Metal Reviews

I buy that argument better than Mises formulation of it. Germany, however, was never faced with chaos. Mises only refers to Italy in the article given the historical context and Italy was being threatened by revolution. State intervention being fine to protect property causes a lot of problems because I don't see how that form of state intervention is not just a defense of being bourgeois and owning property, given many social welfare programs as state intervention are put in place to enable people to maintain their lives and have the possibility to own property. Hmmm... I just don't get it.

I don't think it'd quite so much a fringe element; how many times have we heard the usual mantra of excuses and blame?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/149087/Black ... ights.aspx

Hard for me to answer that in general. But politically in the Philly mayoral race this group represents a fringe.

What group is it? The article only mentioned some ironically named event, International Day of Resistance Against Africa and African People (resistance against Africa? ).

Well I found some pretty extreme links about the keynote speaker at that event, Diop Olugbala, who used it to announce his candidacy for mayor.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93256496

A link explaining how Diop tried disrupting an Obama speech.

And an article from Olugbala's organization's website, published at a time when he was in jail for assault.

http://uhurunews.com/story?resource_name=the-story-of-diop-olugbala-why-he-must-be-set-free

I figure the website should give you a laugh, V. This guy, and this group, are the definition of lunatic fringe.

His real name is probably Leroy, or something.

I've seen that uhuru blahblahblah, though the name didn't ring a bell... you're right, strictly bananas.
I've seen them on youtube demanding this and that, asking Obama "What about about black folk, Obama?" at some sit in and so on and I got the impression of general idiocy.
That explains the unintentionally hilarious "International Day of Resistance Against Africa and African People"...

Wanna quote myself because no one responded :( and that Jon Stewart clip is must-watch.

In the middle of a nation-wide education strike here in Chile. Crazy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... n-shariah/











It's insane that this is even an issue.

I see the usual suspects are causing trouble again.
What would they do without their manufactured "-ism's" and "-phobia's"? Get a, you know, job type job, where you actually have to work for a living?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/ ... H920110826

It didn't work before and it wont work again, these fuckers will just keep printing until the money becomes even more worthless. Will someone tell these retards that the government can't create jobs out of fucking scratch?!!??!!?!?

Tell that to FDR.

A lot of economists say that the problem with the first stimulus was that it wasn't big enough, and if not for the stimulus that was passed, the economy would be even fucking worse.

Also, no one's printing money. Inflation is not a problem in the US.

First, FDR created government jobs. We don't need a bigger government, we need growth in the private sector.
At any rate the world (and the economy) is a vastly difference place than it was in the 1930s. This is a key point.
And Zero is no FDR.
Besides, the real boom didn't happen until post-war, which was due more to not having any real manufacturing competition (most of the other industrialized nations were too busy picking up the pieces of their ruined continent to worry about trying to keep up with us).

As for more stimulus... so if the theory is we didn't spend enough, does that mean they are proposing we spend MORE?
Because, another bill proposing the same thing, only part II, would obviously be just another waste of time. And money.
So the options are wasting another @$1 trillion on something that didn't work the first time or INCREASING the stimulus... yeah, good luck selling that to the American public. We need the PRIVATE sector to grow, not the government, via more government jobs.
It's just another example of government expanding our dependence on them; now we are supposed to depend on the gov for our jobs?

Perfect example: there is a 3/4 mile stretch of road on my commute that has been in the process of doubling it's lanes for about a year and a half. There are sunny days when there is no activity at all and there are no workers to be found, equipment just sitting there. Job should have been finished (and would have been if it was a non-union, private contractor that has to compete with other contractors for business) a long time ago.
Government expenditures are as a rule wasteful, overbloated and inefficient. As opposed to the private sector, where time (and efficiency) truly is money.

There are economists on the other side of the fence that DO NOT believe the stim was a good idea, so citing opposing schools of economic theory is a waste of time.
Let's look at tangible data and results.

