patrick.net

Terrabella says

He deserved the sentence and will most likely die in prison. However, some of the comments here are juvenile and downright stupid. To paint an entire industry as a bunch of crooks is ridiculous. And,

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch leads the pack as an uneducated, redneck spouting bad taste. 7800 + comments kind of tells you something...doesn't it !!

I think he should dump those special needs kids on the Judge's doorstep. See if HE takes them in.

It now looks like Boner is giving up and will put to vote a clean debt ceiling bill:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/11/debt-ceiling-republicans-boehner/5390293/

I hope this is a sign of the fever breaking and the Republicans returning to some semblance of sanity. A man can dream.

Boner is folding like a cheap suit.
Clearly he doesn't have what it takes to shoot the hostage.

Dan8267 says

And here's how to fix it.

Removing $800 billions of spending is like removing 5% of the GDP, plus second order effects, probably enough to start a downward spiral.

I'd say that would kill the hostage.

The guys climb in to dumpsters to take a nap???

Your prices are too high. A home in San Ramon in 1980 did not cost $150,000. It was more like $25,000. a href="http://patrick.net/?p=1237859&c=1051669#comment-1051669">Reality says

First time home buyers do not usually pay cash for houses. Boomers buying a median house in 1980 would have paid 15% interest that cost nearly 3x then median income. That's a much higher percentage of median income than the current 4% interest on a house that is nearly 4x median income. 15% mortgage on a $150k (3x median income) house would be like $2000/mo, whereas today 4% 30yr mortgage on a $200k house (today's median price) is $1000/mo.

Man I was there! There was a phone call placed by Beamer, and it was what it was. No body back then balked and asked... "Well wait a minute, hows comes he's using a phone on a flyin machine, whens theys aint evens goings to invent thems untils 2006?"
Just how stupid do you think Cavemen were back 2001, before the smart phone was invented?

lostand confused says

The guys climb in to dumpsters to take a nap???

An Obama voter no doubt.
Hey if you're happy and you know it clap your hands!

Sirs:

In your arguments please distinguish between current deficit and long term debt.

bgamall4 says

Call it Crazy says

No one denies that Obama inherited a load of crap from Bush,

People deny it all the time.

You know we elected a Leader not a fucking cry baby.

How well do you think you would fare, if you spent 90% of your time at your job, bitching about all of your problems being the last guys fault. OK, that might cut it for the first few months, but eventually Your boss would expect you to exhibit some of those problem solving skills you went to great lengths to illustrate during the interview process.

Did he not run on the "Change" platform?

I'm still waiting for him to quit whining and start Changing things.

You guys are either crappy history students or chronic liars.
History has shown, these things can turn on a dime under the right management.

Just look at the years of Republican abuse on the poor and middle class Clinton erased in just a few short years. This Mother fuckers is not only "NOT" trying to make things better, he's intentionally giving us what we get. Stop pretending it's Bush up there signing away on all of this disasterous legislation that even makes you guys weep tears of betrayal.

But your will to stick back to the right, is much stronger, than you feelings of being thrown under the bus by a guy you invested so much energy in promoting as the President that would be the next "Theodore Marin F. Lincoln". So instead you misplace his misdeeds onto Bush.

Nice touch, I wish I could blame other people for my foolishness.

CaptainShuddup says

Nice touch, I wish I could blame other people for my foolishness.

Isn't that what you do? Blame Obama?

tatupu70 says

Isn't that what you do? Blame Obama?

I would Blame YOU! If you were President.

You Civics class reject!

tatupu70 says

Isn't that what you do? Blame Obama?

Yes, every chance he gets. He knows in his heart of hearts everything must be Obama's fault. It's all he can think of. He eats, sleeps, and dreams of how Obama is ruining this country.

As much of a problem as I have with Obama, this clown has succeeded in convincing me that Obama is actually a pretty good president, because Fox and Captain spend so much energy looking for evidence of how terrible he is, and all they can come up with is indirect and or transparent BS.

I'm not kidding, I would have a far less favorable impression of Obama if the Captain hadn't failed so miserably in convincing me otherwise.

spydah_hh says

bob2356 says

There has been debt since 1790.

Incorrect. In 1835 Andrew Jackson was the first and only U.S. President to pay off the national debt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson#Federal_debt

Ok there has been debt since 1790 except the year 1885. Better. Does it change the context all that much?

humanity says

Yes, every chance he gets. He knows in his heart of hearts everything must be Obama's fault. It's all he can think of. He eats, sleeps, and dreams of how Obama is ruining this country.

