[Vronsky]

(08-08-2014 11:33 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Nice catch. I cropped out "Michelle" and bumped up the midtones. That's not even Michelle Obama. As you can see this woman in the photo has a short afro. And now that I look closely, her arms are thicker too. I fell for it too at first and wouldn't have examined closer if you didn't post this. It's bullshit that people have to doctor photos to try and make a point.

Edit --

Another thing, what is everyone's gripe about Michelle Obama? It's not just this "women are smarter than men' comment because this thing has been going on for far longer.

Everyone tries to make her out like she's this woman:

Maybe because she's black and dark skin everyone by default thinks she has a bad attitude or something. I've not seen any evidence of her having an attitude problem or being emasculating. Someone tell me what I'm missing here...

Frankly, I don't understand why there much vitriol against her (at least online, I rarely hear negative things about her in real life). The only other First Lady who attracted her level of negative attention was Hilary Clinton and that was because she made it clear she was going to be a co-President and proceeded to actively inserted herself into policy matters.
From what I understand Michelle Obama comes from a stable 2 parent working class home, managed to get a stellar education at an Ivy League, got married, had kids, and this is important, stayed by her husband's side when he opted out of the prestigious law track to become a community organizer. How many women married to highly educated, high achieving men, would have stood for that? She fought her hypergamy and stayed with him, being the prime breadwinner for years. I can think of lots of other women who would have dropped him and moved on, with encouragement from everyone, should their husband drop so much in earning potential. A man dropping in earning potential is to a woman what a 9 who gains 150 pounds is to a man.
As First Lady she's taken on safe causes, seems to have raised good kids (I can't imagine the Obama girls being party sluts like the Bush girls, or baby mommas like the Palin girl), dresses well and has kept herself up in great shape for a fifty something year old woman, and most importantly does not insert herself into her husband's sphere, like Hillary Clinton used to do.
It floors me that a know-nothing, semi-articulate moron like Sarah Palin, with drug addicted and sexually promiscuous kids that speak to her failures as a mother, got as far as she did and gets a pass because she passes the "boner" test and someone like Obama's wife, who by the standards of the red pill is pretty much ideal, gets called an "ugly bitch" because she doesn't.
It floors me so much that I have to wonder if other factors are at play, and I think this is what speakeasy might be referring to as well.

[It_is_my_time]

It_is_my_time: Obama has been an unmitigated disaster, there is no doubt about that, but I don't think it would have been that much better under Romney, and wouldn't be much better under a Republican next time (due to demographics, I suspect that 2016 might be the last year the Republicans really have a shot at the presidency).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I agree with your post and just wanted to follow up.

For red pill males, the Republican party is TERRIBLE. The only thing worse for us is the Democrats. The only reason the Democrats are even worse is that they are the feminist party.

Bush was a complete disaster. His war on terror, much like the War on Drugs, or War on Poverty, was a disaster. It helped to destroy what was left of our economy after the dot com crash. It took away our personal freedoms and allowed for things like the NSA scandal to take hold. I can't blame people in 2008 for wanting a Democrat, because Bush just made the Republicans look like shit. Unfortunately people didn't look at Obama's own words to see what they were getting.

And I agree, Obama has been a complete disaster. I don't think this country will ever recover from 16 years of Bush and Obama. The national debt, the amount of govt. dependents, the struggling economy all barely keeping going based on debt we cannot continue to float.

But what is really scary is once the USA collapses is how this will greatly impact people in other countries. The answer for us red pill males, and shared here, is to just get the hell out of the USA. This country is terrible for men. But if the USA does default, then it will have HUGE world wide impacts and the entire world will be far more dangerous. This whole thing just sucks.

With all that said, it is easy to say both Democrats and Republicans suck, Obama sucks, Bush sucks, because it s all true. But there are millions of people in this country who are both smart enough and visionary enough to fix this country. Why are they shunned from the job, or silenced? Because the man behind the curtain. The bankers themselves will not allow it.

Our only hope would be to elect a Libertarian and hope he survives and refuses the bankers influence. Though this is highly unlikely and the smart thing to do right now is understand the USA will default and when it does, what will YOU do to survive it.

[speakeasy]

(08-09-2014 11:53 AM)Vronsky Wrote:  

Frankly, I don't understand why there much vitriol against her (at least online, I rarely hear negative things about her in real life). The only other First Lady who attracted her level of negative attention was Hilary Clinton and that was because she made it clear she was going to be a co-President and proceeded to actively inserted herself into policy matters.
From what I understand Michelle Obama comes from a stable 2 parent working class home, managed to get a stellar education at an Ivy League, got married, had kids, and this is important, stayed by her husband's side when he opted out of the prestigious law track to become a community organizer. How many women married to highly educated, high achieving men, would have stood for that? She fought her hypergamy and stayed with him, being the prime breadwinner for years. I can think of lots of other women who would have dropped him and moved on, with encouragement from everyone, should their husband drop so much in earning potential. A man dropping in earning potential is to a woman what a 9 who gains 150 pounds is to a man.
As First Lady she's taken on safe causes, seems to have raised good kids (I can't imagine the Obama girls being party sluts like the Bush girls, or baby mommas like the Palin girl), dresses well and has kept herself up in great shape for a fifty something year old woman, and most importantly does not insert herself into her husband's sphere, like Hillary Clinton used to do.
It floors me that a know-nothing, semi-articulate moron like Sarah Palin, with drug addicted and sexually promiscuous kids that speak to her failures as a mother, got as far as she did and gets a pass because she passes the "boner" test and someone like Obama's wife, who by the standards of the red pill is pretty much ideal, gets called an "ugly bitch" because she doesn't.
It floors me so much that I have to wonder if other factors are at play, and I think this is what speakeasy might be referring to as well.

Co-sign. Generally speaking, I don't care much about first ladies one way or the other unless they are interjecting themselves into policy. Their only job is to smile, be polite on camera and support soft causes like charity and philanthropy. I don't care about Michelle's attractiveness. Barack is the one that shares a bed with her, let him worry about it. I don't think Michelle is pretty, but I don't think she's bad looking either. I think she's just an average looking 50 year old woman. I think she does a decent job with what she has to work with. She stays in shape(a HUGE problem for black women especially), no wrinkles and dresses feminine(unlike Pantsuit Hillary who I couldn't even picture wearing something like this.). After I wrote that response yesterday I went on youtube and looked up some interviews with her. I just wasn't seeing the bad attitude that gets ascribed to her. Seems like a good mother, stays out of the political spotlight. I don't have any issues with her.

(08-09-2014 12:04 PM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

The answer for us red pill males, and shared here, is to just get the hell out of the USA.

Where do you suggest?

[El Chinito loco]

Has there ever been a first lady within the last few decades who hasn't been just an ugly cockholster or narrative placeholder for women's mainstream media?

Michelle Obama isn't even that much of a troglodyte compared with Barbara Bush (who looked 100% like a linebacker in drag) or many other president's wives. America is shameful in the low quality of 1st lady appearances.

The bigger question is..what's the point of all that power if you're sticking your dick in something that looks like it should be playing in the NFL?

[speakeasy]

^^^ You know what, I didn't realize that Barbara Bush was only 64 at Bush Senior's inauguration. Technically she wasn't even a senior citizen that day. But damn, she looked 85:



To think that Christie Brinkley is only 4 years younger here than Barbara Bush was in the photo above:



Man, nature is not fair!

[Samseau]

(08-08-2014 10:32 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

And when the Bush tax cuts were about to expire, what did the Republicans do? They held the country hostage. If the tax cuts expired, everybody's taxes would go up. Obama was going to extend them by making the middle class exempt and only allow them to revert back for the wealthy. The Republicans pouted and said that unless the rich get to extend their tax cuts, they will allow the bill to expire and everyone's taxes would go up, meaning the poor and middle class, which would anger the public toward Obama. Another example of how Republicans care more about destroying the president than helping the country.

That's not what happened. When the Bush cuts were about to expire, the Republicans wanted spending cuts in exchange for tax increases. They were fine with tax increases on the rich, but only in exchange for decreased spending.

Of course, democrats are incapable of reducing spending, so that meant they were unwilling to compromise with the republicans.

