Lord Ratner

Shack! I actually don't care if they pay off the loans, *IF* they stop guaranteeing the loans and perpetuating this race to the top in tuition costs. Make the banks take the risk of they want to bet on 17 year olds pursuing English degrees.

As I've said before, that's my dream threesome

I would be surprised if the housing bubble results in the ousting of the CCP, but it is a very different story for Xi. In fact, the party will probably specifically secure their position by using him as a scapegoat. It wasn't CCP, it was all Xi. That's short term, let's say the next 10 years. However, more broadly, no matter what they do to resolve their position in the "everything bubble," their demographics going forward or devastating. Not only do they have a tremendous imbalance between upcoming retirees and the younger generation, but the one child policy also put a huge gender imbalance into the system. Young people can be poached from other countries, though you then have to deal with the problem of integration, but asymmetrically importing women? Not sure how well that's going to work.

This is a great comparison. No. But you can bet your ass if the IG is going to kick in the door of a MAJCOM CC, he isn't doing so without first checking in with the CSAF. And you're delusional if you think otherwise, but I'm beginning to think you just might be. You are the king of misrepresentation. You don't think maybe there might be a conflict of interest in your scenario? Or are you implying that telling Biden about the Trump raid might tip off Trump during his weekly gossip session with Joe? Ridiculous. You are fabricating examples using completely ridiculous comparisons. These are not some routine procedures that don't require the king to sign off, this was raiding an ex-president and likely current candidate for the presidency. If you don't think that needs top of the chain sign off, it becomes hard to believe you were ever in the same military I was in. In fact, your comparison just keeps falling apart, since any major military operation gets sign off from the top. For example, bin laden and Soleimani. Or should Obama and Trump have maintained plausible deniability in those operations? The president is in charge of more than just the military. He can, as many before him have. He will pay at the polls. But the alternative to presidential nepotism is far worse. Besides, from the event you described is likely the legislature that takes over investigative responsibilities, as I suspect they will if Republicans take the house in November. Again, unlike the fantasy world you describe, this is not hypothetical fear mongering. The FBI was literally an unaccountable organization run by a power mad lunatic who used his position of power to extort and likely frame people who he disagreed with. Unelected officials should never have real power. When they do, our system does not operate as intended. This is why the supreme Court does not have the power to make laws, only judge them. And they can't even judge a law without someone else bringing it to them. These are pretty basic concepts and foundational to our government. It is surprising to see you struggle with them so much.

Supposed to where? Is it in the federalist papers? Are any of the founders known to have elucidated such a barrier? Is there a law that has been passed declaring such. Or is this just your opinion? Law enforcement falls under the executive branch, which has only one elected official. Two of you count the VP, but no one does. It is specifically the president's job to oversee these bureaucracies. What you are advocating for is an uncontrolled regulatory state, which is sorta what we have right now and it sucks. For the people, by the people. If the president isn't directly engaged in the management of the FBI and all of it's functions, then we the people have no recourse to change the FBI when it, let's say hypothetically, launches an investigation knowingly based off opposition campaign research, eventually lying to the FISA court in order to obtain warrants to surveil Americans who are participants in the nation's most important political process. Your perspective on this particular issue is perfectly demonstrative of the failing of liberal thought. The system should work this way. Best practices. I don't want. It shouldn't be. Ideals. An idealist would create an independent FBI and think that it will act in accordance with everybody's fair-minded values, even though there is no agreement on what is fair-minded. Conversely, our entire system was designed explicitly acknowledging that idealist independent systems will always devolve to tyranny, and instead used checks and balances amongst the competing branches of government in order to rein in the inevitable corruption and political posturing that would follow. An independent FBI is precisely what Americans should fear, and the history of the organization is so laughably demonstrative of this that I'm surprised you, usually historically aware, would think otherwise.

Not really. The difference between Trump and everyone else (R and D) is that he wanted his minions to publicly declare fealty to him. One of his many character flaws. If you think there has been independence between the president and his cabinet, I have a bridge to sell you in Manhattan.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128392138 I think it's great that so many liberal-minded people are suddenly engaged in national level politics and paying attention, but that doesn't mean everything that happened before you were paying attention is ancient history.

