Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

GasBandit · Apr 29, 2013

Necronic said:
Yeah, I know he's hard left, and hard keynesian, so maybe this is the stopped clock syndrome. Still though it was nice to have someone just come out and say "Why are we still talking about austerity like its a workable system?" Because seriously....why the hell are people still talking about Austerity?

Actually, until that article, I hadn't heard the word "austerity" in like a month.

But we're still spending more and more.

Maybe it's like the sequester (which still didn't actually lower any government spending) where if they're forced to choose where to not spend money, they make sure to not spend it in a manner which is the most painful for everyone, thus trying to extort an ever-increasing budget.

Bubble181 · Apr 30, 2013

Also, you have to keep pushing austerity for some people. Belgium was going for a balanced budget in 2011. No, 2012. Or wait, 2013. No, you know what? 2015. Maybe. If the economy suddenly starts booming again.

Seriously - we're currently still increasing our deficit, and our debt, yearly - we need big one-time efforts which'll cost us down the road (like taking over pension plans, considering all the money saved in there as "income" and putting all the pensions to be paid nowhere at all, just leaving them for the next governments to find a way, or selling administration buildings than leasing them back for -yearly- more than 2% of the sale price - moronic stuff like that) just to be able to pay the intrests. If the hard right wasn't continuously shouting "STOP SPENDING YOU MORONS", we'd be deeper in horse manure than Greece.

There is, of course, such a thing as overdoing it and cutting too much, too fast. I've heard people suggest just laying off 10% of all government-employed people at once. We may be able to manage with 10% less bureaucrats, we won't be able to cope with a sudden 6% rise in unemployment.

Just saying.

tegid · Apr 30, 2013

GasBandit said:
Actually, until that article, I hadn't heard the word "austerity" in like a month.

I hear it every single day...

jwhouk · Apr 30, 2013

Austerity is fine, as long as it's someone else who's doing it.

GasBandit · Apr 30, 2013

And Stienman charitably neglects to mention what coincides with how long it's been since we had a budget.

GasBandit · Apr 30, 2013

Well, actually I can't really fault Obama for us not having a budget, because the real stop is that despite the best efforts of the House, the Senate refuses to vote on every budget they're sent.

So regardless of what he actually might or might not do, he hasn't been sent a budget to sign, ignore, or veto.

Tress · Apr 30, 2013

I also fault the House for knowingly sending budgets to the Senate that have no chance of passing. The two need to work together, not punch each other in the face until the next election cycle.

GasBandit · Apr 30, 2013

Tress said:
I also fault the House for knowingly sending budgets to the Senate that have no chance of passing. The two need to work together, not punch each other in the face until the next election cycle.

I don't at all. The senate leadership is being absolutely cowardly by not even bringing them up for a vote. They don't want to be on record for having voted, so instead they pretend it doesn't exist.

If I were magically put in charge of this situation, I would make it so that the failure to pass a budget would prohibit the Speaker/SML from running for re-election (since they're in charge of scheduling what gets voted on and when).

Tress · Apr 30, 2013

GasBandit said:
If I were magically put in charge of this situation, I would make it so that the failure to pass a budget would prohibit the Speaker/SML from running for re-election (since they're in charge of scheduling what gets voted on and when).

I would support that 100%.

Tress · Apr 30, 2013

Ron Paul criticizes Marathon bombing response
GLOBE STAFF
APRIL 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — Former US representative Ron Paul has a warning for Americans after the Boston Marathon bombings, and it may come as a surprise.

The prominent libertarian says citizens should perhaps be more frightened by the police response to the attack — which killed three and injured scores more — than by the explosions themselves. In an article called “Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston,” the former Republican representative and two-time presidential candidate compares the intense April 19 search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to “scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic.”

“The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” Paul writes. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

Paul argues that the Boston case sets a dangerous precedent, recounting scenes of “paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.”

“Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties,” Paul writes. “That is what happened in Boston.”

During the search, authorities encouraged residents in the Boston area to stay inside their homes. It created surreal scenes on the Friday after the attack, with eerily quiet streets.

Governor Deval Patrick last week defended the decision to shut down the Boston area. “I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time,” Patrick said at a news conference Friday.

Article found here.

You can imagine how well this is going over in some circles.

GasBandit · Apr 30, 2013

I'll say this, you'll be hard pressed to find me saying anything complimentary about the Boston PD.

AshburnerX · Apr 30, 2013

I really don't like it when I agree with Ron Paul. They really did just show how easy it would be for the government to sweep in and take control any time they wanted... like say the next time there is an Occupy style protest.

GasBandit · May 1, 2013

Here's something you don't hear every day... hundreds of homes burned by rampaging gangs of angry ... buddhists?

Chad Sexington · May 1, 2013

GasBandit said:
Here's something you don't hear every day... hundreds of homes burned by rampaging gangs of angry ... buddhists?

This has been happening there for a while, so actually I have heard about it every day. Well, with some frequency, anyway. But I was specifically following it for a while, so I'm an outlier

GasBandit · May 1, 2013

Chad Sexington said:
This has been happening there for a while, so actually I have heard about it every day. Well, with some frequency, anyway. But I was specifically following it for a while, so I'm an outlier

We need a "smack upside the head" button.

Anyway, you remember those 3.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil that were supposed to be in North Dakota? Well, about that...

GasBandit · May 1, 2013

No wonder the Tsarnaevs hated America so much.

Eriol · May 1, 2013

GasBandit said:
We need a "smack upside the head" button.