All in all, the entire Obama presidency has been marked by a complete inability to compromise on anything, endless dogma, and nonstop spending.

Pretty much the worst president in all of American history, and reflects how shitty American culture has become. The once great American culture is completely trashed.

[It_is_my_time]

Never mind. Let me get back to this at a better time so I have a better answer.

[Samseau]

(08-09-2014 02:44 PM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

As a guy in his late 30's, who has more that worked his ass off, avoided most fun/interactions with women since graduating college, and amassing a nice nest egg...

I have a strong desire to follow everything very closely, because I have over a decade and a half of pure hell/work into all this. So I do take this seriously, and I know how much trouble this county is in. I'm not here to bash Obama just because I don't like him, or what ever flimsy reason. I know how much trouble this country is in. And I know it is bigger than Obama, it is the progressive agenda being pushed by the elite ruling class bankers who want to effectively take over and rule the world by destroying the middle class and anyone who identifies with a nation.

What do I recommend though, I just wanted to state that I do take this seriously...

I can't recommend what any other person should do, because we all come from a unique set of circumstances. I can tell you what I my personal plans are...

Most American women are just flat out disgusting to me. So continuing to avoid woman and focus on my goals are very easy living in a land locked area with few international travelers. I have no desire to pay $3,000 a month for a roach infested apartment in NYC all with the hopes of meeting some woman from another country and then hoping she doesn't use the laws here to destroy my life.

So I will continue to avoid women, they have little to nothing to offer here. Let them drown on their own.

I will continue to work ungodly amounts of hours each week. There is nothing else to do anyway. TV sucks shit. Sports are boring as you get older and realize they are just kids playing a game. I don't feel like traveling overseas right now, because I then have to come back to the USA and feel even more depressed.

With the work I have more money. That money I am diversifying into things that will be important if we collapse (land, gold/silver, ammunition, canned goods, batteries), but at the same time also into mutual funds and stocks, because maybe the collapse doesn't happen for a decade or so and I can make enough to get out of the USA in time.

I am trying to play both sides of the fence. The USA will collapse, we think things are bad now, we ain't seen nothing yet. And I want to be prepared no matter when it happens. So either...

#1) It collapses while I am in the USA. I have no woman or kids to protect. I have supplies. And I am ready to ride it out.

#2) I get out in time. My target is central Europe. I think I will be safer there if the USA collapses and I love their culture and women. So if the collapse doesn't happen until I have a few million dollars, then I will move out and hopefully not have to look back.

I wish the USA could get back on the right track. This was the greatest country to ever exist. Anyone, from any back ground, could come here and become a very wealthy/safe/healthy and extremely happy person. And progressivism has destroyed that. It is really sad, but there isn't time to be sad, it is time to be preparing.

I think you should travel when you can, just so you can see how you enjoy other countries and so you can decide on where you want to move. You've gotta try before you buy.

[R Smoov]

(08-08-2014 01:39 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  



Nuff said.

I was right.

That bitch was on 12 Years A Slave.

[TravelerKai]

(08-09-2014 02:39 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(08-08-2014 10:32 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

And when the Bush tax cuts were about to expire, what did the Republicans do? They held the country hostage. If the tax cuts expired, everybody's taxes would go up. Obama was going to extend them by making the middle class exempt and only allow them to revert back for the wealthy. The Republicans pouted and said that unless the rich get to extend their tax cuts, they will allow the bill to expire and everyone's taxes would go up, meaning the poor and middle class, which would anger the public toward Obama. Another example of how Republicans care more about destroying the president than helping the country.

That's not what happened. When the Bush cuts were about to expire, the Republicans wanted spending cuts in exchange for tax increases. They were fine with tax increases on the rich, but only in exchange for decreased spending.

Of course, democrats are incapable of reducing spending, so that meant they were unwilling to compromise with the republicans.

All in all, the entire Obama presidency has been marked by a complete inability to compromise on anything, endless dogma, and nonstop spending.

Pretty much the worst president in all of American history, and reflects how shitty American culture has become. The once great American culture is completely trashed.

Let's take better care than to say things like that when a list of bad presidents were far worst. If you took for example Warren G Harding or John Tyler, and put them in Bush or Obama's time as president, you probably would be saying the opposite. Historians will not make crass judgement on a president until at a minimum of 10-20 years after he has long left office because it takes time to see what the real net effect of his policies are. The longer the time elapses, the more information and analysis can be found. The presidency is not like being a Monday Morning Quaterback picking apart one football game from Sunday night. We are talking about 4-8 years worth of work.

Also, sometimes presidents that were considered bad men, can be looked at as masterful after a very large period of time, especially in a Machiavellian lens. Like Andrew Jackson for example. He was a, stone cold, blood thirsty murderer, but when you look at his policies and other actions, he moved the country forward in many ways to an enormous advantage. If he is in hell, none of that makes his seat any colder though, but that is none of anyone's business I suppose.

I know you have deep history knowledge of different civilizations but you have to understand that if it was even possible to put many of the previous presidents in any of the recent ones position, outcomes would have been much worst. That is not counting the fact that outside of the founding fathers, many of those guys would have failed to be elected if television existed.

[El Chinito loco]

Part of the visceral backlash towards Obama has to do with how much of a charlatan he turned out to be. People were expecting magic negro 2.0 like Morgan Freeman but instead the American people got another scheming machiavellian from a corrupt city with a history of producing dog eat dog politicians. It's just that people were stupid enough to think it really was different this time around. What you see is disappointment turned into hatred. The most bitter type of hate.

[TravelerKai]

Like It is my Time was saying, it is painfully obvious that Lobbying and Professional Interest Groups, along with the Legal and Military Industrial Complexes, have hamstrung ANY and ALL presidents in the last 40 years or so. All of them are doing the bidding of their campaign donors and everyone knows it. Part of the cognitive dissonance everyone seems to have is that any kind of voting, grassroots activity, or party support can turn anything around. Part of being Red Pill is realizing that you DID live in the Matrix. All these elections are rigged now that technology is involved. I have personally seen Proof of Concepts of e-ballot hacking. The security architecture behind them are a joke. The only thing missing from all of this fucking circus is a ten headed dragon or cabal forcing everyone to have an RFID chip installed on our foreheads and hands. Once that happens, would anyone except redpill/paranoid Christians realize it? Will Soup be telling everyone that the new chip is just fine and okay because it can help you get extra pussy? Something that might happen sooner than that will be restrictions on passports and travel. They already tax more now.

I know one thing, we all need extra passports, offshore bank accounts/safe deposits, unspoiled wives, healthy children with no Aspergers/ADHD. If those things are unattainable, then we will need plenty guns, ammo, land, and crop seeds.

Edit: All this insulting the leaders of various countries with name calling is bullshit, quite frankly. Lets stop wasting time insulting these people like the shrill harpy feminists we dump on everyday. Insulting Putin, Obama, Bush, is quite frankly, beneath us.

[TravelerKai]

(08-09-2014 04:01 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

Part of the visceral backlash towards Obama has to do with how much of a charlatan he turned out to be. People were expecting magic negro 2.0 like Morgan Freeman but instead the American people got another scheming machiavellian from a corrupt city with a history of producing dog eat dog politicians. It's just that people were stupid enough to think it really was different this time around. What you see is disappointment turned into hatred. The most bitter type of hate.

He was feeling himself as well until he got into the office and they sat him down and gave him that talk. Would you sacrifice your life and your family to spill the beans on the true inner workings of how this country works? What future president will be willing to do this?

[speakeasy]

(08-09-2014 02:39 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(08-08-2014 10:32 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

And when the Bush tax cuts were about to expire, what did the Republicans do? They held the country hostage. If the tax cuts expired, everybody's taxes would go up. Obama was going to extend them by making the middle class exempt and only allow them to revert back for the wealthy. The Republicans pouted and said that unless the rich get to extend their tax cuts, they will allow the bill to expire and everyone's taxes would go up, meaning the poor and middle class, which would anger the public toward Obama. Another example of how Republicans care more about destroying the president than helping the country.