Where is that written, exactly? The constitution? Who does the justice department fall under? Is it like the Federal Reserve? There's nothing normal about raiding an ex-president's home, who very well may be a president-elect again. If you're right and these idiots thought such a decision should be made "independently," we're in bigger trouble than I fear. You can't possibly be this obtuse.

I think you'd have to be high to think the FBI would raid a former president's house without the approval of the current president. If true, Biden should shit-can the entire chain of command. He's supposed to be their boss, when he isn't mumbling into his oatmeal, and this would be a phenomenal decision to make without him.

It would be a shit show, but the real entertainment would be watching his attorneys for the 11 hours. They'd be sweatier than the characters in top gun.

No you walnut. Mistakes and fuck ups happen. That's inherent in the system. These weren't fuck ups. These were intentional applications and misapplications of law based on the political party of the subjects. You think lying to the FISA court was a fuck up? Knowingly using campaign oppo research as evidence? Leaking investigation details to the press? Going on TV daily to lie about the details of the investigation? How about the tax returns that somehow made it to the press, was that a mistaken email from the IRS? Where was the Hillary raid? These cases are so similar it's hilarious, except in her case, the head of the FBI claimed that it was likely her bathroom server of classified emails was compromised by foreign actors. But no no, no need to kick in the door for that. You think these differences are just oopsies? Then you're a fool. The anti-Trump movement has been willing to do and be everything they accuse Trump of being in their crusade to save "us" from him.

How do people not understand that this is everything? Successful societies are not built on right vs wrong. They are built on a sense of fairness. Violate that and you lose it all. If you don't think that it matters that the FBI gave Hillary a pass and is now turning the screws on Trump, you're going to be really shocked when he's reelected president after being indicted, and possibly convicted. Donald Trump is the embodiment of the Republican backlash against what they see as unfair treatment. The solution to that is not more double standards because at least we're doing the right thing now. When the only time you do the right thing is when it's your political opponents, you are not, in fact, doing the right thing.

Did I say that? If you can't take his cock out of your mouth long enough to read what I actually wrote and not whatever you think Liz Cheney would say if you had the chance to yell at her, then there's no point in responding to you. You asked a question, I answered. If you can't handle admitting someone you support is a shitty person, then don't support them, especially publicly. I have no such compunctions.

Because he lies regularly and compulsively. Because he has cheated on every marriage he's been in. Because he dodged military service with "bone spurs." Because he is completely opaque about his income and tax situation, despite claiming for years he has released the information. I don't know many people who would be happy to find out Donald Trump was dating their daughter. Doesn't mean his policies were bad. They were great. And it doesn't make him worse than the other politicians. Wow the opposite. Donald Trump externally looks the way the rest of the political class acts behind closed doors. That's why they hated him so much. He is them, without the decency to hide their ugliness from the public eye.

Honestly? As long as we're content to spend $850k per unit on "homeless shelters," increase SS for a generation that put much less in than they need, and knew it, spend unlimited money on endless medicalization of obese senior citizens trying to live forever, print a few trillion dollars to prop up the financial system's raping of the American savers and retail investors, and all the other ludicrous things we take on insurmountable government debt to fund, I'm quite happy to spend some magical-fed-bucks on arming a peaceful country that was invaded by one of the three biggest geopolitical threats the free world faces (China, Russia, Iran), while the rest of the neutered world stands by like Neville Chamberlain as the great democratization-of-totalitarian-regimes-through-McDonald's-and-Netflix theory crumbles to dust.

Let's not forget the context. Comey had rushed to close the investigation out with no charges against Hillary before yet more evidence of wrongdoing was discovered. So he had to reopen the investigation to save face. This didn't start with Trump. Lois Lerner was the canary in the coal mine. Trump just triggered the rest of them to mount their resistance. And yes, of course Trump is a piece of shit. There may be a few people here who disagree, but overwhelmingly the Republicans I know will all concede that point. However, as we have learned painfully over the past one or two decades, it is not a good-faith conversation, and in an unfair conversation, the targeted side will become reluctant to concede anything at all, knowing it will be used merely as a pretext to ignore whatever legitimate points follow in the conversation.

