretty smarmy on discounting some big flaws in Obama. The trick is, can you actually point to something useful that Obama has actually done since being elected president?

FortWayne says

The problem is the system. You let people take advantage and they will. No one has moral restraint anymore these days.

I agree. The global elite have been taking advantage of the global capitalist system for too long. You let people take advantage and they will. They have no moral restraint anymore these days. In the good old days, the wealthy elite made worker safety and fair wages a high priority.

AverageBear says

Thanks for playing, and projecting. I'm just stating that it's a sad day, when Obama goes out of his way to shut out veterans (and tourists) from open-air monuments,

Dude, sorry, but Obama DID NOT shut down the veteran monument. Your GOP DID. So stop projecting absolute rubbish. Like I said before- most Americans are smart enough to know what the deal is and hence why most of them blame the GOP for the shutdown.

Give me a few minutes. I'll find some random bullshit article that shows some sort of GOP legislation being used and abused and then use that single instance as a lame attempt to paint the entire program with a broad brush...

Dan8267 says

The language of the universe is mathematics and the expression of mathematics to describe reality is theory.

Unfortunately, the language of economics is most commonly known as "bullshitting."

AverageBear says

The trick is, can you actually point to something useful that Obama has actually done since being elected president?

Sure.
1: Obamacare

2: Saved auto industry. To date US auto industry is doing better than it has done in decades. Republicans wanted it to go bankrupt.

3: Expanded pell grants and got bacnks out of federal student loans

4: increased spending on veterens, passed new GI bill worth 78 Billion dollars. Created tax credits for businesses who hire veterans.

5: Passed credit card laws that stops CC companies from raising rates without a notice.

6: Expanded stem cell research. This was restricted under Bush.

I agree with CiC, but have zero sympathy for Walmart. How? Because the taxpayers are footing the bill for these thieving low life's and I am having a hard time understanding why! Walmart loses nothing. They have found their faithful clientele, and as long as EBT payments are made by tw tax payers, Walmart profits will deliver return to shareholders.
It has always struck me as a supreme irony that the very same people who lost jobs because of Walmart activities are the most avid patrons. Then again, in many thousands of small towns, Wally's World is about the only store.

The language of the universe may well be mathematics, but this is not to say that our current understanding of math is adequate to describe it. Just as bodies in motion required the invention of calculus to describe, the inner truths of the universe may require additional advances to even comprehend, let alone describe and predict.

Quigley says

the inner truths of the universe may require additional advances to even comprehend, let alone describe and predict.

I think you've been reading too much Deepak Chopra. ;-)

freak80 says

Unfortunately, the language of economics is most commonly known as "bullshitting."

I believe economics is the number one elite school (meaning Ivies, Chicago, London School of Economics, Stanford, etc) major, which places its converts into management consulting or banking firms. This is where one's alma mater's brand name matters.

In other words, they form the alpha whereas B-school forms the omega, of the world of MBA-ology.

Then, the few who go on to get PhDs and becomes academics like Milton Friedman, Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman, Lester Thurow, etc, become DC/govt/industry policy makers for the rest of us.

Most economic "theories" are little more than ideologies. An ideology exists to benefit the ideology's creator (often at the expense of others).

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."
-- John Maynard Keynes

AverageBear says

HydroCabron says

This is heueuge - could be the final blow to the Obama dictatorship.

Everywhere I go, people are seething over the IRS scandal, Benghazi!, and the Long Form.

Once they are told by Roger Ailes to be angry about this, it's the end for Obama.

You are pretty smarmy on discounting some big flaws in Obama. The trick is, can you actually point to something useful that Obama has actually done since being elected president?

You're not hearing me: it ain't Obama that this is about.

Obama is just a black Reagan, eager to kill Americans to save face (Afghanistan), although, in fairness to Reagan, he pulled ground forces out of Beirut after the barracks bombing in '83. Obama should be in jail, if not for the NSA, then for Gitmo. And the bank bailouts were a moment of shame for America.

But that's beside the point.

The real issue is wingnuts who feel outrage at monument closures, instead of veterans benefit cuts, and get angry at exactly what they're told to get angry about.

What makes your blood boil: Terry Schiavo and flag burning, or spending $3 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan with nothing to show for it?

HydroCabron says

Sounds as if you were there. This is a serviceable description of what
happened.

Many carried Confederate flags,

Many carried Confederate flags? Now you are just making shit up. I've read all the liberal bed wetting over this dude and the flag, and they could only find one guy. Surely you can find a bunch of pictures of other guys if "many carried" that flag - right?

Now I seem to remember how the media and libs were very careful not to label the OWS and anti-war movements as a bunch of Commies just because they had ton of hammer and sickle flags at their rallies.

But liberal hacks got to do what they do. Even if that means putting up barriers in front of WWII vets in wheelchairs and then calling them a bunch of racists.