That's not what happened. When the Bush cuts were about to expire, the Republicans wanted spending cuts in exchange for tax increases. They were fine with tax increases on the rich, but only in exchange for decreased spending.

No Samseau. I'm referring to the Middle Class Tax Relief Act of 2010. The Republicans agreed to no tax increases under any circumstances and threatened filibuster unless they got what they want. They made NO conditions of decreased spending. Keep in mind, Obama himself wasn't raising anyone's taxes. The temporary tax break that Bush had signed into office in 2002 were expiring and returning to the prior rate. Democrats wanted to keep them for households under $250,000 which would be the overwhelming majority of us. Despite the fact that all the gains of the recovery went to the rich, the Republicans couldn't fathom the taxes of their wealthy buddies going from 35 to 39.5%. Obama just took one for the team and extended them another two years so that the poor and middle class wouldn't see their taxes automatically go up and take-home income decrease in the midst of a recession. The wealthy of course, win again.

The can was kicked down the road and we were back at the same situation in 2012 when the 2-year extension expired. This time the tax cuts on the lower and middle class were made permanent, and the tax rate for the wealthy expired and reverted back to pre-Bush levels. Difference is, the Democrats wanted the tax increase for households over $250,000 and they ended up compromising with the Republicans and raising the threshold to $450,000.

Quote:

Of course, democrats are incapable of reducing spending, so that meant they were unwilling to compromise with the republicans.

There were NO provisions for spending in either the 2010 or 2012 acts, nor was it made a term of condition. I have no idea what you're talking about. My only guess is that you are erroneously referring to the debt-ceiling crisis which had nothing to do with the tax cut extensions.

Quote:

All in all, the entire Obama presidency has been marked by a complete inability to compromise on anything, endless dogma, and nonstop spending.

Pretty much the worst president in all of American history, and reflects how shitty American culture has become. The once great American culture is completely trashed.

I'm not even going to bother with these Rush Limbaugh talking points. Traveler Kai already laid it down.

(08-09-2014 04:01 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

Part of the visceral backlash towards Obama has to do with how much of a charlatan he turned out to be. People were expecting magic negro 2.0 like Morgan Freeman but instead the American people got another scheming machiavellian from a corrupt city with a history of producing dog eat dog politicians. It's just that people were stupid enough to think it really was different this time around. What you see is disappointment turned into hatred. The most bitter type of hate.

My feeling is that it's just not possible to be president and be a nice guy. If you go in as a nice guy, you won't come out as one. It's just the way it is. None of us here have been in high level politics. It is so incredibly complicated that I don't know how anyone can stay there for long and not be a broken soul at some level. They all have to sell out at some point. If you are president you know that at the very least you are going to have to order someone's death at some point during your term, probably many people's deaths. You're going to have to break some of your promises when you realize that making those changes are going to be harder than you thought, or circumstances or priorities have changed for reasons outside of your control. You stop extending unemployment insurance and some family is going to be up at night having no idea whether they'll be living in the street in a month. You give a bailout to the banks and your constituents hate you for helping the rich when you said you were for helping the common man, your opposition hates you because you drove up debt. If you do nothing, the entire economy could collapse and everyone will hate you and blame it all on you regardless. You order wiretaps and everyone accuses you of setting up a surveillance state, but if you don't do it and it turns out in hindsight that surveillance could've prevented a terrorist attack, it will all be blamed on you for being weak on security. Seriously man, it's not a job I'd ever want.

[kosko]

(08-09-2014 04:21 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(08-09-2014 04:01 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

Part of the visceral backlash towards Obama has to do with how much of a charlatan he turned out to be. People were expecting magic negro 2.0 like Morgan Freeman but instead the American people got another scheming machiavellian from a corrupt city with a history of producing dog eat dog politicians. It's just that people were stupid enough to think it really was different this time around. What you see is disappointment turned into hatred. The most bitter type of hate.

He was feeling himself as well until he got into the office and they sat him down and gave him that talk. Would you sacrifice your life and your family to spill the beans on the true inner workings of how this country works? What future president will be willing to do this?

He got taken to the cleaners when he was in his "transition" period back in 'Machine' Chicago as the President-elect, that is likely when he got sat down by all the suits whom showered money on his campaign. How naive he was to think Coke, Pepsi, and Wall Street gave him blank cheques and did not expect to have the hands on the wheel. He never had enough time as a DC crony to know how it all really went down. He was brought up through the Chicao system, but I believe, he did not believe how deep the rabbit hole went in how gagged and hand tied the position of POTUS is. Bush II knew from day 1, and basically spent 60% of his time chilling on his Crawford, Texas ranch while running things into the ground and making sure all his homies got a cut. The massive amounts of money that "disappeared" during his tenure is staggering (until Obama came in) and zero fucks were given as money was jus stolen on wholesale levels in regards to the phony Afghan and Iraq war campaigns. Bush knew the deal as he grew up in it, seen how his father operated within that environment. He seen first hand how his father Bush I, exploited a prestigious intelligence career to basically create a power vacuum with his faction within the Regan administration and position himself for the POTUS job.

Back to Obama, since from Day 1 he got the keys it was a nose dive, when he was told to simply just sell smiles and lemonade for a destructive tax restructure/ insurance ATM in Obamacare you saw quickly the burden of the job get to him as he's cherry self turned into distant and ambivalent greying. Never mind the economy, he had to of known that was in the pits and would be for a long while but he became jaded with the job quickly to the point rumors were he resigned himself to watching basketball in his chambers most evenings, cutting his work days short as he was just sick of the shit. He was done with this job two years in and look how he's dragged it on to eight.

[Feisbook Control]

speakeasy: First let me begin by reiterating what I wrote before. This is a structural issue. It_is_my_time articulated a lot of what I was going to write. Also, you won't get an argument out of me that Bush was a terrible president. The reason I am so critical of Obama is because his presidency has largely been a continuation of all that was wrong with Bush, with its own brand of idiocy thrown in for free. Little, if anything, seems to have been learnt from Bush's major fuck ups.

In short, the U.S. is now more indebted, the culture continues to go to shit, foreign policy and how the U.S. is regarded has been an absolute disaster, and the U.S. continues to morph into a (proto) police state.

On debt (and it really is staggeringly huge now, perhaps past the point of no return, and history has shown us many, many times just how badly these things end) and the deficit, I believe you are looking at this entirely the wrong way, but we may never see eye to eye on this. Basically, I don't believe that tax is the government's money, and hence, I don't believe that tax cuts represent the government being generous to anyone. A person's money is his money (including if he is wealthy), and he should choose how he wants to spend it. The government shouldn't take it from him, spend some of it, and then act like it's doing everyone a favour by either returning some of it or not taking so much next time.

Furthermore, I believe that when you give the government money, rather than it actually figuring out if it really needs that money, it will spend it simply because it can. Asking a bureaucrat or politician if he needs more funding is like asking a barber if you need a haircut.

I don't see government as benevolent. I see it as self-serving and expansionary by its very nature.

Thus, from my point of view, the government should have been living within its means. It should have been scaling back the welfare-warfare state. It shouldn't have been bailing anyone else out. Screw "too big to fail". Those fuckers will always have others over a barrel with that line. Nothing has changed there either, and that's part of what others were talking about when they described Obama as having failed by his own standards. How has Wall Street been cleaned up? How have further bubbles even been addressed? How is the middle class not getting screwed anymore than before. Where's the hope and change?

Then there's the culture. Look at just how rapidly all this weird social justice agenda has accelerated within the past few years. That has occurred because at best, a blind eye has been turned towards it, and at worst, it's been actively given the green light by this administration (see below for just one issue). The original topic of this thread was about the misandry from Michelle Obama. That is the zeitgeist. Maybe she's the chicken, maybe she's the egg. Maybe it's both. Doesn't matter. It is what it is.

