After the protagonist finally corners the market in wheat and is on the brink of becoming wealthy beyond measure, farmers around the world suddenly begin delivering wheat to market in unprecedented quantities. The price of wheat crashes and he is bankrupted.
Silver is a commodity just like wheat.
As is gold. To which I keep remembering what Johnny Carson said in 1980.
Since before I was born (starting with the FDR Administration), the US government kept gold at the artificial price of about $32/oz (that is what I remember, which disagrees by a few dollars with other sources, so close enough for our purposes here). Private ownership of gold outside of reasonable amounts was not allowed. Wikipedia describes a two-tier system that tried to balance our artificial price with what was happening in the private markets and how around 1968 that was becoming more and more difficult, even impossible, to maintain.
Then around 1975 that two-tiered pricing system was abandoned and the price of gold was allowed to follow find its free-market price. That sparked a flurry of speculative trading in gold and the price surged.
Kind of a "gold bubble" was forming. In 1980, it peaked at $850/troy-oz and then crashed; from that Wikipedia link:
quote:After 15 August 1971 Nixon shock[DWise1: a series of economic measures trying to control inflation which included "the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold."], the price began to greatly increase, and between 1968 and 2000 the price of gold ranged widely, from a high of $850 per troy ounce ($27.33/g) on 21 January 1980, to a low of $252.90 per troy ounce ($8.13/g) on 21 June 1999 (London Gold Fixing). Prices increased rapidly from 2001, but the 1980 high was not exceeded until 3 January 2008, when a new maximum of $865.35 per troy ounce was set. Another record price was set on 17 March 2008, at $1023.50 per troy ounce ($32.91/g).
Like all bubbles (as described in Boom Bust Boom), the gold market was caught up in a euphoria keeping them from seeing the coming crash; they thought that prices would continue to soar ever higher. But, as in the Tulip Bubble, one day sellers showed up but no buyers.
When prices began to plummet, Johnny Carson remarked in his monologue in Jan 1980 (quoting from memory):
quote:Wouldn't you hate to be that guy who bought gold at $850?
Edited by dwise1, : Added "one day" to "sellers showed up but no buyers"
Because both sides will never agree on who should be in control.
One of my favorite lines from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is when they come under attack (two nuclear missiles fired at them) and Eddie the Shipboard Computer is off-line trying to solve a higher-priority problem (why the ape (Arthur Dent, Homo sapiens sapiens) would ever want to drink dry leaves boiled in water, AKA tea). They have to take control of their starship and fly it manually, but a quick poll reveals that nobody knows how (Arthur Dent adds, "I don't know either." "We already knew that!"). So, nobody having a clue how to do it, the conclusion is: "Right! We do it together!"
But why do you think that it must be a matter of any one person or small group being in control? This is supposed to be a representative government in which everybody works together for the common good. Who's in control should not even be the question, since the system is supposed to be that everybody is in control.
IOW, "We do it together!" Because that is the American Way!
The Democrats want to be able to work with Republicans in a bi-partisan manner in running the country for the benefit of all citizens. But the Republicans have devolved into autocrats who want to seize control at any cost and who would rather destroy everything than to work with Democrats on anything, just so long as they win.
Not only has the modern GOP (and now the GQP) repeatedly vowed to block all Democratic legislature and obstruct the ability of the government under a Democratic president to get anything accomplished (just as they did with Obama and just as McConnell vowed to do with Biden before negative public reaction caused him to go through the motions of back-pedaling), but they have also sabotaged all efforts by the Democrats to work with them in any bi-partisan manner.
For example, one of their criticisms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that it is not a single-payer system like Medicare. Well, the Democrats tried to make it a single-payer system but met too much opposition to that provision (mainly from Republicans, as I seem to recall), so they had to go another way.
That means that the Republicans had sabotaged the ACA so that they could later complain about it. Kind of like how they have worked so hard to sabotage our vaccination efforts just to oppose Biden's efforts to save lives (they are the proverbial scorpions on the frogs' backs; it's in their nature to sting even if it kills them too). So now they have their "gotcha" moment of Biden missing his vaccination goal by a few percentage point even though he was not the cause of missing that goal, but rather they were. Just as they are now fueling a resurgence of the virus just so they can complain about the public health measures that must be imposed even though they are the ones responsible for the situation. Scorpions.
Another tactic is that they will go through the motions of bi-partisan negotiations, but then vote against the bill anyway. Not only were they able to slow down legislature, but they were able to "compromise" the Democrats down on what the bill would do, thus giving themselves something to use in complaining about Democrats' failures.
One cited example was Obama's efforts at economic recovery in the wake of the 2008 housing market crash. If we had thrown much more money at the problem, we would have recovered in much less time, but Republicans had "negotiated" that amount down to a bare minimum required and then voted against it anyway! Scorpions.
Basically, Democrats are sick and tired of that Republican tactic. We know what needs to be done. If Republicans also want that to be done, then fine and good. But if they insist on reverting to their scorpion nature, then forget them!
So now today we have an infrastructure bill that Republicans have worked to "negotiate" that down (there is a quasi-racial epithet that applies and which I refuse to use). Wanna bet that the Republicans end up voting against it? That would after all be within their scorpion nature.
Re: Only God will Ever Control Me(and even then He won't)
The Dems, on the other hand, are morality cops and control police. They would advocate control and power for the good of all, but in reality they are simply guilty of desiring total control.
Wow! Your wrong-wing handlers have you completely turned around!
The Repugnants are the ones who are the "morality cops and control police" who want to completely control our lives. Again according to DARF, they Attack the opposition by projecting their own evil ways and deeds upon their opponents. (ironically, "darf" is the first and third person singular present indicative conjugation of the German modal verb, dürfen, "to be allowed to" as in „Mutti, darf ich?" ("Mother, may I?"))