You generally don't make it very far in conversations where you've already decided someone else's motives, but this is an easy one. Because the people claiming climate change is a threat to humanity aren't acting like climate change is a threat to humanity. Watch what they do, not what they say.

Or evidence that kids were at risk.

If you can't apply the law evenly, you're better off not applying it at all. Fairness is an evolutionary trait that you can not violate. The response will be violent and immediate. https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg

The problem with all of this is that China is spending themselves into oblivion, and they have a much weaker foundation than we do. That may have been their plan 20 years ago, but the 20 years of horrifically inefficient spending (see the Chinese ghost cities) by a centralized government is catching up with them. Don't get me wrong, our horribly inefficient spending is catching up with us as well, but the Chinese have it much worse. I think the biggest threat is that when their house of cards starts to crumble before ours, they will resort to the only thing totalitarian regimes know to resort to. It's going to be an interesting winter.

Don't you worry, the second something happens and the sleeping giant is awoken, you can count on corporate America to dust off the American flags and change their profile pics to red white and blue. They are soulless money whores, not cowards or cosmopolitans. When the sanctions make their business model in China untenable, they'll suddenly be Made-In-America patriots.

It seems like democrats are hell-bent on getting Trump reelected. This is either some serious 4D chess or they are literally too stupid to breathe. Imagine the insanity of making a lunatic with a martyr complex into a martyr.

Well it's a disease primarily spread through gay sex, so those three states and the associated metros will cover many/most of the hot spots. Throw Miami in there for the full set. It is curious that during the covid emergency, dating was just one of the many normal human activities that was strongly discouraged by the government, but not protesting... And during this emergency it seems like no one is willing to discourage anonymous gay sex, which is the primary vector of spread... It's almost like public health is just another institution that's become subordinate to progressive social ideology.

Only if you're selling, now. Canada uses adjustable rate and intro-rate mortgages almost exclusively. The rate hikes are having much more immediate effects in Canada, and will profoundly impact the foreclosure and eviction statistics. Prices rarely stay above historical income ratios for long (for obvious reasons), so expect a big crash. And since, like here, there is political pressure to fix the "housing shortage," tanking the housing market is not going to cause much heartburn with the Fed, though that may change when the baby boomers see their only retirement plan (an overvalued home) vaporize.

I missed a couple other faulty examples you used: A mother is not exchanging with her children, that is a closed system. Also... Have you heard of daycare? Nannies? Au pairs? Babysitting? If you've found non-monetary daycare, please let me know. Slavery was massively deflationary, which is why it was so damn popular. Input costs, in money, were dramatically reduced if you put the cost of human effort to near-zero. The slaveholder was merely the collective representation of the entire plantations's productivity cost to outside buyers. You think the output of slaves was consumed by slave-holders? They were just hoarding all the cotton for themselves? Which money? Banks do not print dollars. Dollars are money. They don't mind for gold, which was money for a long time. Anyone can make money, if the system, as supported by the society, allows for it. Hell, even counterfeiters create money if they can get away with it. And in all cases, the creation of money reduces it's value relative what it can be exchanged for. Our system allows for the creation of money beyond the rate of productive growth. That will always be inflationary. It doesn't matter if the money is metal, paper, or digital, or if it came from a Fed printing press or bank database. If it can be exchanged for something that is not money, it will have a direct effect on inflation. They were talking about minting a $1T coin in 2020 to fund the government. What bank was that going to come from? If Congress passes a law tomorrow that says colon polyps can now be used as hard currency, then they will have created money. Not from a bank. And is it really creating a loan when there is no intention or ability to pay off? More linguistic trick fuckery. A loan is only a loan if it is paid back. I believe a fair argument can be made that the government has no intention of paying back the trillions of dollars in deficit spending they authorize each year. But we call it a loan so that the entire philosophical basis for the system can persist. But it's not a loan, no matter how much you or they proclaim it to be, and therefore the system is in effect already failed. If money is not being created as a loan, it is simply being created. Our system, this monetary system that I suggest will fail, is predicated on the idea that certain loans never need to be paid back. That is definitionally not a loan. So if the Federal reserve "prints money" by "loaning" it to the government with no honest intention of being paid back, then the money is being created without being part of a loan.