Now let's examine foreign policy. The world was so relieved when they got rid of Bush that they awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize before he'd even done anything. Yet look at what's happened on his watch. The Arab Spring has turned out to be a complete disaster. First, Obama backed ousting all of these old dictators (again, did no one learn anything from Bush in Iraq?), then it went south in a big way in Egypt to the point where radical Islamists became the government, then that predictably all fell apart as they couldn't run the proverbial orgy in a brothel, and now we're seemingly back to square one with a military dictatorship. Yet that's somewhat of a success story in that region. At least Egypt isn't building a new caliphate a la ISIS. Again, there was a huge precedent of funding terrorists and the blow back from that. Did anyone really think that those ISIS goons would politely follow orders and not pursue their own agenda? At least with Osama Bin Laden there was a grace period before the blow back. In Syria it was almost immediate. Really? Are people that dumb? A child could have seen that a mile off.

Then there's the Ukraine. Frankly, Putin has exercised considerable restraint, but that could have got really out of hand. Again, Obama allowed a democratically elected government to be overthrown by a mob, and the new government is attacking civilians who want to secede (I'm not talking about the guys taking up arms, I'm talking about their shelling of residential neighbourhoods), and all the while, everyone -- including the U.S. -- seems to be trying to goad Putin into declaring WW3 just so that they can say he started it. It's fucking insane.

Then there's East Asia. China's sabre rattling is partly the natural outgrowth of their rising power and influence in other areas. Yet you'd surely have to think that they're also being opportunistic in filling the power vacuum created by the U.S.'s ongoing woes elsewhere. Ditto Iran, North Korea, etc. Pretty much right now, if I were the leader of another country, I'd be taking full advantage of the situation also. Weakness invites aggression.

Finally, there's the growing police state. Everyone rightly criticised Bush for his attacks on civil liberties. Such policies have continued or expanded under Obama. Again, where's the hope and change? Yet it's more than that. Obama used the IRS as a political tool. Does that precedent not worry you? The reason I mention this in particular is that I mentioned the broader culture above. Pretty much not a week goes by without those slavering, frothing social justice warriors hounding someone out of a job for thought crimes, even those that occur in private. I believe that this is in no small part because the zeitgeist is that thought crime shall be overcome by any means necessary. When the POTUS acts in this way, he sets a bad tone. The irony, of course, is that these social justice idiots may one day see themselves declared as wrong thinkers and dangers to society, and the apparatus they will have helped to create will be their own undoing.

You have to understand the cumulative effect of all of these things. There are droves of guys like It_is_my_time on this site making comments about stacking cash and fleeing the U.S. He just articulated such ideas far more eloquently than most. The internet generally is awash with guys buying farms, gold and ammo because they're worried about this. Or there are tons of guys who are quietly shrugging their shoulders and deciding that it's not really worth working hard, and that it would be easy to sit and play their Playstations all day. This phenomenon certainly didn't begin under Obama, and I don't think it would have been/will be solved by a Republican, but it sure seems like it's accelerating under Obama. In other times, these 20-something year old guys would be the bedrock of society, not putting all of their creative energies into thinking about buying weed or how to get a foreign passport.

Then there's the perspective from an outsider's point of view. I was 13 when the Berlin Wall came down. The U.S. was by no means perfect then, but it was still the light on the hill it aspired to be to many of us from other countries. It was clearly the good guy. Not now. I am under no illusions that the governments in Russia, China or Iran would be good to live under or are forces of good in the world. Yet do I think the U.S. government would be or is? Do I have to choose one of them or can I choose "none of the above"? Don't you see what an absolute tragedy this is when tons of guys -- domestic and foreign alike -- who would have once been staunch supporters of the U.S. in general now see a best case scenario where the U.S. is something to be avoided, and at worst, actively despised? This was all meant to change once Bush stopped his bumbling foreign police, right? Right? Obama did get the Peace Prize, after all. Twenty years ago, a guy like It_is_my_time would not have been building himself a bunker and filling it with gold. Right now, you pretty much couldn't get me to visit, let alone move to, the U.S. even if you gave me an all expenses paid trip or a huge house for free. I went to the U.S. pre-911, and it still rates as one of the best places I've ever been. It's an awesome country in so many ways, probably in my top three. Yet unless it radically changes course, I don't think I'll ever go back there again.

If it were just me, you could dismiss me as some nutter or hater.

[speakeasy]

Quote:

speakeasy: First let me begin by reiterating what I wrote before. This is a structural issue. It_is_my_time articulated a lot of what I was going to write. Also, you won't get an argument out of me that Bush was a terrible president. The reason I am so critical of Obama is because his presidency has largely been a continuation of all that was wrong with Bush, with its own brand of idiocy thrown in for free. Little, if anything, seems to have been learnt from Bush's major fuck ups.

In short, the U.S. is now more indebted, the culture continues to go to shit, foreign policy and how the U.S. is regarded has been an absolute disaster, and the U.S. continues to morph into a (proto) police state.

I am troubled by the debt. I also realize that neither party is willing to do what it takes to resolve the issue because it would require pain in the form of serious cuts and tax increases. You can't merely cut our way out of $17 trillion in debt. Cuts alone are NOT enough. Someone has to pay for these wars and it's either going to be us, our kids or our grand kids, but the bills are going to come due. But nobody wants to hear any of it. The Republicans and neocons don't want the Pentagon cut because the hawks want to maintain global hegemony. Plus the military is basically right-wing socialism. It employs a tremendous amount of people. Slash the $600 billion Pentagon budget and we'd probably fall right back into recession. The Democrats don't want cuts in social spending. Neither are going to touch SS and Medicare. And tax hikes are extremely unpopular. I think this country is becoming largely ungovernable due to the hyper-polarization we've seen starting with Bush and continuing into the Obama administration.

I really do think Bush was a tipping point in our country. I throw my hands up in disbelief when people like Samseau can say Obama is worse than Bush. Bush actually inherited a country that had a deficit surplus and turned it into deficit by slashing taxes while at the same time putting two wars that cost us at least $10 trillion on the credit card. I mean that is the opposite of fiscal responsibility. You gut your source of revenue while at the same time ramping up spending. WTF was he thinking?? The combination of those two policies is what largely put us on this trajectory of insolvency. Side by side, you have one president that inherited a country in good shape and checked out with the country in economic free fall, and you have one president that took over a disaster and has at the least stabilized it in most aspects and improved things by some degree. What I mean by improved things is that the auto industry was saved and all the jobs that support into it. Anyone that has a 401k or stocks has seen their portofolio restored back to what it was before Bush. Housing values have mostly recovered, unemployment actually isn't that bad at around 6%, 5% is normal, it peaked around 10%. He got the troops out of combat in Iraq and Pentagon spending has dropped by $100 billion from its peak. And while the ACA is controversial, I think it's generally a good thing and some of aspects of it definitely help everyone. In fact most people like the ACA when you read them the individual components without telling them it's Obamacare. He passed the Dodd-Frank reform act in response to the Wall Street meltdown to prevent something like this from happening again. I know the Wall Street bailouts were controversial, but those started under Bush. I'm not an economist by any means and I can't say for sure what would've happened if these banks weren't bailed out, but economists were saying virtually unanimously that there was no other option here and that not doing it would've caused a meltdown far worse that would've plunged us into depression. I'm not going to out-argue people with PhDs in economics, at a certain point I just have to defer to people way smarter and educated than I am on certain topics such as lending and finance. Only the most extreme libertarians were calling for nothing to be done and letting the house burn down. Unfortunately the debt has continued to soar under Obama, though even that is controversial because so much of that debt isn't coming from discretionary spending that you can directly attribute to him. Of course the Republicans would like everyone to think that the increase in debt is coming solely from food stamps, welfare, and Obamacare, which is a joke.

Quote:

On debt (and it really is staggeringly huge now, perhaps past the point of no return, and history has shown us many, many times just how badly these things end) and the deficit, I believe you are looking at this entirely the wrong way, but we may never see eye to eye on this. Basically, I don't believe that tax is the government's money, and hence, I don't believe that tax cuts represent the government being generous to anyone. A person's money is his money (including if he is wealthy), and he should choose how he wants to spend it. The government shouldn't take it from him, spend some of it, and then act like it's doing everyone a favour by either returning some of it or not taking so much next time.

