[YoungGunner]

Sounds like the forum's gonna have a lot to say to this so I'm starting it in advance:

Most striking thing so far is he basically said "college should be for everyone"

[Deluge]

Got a video for us who ain't in the States?

[YoungGunner]

Video will probably be on youtube shortly, but here's a transcript:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/...52780694/1

[Deluge]

Initial impressions.

Quote:

And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.

It will be a cold day in hell before this new unit brings anybody to justice.

Quote:

Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. In fact, if you're earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn't get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn't go up. You're the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You're the ones who need relief. Now, you can call this class warfare all you want.

But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.

30% seems very low to me for someone making over a million a year, then again I'm Australian and not American.

Quote:

I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad - and it seems to get worse every year.
Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics. So together, let's take some steps to fix that. Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let's limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let's make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can't lobby Congress, and vice versa - an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.

Obama talking lecturing about money in politics? This is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Quote:

Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about. That's not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That's not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they've been in years.

Obama is delusional.

[Brian]

He's such a joke its sad.

This is the same guy who, when asked on 60 minutes why no one has gone to jail for financial crimes, said, "Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn't illegal." Now he's going to appoint a commission to go after them? Whatever.

[Only One Man]

None of what he said in this speech actually means anything. It's just gonna go back to status-quo business as usual tomorrow.

[Kona]

What was that the third time in American history a non-caucasian has given the State of the Union speech?

Barack Obama has balls bigger than 99.99% of American dudes.

Aloha!

[Brian]

(01-25-2012 12:18 AM)Kona Wrote:  

What was that the third time in American history a non-caucasian has given the State of the Union speech?

Barack Obama has balls bigger than 99.99% of American dudes.

Aloha!

I doubt this considering he doesnt even wear the pants in his own family.

[Excelsior]

[Duke Castile]

"Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office." - Obama's first state of the union address.

Oh and this gem: "My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs."

[speakeasy]

(01-25-2012 01:58 AM)Fisto Wrote:  

"Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office." - Obama's first state of the union address.

Oh and this gem: "My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs."

Administrations make fiscal projections, but they don't always pan out due to circumstances they can't control. If the Republicans hadn't been ideological stalwarts and allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire, we WOULD have half the deficit we have now. He was counting on those tax cuts expiring and underestimated that the Republicans would blackmail the country to keep them. And he has eliminated spending: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...umber.html

Let me also remind people that the US government doesn't spend that much as a percentage of GDP compared with most countries. Americans are always crying about big government(as in how much we spend on programs), but it's not as big as you think.

Most the deficit isn't from new Obama spending, it's from lowered tax revenue from a recession, Bush tax cuts that the Republicans wouldn't allow to expire, the wars and the growing cost of medicare and medicaid. TARP and stimulus is where Obama's discretionary spending is coming from. You can point to both success and failures such as Solindra being a waste and GM went from the brink of collapse to now being the number one automaker in the world, so that was undoubtedly a success of the stimulus bailouts. Shit is way more complicated than most people appreciate. I know I'll get panned for saying in here given how many angry Libertarians, Republicans and Ron Paul fans frequent the forum, but I think Obama is doing a decent job given what he's under. I'll be voting for him in November, and not as a lessor of two evils. He's not perfect by any means, but I like him.

[Deluge]

(01-25-2012 02:18 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(01-25-2012 01:58 AM)Fisto Wrote:  

"Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office." - Obama's first state of the union address.

Oh and this gem: "My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs."

Administrations make fiscal projections, but they don't always pan out due to circumstances they can't control. If the Republicans hadn't been ideological stalwarts and allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire, we WOULD have half the deficit we have now. He was counting on those tax cuts expiring and underestimated that the Republicans would blackmail the country to keep them.

Most the deficit isn't from new Obama spending, it's from lowered tax revenue from a recession, Bush tax cuts that the Republicans wouldn't allow to expire, the wars and the growing cost of medicare and medicaid. TARP and stimulus is where Obama's discretionary spending is coming from. You can point to both success and failures such as Solindra being a waste and GM went from the brink of collapse to now being the number one automaker in the world, so that was undoubtedly a success of the stimulus bailouts. Shit is way more complicated than most people appreciate. I know I'll get panned for saying in here given how many angry Libertarians, Republicans and Ron Paul fans frequent the forum, but I think Obama is doing a decent job given what he's under. I'll be voting for him in November, and not as a lessor of two evils. He's not perfect by any means, but I like him.

I agree with your first paragraph speakeasy. And yes, Obama has had a very tough time cut out for him by House Republicans. It's almost as if they want to destroy America's fiscal position to win an electoral advantage.

