Once again, X-height demonstrates that trying to discuss politics with him is like trying to talk quantum physics with Helen Keller.

I mean, there are intelligent, conservative criticisms to make of stuff like the federal stimulus package...but making them seems to be utterly beyond X-height's capabilities.

Mike

you mean like in the link I provided?
you trying to hurt my feelings or sumptin'?

Yeah, that link is pretty much what I'm talking about. Even most conservatives would recognize that holding up a Wall Street Journal editorial as some sort of authoritative source, especially on tax policy, would do nothing but produce uncontrolable laughter in their intended audience. Obama could personally find the cure for AIDS and within a week, the WSJ would run an editorial taking him to task for NOT curing cancer.

That you think referencing a WSJ editorial is actually contributing something useful to any discussion demonstrates the vast chasm that separates you from intelligent discourse.

Mike

I agree that he could. He is powerful and God like!

(I do love Obama so that ain't a shot at him).

Just where is this discourse taking place then Bunge? The NYT? HBR? The Interweb?

There is something useful about a newspaper that doesn't take every utterance of this president as being pure genius. Fact is people that read the Journal seem to be doing far better than those sitting in their foreclosed homes waiting for the moving van.

But that's going off topic as you well intended rather than take up some of the empty promises made on Tuesday night.

Here is a nugget for both liberal and conservative to chew over from Duncan Watts a professor of sociology at Columbia University.

"The current crisis has demonstrated that markets do not automatically control systemic risk any more than they automatically create competition. Pragmatically speaking, therefore, government intervention is required to prevent markets from destroying themselves, and the relevant question is what kind of intervention is effective."

Simply put we speak of 'guber'ment' all too uniformly as regulation is not the same thing as spending programs and their attendant bureaucracies.

1. That would be true if you were referring to the WSJ news reporting, which is actually quite good. You, however, are referring to the WSJ editorial page, which is spectacularly slanted. Again, the fact you think the unsupported and unjustified assertions of a WSJ editorial are a credible source shows how far gone you are.

2. Considering that the folks who read the WSJ are largely responsible for those folks sitting in the forclosed homes, waiting for the moving van, I'm not sure that's something you want to bring up. And please don't haul out that racist nonsense about the financial collapse being caused by poor minorities getting mortgages. I'd prefer to think of you as mentally deficient but free of that sort of base bigotry.

Mike

Upon what do you base this assertion? I just so happen to know reporters and editors who have done both at both the WSJ and the FT. Its the implications that you don't like or just the unfettered political critique.



If you mean a bigotry toward stupid and ignorant people I'll take that charge. I'll extend to you a grace though and assume that you can explain how 'the folks who read the WSJ are largely responsible for those folks sitting in the forclosed homes'. In fact I think we would all like to hear about that.

1. Are you seriously stating that you've never read or heard ANY of the criticism leveled at the WSJ editorial page? Use the Google with "Wall Street Journal Editorial Lies" and Wall Street Journal Editorial Bias", or I guess you can go back to living in a cave or whatever.

2. Name these "reporters" who write hard news for the WSJ or the FT and also write editorials and explain how you know them.

3. Moron, anyone who spends even 5 minutes looking at the financial meltdown realizes that bad mortgages are not the fundamental problem. If all this was about was just bad mortgages, there wouldn't be a financial meltdown. There'd be some problems and some banks might have still gone under, but we wouldn't be facing the worst circumstance since the Great Depression. What made that possible was the geniuses who read the WSJ and took those bad mortgages, turned them into financial instruments (mortgage backed securities) and then sold, split up and leveraged those instruments in about a billion different ways without any regard to economic logic or ordinary common sense. Which you would understand if you actually READ the news coverage in the WSJ and the FT.

Mike

I've seen and heard lots of bias on both sides is what I am saying and for certain the paper isn't without flaw. If you want to dismiss the paper entirely that is up to you and what paper you get delivered to your cave.

yeah like I going to name names in a public forum. Again it is up to you to accept or reject that my experience refects reality.



meanwhile over at the oh so conservative NPR Planet Money

"Beim says. "It says: The problem is us. The problem is not the banks, greedy though they may be, overpaid though they may be. The problem is us."

We have overborrowed, Beim says: "We've been living very high on the hog. Our living standard has been rising dramatically in the last 25 years. And we have been borrowing much of the money to make that prosperity happen."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101224460

It being: "how much debt American citizens owe, how much we all owe — with our mortgages and credit cards — compared with the economy as a whole. For most of American history, that consumer debt level represented less than 50 percent of the total U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product. From 2000 to 2008, it's almost a hockey stick. It just goes dramatically upward," Beim says. "It hits 100 percent of GDP. That is to say, currently, consumers owe $13 trillion when GDP is $13 trillion. That is a ton."

1. This is why I used the Helen Keller reference. I specifically have not dismissed the WSJ entirely. I specifically praised the paper's straight news coverage. What I dismissed is the WSJ editorial page. It's like you're autistic or something.

2. I think everyone familiar with your political statements on this forum is perfectly aware how how closely connected you are to reality.

3. The person whose comments you're highlighting is described within the story as a former banker. So, a former banker is claiming banks aren't really to blame for our problems. What a shock. Not to mention that the point he makes has nothing to do with the point I made. Yes, America's high personal debt levels were and are very bad. We've been carrying those high debt levels for decades now, however, and they are not what has caused us to come within inches of the Economic End of Days. High levels of personal debt had zero to do with Wall Street's irresponsible behavior with mortgage backed securities. Seriously, it's like you're autistic or something.

You are beyond help but just in case anyone else is wondering about this point, here's an analogy. Imagine if you got an infection in your big toe and you ignored it and ignored it until you toe turned black and had to be cut off. That would be your fault. Now imagine if you got an infection in your big toe and went to see a doctor, who deliberately caused the infection to spread throughout your body and then said you had nothing to worry about. When you die, whose fault would that be? (Wall Street is the doctor, in case you're wondering X-height).

Mike