Yeah, but if you drive on roads, fly over our airspace, went to public school, eat food that has to be inspected, use anything connected to the power grid, use the internet, benefited from military defense, get water out of the tap, visit a national park, call the police or fire department, etc etc these things have to be paid for. You can say it's my money and the government has no right to it, but anyone that feels that way should then go live in some remote wilderness off the grid and live off the land. I don't love paying taxes anymore than you but some degree of taxation is necessary of course. Now I know you'll probably say that this stuff should be privatized, but some things should not be for profit but to serve the public good. Not everything should be for profit.

Quote:

Furthermore, I believe that when you give the government money, rather than it actually figuring out if it really needs that money, it will spend it simply because it can. Asking a bureaucrat or politician if he needs more funding is like asking a barber if you need a haircut.


I don't see government as benevolent. I see it as self-serving and expansionary by its very nature.

There's truth to that, but at the end of the day, checks and balances and a mixed economy that combines free enterprise with a social safety net and progressive taxation with few loopholes for the wealthy is what serves the majority best in my opinion. I'm not a libertarian at all, and your words seem consistent with the libertarian outlook on the role of government. My perspective is that wealth inequality is bad for society and government should have some active role in preventing a society from becoming too unequal. I'm not a communist in thinking that the government should own the means of production and that everyone should make the same amount of money no matter what. I don't have a problem with there being rich people, it's just a matter of degree. So I support things like strong labor unions, hiking the minimum wage, higher taxes on the wealthy and investment income, closing loopholes for the rich and single-payer healthcare. I don't want to live in a society that looks like Brazil or Mexico with a few rich people that own all the wealth and own the government who have to drive around with armed guards and then half your population living in slums. The purpose of socialism is to make sure situations like this don't arise and give everyone at access to at least the most basic human necessities. We are nowhere near as bad as that, but we are definitely headed more in that direction when you see all the economic gains go to the wealthy and the poor and middle class haven't seen an inflation-adjusted increase in income in several decades now. Then the other problem is that as wealth becomes more concentrated, the wealthy are able to buy more power in government and you begin to have rule by oligarchy. Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world and their government is a basically a mafia state, a cabal between politicians, the Russian mob and oligarchs. And we aren't too much better here with all the powerful lobbyist that can buy any legislation they want. That's just another outcome of too much wealth concentrated in too few hands. The libertarian reaction to this is "so what, that's the way the cookie crumbles!" So I really have no use for them, even if I may think they are right on a few issues. Economic inequality is a non-issue to the Libertarian platform, and Republican platform. I have no use for their ideology.

Quote:

Thus, from my point of view, the government should have been living within its means. It should have been scaling back the welfare-warfare state. It shouldn't have been bailing anyone else out. Screw "too big to fail". Those fuckers will always have others over a barrel with that line. Nothing has changed there either, and that's part of what others were talking about when they described Obama as having failed by his own standards. How has Wall Street been cleaned up? How have further bubbles even been addressed? How is the middle class not getting screwed anymore than before. Where's the hope and change?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%...ection_Act

Quote:

Then there's the culture. Look at just how rapidly all this weird social justice agenda has accelerated within the past few years. That has occurred because at best, a blind eye has been turned towards it, and at worst, it's been actively given the green light by this administration (see below for just one issue). The original topic of this thread was about the misandry from Michelle Obama. That is the zeitgeist. Maybe she's the chicken, maybe she's the egg. Maybe it's both. Doesn't matter. It is what it is.

The direction of the culture is outside the realm of politics.

Quote:

Now let's examine foreign policy. The world was so relieved when they got rid of Bush that they awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize before he'd even done anything. Yet look at what's happened on his watch. The Arab Spring has turned out to be a complete disaster. First, Obama backed ousting all of these old dictators (again, did no one learn anything from Bush in Iraq?), then it went south in a big way in Egypt to the point where radical Islamists became the government, then that predictably all fell apart as they couldn't run the proverbial orgy in a brothel, and now we're seemingly back to square one with a military dictatorship. Yet that's somewhat of a success story in that region. At least Egypt isn't building a new caliphate a la ISIS. Again, there was a huge precedent of funding terrorists and the blow back from that. Did anyone really think that those ISIS goons would politely follow orders and not pursue their own agenda? At least with Osama Bin Laden there was a grace period before the blow back. In Syria it was almost immediate. Really? Are people that dumb? A child could have seen that a mile off.

Then there's the Ukraine. Frankly, Putin has exercised considerable restraint, but that could have got really out of hand. Again, Obama allowed a democratically elected government to be overthrown by a mob, and the new government is attacking civilians who want to secede (I'm not talking about the guys taking up arms, I'm talking about their shelling of residential neighbourhoods), and all the while, everyone -- including the U.S. -- seems to be trying to goad Putin into declaring WW3 just so that they can say he started it. It's fucking insane.

What do you mean America "allowed" it? What exactly are we supposed to do about Ukraine's internal affairs? And what did Obama have to do with ousting the dictator of Egypt?

Quote:

Finally, there's the growing police state. Everyone rightly criticised Bush for his attacks on civil liberties. Such policies have continued or expanded under Obama. Again, where's the hope and change? Yet it's more than that. Obama used the IRS as a political tool. Does that precedent not worry you? The reason I mention this in particular is that I mentioned the broader culture above. Pretty much not a week goes by without those slavering, frothing social justice warriors hounding someone out of a job for thought crimes, even those that occur in private. I believe that this is in no small part because the zeitgeist is that thought crime shall be overcome by any means necessary. When the POTUS acts in this way, he sets a bad tone. The irony, of course, is that these social justice idiots may one day see themselves declared as wrong thinkers and dangers to society, and the apparatus they will have helped to create will be their own undoing.

To say you are drawing hasty conclusions here would be an understatement.

Quote:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/art...watergate/

The IRS decides whether to approve groups for tax-free status. But rules about how much political activity is too much to keep a nonprofit label are not clear cut, which contributes to the agency's recent troubles.

The controversy touched off last year after the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said IRS employees in the Ohio-based Determinations Unit used inappropriate criteria to screen groups seeking tax-exempt nonprofit status. The investigation was prompted by congressional Republicans concerned about conservative groups complaining of burdensome requests from the agency.

The scrutiny, which inordinately affected conservative groups, led to months-long delays in processing applications and unnecessary requests for additional information, such as donor lists and expenditures, the inspector general said. The report blamed ineffective management and poor guidance from higher-ups.

Most of the groups in the cases examined applied for 501©(4) status, which is a designation for social welfare groups. These groups are allowed to engage in limited political activity without disclosing their donors. Charities categorized as 501©(3) must follow clear standards and are not allowed to have political involvement.

Instead of focusing on groups’ planned activities, IRS employees erred in honing in on groups based on their name or focus, i.e. government debt and spending or criticizing how the country is being run, from early 2010 to early 2012. The audit found all cases with "tea party," "patriots" or "9/12" in their name were deemed potential political cases, though another 200 cases for groups without those qualifiers were also recommended for additional scrutiny.

The Treasury auditor agreed that a majority of the nearly 300 applications identified by IRS workers as potential political cases showed signs of significant political activity (i.e. the scrutiny ultimately was warranted). But 31 percent, including 17 tea party groups, did not.

Why would the IRS workers do this? Larry Noble, a counsel at the Campaign Legal Center who worked with Lerner when he was general counsel at the Federal Elections Commission, said the IRS was under enormous pressure from outside organizations and Democratic senators raising concerns about the rise of "dark money" groups after the Citizens United ruling. Of particular concern was Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which spent millions in ads against Democratic candidates as a 501©(4) nonprofit.

While all sides have called the employees’ actions inappropriate (Obama used "boneheaded" in a February interview with Bill O’Reilly), they disagree on the motivation. Republicans say it’s evidence of politics seeping into a nonpartisan government agency to punish Obama critics. Democrats say the workers were just trying to find a way to capture obviously political-centric groups that did not have social welfare on their agenda.

Bottom line

Will likened the events at the IRS to Watergate. That’s his right as a Washington pundit, but we found little evidence (in fact, no one has) linking the actions of the IRS to the Obama White House in the way the Watergate break-in and cover up was orchestrated by Nixon’s White House.

That’s part of Will’s point -- a more thorough investigation is merited. But several investigations are under way.

Democrats say the Republicans are on an endless witch hunt that conveniently falls during a midterm election cycle, and Republicans say Democrats are protecting Obama and to ice out conservative groups from the elections process.