As for the election, if I were American, I'd vote Obama out of loyalty to the Democrats against every Republican candidate except for Ron Paul, in which case I'm 50/50 at this point. That's my 2 cents.

[Duke Castile]

Sorry man, but that is absolutely false. This president has spent more than George Washington until G.W. Bush COMBINED in less than 4 years.

Blaming Bush Tax cuts is pretty unsubstantiated and a lot of evidence points to even worse tax revenue as a result.

You can't point to GM as a success when I'm pretty sure they aren't profitable and that money hasn't been repaid.

Solyndra was a 500 BILLION dollar fuckup and it's not the gov't place to be a venture capitalist.

I love you speakeasy but I can't get behind any of those reasons as being valid.

[Duke Castile]

House Republicans are destroying the fiscal position? Pdog, how is that possible when they're trying to reduce Gov't spending?

[Samseau]

2006 Obama Wrote:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's own reckless policies.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to over 8.6 trillion. That is trillion with a "T". That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American Taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President's budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.

[Deluge]

(01-25-2012 02:31 AM)Fisto Wrote:  

House Republicans are destroying the fiscal position? Pdog, how is that possible when they're trying to reduce Gov't spending?

Well number one, battling to maintain tax cuts severely limits the ability of the government to reduce the deficit. You can't bring about fiscal stability by only slashing spending when you're in a crisis like this. You need to increase revenue (by letting tax cuts expire) at the same time to make up the gap. House Republicans went nuts over this during the near government shutdown, I swear they were on a suicide mission to purposely bring about a shutdown. Because if that were to happen Obama would've gotten stomped over this year no matter who was running against him.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/...o-veto.php

It was a while ago, this non-partisan article would be a reminder. Ehh, I hate debating U.S politics like this, I'm going to bow out on this particular issue for now. Things get too heated eventually.

[speakeasy]

(01-25-2012 02:28 AM)Fisto Wrote:  

Sorry man, but that is absolutely false. This president has spent more than George Washington until G.W. Bush COMBINED in less than 4 years.

Blaming Bush Tax cuts is pretty unsubstantiated and a lot of evidence points to even worse tax revenue as a result.

You can't point to GM as a success when I'm pretty sure they aren't profitable and that money hasn't been repaid.

Solyndra was a 500 BILLION dollar fuckup and it's not the gov't place to be a venture capitalist.

I love you speakeasy but I can't get behind any of those reasons as being valid.

1) Dude, this is how subtle errors in language can completely change the truth 180 degrees. No, Obama has not spent more than all previous presidents combined. I know a lot of republicans and libertarians run around shouting this at Tea Party meetings, but they got it wrong. The actual fact is that there is more new DEBT under Obama than all that was accumulated before him. But as I said in my previous post, most of the debt is NOT due to Obama's discretionary spending. This chart makes it clear if my words aren't convincing enough:



2) See above

3)GM actually has been profitable. They got both a loan as well as the government buying their stock. The loan they paid back ahead of schedule. The stock that the government bought... it all depends on when the government decides to sell the stock. At the moment, the stock is still well below what the government paid for it. Though that could easily change if the company continues to be profitable again.

4) Solyndra wasted half a billion, not half a trillion. If it was the latter, hell I'd be calling for his impeachment!

[Duke Castile]

Pdog, Gov't has never held it's spending back when revenue has increased. Cutting severely is the only way this will improve matters imo.

If you want to generate revenue, how about deregulating some of the ridiculous laws that are putting a 1.5 trillion dollar a year burden on businesses?

Or giving amnesty to businesses who have their money overseas if they bring it back and put it to work?

Or LOWERING taxes so that more money is flowing through the economy and allowing more people to work thus more people paying taxes?

All I'm hearing from Obama is "raise taxes, spend more, more regulations".

I don't know what speakeasy has been looking at during this 1st term but it almost seems to me that he HATES this country and wants to systematically destroy it. I haven't seen a single thing he's done besides begrudgingly give the order to kill Osama Bin Laden that's worth a compliment.

[Duke Castile]

Oops speakeasy, my bad on the typo putting billion, still man 500 million? And that's not the only company, it looks like there are almost dozens of these emerging.

New Debt, that's my whole reason for pointing out the "line by line, eliminate wastful spending" and this obamacare thing is going to make medicare and medicaid look like a dream. This guy didn't deliver on anything.