Despite Republicans' traditional cries for smaller government, they have always, even long before this aberrant GQP strain, strived to expand government in order to exert their control over the intimate details of everybody's life.
For example, anti-abortion measures that force a victim of rape or incest to carry to term her rapist's fetus. All while at the same time they promote "my body, my choice" as a "reason" for refusing to be vaccinated. Yet another example of wrong-wing hypocrisy (most "true Christians" I've encountered have no clue what Jesus' opinion of hypocrites was according to the Gospels; do you?). Democrats say that it's her choice, whereas Republicans want to prosecute her for murder if she has a miscarriage (which is rather common).
Gay marriage and marital rights. Republicans oppose that while the only problem that Democrats see is depriving a gay partner of his/her rights. So who's the "morality cop" here? There is so very much to be covered here (I am definitely straight and have no functioning gay-dar since none of that could ever have any bearing on my daily life, but rather a conscientious objector due to my very bitter divorce a couple decades ago). Would you care to go a round or two on this one? I am very pro-family while the Republicans are most decidedly not.
Religion in the public school classroom. Republicans want to impose their own religion on all public school students regardless of their own individual religious beliefs or backgrounds. Democrats say, "No! That is not right!"
On that last (sorry, Navy-speak), while it was a Unitarian who in the early 1800's started public education, the Protestant Christians very quickly took over the system and turned to using Protestant Christianity as a source of instruction. But then in the second half of the 19th Century we saw a large number of Catholic immigrants, mainly Irish, bringing their children into that Protestant-tinged/contaminated public education system. Since Catholic children were being instructed in the Protestant Bible (different from the Catholic Bible ... albeit differing in mostly minor ways, but much smaller minor differences have in the past had led to mass exterminations), that was clearly the government mandating a particular religion over all others, including the students' own religions. At one point, a bishop or archbishop of Philadelphia asked for public schools to simply allow Catholic students to recite Catholic prayers instead of the government-mandated Protestant prayers. The result was a weekend of virulent anti-Catholic rioting in the streets which resulted in several deaths.
A result of that was the necessary formation of the parochial school system. A system of schools for Catholics free from the Protestant indoctrination of the public school system. On other fronts Protestants pushed for laws and court decisions to prevent those parochial schools from drawing from public funding as the Protestant-driven public school system could. Ironically, it was those very same anti-Catholic laws and court decisions that recently block private "Christian" schools from those very same resources. Hoisted on their own petard.
So, the Democrats are on the side of individual freedoms. The Republicans are on the side of their dictating everything you can and cannot do in your private life.
Please remind me of which side is on the side of freedom.
Re: Phat, read the Bible at least once. You might even learn something.
From their last exchange in the topic, Discussion With An Adventist Pastor: Raphael and Phat Only (for now), I got the impression that Phat (and also Raphael to a lesser extent) values the Bible only as "proof" that Jesus existed and not for what it actually says. Nor even for what it claims that Jesus himself had said and taught. So then, basically, it's just yet another personality cult for Phat. Like the Death Cult of Trump wherein the followers adorn the image of Trump while ignoring what Trump actually says (and rightfully so).
If the Bible is supposed to be such a great book filled with timeless wisdom and all that, then shouldn't its contents be at least as valuable and its purported authorship, or even more so. And supposedly being such a great book, why are "true Christians" (ie, biblical literalist and believers in its inerrancy) so primed are eagerly ready to throw it in the trash should its lack of divine authorship ever become apparent? (eg, "If even a single error can be found in the Bible then it's completely worthless and you should throw it in the dust bin!", which have personally been told by such Christians).
This question has been around for centuries. As Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason:
quote:... I will show wherein the Bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their answers to the former part of the Age of Reason, undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as well established as that of any other ancient book; as if our belief of the one could become any rule for our belief of the other.
I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry;* and the reason is, because it is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of everything relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters contained in that book would have the same authority they now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical certainty of who was the author, makes no part of our belief of the matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.; those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible; and therefore, the whole of our belief as to the authenticity of those books rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; secondly upon the credit we give to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, we may believe the certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible, such as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of a man. The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here, again, the author is not essential in the credit we give to any of those works, for, as works of genius, they would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true- for it is the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related by the Bible authors, (Moses for instance), as we disbelieve the things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an impostor. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no farther; for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracle cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to our belief of the Bible, because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since we believe the things stated in these writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve of them because they are sedate, like Plato or judicious, like Aristotle.
*Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt.
If a book has something of value to say, then its contents must be able to stand on their own, as with Euclid's Elements, even if it turns out to have been written by somebody else. The alternative is a book whose contents have no value outside of who was supposed to have written it.
The former can truly be a great book (eg, Euclid), but not the latter (eg, the Bible). No wonder Phat does not value the Bible's contents, but rather values it for the wrong reason.
On The Stephanie Miller Show on the Progressive channel on XM Radio, I just heard a quiz for a black guest: at what point were you able to guess the race of yesterday's Capitol wanna-be bomber? When they let him sit there while they negotiated with him for hours? When they listened to his problems and issues and his anti-America ranting calling for the violent overthrow of the US government? When they finally arrested him alive after he surrendered? Answer: she knew before he even pulled up and parked on the sidewalk! (often a capital crime had he been black). How long would he have lasted had he been black? And what would his chances of survival been had he been black, especially after he had surrendered (George Floyd had surrendered and was complying to police orders and yet he was still killed).