Yes and perhaps some who act as such would have more clout if it weren't for the fact that the very second Obama was elected they basically acted and behaved exactly the same as they do now- which it wouldn't have mattered whether Obama or another Democrat was elected. So long as a Republican is in the office- no matter how bad of a president they are- they are pleased as punch. The second a Democrat gets elected, all common sense gets thrown to the wind and they are blinded by ideology. We should be pleased that luckily this type of attitude only exists in a very small percentage of the population and they make no real difference in regards to who wins elections.

Yea the same thing happened with Soylent Green, tometo tomato, it all eats good.

hrhjuliet says

the fact remains, the prices are too high.

That is true, but the solution? In some cities they can (and do) do infill. The results haven't impressed me (they did some of this up in Portland) but it is a 'solution'. However in the SFBA, where (in many cases) homes have already been built literally touching each other (if not sharing a common wall), I don't think that is a solution. You have a large segment of people who want to live there (for whatever number of reasons) and a finite number of dwellings. Your solution? In the free market a limited supply (dwellings) and a large demand will cause the price to climb. You said (in an earlier post) that we should build more houses. However, there is a limited amount of land. Someone who works and WANTS to live in SF may not be happy if the nearest house is in Sacramento. The solution? I sure don't have the answer, not ONLY do I NOT want the GOVERNMENT to set prices; but even if they did there would not be enough supply. Oh, I know, we can build lots and lots of skyscraper apartments in SF. Yeah, that will go over big.

What I don't like is that it is what it is, and people whine about how it is. They don't do anything (for the most part) to change it, they just say 'I don't have mine and I want it'. Isn't that the case for lots of stuff? I'd love to drive a Lexus, but finances and reality is that it fiscally sound for me to be driving my 14 year old, 200,000 miles on it Camry.

Reality says

The percentiles have nothing to do with the mean.

Right and I'm arguing that if the percentiles were established according to the mean it would better inform the conversation of "Can a person work their way into x percent?" I saw some great articles on "upward mobility in the U.S." a few months back but haven't taken time to dig them up. Summary:Upward mobility is more rare in the United States than a lot of other countries despite the stellar reputation.

If Taco Bell can't serve Man, their costs will rise and they will pass it on to the consumer.

I am not paying higher prices for food just because of some government bureaucrats.

mmmarvel says

However, there is a limited amount of land.

That's not the problem.

edvard2 says

So long as a Republican is in the office- no matter how bad of a president they
are- they are pleased as punch. The second a Democrat gets elected, all common
sense gets thrown to the wind and they are blinded by ideology.

Above is a perfect example of how the typical "liberal" forum member here is so blinded by their own ideology, that they don't even recognize the extent to which their own side does the exact same thing they complain about.

The only difference in me and you guys is you voted for him.
If this was Romney or McCain under the same exact circumstances, you guys would be the peanut gallery. I'll tell you something else, I would be saying the same thing now, if I had been dumb enough vote for him in 2008 or 2012. This guy is not Right!

bgamall4 says

You have watched Robbie Parker and you can't see it? I wouldn't spread that around to too many people.

I don't find video clips on the internet a meaningful way of forming an opinion. Looks like you're really into it, though, so good luck.

mmmarvel, Re. "... the prices are too high.", you wrote above
"That is true, but the solution?"

The MAIN ENABLER of sizable asset price bubbles is keeping the real price histories out of sight -- see for example here.
http://www.showrealhist.com/yTRIAL.html

SOLUTION IS OBVIOUS to me, do you agree?

CaptainShuddup says

This guy is not Right!

You mean, "This guy's TOO far right". For that, I blame the citizens, particularly the midterm voters who, out of fear and a loss of gray matter, made the baggers ascendant, albeit briefly.

FunTime says

That's not the problem.

Embarrassed not to elaborate. How annoying. There are enough areas of San Francisco that are very low density to allow for thousands of more housing units added to the supply. People, especially house owners, are VERY reluctant to let this housing as it is a very simple reason for house prices to go down. People in San Francisco are terrified of house prices going down since most have WAY overspent. The house owning population is quite motivated and when spurred become exceptionally vocal.(wow did I use a lot of adverbs!)

Paralithodes says

Above is a perfect example of how the typical "liberal" forum member here is so blinded by their own ideology, that they don't even recognize the extent to which their own side does the exact same thing they complain about.