The evidence available so far indicates IRS employees behaved poorly but did so in a silo; it was not reflective of corruption from the White House or external forces.

Quote:

The reason I mention this in particular is that I mentioned the broader culture above. Pretty much not a week goes by without those slavering, frothing social justice warriors hounding someone out of a job for thought crimes, even those that occur in private. I believe that this is in no small part because the zeitgeist is that thought crime shall be overcome by any means necessary. When the POTUS acts in this way, he sets a bad tone. The irony, of course, is that these social justice idiots may one day see themselves declared as wrong thinkers and dangers to society, and the apparatus they will have helped to create will be their own undoing.

There is no evidence thus far that the president had anything to do that IRS matter. Maybe someone will find something later, and there could be, but as of now, the evidence isn't there. Speculation and guesswork is not evidence.

Quote:

You have to understand the cumulative effect of all of these things. There are droves of guys like It_is_my_time on this site making comments about stacking cash and fleeing the U.S. He just articulated such ideas far more eloquently than most. The internet generally is awash with guys buying farms, gold and ammo because they're worried about this. Or there are tons of guys who are quietly shrugging their shoulders and deciding that it's not really worth working hard, and that it would be easy to sit and play their Playstations all day. This phenomenon certainly didn't begin under Obama, and I don't think it would have been/will be solved by a Republican, but it sure seems like it's accelerating under Obama. In other times, these 20-something year old guys would be the bedrock of society, not putting all of their creative energies into thinking about buying weed or how to get a foreign passport.


Then there's the perspective from an outsider's point of view. I was 13 when the Berlin Wall came down. The U.S. was by no means perfect then, but it was still the light on the hill it aspired to be to many of us from other countries. It was clearly the good guy. Not now. I am under no illusions that the governments in Russia, China or Iran would be good to live under or are forces of good in the world. Yet do I think the U.S. government would be or is? Do I have to choose one of them or can I choose "none of the above"? Don't you see what an absolute tragedy this is when tons of guys -- domestic and foreign alike -- who would have once been staunch supporters of the U.S. in general now see a best case scenario where the U.S. is something to be avoided, and at worst, actively despised? This was all meant to change once Bush stopped his bumbling foreign police, right? Right? Obama did get the Peace Prize, after all. Twenty years ago, a guy like It_is_my_time would not have been building himself a bunker and filling it with gold. Right now, you pretty much couldn't get me to visit, let alone move to, the U.S. even if you gave me an all expenses paid trip or a huge house for free. I went to the U.S. pre-911, and it still rates as one of the best places I've ever been. It's an awesome country in so many ways, probably in my top three. Yet unless it radically changes course, I don't think I'll ever go back there again.

I don't know what to say dude, anyone that decides sit home and play video games and smoke weed rather than be a productive adult has other issues. One thing I liked about posters like Hencredible, International Swagger and Gmanifesto when they were here is that they kept their distance from the whiny aspect of the manosphere. Dudes complaining like victims rather going out there and winning and having a blast. You never saw them whining about feminism and men's rights and what not. They were upbeat guys enjoying their lives, making money and getting laid, not looking for reasons to feel victimized. All this MGTOW stuff, I just don't relate to it.

[It_is_my_time]

I just want to point out a few things quickly...

Bush inherited an economy that was in a recession after the dot com bubble burst. The economy never really got going by the time 9/11 hit, and then things really went south. The tax cuts got the economy going again, unfortunately he squandered that by starting a needless and very expensive war in Iraq.

Raising taxes does not necessarily increase the tax base. We need solutions that will raise the tax base. Raising taxes often times fails to do this because the govt. takes a greater % of the economy, so the economy will grind to a halt. Sure, the govt. increases taxes from say 25% to 40%, but the GDP suffers due to it.

So 25% of $10,000,000,000,000 ends up being more than say 40% of $5,000,000,000,000.

[rekruler]

Jeez, that Michelle Obama thesis is painful. Reading it, you feel like you're watching a 10 year old attempt a task for which he is intellectually inadequate. You can tell what Michelle is trying to do here, and you can see that her IQ is so far below the level that is required. Her struggle to string together big words in complicated sentence structures is comical.

"The purpose of this study is to examine various attitudes
of Black Princeton alumni in their present state and as they
are perceived by the alumni to have changed over time. This
study tries to examine the following attitudes of alumni:
the extent to which they are comfortable interacting with
Black and with White individuals in various activities; the
extent to which they are motivated to benefit the Black com-
munity in comparison to other entities such as themselves,
their families, God, etc.; the ideologies they hold with re-
spects to race relations between the Black and White commu-
nities; and feelings they have toward the Black lower class
such as a feeling of obligation that they should help im-
prove the lives of this particular group of Blacks.

As a future Black alumnus, this study is particularly in-
teresting because often times I take my own attitudes about
such issues for granted;. never pausing to reflect upon how
my experiences at Princeton may somehow have caused my atti-
tudes to change. This is important for Blacks in contempo-
rary society because as more Blacks begin attending predomi-
nately White universities it will be helpful to know how
their experiences in these universities affect their future

2

attitudes. In years to come if their attitudes do change,
is it possible, for example, that they will become more
comfortable interacting with Blacks or with Whites in vari-
ous activities? Will they become more or less motivated to
benefit the Black community? If there is a change in their
attitudes to what might it be attributed? Will they feel
any obligation as a member of the Black community to help
other Blacks in particular who are less fortunate than them-
selves?"

[speakeasy]

(08-10-2014 06:45 PM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

Raising taxes does not necessarily increase the tax base. We need solutions that will raise the tax base. Raising taxes often times fails to do this because the govt. takes a greater % of the economy, so the economy will grind to a halt. Sure, the govt. increases taxes from say 25% to 40%, but the GDP suffers due to it.

So 25% of $10,000,000,000,000 ends up being more than say 40% of $5,000,000,000,000.

I agree with this if the reason for the economic sputter is lack of access to capital. Tax cuts in the case can allow businesses to invest and hire. But right now, profits are at record levels. A lack of cash isn't what's preventing businesses from hiring and raising wages. There simply isn't the demand for more workers. Either through better efficiency, outsourcing, insourcing(hb-1 visas), or some combination of all the above.

This is one reason I absolutely despise illegal immigration. All these jobs in construction, meat packing, gardening, drywalling and other trades are things poor Americans could be doing if the wages weren't being driven down by cheap labor. I'm honestly surprised it isn't all illegals working up in the oil fields in N. Dakota for $8/hr. That's one of the last few jobs left where a poor American with no degree can go and make some decent money. Not to even mention the social effects of importing 3rd world poverty en masse and all the problems associated with it.

Edit--

As for Michelle Obama's thesis, I read part of it several years back. Yes, I was unimpressed, but perhaps prose isn't her gift. I went to a no name public college and was a "C" student in high school and I wrote vastly better than she did. That said, she did graduate from Harvard Law School, passed the Illinois bar, become a lawyer and later went on to work in hospital administration making over 300k a year. The woman is no dummy. Some say she got into school with affirmative action based on the quality of her thesis. I don't know this to be the case. I tried finding information on her LSAT and graduating GPA but couldn't find it. I don't know if affirmative action played any role without seeing her scores. But regardless, even if she did get some bonus points for affirmative action, there is no affirmative action for graduation or the bar. And the most prestigious law school in the country isn't graduating dummies.

[mikado]

(08-10-2014 08:38 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(08-10-2014 06:45 PM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

Raising taxes does not necessarily increase the tax base. We need solutions that will raise the tax base. Raising taxes often times fails to do this because the govt. takes a greater % of the economy, so the economy will grind to a halt. Sure, the govt. increases taxes from say 25% to 40%, but the GDP suffers due to it.

So 25% of $10,000,000,000,000 ends up being more than say 40% of $5,000,000,000,000.

I agree with this if the reason for the economic sputter is lack of access to capital. Tax cuts in the case can allow businesses to invest and hire. But right now, profits are at record levels. A lack of cash isn't what's preventing businesses from hiring and raising wages. There simply isn't the demand for more workers. Either through better efficiency, outsourcing, insourcing(hb-1 visas), or some combination of all the above.