Just about every face I have seen among the Capitol insurrectionists was white and MAGAty (sounds like "maggoty") -- and we have seen so much footage of that terrorist attack against our government. Only one of them was shot (as she assaulted the House chamber) as we haven't heard much of them having been injured (compared with over 100 cops having been injured). How many of them walked away that day? All of them except for two (the one who was shot and another who had been trampled to death by the rioters themselves); since then we've rounding them up.
How do you think that would have turned out had they been black? Trump would have immediately mobilized the Guard instead of sitting on both his thumbs all day and he would have yet again tried to mobilize active duty troops as he had tried to against the BLM demonstrators (not insurrectionists nor terrorists) -- not only did Trump try to call out active duty troops multiple times (and Esper had to recall them back to base each time as he tried in vain to explain how damned illegal Trump's actions were), but Trump also tried to issue orders to have the BLM demonstrators shot.
Even domestic terrorists benefit from white privilege. Plain as day.
I think it was Cedric the Entertainer who told the personal story of driving his family in the family minivan down somewhere where it's hot and humid, so he had the windows up and the A/C running. A cop pulled him over and he complied. As he was getting his license and registration ready, he glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the cop in full crouch and clearly extremely agitated with sidearm drawn and ready in a two-hand grip and shouting orders that Cedric couldn't hear (windows up, A/C running).
Have you ever been pulled over by the police? It's a minor inconvenience for us white guys, but we know we have nothing to fear from the police. Black drivers never know whether they're going to come out of it alive regardless of what they do. Hispanic drivers have similar fears, especially in sh*thole states (some Trump-speak there) like Texas where they could suddenly find themselves in ICE custody just because they do not always carry all their citizenship documentation with them everywhere they go -- no, I'm not using "Born in East LA" as my source, but rather a teenager, a native-born American citizen, who was trapped in ICE custody under Trump and not allowed to call his family to tell them where he was (BTW, many do make copies of birth certificates, etc, for their wallets and the cops even ignore that much of the time).
Go back to the Eisenhower Administration and its Operation Wetback in which "illegal immigrant" Mexicans were rounded up off the streets and deported en masse "back" to Mexico. That included many US citizens who didn't happen to have been carrying their full citizenship documentation with them (BTW, from my father's family records, I know that the birth of many US citizens had never been recorded such that in order to get a Social Security number they had to have witnesses to their birth take out sworn affidavits). A similar event from two decades earlier was depicted in the Edward James Olmos movie, Mi Familia (My Family, 1995).
In a similar story, my brother-in-law is Mexican and is the darkest one in the family. At the time, he had a beard and his hair and beard were black. Native-born US citizen and an electrical engineer, he was on a business trip to the UK around the time of that shooting stand-off at the Libyan embassy in London. Customs nearly did not let him into the UK because he looked like he could be Libyan.
The point is that we white guys never have to worry about any of that crap happening to us, so much so that the very possibly of such problems for anyone would never occur to us. And yet a very large segment of the population (ie, non-hispanic whites who are now only a little more than half of the US population, which has the GQP fouling themselves and getting busy passing even more racist laws) has to live with that crap every single day of their lives for all of their lives.
My problem with BLM is that they take it upon themselves to rectify moral issues by targeting an entire group--white people.
Good point! Why aren't they targeting other groups like Easter Islanders or Mongolians or the Lakota?
Oh yeah, because none of those groups had done anything to oppress them. Well, what groups did take sustained and systematic action to oppress blacks? Well, there's white people and ... uh ... you know, for the life of me I simply cannot think of any other group. Can you?
And why don't they just sit back and wait patiently for those white people to rectify those moral issues? Could it be because then it will never happen?
If you think that it will happen all on its own solely through the actions of white people, then why hasn't it happened in the past 155 years, during which time almost the only thing that happened along these lines was the establishment and shoring up of abuses leading to those moral issues? And even we non-racist white guys aren't going to be of much help while we are all fat, dumb, and happy in our ignorance of the very idea that such a problem might exist.
From the Pirke Avoth ("Sayings of the Fathers"):
quote:If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, then what am I? If not now, when?
Or we could quote Dylan rival Phil Ochs' best known song:
quote:And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
Yes, Rodney King whose brutal beating beating by LAPD police led to them being acquitted which sparked a race riot in 1992. We were watching that unfold right next door in Orange County. All the local TV stations went to live coverage. Except for KCOP which continued to air Star Trek TNG. My team of programmers all agreed that Star Trek saved Orange County (yeah, we were all fans, including the more rabid fundie who would complain about its humanistic messaging even while he still loved to watch it -- eg, "Yeah, that was their gay marriage episode.").
Let's use a conflagration as our metaphor -- this is a case where being "totally involved" is not a good thing (a house that is engulfed in flames is reported by fire fighters as "completely involved"). Let's describe a riot such as in 1992 LA as a big fire, a conflagration. An incident provides the spark to start it. But did that spark alone cause the fire? Or was there a lot of fuel lying about, fuel that should not have been there (eg, lots of dry underbrush in forested or chaparral extending up to houses, which is why you are advised to clear out all of that that you can -- hint: despite what Trump told you, you don't sweep the forest floor with brooms). All that a spark, any spark no matter how small, can do is to ignite kindling and tinder and accelerant that's already there. If there is no kindling or tinder or accelerant, then a spark will not result in a fire. It's the Holy Trinity of firefighting: Fuel, Air, Heat.
Unwrapping that metaphor, long history of oppression and systematic mistreatment builds up all kinds of fuel including accelerants. After all that has been piling up for years and decades, all it takes is just one spark to make the entire structure (eg, the city) completely involved (and not in the good way).