Charming bunch you guys!

edvard2 says

AverageBear says

Sure.

1: Obamacare

2: Saved auto industry. To date US auto industry is doing better than it has done in decades. Republicans wanted it to go bankrupt.

3: Expanded pell grants and got bacnks out of federal student loans

4: increased spending on veterens, passed new GI bill worth 78 Billion dollars. Created tax credits for businesses who hire veterans.

5: Passed credit card laws that stops CC companies from raising rates without a notice.

6: Expanded stem cell research. This was restricted under Bush.

7: Not being an outright braying wingnut who hates science, along with pretty much every institution but the NRA, churches, and the military.
8: Having just enough brains to understand that in an economic collapse, federal spending should increase to compensate for cratering state and local spending.
9: Believing that the world is older than 6,000 years
10: Believing in the competent administration of disaster relief

socal2 says

Many carried Confederate flags? Now you are just making shit up. I've read all the liberal bed wetting over this dude and the flag, and they could only find one guy.

You're right: very few in the conservative movement ever wave the Confederate Flag, which is why it has never, ever adorned the bumpers of pickup trucks or the cupolas of southern state houses.

After all, I'm sure that the patriots of the GOP would never countenance racist traitors in their ranks, now would they?

HydroCabron says

You're right:

See that's not so hard.

Please refrain from making shit up in the future.

Thanks

This is the only thing the right wing media seems to be able to come up with:

" Obama shut down the veteran's memorial!!! OMG!!!!!"

Yeah- just keep repeating the same thing and maybe enough on the right will do like they always do and "Squawk!, Squawk!" repeat it, verbatim as their one and only means to try and distill the fact that nope, sorry, the GOP was most responsible for shutting down the government and guess what? The polls show that most Americans ain't buying those on the right somehow pinning this on the president.

Like I said before- I don't even need to say anything. What's happening is the direct fault of the GOP and they will be suffering from the bad PR this will create for their party.

edvard2 says

Like I said before- I don't even need to say anything. What's happening is
the direct fault of the GOP and they will be suffering from the bad PR this will
create for their party.

Direct fault of the GOP? They only control 1/3 of the US government.

Democrats have controlled no less than 2/3 of the US government since 2006 - how come they don't get blamed for the "Great Recession"?

Just like with Bush and his party getting all the blame, people 10-20 years from now will only remember that Obama was President during one of the worst economic periods in our history.

freak80 says

New Renter says

Don't forget to hit up your soon-to-be former municipality for your free one way bus ticket!

You think the Village of Horseheads, NY would buy one for me? ;-)

Depends how much of a pain in the ass you are.

Tim Aurora says

Direct fault of the GOP? They only control 1/3 of the US government.

Democrats have controlled no less than 2/3 of the US government since 2006 - how come they don't get blamed for the "Great Recession"?

Just like with Bush and his party getting all the blame, people 10-20 years from now will only remember that Obama was President during one of the worst economic periods in our history.

Believe you are misunderstanding what I wrote. What we are seeing here is basically a repeat of what happened in the 90's when the GOP last decided to pull this stunt and use the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip: Prior to the shutdown they had basically taken over the house and had some substantial public figures, like Newt Gingrich for example. Had they stayed the course, things probably would have worked out better for them.

But instead they used the debt ceiling as a bargaining tool and the general public placed more blame on the GOP than the Democratic party and the result was that the GOP lost a LOT of their influence at that time as a result.

edvard2 says

Believe you are misunderstanding what I wrote. What we are seeing here is
basically a repeat of what happened in the 90's when the GOP last decided to
pull this stunt and use the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip: Prior to the
shutdown they had basically taken over the house and had some substantial public
figures, like Newt Gingrich for example. Had they stayed the course, things
probably would have worked out better for them.

But instead they used the debt ceiling as a bargaining tool and the general
public placed more blame on the GOP than the Democratic party and the result was
that the GOP lost a LOT of their influence at that time as a result.

I get all the perception bit. But I am less in this trying to win points for my team, but what is good for our country.

I do believe the "stunts" that Republicans pulled in the mid 1990's helped pave the way for welfare reform and even helped bring about our temporary surpluses under Clinton. (That along with Clinton benefiting from the peace dividened from his predecessors with the end of the Cold War and implosion of Communism).

It is just like the stunt of "sequester" this past year has helped shrink the deficit under Obama in the last few months.

edvard2 says

The reason I don't agree with that assessment is because it really wouldn't matter whether this was a liberal or a conservative-backed program: no matter what it is, there will ALWAYS be people who abuse whatever system happens to be. That's human nature. But furthermore, its grossly out of reason to hold the small minority of those who do in fact mis-use welfare and then proclaim that ALL of those on welfare are the same.

I don't think it's just a small portion of people abusing welfare benefits. Particularly when half the people on "disability" could easily work a job, I don't think 50% is a small portion. Other programs are probably not nearly as bad.