Oh contraire my friend... You see, I mentioned this before but its worth mentioning again. I grew up in the super-conservative, always- Republican voting South, at one point actually voted for Republicans, and when I grew up I was able to see past all of the crap that conservative politicians have used to fill their constituent's heads with. Blinded? Hardly. More like the recognition over reality versus the fiction many conservatives in the US believe in.

Heraclitusstudent says

Removing $800 billions of spending is like removing 5% of the GDP, plus second order effects, probably enough to start a downward spiral.

The key word in GDP is product. The warfare industry produces no product. In fact that industry destroys wealth.

To say that war increase the GDP is to say that natural disasters like Katrina increase the GDP or that a rapist increases the GDP because his victims need psychological counseling.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/I2QHj75Ulmo

BLOODBATH TUESDAY!

Bigsby says

The nightmare just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it. LOL

Don't worry, he's going to double-down on the double-down of his double-down.... after he sells his five houses. Or was it six?

Just closed out all my short positions and am 100% long. This thing is going to the moon. Yellen is our savior! All hail the queen. Cash holder or shorts will get clobbered. Renters will go broke also. Buy stocks, buy houses, buy cars. We are approaching the best time every in the wealth of the American system and the global economy for that matter. Vietnamese are eating at McDonalds finally! Don't bet against the power of Yellen, she can shit money at will.

Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie continue to pay dividends to the taxpayer... errr, government... I mean Treasury.
Later this month, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are likely to report earnings that will result in them paying the U.S. Treasury more than the $187 billion they received starting in 2008.
Since the beginning of last year, Fannie and Freddie have been turning over virtually all profits to the government each quarter. Before that, they were paying a 10% dividend on the preferred stock held by Treasury.
That change has meant a windfall for Treasury, which controls 80% of each company's stock.
Each subsequent cha-ching seems to make reform less likely. Note all the "special interests" that want a piece of the pie: speculators (aka hedge funds), pre-bust shareholders, and affordable housing advocates.

Whether them reporting the use of a Cell phone conjures up images of a 2006 iPhone in your mind, or the Credit card phone on the back of every airlines seat at that time in my mind. Is purely a Conjecturable argument. They were 10,000 feet in the air, it would have been save to say, any layman at the time would call any technology that could have done that Cell phone technology.

Even today we still call it a Cell Phone, when in reality that technology hasn't been in the process of being phased out for well over 30 years. Mobile has become the most common name for the various telephony technologies out there. But those companies would think of them selves as Wireless providers, not Cell phone companies.

Even if you are using a planes satellite phone and mistakenly tell your wife..."Hey listen I'm on a cell phone and I may not have much time..." while you're about to bring a plane crashing down into the ground. But the rest of us knows what you meant.

Reading bgamall's conspiracy theories reminds me of the complexity of visual perception. A famous example is to look at a picket fence, and see a dog running along the other side of the fence. The purely visual data reach your retina and travel along the optic nerve to the visual cortex, which needs to assemble those data into a coherent image. The data contain many omissions, distortions (e.g. myopia, astigmatism) and stray data (e.g. misfirings of cells in the retina). A computer would never have been able to assemble those data into a coherent image, at least until very recently, and maybe not even now. The visual cortex receives all these data and compares them to similar data sets from past experience, and other information about current events (e.g. ears detect barking), and selects hopefully the right match based on all that information.

Conspiracy theorists fall ever deeper down a rabbithole, where every bit of data reminds them of other conspiracy theories that they believe. An obscure report where someone misspoke somewhere sets off an association, not of ordinary 'noise' in the data, but rather of an elaborate conspiracy.

Where most people see a dog running along the far side of a fence, the conspiracy theorist sees an elaborate hoax, involving a space alien or a robot concealed behind the fence, in league with the usual suspects.

edvard2 says

Paralithodes says

Above is a perfect example of how the typical "liberal" forum member here is so blinded by their own ideology, that they don't even recognize the extent to which their own side does the exact same thing they complain about.

Oh contraire my friend... You see, I mentioned this before but its worth mentioning again. I grew up in the super-conservative, always- Republican voting South, at one point actually voted for Republicans, and when I grew up I was able to see past all of the crap that conservative politicians have used to fill their constituent's heads with. Blinded? Hardly. More like the recognition over reality versus the fiction many conservatives in the US believe in.