What to do to prevent those conflagrations? Keep any sparks from happening? Yeah, though that can be about as feasible as keeping everything dry in a flood. That would be the "Heat" of the Holy Trinity. But even if you could prevent all sparks, that would still not keep us safe. I'm sure you've heard of spontaneous combustion in which decomposition (AKA "rotting") generates heat which can lead to a fire (commonly happens with bales or stacks of hay where the interior rots and the bale/stack retains the heat which keeps building up such that the moment you disturb it and the air reaches it then you have a hay fire on your hands -- you get the same thing with a couch or mattress fire that you may put out, but the padding is still smoldering and waiting for air to hit it in order to re-ignite). In our conflagration metaphor for a riot, long simmering resentment would build up residual Heat that could ignite all on its own without the benefit of a spark.
Since Heat is virtually impossible to completely eliminate, what about Air? In a society I would interpret Air as being the life of the community. It's like a sci-fi cartoon set in a space ship where a hammer hangs next to a porthole to space and the sign says, "In case of fire, break glass" -- sure that'll snuff out the fire, but also every person in that compartment). So in the metaphor, removing Air would be like locking everything down, or even mass arrests and shipping all malcontents to concentrations camps (which have been given a bad name; more on that elsewhere). We are still seeing what locking everything down does to a community and to individual psychology (right-wingnut idiocy only makes that so much worse and more dangerous). Removing Air from the community makes no sense at all if you want to maintain a viable community -- here's another quote for you albeit paraphrased: "It was necessary to destroy the community in order to save it."
OK, so what about Fuel? What would the Fuel for a riot be? Long simmering resentment, poverty with no way out, systematic oppression, systematic mistreatment including arbitrarily administered summary death sentences or felony convictions for minor offenses (even white cops who looked into it found that black offenders get treated entirely differently than white offenders such that the whites get off easier while the blacks get the book thrown at them), a sense of hopelessness, no way out, everything set against you from the day you were born. If you have nothing, then you have nothing to lose. If you have no skin in the game, then you don't care about the game.
Have you ever read the 13th Amendment? Do you even know what the 13th Amendment is? It abolished slavery, but with a caveat, a very important one. To quote from the text of the Wikipedia article (my emphasis added):
quote:The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
So, you can no longer keep blacks as slaves, except through that mechanism of convicting them of a crime. So there we see a motivation (an economic one, which makes it so much stronger) for having higher arrest and conviction rates for blacks than for whites: people can make more money off the sweat of legal slaves.
And the loss of those lives, especially young ones, is sorely felt by the black community. Loss of education, loss of professional skills, loss of fathers resulting in far more single-parent families (resulting in lower family income along with extra child-care expenses which often make staying on welfare a much more viable option -- which you are paying for while you fight trying to solve that problem) as well as the negative impact of the children's development by not having a father, etc.
But the real cash payout for racists (used to be Democrats back in the day, but now predominantly Republicans * is that you could now keep them folk from voting!!!!! When the law says that felons cannot vote and you have Carte Blanche to turn them others into felons, then you can also eliminate them from voting! Dang! Gimme another heapin' helpin' o' that!
And don't forget redlining, which has had a devastating effect on the black communities.
I've developed an interest in local Orange County history, mainly on the renaming and rerouting of the streets. Fountain Valley used to be almost entirely agricultural (I personally remember that) before they switched in the late 60's to planting housing tracts. On a Thomas Brothers wall map from the 1940's, I saw in Fountain Valley a number of "colonias", which I interpreted as the communities of the farm workers. ¡Pero no! Even though nowadays my hometown of Santa Ana is predominantly Mexican (you always know you have just entered Santa Ana because the billboards are suddenly all in Spanish -- I live in Santa Ana again y soy orgulloso), in the past Mexicans were legally forbidden from buying any property in Santa Ana -- that is the basic definition of redlining. So an entrepreneurial developer in the 1920's and 30's came up with the idea of the colonias, housing tracts, mainly in Fountain Valley, so that Mexicans could finally buy and own property. To this day as you drive around, you can still spot some of the old colonias by street names (eg, Los Jardines) or by small clusters of streets with houses much older than the newer development around them.
My older sister (8 years my senior) is a fundamentalist. We recently did a lot of driving around together and I tried to tell her about redlining and the colonias, but she kept trying to change the subject. Hmm!
OK, take the TV show, Adam Ruins Everything with a grain or more of salt (if you don't understand "cum grano salis", just ask -- it means to be skeptical of a claim; I am smarter than average (much dulled of late) and have received a liberal education (foreign languages mainly, followed by computer languages, but a foreign language degree is like an English degree but with a much different reading list)), but this part of an episode was the first time that I, wrapped within the sound-dampening cocoon of my own white privilege, had ever even heard of redlining and its effects:
Uff da! (Norwegian exclamation which I learned in eastern North Dakota while I was stationed there, where it means, well, "Uff da!", maybe close to "Ho-boy!").
Before we start this part, let's get one thing straight: family wealth is mainly through inheritance of property. Property always appreciates in value, right? Ehhhhhhh ... . But the basic model, like budgeting a quarter of your monthly income to housing, is still the same.
Basically, most white families have been doing that for decades (also the quasi-whites like the Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc -- do you see my dig there?) and it has for the most part almost always worked well. The basic tenant of The Big Short was that investing in mortgage bonds was sound because, "who doesn't pay their mortgage?"
But, what happens when your property value plummets? Kinchloe Air Force Base, MI (Upper Peninsula), 1977. I am a military veteran, but did not buy until after my active duty days. Civilian families have the luxury of remaining in one place for many years holding onto property which appreciates in value. Military families have be much craftier and much more cunning (in the various Blackadder series in various time periods, his underling, Baldrick, would always have "a cunning plan" which always turned out to be complete bollux and yet usually seemed to always work out in the end; as the centuries rolled by, Blackadder became progressively smarter and Baldrick progressively dumber). Officers were especially vulnerable, since an officer's tenure was usually about two years in order to allow him to apply for a wider array of challenging assignments to make him more promotable. So, an officer's family would sell their home from their last assignment and use the equity to buy a new home at the next Permanent Duty Assignment (PDA).