Plus I don't like guaranteeing people a minimum standard of living that's actually quite high by world standards.

edvard2 says

2: Saved auto industry. To date US auto industry is doing better than it has done in decades. Republicans wanted it to go bankrupt.

"Saving" the auto industry? By that, do you mean stealing for the UAW? Ask the Delphi non-union folks about your savior...

....."The Treasury sold nearly 20 percent of its remaining shares in General Motors Co. in the first three months of the year, the Detroit automaker disclosed Thursday.

The Treasury, which initially held 60.8 percent of GM as part of the U.S. $49.5 billion bailout, now owns just 16.4 percent, or 241.7 million shares. In December, the Treasury sold GM 200 million shares of its stake for $5.5 billion to reduce its stake to 300 million shares.

In total, Treasury has recouped $30.6 billion. At current trading prices, Treasury would lose around $10 billion on its GM bailout......"

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/06/12/finally-delphi-workers-break-through-obama-stonewall-on-uaw-bail/

...."I have been reporting to you about how President Obama’s UAW bailout threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus since September 2010. It’s the real-life horror story of some 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer “rescue” funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life insurance benefits. The abused workers — most from hard-hit northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states — had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish.".....

HydroCabron says

7: Not being an outright braying wingnut who hates science, along with pretty much every institution but the NRA, churches, and the military.

8: Having just enough brains to understand that in an economic collapse, federal spending should increase to compensate for cratering state and local spending.

9: Believing that the world is older than 6,000 years

10: Believing in the competent administration of disaster relief

^^^^ = unhinged + projector

edvard2 says

3: Expanded pell grants and got bacnks out of federal student loans

You think this is a good thing? Really? I can see how this will be used as a weapon, just like the IRS is currently used.

'So much wrong': Aetna CEO blasts Obamacare tech debacle

Like I said, Obama care = shit. Don't believe me? How 'bout Aetna's view of things?

Words/phrases that resonate within this article:
- "There is so much wrong"
- Debacle
- problems
- missing deadlines
- On the fly

Oh, and this isn't any Fox/Rush site either. It's your good 'ol low-ratings CNBC... Enjoy...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101110161

....."Aetna's CEO gave a harshly critical review Monday of the federal government's Obamacare marketplace, saying, "There's so much wrong, you just don't know what's broken until you get a lot more of it fixed."

Asked on CNBC's "Squawk Box" if he knew that the rollout of Healthcare.gov would be problematic, the insurer's CEO, Mark Bertolini, said his giant company's role as an alpha tester for the system gave it a sense of how many problems the health insurance marketplace faced on the eve of its launch.

"We were pretty nervous as we got further along," Bertolini said. "As they started missing deadlines, we were pretty convinced it was going to be a difficult launch."

(Read more: Rx for Obamacare? Feds mull rebuilding website)

His fears have been realized, he said, and the technological debacle seen at Healthcare.gov is one similar to just the handful he's witnessed in his career.

"It's nothing you ever like to repeat," Bertolini said. "Because it's very difficult. I've been there. It's career-ending in a lot of cases." ........

HydroCabron says

Time dilation is definitely a thing. The GPS satellite clocks have a rolling adjustment to compensate for both general and special relativistic effects.

Time dilation has also been measured in supersonic aircraft using precise clocks.

edvard2 says

5: Passed credit card laws that stops CC companies from raising rates without a notice.

I'm guessing this was a bi-partisan effort that Obama signed into law. Any links?

AverageBear says

"Saving" the auto industry? By that, do you mean stealing for the UAW? Ask the Delphi non-union folks about your savior...

Believe you need to look back on history as well as current performance. GM and Chrysler would have gone bankrupt, no question, had there not been a government bailout. We are talking about an industry that employees millions of people and generates untold billions of dollars of revenue per year.

As we now see, all three of the Big three automakers are doing exceptionally well. GM not only has markedly improved sales in the US, but they now do even better overseas. That's right- they sell cars overseas now.

So my question for all of the righty-wingers who think GM and Chrysler should have failed, what would that have done to the economy? You guys wail about waste and costs. Had those millions of autoworkers been lost then suddenly we would have had many, many millions of people instantly on the unemployment system. That versus the majority of those people staying at work and now contributing to the national economy.

And don't say we're alone in doing this: There isn't a single automaker in the world that has not at some point either been subsidized, bailed out, or otherwise helped along by their respective governments. AverageBear says

You think this is a good thing? Really? I can see how this will be used as a weapon, just like the IRS is currently used.

Yes. I was one of those people who used a Pell grant to get through college. There are millions of people who use them and they are a means for people to be able to actually afford college. As far as getting banks out of federal loans, that means that they got financial interests whom viewed student loans as a profit making endeavor out of that business. Again- as a means to in some ways limit the costs of college. There are still MANY things that need to be done to improve its affordability. Pell grants are just one of those ways and it works very well.