I believe you as much as I believe Vicente was also a "staunch [conservative or republican]." I know people in real life who have converted politically - I am one of them. In real life the converts generally understand that your observation applies equally enough to a good % of both sides to not be something with pointing out as if it applies to only one side, as you did above. Those alleged converts (to either political side) who talk like you do online are invariably liars about their past or talking it up to fit in with the hard core that are here.

bgamall4 says

Why is

your source an Iranian government website that bases its report on what somebody posted on a Facebook page? Because you are lost in the noise, projecting a bizarre conspiracy based on misinformation.

Paralithodes says

I believe you as much as I believe Vicente was also a "staunch [conservative or republican]." I know people in real life who have converted politically - I am one of them. In real life the converts generally understand that your observation applies equally enough to a good % of both sides to not be something with pointing out as if it applies to only one side, as you did above. Those alleged converts (to either political side) who talk like you do online are invariably liars about their past or talking it up to fit in with the hard core that are here.

So you're calling me a liar because you don't agree with what I say? If so then that more or less makes the extent of your response entirely hypocritical. If you think I am lying then I'll be the first to correct you. I grew up in the South. As in not the suburban South, but in a rural area about 20 miles from the closest small town. We had a long gravel driveway as did most in our area. Even though my family had lived in the area for around 40 years they were still considered newcomers. Most had roots to the area going back as much as 150-200 years.

Nothing ever changed. The way things had been there was the way it had always been and if anything ever changed people generally took notice. I remember that everyone was unquestionably conservative and always voted Republican no matter what. I was raised this way. I was never given reasons why, but only that I should ALWAYS vote Republican, which I did right up into my 20's.

I moved first to the Northeast to Boston and then to the other side of the country to California. I ran into many people from all over the country and the world. When I first moved to Boston it was a tremendous cultural shock for me. I was so used to the cultural and political homogeneous nature of where I grew up that it took a lot of adjustment to see that hey- not everyone thinks the same.

It was only after having this experience that I realized a lot of the things that were fed into our heads by the various Republican politicians was pure bullshit. Mostly just fear mongering and this constant claim that anything different or new should always be despised and challenged. As time went on I more fully realized that this tactic has been employed by the GOP on their constituents for decades simply because its so much easier to place blame on something else rather than actually address problems and do something about it. The GOP has been a party fueled by outright misleading propaganda for some time now and this among many other reasons is why I no longer support that party nor will I unless they decide to become more reasonable, if not at least somewhat more moderate instead of acting like the witch hunt party.

So you call me a liar all you want. I made my own choices by my own accord through my own life experiences and I didn't need anyone other than myself to make that change.

edvard2 says

everyone was unquestionably conservative and always voted Republican no
matter what. I was raised this way.I moved it was a tremendous cultural shock for me. I
was so used to the cultural and political homogeneous nature of where I grew up
that it took a lot of adjustment to see that hey- not everyone thinks the
same.

This is the mindset I run up against on my favorite trade forum. The worst part is, all of them think EVERYONE ELSE is wrong, factually, politcally, and morally, and that THEY are the true patriots and 'merkans. They tell me daily that I am an obamabot or some such, using language whose mitochondrial DNA has a clear lineage all the way back to this morning's Rush show or last night's Fox tirade.

Dan8267 says

The key word in GDP is product. The warfare industry produces no product. In fact that industry destroys wealth.

I'm not saying there are no better activities. But in the meantime, if you remove the miltary, it will leave a big hole in your economy and that will affect a lot of people.

And if you pay these people for something else... then well, the deficit question is not solved.

That's the nature of the problem: It's not enough to say "we don't need this".

RentingForHalfTheCost says

Have you ever considered that some on the board merely want to just yank your
chain? Nonetheless it can provide brief moments of entertainment, then it starts
to get old.

But the chain is just there to be yanked all the time. Can you blame
people?

I guess not, maybe it is too tempting.

Hey bgmall,

Which weapons are these Israeli weapons you refer to?
I saw no weapons in the picture, and no specifics on the actual weapons.

I'm an Israeli paratrooper veteran.

What about Syria? Which side are we on? (you know about Syrians getting treatment in Israeli hospitals, it's for planting bugs into them).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24998618

Egypt? Which side is Israel on? All sides?
How about Sudan? They have south Sudan but also North South Sudan against South South Sudan. Surely it's Israel's fault again.
And Turkey-vs Syria? Must be Israel's fault.
I hear also the massacre of Fatah politicians by Hamas in 2005 was Israel's fault...
But the worst offense was the Israeli Mossad shark eating all the poor tourists in Sharm!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11937285

Hugs

arit