[Thorfinnsson]

Didn't watch it because I never do, but I skimmed through the transcript this morning and noted two alarming things

1 - The bitching about mortgage brokers packaging and selling loans to minorities who were incredibly poor credit risks. This was a government created policy, not a private sector one. Even the innovation of securitizing mortgages and trading them, while a private sector innovation, was only possible because of the willingness of Fannie and Freddie to act as lenders of last resort. It's 2012, and we're still not willing to admit that the Clinton-Bush dream of expanding minority home ownership is the root cause of the subprime debacle?

2 - "College should be for everyone". This ridiculous, HBD-denialist view is why education policy in America is FUCKED

RE the taxation debate in here yeah raise the top marginal tax rate. There's little evidence that it impacts economic growth and the government is spiraling into a debt crisis. Solution: cut spending and raise taxes. That's a policy Republicans used to be known for back when they were the sharp pencils party of businessmen opposed to waste and imprudence, but now opposing taxes (except payroll taxes, apparently!) is a religion for the GOP.

this comment is particularly economically illiterate:

fisto Wrote:

Or LOWERING taxes so that more money is flowing through the economy and allowing more people to work thus more people paying taxes?

What do you suppose the government does with tax revenue? Puts it all in Scrooge's Duckburg vault so he can go swimming in all that sweet cash?

[chyamor]

Does it really matter who's in the office? If its a republican the same shit will happen. Democrats will just cockblock everything just as GOP is doing now. Once insider trading is banned for house/senate members than maybe we can get shit done.

[Thorfinnsson]

Yes it matters who's in office, but it doesn't matter to the dramatic degree radicals wish. If a Republican was in office I somehow doubt that ICE would've announced a new policy of not deporting illegal aliens unless they are serious criminals, because he would catch hell from his own base for doing so. We also wouldn't have gotten "health reform".

So those are two examples of how a Democratic administration substantively differs from a Republican one.

Most of the stuff that does matter isn't really well known, because it takes place through the bureaucratic workings of the Executive Branch. Journalists, who are mainly just vainglorious gossipers, find this sort of investigative reporting boring and hard. They prefer palling around with glamorous politicians who make them feel like important people.

Congress not so long ago decided to destroy the American patent system by harmonizing it to global standards--replacing the first-to-invent principle with first-to-file, giving a huge advantage to large corporations with big legal departments. This was reported on, but only barely, because innovation and industrial policy requires a sophisticated understanding of business and economics. Journalists don't have this, the only training they have is how to write and how to appear "balanced".

Now while that's an example of something that's important and probably would've happened under a Republican President too, it just goes to show how important things go on without people really noticing because of how criminally incompetent and vain journalists are. There's also the whole "corporate media" and "liberal media" angle of looking at it, but oftentimes it just comes down to what shit people journalists are.

[Deluge]

(01-25-2012 11:04 AM)Thorfinnsson Wrote:  

2 - "College should be for everyone". This ridiculous, HBD-denialist view is why education policy in America is FUCKED

Do you mean "Human Bio-Diversity"? HBD is just a code word for scientific racism. The same sort that the Nazi's based their eugenics on. I'm ashamed that so many prominent game bloggers (Heartiste and In Mala Fide) support such views.

If you don't believe me, take a good hard look at the ads that In Mala Fide keeps on the site. Specifically the book publishing ones. The publisher in question deals with far right, fascist and Nazi books which espouse the same racial theories that you clearly do.

Hell, the website even has it's own section dedicated to "National Socialism" and "British Fascism" under the Politics section. Google the names of some of the authors. The main book advertised on IMF is "The Revolt Against Civilization" Google it's author Lothrop Stoddard. You'll find he was a Nazi sympathizer and guest of Nazi Germany in the early stages of the war.

The only difference between "HBD" and Nazi racial hygiene is that HBD puts East Asians (Chinese, Koreans and Japanese) on an equal or higher level than White people.

This is the offending website in question: http://shop.wermodandwermod.com/

The propensity of extreme far right views hidden in some of the most prominent Game bloggers sites scares the shit out of me.

That crap and your comment belongs on StormFront not a Game website.

[Thorfinnsson]

HBD is a catch-all in order to encompass more than scientific racism. For instance, the neurological differences between men and women which significantly explain why more women don't pursue careers in science and engineering--another educational "crisis" rooted in HBD denialism and PC bullcrap.

It's perfectly possible to reconcile the individual heritability of intelligence while denying that the differences in intelligence between racial groups are genetic in origin. I happen to agree with the hereditarians that the gap is primarily genetic in origin, but scientists like James Flynn who support the environmental position are perfectly respectable. And crucially, James Flynn does not deny that intelligence has a significant genetic component despite his refusal to accept that the racial gaps in intelligence are genetic. In fact, he has made policy statements in his native New Zealand disparaging the fact that highly educated women are not having children at replacement levels. The response from the New Zealand government was that "education" would solve this, whereas Flynn's entire career says this isn't true.