This is one reason I absolutely despise illegal immigration. All these jobs in construction, meat packing, gardening, drywalling and other trades are things poor Americans could be doing if the wages weren't being driven down by cheap labor. Not to even mention the social effects of importing 3rd world poverty en masse and all the problems associated with it.

But when you don't have a job, why don't you take what comes to you, until you have a better situation?

Being a baby sitter, washing cars ( still practiced in Senegal), baking cakes and selling them for a few benefits, or even cleaning people's house are many things you could do. These immigrants manage to live with these low wages. Why woudn't you too?

My mother told me the story of a woman who was in a deep trouble financially whom she lent some money, and asked her to make them fructify. That woman made by herself ( had no oven btw) donuts (she was only good at them), sold them, and continued for a while. A week later, she had quadrupled the sum my mother lent her. Mom told her the money was her own participation, and that she could keep them.
My mom could have just given her money. But they would have been wasted quickly. And the woman would have had to do the same to other people.
Obviously, it is more complicated than this situation. However, for me, you must start from the bottom and proceed from there if it is necessary. Refusing to work because the wage is very low ( like some Americans do) is shooting yourself in the leg. You must have that resilience, that will to fight for yourself, because you are entitled to nothing. This is why that woman in my history managed to succeed. Because she had resilience.

[speakeasy]

(08-10-2014 08:43 PM)mikado Wrote:  

(08-10-2014 08:38 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(08-10-2014 06:45 PM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

Raising taxes does not necessarily increase the tax base. We need solutions that will raise the tax base. Raising taxes often times fails to do this because the govt. takes a greater % of the economy, so the economy will grind to a halt. Sure, the govt. increases taxes from say 25% to 40%, but the GDP suffers due to it.

So 25% of $10,000,000,000,000 ends up being more than say 40% of $5,000,000,000,000.

I agree with this if the reason for the economic sputter is lack of access to capital. Tax cuts in the case can allow businesses to invest and hire. But right now, profits are at record levels. A lack of cash isn't what's preventing businesses from hiring and raising wages. There simply isn't the demand for more workers. Either through better efficiency, outsourcing, insourcing(hb-1 visas), or some combination of all the above.

This is one reason I absolutely despise illegal immigration. All these jobs in construction, meat packing, gardening, drywalling and other trades are things poor Americans could be doing if the wages weren't being driven down by cheap labor. Not to even mention the social effects of importing 3rd world poverty en masse and all the problems associated with it.

But when you don't have a job, why don't you take what comes to you, until you have a better situation?

Being a baby sitter, washing cars ( still practiced in Senegal), baking cakes and selling them for a few benefits, or even cleaning people's house are many things you could do. These immigrants manage to live with these low wages. Why woudn't you too?

I don't think you get what I'm saying. If it weren't for the cheap labor, these jobs would have to pay a living wage and it would attract more Americans to do that work. Do you know the kind of conditions these migrants live in? They are often shacked up 3 families to a house. Driving around with no car insurance, using the public hospitals if they get sick or have a baby. Who wants to live like that? As shitty as that may be, that's an upgrade compared to what they'd be facing in Mexico:

You only need to watch a few minutes of that video. FF to 5:00 minutes in. There are dudes literally living in rat holes underground. There's no way in hell American labor can compete with people that destitute. I'd rather bring the bottom up rather than have a race to the bottom.

[mikado]

I see your point.

Then what is the answer? Introduce "preference nationale" as French call it? Make hiring immigrates a pain in the ass?

My personal opinion is that for jobs where living conditions are likely to be the same, independantly of your legal status ( engineers, commercial jobs, company manager ) introducing preference nationale is more likely to have a negative result. Because you are willingly throwing away intelligent people, who would have made relatively a good amount of money ( and paid taxes too , because they can't escape it) . And don't give me the argument of " There is enough amount of natives willing to do the job". Because there is never enough... And, if you take the example of France, why would the State waste 5+ years of money ( teachers, entry fees, internships) on these people?

This is an unpopular opinion maybe, but for me, immigration should be eased for people that have some important, or very interesting skills like engineers ( but I am a foreign engineer, so ^^ ). And restricted for people with the lower wages. Instead of just cutting it for every foreigner.

[Feisbook Control]

(08-10-2014 06:08 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Yeah, but if you drive on roads, fly over our airspace, went to public school, eat food that has to be inspected, use anything connected to the power grid, use the internet, benefited from military defense, get water out of the tap, visit a national park, call the police or fire department, etc etc these things have to be paid for. You can say it's my money and the government has no right to it, but anyone that feels that way should then go live in some remote wilderness off the grid and live off the land. I don't love paying taxes anymore than you but some degree of taxation is necessary of course. Now I know you'll probably say that this stuff should be privatized, but some things should not be for profit but to serve the public good. Not everything should be for profit.

Two points:



Okay, so people living in the U.S. 100 years ago did not get the benefit of living in a modern state.

Taiwan is a modern state. Some things about it are less modern than the U.S., some more, some on a par. People on the median salary here pay 5% tax. Many well above that, due to various deductions, pay 5% also. Small businesses pay a company tax of 0.4%. Hard to believe that a modern state can function like that, right? You guys are getting screwed.

One thing of note is that whilst there is poverty, I don't think it's much better or worse than in the U.S., but what Taiwan doesn't have is a massive underclass dependent upon welfare and afflicted by attendant social ills like crime, drug use, single motherhood, etc.

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There's truth to that, but at the end of the day, checks and balances and a mixed economy that combines free enterprise with a social safety net and progressive taxation with few loopholes for the wealthy is what serves the majority best in my opinion. I'm not a libertarian at all, and your words seem consistent with the libertarian outlook on the role of government. My perspective is that wealth inequality is bad for society and government should have some active role in preventing a society from becoming too unequal. I'm not a communist in thinking that the government should own the means of production and that everyone should make the same amount of money no matter what. I don't have a problem with there being rich people, it's just a matter of degree. So I support things like strong labor unions, hiking the minimum wage, higher taxes on the wealthy and investment income, closing loopholes for the rich and single-payer healthcare. I don't want to live in a society that looks like Brazil or Mexico with a few rich people that own all the wealth and own the government who have to drive around with armed guards and then half your population living in slums. The purpose of socialism is to make sure situations like this don't arise and give everyone at access to at least the most basic human necessities. We are nowhere near as bad as that, but we are definitely headed more in that direction when you see all the economic gains go to the wealthy and the poor and middle class haven't seen an inflation-adjusted increase in income in several decades now. Then the other problem is that as wealth becomes more concentrated, the wealthy are able to buy more power in government and you begin to have rule by oligarchy. Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world and their government is a basically a mafia state, a cabal between politicians, the Russian mob and oligarchs. And we aren't too much better here with all the powerful lobbyist that can buy any legislation they want. That's just another outcome of too much wealth concentrated in too few hands. The libertarian reaction to this is "so what, that's the way the cookie crumbles!" So I really have no use for them, even if I may think they are right on a few issues. Economic inequality is a non-issue to the Libertarian platform, and Republican platform. I have no use for their ideology.

I am not a libertarian. I am a neoreactionary. Many of the libertarians' ideas about economics are unfeasible for two reasons. The first is that they have an idealised vision of human beings as rational. The second is that their stances on social issues (e.g. immigration) don't gel with their stances on economic issues (e.g. being opposed to welfare).

Anyway, all this aside, I think you missed my points about tax havens and capital flight. Lots of people are very carefully watching the U.S. At the first hint that there is going to be a soaking of the rich, money will leave the country in droves. I know this because I have some investments in the U.S. and I'm watching this situation very closely myself for exactly that reason. It's also why I have money in different countries and am trying to diversify it further. You could have the next Peter Lynch managing your money and it wouldn't matter if the government wanted to stick its grubby paw in the cookie jar, which it may very well attempt to do when the pork runs out and the gimmedat class and elite conspire to have a go at you. In all seriousness, I suggest that if you have more than two red cents to rub together (which would already make you far richer than a huge percentage of the population), but not enough to personally own your own Congressman, then you need to seriously think about who is going to get screwed in the next financial crash. Hint: If you don't know who the mark is, it's you.