In 1977, the DoD closed Kinchloe Air Force Base, MI (Upper Peninsula). The local real estate market basically depended on the regular turnover of base personnel, but now there were only out-going personnel and no incoming. That local housing market collapsed. Air Force personnel had a huge part of their family equity tied up in houses that could not sell. Devastating.
So investing in real estate, while normally a good choice, can turn around and ruin you when things turn abnormal. Which you never expect them to do, but which does actually happen now and again. 2008 (timeframe of The Big Short) is when almost everything turned abnormal.
OK, with the redlining of blacks (arguably more widespread nationwide than the redlining of Mexicans in Orange County, Calif -- BTW, one infamous court case involved a local school district with segregated schools for Mexicans which only taught horticulture (gardening/farm workers) for the boys and homemaking for the girls because their only possible futures were as gardeners and housemaids) also came the lenders automatically steering them to sub-prime loans. "Here is Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to explain that to you":
Having a sub-prime loan means (if for no other reason than you couldn't qualify for a better loan even if one had been offered to you) that you are more likely to default or be forced to default (eg, escalating interest rates, balloon payments ... it's amazing what you can agree to when you are so desperate or have no other choice). Which means that you are more likely to lose all the equity that you had clawed and scraped to accumulate, adding to your levels of resentment and hopelessness.
Now as Adam pointed out, most public services are funded through property taxes. And if your property isn't worth much, then the revenues from your property taxes are low. Less money for public services. But more importantly for the future, less money for education. We could make college education free for all who qualify, but that would still only admit those whose lower-level education had prepared them to be able to qualify. Push kids through a substandard school system where they're fed defeatist attitudes and how many would you expect to go on to college? Or even be able to?
One of my all-time favorite movies is Stand and Deliver. Jaime Escalante. The system had written his students off, but those "burros have math in [their] blood". My point: they do have the potential, but the educational system must still enable them to reach that potential. In the absence of visionary teachers like Jaime Escalante, where can they find it within their impoverished school systems where all students are already written off as failures? In the movie, Angel, the one most likely to serve a life sentence in prison, made top scores on the Calculus AP test.
Here's another scenario I heard on Progressive Radio (Sirius XM), though I'm immediately adding some historical context.
In the 1992 Los Angeles riots, we saw local store owners on top of their roofs with rifles trying to protect their stores, their property. What race were they? Most of them, as I recall, were Korean.
OK, now step back a bit. This was a predominantly black neighborhood, yet all the storekeepers were Korean? Uhhh ... why weren't they black? Good question!
Within a black neighborhood, how many blacks could afford to open a neighborhood shop? Average black family financial worth is in the pits (I was driving through a Del Taco at the time and was not in a position to jot down notes). Isn't the capitalism mantra "You need money to make money"? Local blacks were in no position to front the capital to open businesses, but immigrants with money were able to. So the local blacks felt that they were being exploited by those Asians.
That created a secondary siphon of wealth out of the black communities. OK, metropolitan areas are too complex.
One night on Progressive Radio I heard a discussion of the economics of an isolated community.
There is a small community in New Hampshire. Their primary industry was lumber, but that has now died away so they are struggling. They had shrunk down to a few small businesses including a diner and a local bank. The local diner made use of local farmers' produce, etc, providing those farmers with income. Basically, the local cache of money kept circulating within the community and the community was able to remain viable.
But then a fast-food chain moved in. Not only did that siphon cash out of the local economy (ie, the money flowing up the chain to Corporate) but their food source was shipped in from Corporate which cut out the local farmers. Sure, everybody was now able to eat Whoppers (or whatever chain that was), all while everybody else in the local economy was out of work. Now redo that local economy model with a Walmart.
FOOTNOTE * "Racists used to be Democrats back in the day, but now they are predominantly Republicans."
MAGAt-heads keep bringing up the fact that Southern racists had traditionally been Democrats (AKA "Dixie-crats") as if that were still the case. The only effecive response I have found is to challenge them to go to any KKK rally and start pulling hoods off to find any Democrat. Because a small thing had happened in the meantime that they would never have noticed, called The Twentieth Century.
Here's yet another video (there's another really good one, but I can no longer find it):
So basically, the anti-slavery Party of Lincoln quickly became the party of the super-rich. The South deeply resented Reconstruction which was being imposed on them by the Radical Republicans, so they were predominantly Democrats. It was those Democrats who developed and implemented Jim Crow laws.
But then things changed starting with LBJ's civil rights laws. The Deep South Democrats, AKA "Dixie-crats", rebelled and ended up shifting over to the GOP.
So now the the modern Democrats are entirely different from the racist Democrats of the 19th Century. Duh???
Edited by dwise1, : Mexican students could only ever be gardeners/farm workers or housemaids
Edited by dwise1, : developed the footnote plus minor cleanup
Well if you can convince me that I won't end up closer to being as poor as the ones I am trying to help (as you feel no shame in being) then I'll drop this argument for good.
I'm feeling like the problem is the same as trying to talk with a creationist in that you are drawing your conclusions from faulty assumptions which you are not stating and which blocks us from understanding each other.