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputSer ... N_cpsbref3


Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
2001 4.2 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.3 4.5 4.6 4.9 5.0 5.3 5.5 5.7
2002 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.9 6.0
2003 5.8 5.9 5.9 6.0 6.1 6.3 6.2 6.1 6.1 6.0 5.8 5.7
2004 5.7 5.6 5.8 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.5 5.4 5.4 5.5 5.4 5.4
2005 5.3 5.4 5.2 5.2 5.1 5.0 5.0 4.9 5.0 5.0 5.0 4.9
2006 4.7 4.8 4.7 4.7 4.6 4.6 4.7 4.7 4.5 4.4 4.5 4.4
2007 4.6 4.5 4.4 4.5 4.4 4.6 4.7 4.6 4.7 4.7 4.7 5.0
2008 5.0 4.8 5.1 4.9 5.4 5.6 5.8 6.1 6.2 6.6 6.8 7.3
2009 7.8 8.2 8.6 8.9 9.4 9.5 9.5 9.7 9.8 10.1 9.9 9.9
2010 9.7 9.7 9.7 9.8 9.6 9.5 9.5 9.6 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.4
2011 9.0 8.9 8.8 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.1


Note the data from 1/09 - present.
Unemployment has gone UP since the stimulus was passed, and is fairly steadily hovereing between 9% - 10%; the forecast is that it will get worse in the coming months.



So, if the stimulus worked, just not enough (due to not spending enough), the data should show at least a bit of improvement in unemployment rates. Instead we see the opposite.

We are digging ourseleves deeper and deeper, and the answer is to redouble our digging? Where is this money supposed to come from?
And we are supposed to buy their sales pitch of "it will really, really, really work this time, trust us."?

Insanity.

And besides, there are some that would say the whole bailout / stimulus combo was more about Washington enriching it's friends and intimates than anything else.

An interesting article on Sunni-Shiite relationships and the diplomatic conflicts between the two.

Fascinating as we Westerners don't generally hear about this and Islam is often portrayed as a monolithic block (just the Communists were despite reality - China and USSR deeply divided and with occassional border wars flaring between the two).

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/H ... e_arab.csp

Also interesting article on Syria's opposition - an interesting revelation how minorities (Druze, Alawaites, Christians) prefer the brutal Assad dictatorship to continue beceause they fear how they will be treated by majority Sunnis and how there's a perception many supposed "dissidents" are only in it for personal gain:

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalco ... lternative

To be honest I think Westerners are becoming to dependent on Government's orchestrating every element of economic and social development.

I live in Tasmania which is an economically backwards part of Australia.

There are constant calls by people and business on the government to fix the economy and to implement economic development plans.

At the same time the private sector does nothing.

For example the government has been accused of being inneffective in managing tourism development by tourism operators.

Yet independent reviews point out that Tasmanian tourism operators have failed to keep up with global developments (e.g. utilisation of the internet), failed to keep up capacity, be innovative, flexible or even efficient, and failed to stay competitive.

But everyone just wants the government to fix their own problems and for the government to compensate for lack of efficiency, innovation and incompetence.

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/152201 ... _ignoring/

3 Reality-Based Charts your right-wing relative will have a hard time ignoring

Not fan of hatin on the other side, even conservatives, but yeah.

I don't think anyone denies that Bush increased spending massively. Doubt many conservatives will have trouble ignoring that, or the others...

at anybody that thinks W was conservative.

Buncha sheep.

Didn't read beyond the byline, because it's nothing new and I am sick and tired of dems acting like they didn't have a majority in both the house and senate from 2006 until 2010 (I mean don't you see the idiocy of blaming the "tea party" for things, even though they are a small majority in the House, and a minority in the senate, and have only been in congress for, what? seven, eight months? Meanwhile, the fact that the dems had a majority for four years, incidentally, about the time spending really started to increase, pretty much goes unmentioned by hacks like the one that authored that article). The same goes for reps that have abandoned their conservatism and have embraced big government.
You'll excuse me if I dismiss that article as nothing but more of the same old "right vs. left / Rep vs. Dem" hackery.


That being said at what point does the current administration start to take some responsibility? It's been three years, already, with no improvement in sight. But, yeah, let's just keep playing these cheap parlor games, it's working wonderfully.

Face it, as bad as W was 0 is even worse, and it's this idiotic "R vs D" garbage that will ensure either four more years of this walking talking finger-pointing perpetually vacationing disaster or whichever zio-neo-theo-con the GOP throws out there.
You may not give a shit, because you don't have a financial stake in things (not yet, but you will; all this will be waiting in the wings for you and your generation once you get out of Big U and enter the job market, err, well, what's left of it), but I have a wife, a home and two kids that I have to somehow not only support now, but also send to college.
On top of that, my wife and I will need to live off of something in about twenty years when we retire, and it doesn't look pretty. See to young kids like you, all this is nothing more than a semi-interesting topic for debate; for people like me, the way we are headed is a major concern, with tangible consequences; believe me, twenty years flies by fast, so the future is imminent.

But, yeah... keep enabling this idiot and the others that will surely follow in this revolving door circus.
Well done.