We can continue to sweep the racial issue under the rug and still admit that sometimes stupid is as stupid does. Everyone knows that some children are dumb and some children are bright, and our education policy needs to take that into account. All children should be educated to the limit of their potential, regardless of who their parents are or how much money they have. But that's not the same thing as claiming all children should go to college. Not everyone is college material, and there is nothing wrong with that. In the past this was widely understood in America, and the structure of our educational system and our economy was geared so that people of ordinary and indeed below average intelligence could still acquire useful vocational training and work in good, blue-collar jobs.

The current idea is believing that college magically makes people smart, based on absolutely no evidence at all, and browbeating teachers into fudging the numbers so kids with mediocre intellects look like they're college material. You don't get people to achieve by raising a bar they're already not meeting and demanding they must meet this bar or else.

Smearing things by association with Nazism is intellectually lazy. In addition to Nazi Germany, 27 other countries had eugenics policies. Sweden and the province of Alberta continued these into the 1970s. These policies were primitive and unfair, but they're not exactly the gas chambers. The Nazis also built the Autobahns, but somehow no one thinks the interstate highway system is a one-way road to Auschwitz. Using the same dishonest debating tactics we could claim that a belief in blank slate human equality is a one way ticket to Pol Pot's killing fields, but somehow I don't see Malcolm Gladwell being touted as the new Pol Pot.

[Deluge]

(01-25-2012 11:39 AM)Thorfinnsson Wrote:  

HBD is a catch-all in order to encompass more than scientific racism. For instance, the neurological differences between men and women which significantly explain why more women don't pursue careers in science and engineering--another educational "crisis" rooted in HBD denialism and PC bullcrap.

It's perfectly possible to reconcile the individual heritability of intelligence while denying that the differences in intelligence between racial groups are genetic in origin. I happen to agree with the hereditarians that the gap is primarily genetic in origin, but scientists like James Flynn who support the environmental position are perfectly respectable. And crucially, James Flynn does not deny that intelligence has a significant genetic component despite his refusal to accept that the racial gaps in intelligence are genetic. In fact, he has made policy statements in his native New Zealand disparaging the fact that highly educated women are not having children at replacement levels. The response from the New Zealand government was that "education" would solve this, whereas Flynn's entire career says this isn't true.

We can continue to sweep the racial issue under the rug and still admit that sometimes stupid is as stupid does. Everyone knows that some children are dumb and some children are bright, and our education policy needs to take that into account. All children should be educated to the limit of their potential, regardless of who their parents are or how much money they have. But that's not the same thing as claiming all children should go to college. Not everyone is college material, and there is nothing wrong with that. In the past this was widely understood in America, and the structure of our educational system and our economy was geared so that people of ordinary and indeed below average intelligence could still acquire useful vocational training and work in good, blue-collar jobs.

The current idea is believing that college magically makes people smart, based on absolutely no evidence at all, and browbeating teachers into fudging the numbers so kids with mediocre intellects look like they're college material. You don't get people to achieve by raising a bar they're already not meeting and demanding they must meet this bar or else.

Smearing things by association with Nazism is intellectually lazy. In addition to Nazi Germany, 27 other countries had eugenics policies. Sweden and the province of Alberta continued these into the 1970s. These policies were primitive and unfair, but they're not exactly the gas chambers. The Nazis also built the Autobahns, but somehow no one thinks the interstate highway system is a one-way road to Auschwitz. Using the same dishonest debating tactics we could claim that a belief in blank slate human equality is a one way ticket to Pol Pot's killing fields, but somehow I don't see Malcolm Gladwell being touted as the new Pol Pot.

Yes, I agree the intelligence is passed genetically, but not racially. I'm not talking about differences between gender either. I'm talking about race.

The foundation of Human Bio-Diversity is that minorities, particularly African people have lower IQ's than other groups and this is because their genetic make up as a race.

Your entire post was sidestepping the question and disassociating yourself with HBD. Your first three paragraphs are just filler to shroud your views, with the exception of the part in bold, which gets to the heart of the matter I'm talking about.

As for the Nazi connection, it's not being intellectually lazy it is a direct connection. When you have a Game blogger who believes in HBD displaying ads for a book written by a eugenicist who consulted for the Nazi's the link is made extremely clear.

You spent your entire post in a misdirection of my point. You are a racist. You believe that a persons skin colour and which part of the world their ancestors came from has an effect on intelligent they are likely to be. At no point in your post did you even try to deny my charge against you.

I think that Athlone would have quite a lot to say about this. I believe that debating against racism is his forte.