Are you assuming that there is only a fixed amount of wealth such that when someone gets more money then that money has to be taken from somebody else? IOW, are you viewing this as a zero sum game wherein one party only wins when the other party loses -- that's the way that Trump and the Trumpists think and how Trump "makes deals" which is why he is such a horrible negotiator. A non-zero sum game is one in which both sides and win. Here is the intro section from that Wikipedia article:
quote:In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which an advantage that is won by one of two sides is lost by the other. If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Thus, cutting a cake, where taking a more significant piece reduces the amount of cake available for others as much as it increases the amount available for that taker, is a zero-sum game if all participants value each unit of cake equally. Other examples of zero-sum games in daily life include games like poker, chess, and bridge where one person gains and another person loses, which results in a zero-net benefit for every player. In the markets and financial instruments, futures contracts and options are zero-sum games as well. Nevertheless, the situation like the stock market etc. is not a zero-sum game because investors could gain profit or loss from share price influences by profit forecasts or economic outlooks rather than gain profit from other investors' losses.
In contrast, non-zero-sum describes a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses can be less than or more than zero. A zero-sum game is also called a strictly competitive game, while non-zero-sum games can be either competitive or non-competitive. Zero-sum games are most often solved with the minimax theorem which is closely related to linear programming duality, or with Nash equilibrium. Prisoner's Dilemma is a classical non-zero-sum game.
Many people have a cognitive bias towards seeing situations as zero-sum, known as zero-sum bias.
The real economy (Main Street instead of Wall Street) is non-zero sum. In fact, when others do better, we all do better. Plus there is not a fixed limit on the amount of wealth available, but rather more wealth can be generated.
OK, food stamps are coming back stronger than before after the GOP had chosen to starve the poor. Our tax dollars at work. The figures I heard is that for every dollar we spend on food stamps, the economy grows by $1.70; ie, it very nearly doubles. The program also creates 9000 to 17,000 new jobs. Not only are families now able to feed themselves, but when they go to the grocery stores to buy their food then that's more business for the stores -- the people win and the stores win too. That means that not only can the stores stay in business, but they could even expand by opening more stores. Even if they don't expand, they not only can afford to keep their employees, but they could hire more people -- more jobs. More jobs mean more people getting a paycheck which means that they can go to other stores (ie, non-grocery) and spend some of their money there, which means that those other stores can stay open and keep their employees employed, etc. It's a win-win-win-win-win-win situation. And far better, it would cut down on your red-hot button issue of shoplifters since now they would be able to use food stamps to buy food.
But if you're trapped with zero-sum bias, then you would only see the tax money spent on food stamps as money being taken out of your pocket; you would see yourself as losing even though you would also benefit from that program with job security, possible raises, etc.
So is that your problem? Are you trapped in zero-sum bias? The Wrong Wing keeps feeding you zero-sum nonsense (as well as trying to scare you half to death), so you cannot see how things actually work.
We can do the same thing with affordable housing. By keeping families in their houses, they can go find jobs. If you're homeless, then it is far harder to get a job because you cannot fill out an application form (no address). In addition, it's much more difficult and expensive to move off of the streets. Then there are also the issues of disease and finding food (more shoplifters), etc. Not to mention the effects on the children having to live on the streets. And BTW, in a number of red states, the GOP state gov't has received the federal funds for rent relief but the state is just sitting on all that money and not applying it to its purpose.
One of the local dance teachers describes herself as having been raised by hippies. She fondly remembered how they would go camping a lot, but after she grew up she came to realize that they were actually homeless at those times.
Government funded medical care; eg, Medicaid. Without it, the only medical care many people get is going to the emergency room, which means no preventive medical care. Since they cannot pay the medical bill from their ER visit, the hospital makes up for their losses by charging us that much more; ie, that is one of the causes of the US' ridiculously high cost of medical care.
The ACA (AKA "Obamacare") included Medicaid expansion and had provided the funding for that to the states, but many red state governors have refused to expand Medicaid and so are just sitting on that money. In the meantime, many hospitals in those states have been going out of business and closing, especially the ones in rural areas. And now with the pandemic, that loss is being felt very sharply, especially if their governor is one of those who are trying to get everybody sick. If they had gone with Medicaid expansion then many of those hospitals would have been able to stay in business and the people would have medical care available.
Do you remember when Tony Soprano got shot? The EMTs driving him to the hospital performed a "wallet biopsy", meaning that they looked in his wallet for medical insurance. Based on the results of that biopsy they decided with hospital to take him to.
OK, so what we find is real life is not zero-sum, but rather when others are able to prosper then we all can prosper. But then large segments of the population are poor, starving, homeless, have no medical care, etc, then we all suffer as a result.
Ashli Babbitt was a US Air Force veteran. My understanding is that she was an SP (Security Police). SPs are the ones who provide security for USAF facilities, including the alert pad and weapons storage areas. They are taught to take their duties very seriously.
If you are trying to gain access to any secure area and there's anything about that looks or sounds wrong, then you can be subject to getting jacked up immediately and found yourself face-down in the snow with an M-16 muzzle jammed against the back of your neck (as per reports by airmen who had had that personal experience with the business end of an M-16 or had personally witnessed it happening).
In addition, we were taught in basic training about the red lines. Especially on SAC bases (and I was stationed on one), secure areas are indicated by a red line painted around that secure area (eg, aircraft on the alert pad). SPs are authorized to use deadly force on anyone crossing the red line for which they are responsible -- actually, remembering back I seem to recall that they have standing orders to shoot to kill. Absolutely no requirement to determine first whether that intruder is armed.
By physically breaching the secured perimeter of the House chambers (the doors were locked down and had to be breached by violent force), she crossed that red line. She definitely knew what she was doing and what the consequences should be -- if after 12 years of service, especially if she was an SP, she still didn't know that, then she couldn't have been very smart which is supported by her not having advanced past E4 (SrA) after 12 years (I had made E5 in a third of that time).