Anyway, you remember those 3.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil that were supposed to be in North Dakota? Well, about that...

I hope that goes up into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The 49th parallel isn't a geological boundary, but I don't know what part of the state (north, south, central, whatever) the find is in. If it's north, then there's benefits for those provinces as well.

GasBandit · May 1, 2013

Eriol said:
I hope that goes up into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The 49th parallel isn't a geological boundary, but I don't know what part of the state (north, south, central, whatever) the find is in. If it's north, then there's benefits for those provinces as well.

Now if only you had some kind of pipeline that would enrich both our countries.

Krisken · May 1, 2013

Good luck. I picture the U.S. as Daffy Duck...

Eriol · May 1, 2013

stienman said:
Lots of countries slant drill into other countries if they think they can get away with it... Now it's a race to see whether Canada or the US can empty it first!

Methinks you overestimate how far that can actually happen. 5 miles in? 10? Maybe? Not a big percentage of any such reserves.

Besides, it'd be more trouble than it's worth, given the big oil companies are on both sides of the border anyways. Just use your subsidiary on the correct side.

GasBandit · May 1, 2013

So apparently, EMI claims it owns Beethoven's 5th symphony, at least credibly enough to get it blocked on youtube.

Tress · May 1, 2013

GasBandit said:
So apparently, EMI claims it owns Beethoven's 5th symphony, at least credibly enough to get it blocked on youtube.

Chad Sexington · May 1, 2013

GasBandit said:
So apparently, EMI claims it owns Beethoven's 5th symphony, at least credibly enough to get it blocked on youtube.

Must be the conductor or symphony signed with the label for that cycle? Bullshit nonetheless.

AshburnerX · May 1, 2013

Chad Sexington said:
Must be the conductor or symphony signed with the label for that cycle? Bullshit nonetheless.

If it's a conductor or symphony, then no... it's not bullshit. Those people have the right to their performances as much as anyone else does. Just because a work is in the public domain doesn't mean a performance of it is.

GasBandit · May 2, 2013

Turns out, it IS that they hate our freedoms and way of life, after all. Especially the parts about women being anything other than silent, obedient property.

TommiR · May 5, 2013

GasBandit said:
Turns out, it IS that they hate our freedoms and way of life, after all. Especially the parts about women being anything other than silent, obedient property.

I'm not actually entirely convinced the majority of the Taleban really hate the Western way of life. It's just very different from their own way, and they don't want to live their lives by it any more than we'd want to our lives by their way if things were reversed. From their point of view (meaning the pov of the average Taleban footsoldier), their country us under occupation by a heathen coalition who dress weird, talk weird, think weird, and who have set up a corrupt puppet government that is enacting laws according to the social ideology of the occupier. It is not unreasonable to expect even forceful resistance against such change. But that does not necessarily mean the Taleban violently hate what Western people do, as long as the westerners keep doing it in their own countries and not try to export it to Taleban turf.

I personally hold 'their country, their rules' as a generally useful maxim, though politics of course might complicate that.

GasBandit · May 10, 2013

Downloads for 3D printed Liberator gun reach 100,000; Federal authorities demanding that blueprints be removed from the internet. Yeah, cause THAT works.

I don't think this genie can be crammed back in the bottle.

AshburnerX · May 10, 2013

GasBandit said:
Downloads for 3D printed Liberator gun reach 100,000; Federal authorities demanding that blueprints be removed from the internet. Yeah, cause THAT works.

I don't think this genie can be crammed back in the bottle.

It's already up on all the torrent sites and posted many other places. It's impossible to get something off the internet once it's been unleashed, but I -relish- the upcoming lawsuit the US Government is going to be facing over this. There are ALREADY gun blueprints on the web and I highly doubt there is a huge legal difference between this one and the hundreds already out there, even if this one is almost entirely plastic. They are ether going to need to pass legislation to ban them all (which won't work anyway) or put it back up.

The gun itself looks like a Fisher Price toy and is pretty big. There is no way you'd be able to sneak this thing past security if they gave you even the most casual of glances.

GasBandit · May 10, 2013

The IRS apparently tried to run conservative groups through the ringer more than usual during the 2012 election cycle, got called on it, says "sowwy."

Covar · May 10, 2013

wow, that's not shady at all...

Tress · May 10, 2013

Ugh. For once in my life I partially agree with McConnell. They should launch an investigation, not because they will find wrongdoing, but rather so it can be made clear that there was no impropriety at the higher levels.

That's just fucked up.

Covar · May 10, 2013

Call me crazy but having no idea that your employees are doing this kind of thing is a impropriety in and of itself. Leadership doesn't end when things stop going well.

Tress · May 10, 2013

Covar said:
Call me crazy but having no idea that your employees are doing this kind of thing is a impropriety in and of itself. Leadership doesn't end when things stop going well.

There is no way I'm going to hold the President and his staff personally responsible for what some low-level employees did at the Cincinnati IRS office did. And if you think he should be held responsible for that, you're not just crazy, you're out of your fucking mind.

Covar · May 10, 2013

Well since we're making that ridiculously large leap of logic, why stop at the President? It's high time the UN Security Council come clean and are held to actions committed by members of the IRS Ohio Branch.

Eriol · May 10, 2013

Ya Tress, I'm pretty much with Covar in that you made a massive leap implying that anybody was linking this to Obama. Leadership of IRS? Ya maybe, but I don't think anybody else was implying any more.