It's those kinds of unintended consequences that people always either downplay or ignore. I read recently (I don't have the link, sorry), that the decline in tax rates (though they're still high) over the past half century served to create incentives for people to repatriate or declare income. In other words, whilst tax rates might have been higher in the 1950s, for example, people were simply better or more willing to hide it. This actually happened not that long ago in Taiwan. The government gave all sorts of incentives for people to repatriate money to Taiwan. Guess what happened? Tons of money came flooding back in. That money was previously untaxed. Taken to its logical extreme, a 100% tax on something the government can't touch produces zero tax revenue.

This is not about how the world should or shouldn't be, what is or isn't fair. We live in an age when everything is on the table. "Fair" is a con. If you're the only one trying to do "the right thing" in a room full of scoundrels, then that doesn't make you noble, it just makes you a sucker.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%...ection_Act

There have been plenty of criticisms of that from all over the map and in every direction.

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The direction of the culture is outside the realm of politics.

I'm not quite sure how to respond to this. Do you really believe this? Why do politicians invest so much time in the culture wars then? Does legislation on social (and even economic issues) really not affect social outcomes?

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What do you mean America "allowed" it? What exactly are we supposed to do about Ukraine's internal affairs? And what did Obama have to do with ousting the dictator of Egypt?

Read the Ukraine threads here. The U.S. was involved. They want to destabilise Russia and encircle it. Furthermore, Joe Biden's son is on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Echoes of Halliburton, anyone?

As for Egypt, the U.S. was very much for regime change in Egypt. Again, did they learn nothing from the ousting of Saddam Hussein in Iraq? How has the Arab Spring and all of this support for "rebels" (i.e. Anti-American terrorists) turned out, from the Maghreb to the Levant? The most glaring example is ISIS. Bush was an idiot, so let's have some more of that.

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To say you are drawing hasty conclusions here would be an understatement.

No, I am not. You don't think the U.S. is turning into a proto-police state? You don't think this might be a problem? Please note that I am not absolving the Republicans of their responsibility in all of this, but that is precisely my point: Bush, Obama, Republicans, Democrats, doesn't bloody matter as they're all against you. Just because you haven't personally been caught in their web yet doesn't mean it's okay. This is the zeitgeist. Do you think the social justice warriors are going to feel any less emboldened if/when Hillary becomes president?

As for the IRS scandal, if Obama wasn't involved or didn't know (there is plausible deniability, which is why Nixon was a fucking idiot for not covering his tracks properly), then it's even worse than that. He doesn't have a handle on the government beneath him then, which suggests that there is a rogue deep state that operates beyond the president, likely any president. Maybe you're right and he didn't know. I'd place that somewhere on a scale of possible to probable. I think the deep state explanation is far more likely, and is the result of a Gramscian march through the institutions. Call me crazy for believing that if you will.

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I don't know what to say dude, anyone that decides sit home and play video games and smoke weed rather than be a productive adult has other issues. One thing I liked about posters like Hencredible, International Swagger and Gmanifesto when they were here is that they kept their distance from the whiny aspect of the manosphere. Dudes complaining like victims rather going out there and winning and having a blast. You never saw them whining about feminism and men's rights and what not. They were upbeat guys enjoying their lives, making money and getting laid, not looking for reasons to feel victimized. All this MGTOW stuff, I just don't relate to it.

Those guys sitting at home smoking weed and playing games likely have never heard of the manosphere, let alone actively embraced any of it. They're just average guys who have looked around themselves and their chances and responded accordingly to various incentives. In the same way, a woman who has a bunch of kids out of wedlock and collects welfare, or a woman who takes her husband to the cleaners in a divorce have likely never studied feminism. They also are just acting in accordance with the broader society.

It does strike me as odd that earlier you wrote about the kind of society you want to live in not being a dog-eat-dog society, but then go on to talk about alphas. By definition, only a very small portion of society can be alpha. Everyone else has to live within the broader culture, economic circumstances, etc. If the broader society is in real trouble, then 80%+ of guys are going to be screwed. In the short term, an alpha can take advantage of that. In the long term, even that might be difficult, and he might need to abandon ship. Where to and how though? Aren't we seeing that here with many people periodically or permanently decamping from the West?

For what it's worth, though I wouldn't call myself an alpha, I think I'm doing alright for myself. Initially, it was for other reasons, and perhaps I was lucky in doing so (though these days it's much more by design), but I found myself in a place where I could do okay. In all likelihood, if I'd stayed in the West, I'd be screwed at so many levels. I'd be working a job I hate, married to (or divorced from) a horrible, fat Western woman, I'd be up to my eyes in debt, and so on. That's because that is the basic structure of things there and I either I don't have enough verve or I am realistic enough to understand that I wouldn't be in the top couple of percent and able to avoid the worst of it.

As things stand, I am hedging my bets. If the U.S. and other Western nations fall apart, it won't affect me too much. I have residency abroad, and my kids (when I have them) will have dual citizenship. I will have my money in a number of locations, and I might even be able to profit from the chaos and grief going on in any one place, and so expand my fortunes. I, and my descendants, will likely be completely immune to all of this and living it up. I could just say "fuck 'em" about the average male in the West. His fate won't be mine, so why should I care? I don't know. Why does anyone ever feel anything towards anyone? We're not robots. Whilst the destruction of the U.S. won't really affect me, I care about the destruction of beautiful things. That's why when I saw images of those ISIS goons blowing up other Muslim shrines or statues from antiquity I felt at once sad and revolted. The U.S. is not perfect, but it was a beautiful idea, and I believe the world will not necessarily be a better place after it. The average American guy is not bad -- perhaps weak or misguided -- but not bad. Why the hate for the MGTOW crowd?

I know that you don't even believe this about the average man anyway. I've seen you complain about the deleterious effects of illegal immigration and the hollowing out of opportunities for average men.

[It_is_my_time]

"I agree with this if the reason for the economic sputter is lack of access to capital. Tax cuts in the case can allow businesses to invest and hire. But right now, profits are at record levels. A lack of cash isn't what's preventing businesses from hiring and raising wages. There simply isn't the demand for more workers. Either through better efficiency, outsourcing, insourcing(hb-1 visas), or some combination of all the above."

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The reason for record profits is the wealthy elites, who run large corporations, today run our govt. They pay off the politicians and then get laws passed that help them and crush small and medium sized businesses.

Obamacare is a GREAT example of this. Obamacare crushes small business. All the while, this adds even more benefit to large corporation because...

#1) I crushes their competition.
#2) It allows them to treat their beta class cubical worker slaves even worse. Force them to work more hours and pay them less per COL. What can they do about it? There are less and less jobs for them to jump to and starting their own small business is nearly impossible.

So large corporations buy our politicians and keep screwing over the middle class. And it keeps getting worse and has gotten much worse under Obama. So it is both political parties doing this. IMO, there really isn't a middle class any longer. A single mom can live as good on govt. handouts and a part time job as a couple working full time jobs to raise their kids. Maybe the couple has a little nicer stuff, but it isn't worth all the stress. For right now, in my opinion we have...

- Elites
- Upper Middle class - and this will be the next target for the politicians
- Lower class

If we tax these corporations more, we will get a one or two year bump. Then the companies will look to move overseas, and they will just pass the expense of these taxes on to the consumers and in the end the middle class gets screwed over again.

I do want to comment about the guys "making money and getting lots of women in the USA". I don't believe it. I think there are a small tiny % of men in the USA able to do this. Single guys making $250,000 and on up. And that is probably less than .3% of single men. Anyone making less than this might be getting lots of women, but they are playing with fire. They will get burned with either a pregnancy or a false rape charge or something else that this system seems to nonstop throw at men.

MGTOW saved my life. I don't want to be looking at 40 years old, no women prospects in sight, no chance of having a family. Working 7 days a week and having no fun. But when I look at the guys my age who all did chase women, I realize I have it better today. I got lucky to not get stuck with some fat and/or unappreciative wife, or even worse, be divorced and have the govt. gun pointed to my head telling me to work, go to jail, or be shot to pay for her to sit on her ass.