She crossed that line during a high security situation (she and her fellow f**king traitors were physically attacking the Capitol with extreme malice and were fighting to gain physical access to government officials for the obvious purpose of doing them grievous harm), she knew full well what she was doing, she knew full well what the consequences would be, and she got what she knew she would. Plus, that kept her fellow traitorous pukes from repeating her actions.
I feel sorry for her family, but she paid for her own stupidity and she alone is responsible ... except for whoever incited her traitorous actions (eg, Trump, Lin Wood). I hope that she didn't have any children, so that she could qualify for a Darwin Award by having removed herself from the gene pool through conspicuous stupidity.
Edited by dwise1, : Corrected my military record: "I had made E5 in a third of that time", not half
The evidence of prison populations shows that blacks are found guilty of almost every type of crime at rates far higher than whites.
For example on charges of voter fraud in the 2020 election:
Pennsylvania reported three cases of voter fraud:
Two who submitted a second ballot posing as a dead family member (I seem to recall that one guy's mother had been died at least two years prior).
Another guy who voted in person, then returned several minutes later wearing a disguise to pose as his son (different shirt, ballcap and sunglasses -- ¿What, no Groucho Marx moustache?).
BTW, all perpetrators are white and they all voted twice for Trump. A Texas state official made a lot of noise offering a bounty of up to a million dollars for any proof of voter fraud in the 2020 election in any state. PA SecState claimed that bounty with these three cases and has so far never collected a single cent. However, an election official who reported on that ballcap guy did receive a check for $25,000.
Also, in each of these cases, the perps acted with forethought and full intention to violate the law. Ie, they knew full well that they were breaking the law and they decided to do it anyway.
Punishment: something like six months probation, as I recall. I'm pretty sure that no jail time was involved.
In Nevada, a white man reported that his recently deceased wife's mail-in ballot never arrived in the mail and that he then discovered that someone had used it to commit voter fraud. This became a huge cause célèbre in the Republican stolen-election propaganda. Then investigators found that he had himself used his wife's ballot to vote twice for ... Trump!
Yet again, he had acted deliberately to commit voter fraud and then he committed deliberate fraud by falsely reporting her ballot to have been stolen (¿submitting a false police report at the very least).
Punishment: I don't think this case has worked its way through the system yet.
Somewhere else, I heard of a white man murdering his wife and then later deliberately turning in a false ballot in her name -- I have no idea whether the two crimes are directly related. Yet again, he voted twice for Trump.
Punishment: I don't think this case has worked its way through the system yet, but I would assume (albeit naïvely) that he'd have at least some time coming for the murder, but probably nothing from the voter fraud.
In Texas, a black woman who had served her time in prison and truly believed that she was eligible to vote, so she did. Only once! It turned out through some twist in the law which she did not understand that she was not yet eligible to vote.
Shooting into a crowd? The way I heard it Babbitt was the first one through - the “crowd” were still the other side of the door.
And you heard it wrong. Everyone was on the other side of the door. She was targeted, he took careful aim at her BEFORE she went through the door. She never made it through the door.
Where did you get your disinformation from? Here's a video taken at the moment that she was shot:
As we can very clearly see, when she was shot she was in the middle of climbing through the busted window in the door. To me, it looks like she was about to jump down into the House antechamber on the other side of that busted door, the side that the police were trying to keep secure.
As we can clearly see, that was not "BEFORE she went through the door", not even close. She was almost completely through it. Yes, she fell backwards, but that was undoubtedly in part due to the moment of the bullet hitting her.
As we can very clearly see, she was not standing on the mob's side of the door. Nor was she somehow arbitrarily chosen to be shot, but rather the police officer knew that he had to stop every person who tried to climb through, so he was aiming for that window. The reason why she was shot was that she was in that window climbing through it. Why did she do that? Sheer stupidity.
We have all seen that over and over again. Why have you never seen it before? Because your disinformation sources doesn't want you to see what actually happened?
I mention that because of what Rep. Ted Lieu said. He was part of the team presented the case against Trump in his record-breaking second impeachment. The presentation included showing videos from the attack on the Capitol -- I forget whether Babbitt's shooting was shown there. When he wasn't giving the presentation, he waited with the others in the Green Room where they had TVs tuned to all the channels that were covering the impeachment proceedings live. When a video was shown to the Senate, they all showed the video. Except for one station: FOX News. Every time a video was shown as evidence, they either cut to a commercial or to commentators. Obviously, they did not want their audience to see the truth.
BTW, the video I linked us to came from an ultra-conservative channel, CGTN America. Also, many of the comments echoed my earlier amazement at how she could have ever served 14 years in the military (including three deployments to the Middle East) without ever having learned a single thing.
You mean to the Navy side? Huh-ah! The Good of the Order! Square yourself away, sailor!
And an added benefit is the US Navy's absolute dependence on evolutions, so that can never again be called into question without those pukes receiving a Letter of Counseling.
Sorry, but I don't even know what "come out of retirement" is supposed to mean, let alone "due to marriage."
One 70 year old lost $400,000 due to his marriage to someone who got I ll. I. L l sp {{{ the rest hopelessly garbled }}}
Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot--Oscar????
Except that no male is ever immune from properly deployed pussy. OR? (the typical Germanism that my ex absolutely hated ("Das is aber komisch, oder?))
Please retransmit that last in the clear.
Better to "shack up" and let Medicaid cover the other spouse.
One fellow chief in the VTU (Voluntary Training Unit) was in the situation of being separated from his former spouse for decades without ever actually divorcing her. The moment he actually divorced her, she would have been cut off from his medical insurance coverage (my own personal experience, though I was being carried under HER medical insurance) and he didn't want their children to think of him as having done such a thing to their mother.
Re: The Cult of "What's in it for ME?" Christianity as found in Phat.
My argument is that no government (especially a secular humanistic one) has any moral high ground to make the people build anything (back better!) ...
Nor does any government hold a Freedonian Charter. So what? What does any question of whether a government has a "moral high ground" says nothing about its ability to function and to provide for its citizens and other inhabitants.
It looks like you're trying to invoke something like that crackpot idea fundies keep hawking about "absolute morality", that nobody can possibly act morally nor can any morality exist unless there exists some "absolute morality" (which they will of course falsely claim to possess). Not only does not such thing as "absolute morality" even exist, but such a requirement as described above also does not exist. Nor do the advocates for "absolute morality" themselves follow that "absolute morality" that they claim to possess -- indeed, they refuse to follow it, sometimes even claiming that they are not subject to it (because Jesus) but rather non-believers are (I shit thee not, I have seen that claim made by "true Christians"™).
So what the hell was your point?
... nor should people be forced to give up the beliefs that they have in their heart for the alleged benefit of all.
So where and how is that supposed to happening?
Also, please note how EWolf has not repented of calling for the government to impose religious indoctrination on public school children. Plus he has ignored the issue of the parents' own wishes, so the religion in which those students would be indoctrinated would not be of the parents' choosing and that would happen in the vast majority of cases.
How would that sit with you?
Again, our current government has less intelligence and does NOT know what's best for us.
For one thing, our current government has a dysfunctionally split personality: the one party which is trying to govern for the benefit of the nation and of the populaton, the other party is the GQP (formerly known as the GOP) which is trying to turn its Reagan era mantra of "government doesn't work" by seizing power by any means possible, including trying to steal the election, to turn that mantra into a self-fulfilling prophesy.
For another thing, many of us do not know what's best for us. Which is evidenced by the MAGAts and other Republicans persistently voting against their own interest (eg, deprive themselves of medical coverage, close many medical facilities closed (especially in rural areas), destroy any hopes for retirement, literally take the food out of the mouths of their families, encourage businesses to send jobs overseas, drive our economy into the shitter, etc).
I've told this story before, but my brother-in-law is a life-long Republican and still is. A few years after he had retired we were watching the news covering what the Bush-43 Congress Republicans were pushing for and he commented, "Now that I'm retired I've come to realize that the Republicans are not my friends." And yet he continued to vote for Republicans, though this Thanksgiving he stated that he had not voted for Trump in 2020.
Rather, in order to work out what's best for us is to work together as we are meant to as per the Preamble to the US Constitution:
quote:We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
We have the mandate to govern ourselves through the Constitution. Nobody else will do it if we don't -- or rather all manner of authoritarians will gladly step in to seize total power by destroying the Constitution, Trump being the current one but others will follow. And false appeals to non-existent requirements some "moral high ground" have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
That's why I say to AZ Paul that his plan to eliminate religion will never get the clear majority to implement that it needs.
The elimination of religion cannot and will not be accomplished by the government as long as the Constitution and the First Amendment religious protections are still being implemented. If a dictator takes over as the GQP is attempting to do, then whatever the President For Life says about religion will be the law -- that's how dictatorships work.
Rather, the elimination of religion will be accomplished by the people voting with their feet; ie, by everybody leaving religion. That is independent of any government (unless it's a religious dictatorship in which case everybody except for members of the government-chosen church is in deep yoghurt).
I believe that the rights of the family supersede the rights of government.
To my knowledge, governments do not have rights, but rather they have powers. In contrast, it is the people (which according to the Roberts court includes corporations) who have rights.
So what are you trying to say there? What powers of the government do you see being in conflict with what rights of the family? You're not making any sense.
The nation is not my higher power.
Uh, yes, it is. Which is to say that you are within the jurisdiction of the government and subject to its laws. So, yet again, what is your point?
Or are you taking the whacko Hovind-esque path of claiming to be a sovereign citizen who is not subject to US laws. That landed Hovind in federal prison for ten years on tax fraud. If this is what you're thinking about, you'd best give it another thought.
And just what the hell is with that nondescript video that you're trying to sneak in? Does it even have anything to do with the topic? It must not, since you are too ashamed of it to saying anything.
If you cannot say anything about a video, why should any of us even think of watching it? It's just yet another f*cking useless bare link.
Your whole plan to throw religion away and push it out of public education and speech would be agreeable to me if God did NOT exist.
Uh, what? What exactly are you talking about there?
Are you joining EWolf in calling for the government to mandate religious indoctrination in the public schools? Knowing that that would require the government to choose which religion that indoctrination would be in? And that it would be in spite of and most often contrary to the parents'?
So despite your very recent proclamation in Message 562, "I believe that the rights of the family supersede the rights of government.", you now want to advocate government power taking precedence over one of the most personal of family rights, the right to choose the faith in which to raise their children?
What are you thinking? Please be very specific!
... if God did NOT exist.
What the hell has that ever had to do with religion?
Religions exist and have their characteristics completely independent of the existence of any gods.
MT Greene's (AKA "QAnon Betty") name for the Gestapo ("Geheime Staatspolizei") has generated a number of comments, a few of which were read at the beginning of this morning's The Stephanie Miller Show):
quote:"With the Gazpacho Police every crime is a cold case."
"I have met some members of the Gazpacho Police. They are consummé professionals."
"The real question is how the Gazpacho Police interacted with the Vichyssoise government."
It's so strange to remember how much we feared Dan Quayle would put comedy writers out of work by doing all their work for them. Now he looks like a genius. Like how Nixon now looks like a choirboy.
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