StrangeSox

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:58 AM) I have a hard time believing you'd make such a leap. None of those questions have anything to do with liking or disliking a group of people. Sure, thinking their religion is at odds with American values has nothing to do with liking that group or not.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:54 AM) If that is your definition, a sizable portion of Democrats hate Muslims too.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:50 AM) That nicely illustrates exactly what I was saying earlier... yes there is a distinct flavor of anger and hate in the Tea Party crowd, but it isn't as if it's 90% compared to 10%... its a smallish, but still noticeable, difference between them and other slices of political society. There's not a huge gap between tea partiers and republicans, but there is a huge gap between the tea party and every other group.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:47 AM) We saw the same whack jobs at anti-war rallies call for Bush and Cheney's deaths during the Bush administration. We have seen far left nuts blow up car dealerships in the name of environmentalism. The big difference is that one group is painted as representing the whole, and the other group is painted as a fringe. So much so that people now believe they are the mainstream. ELF never succeeded in inter-party primary challenges and forming a strong caucus in the HoR. The big difference is that one represents a significant political movement that had a huge impact on the 2010 elections and the 2012 GOP primaries while the other really does represent a tiny minority fringe that never gained any support.

Full Brookings/PRRI report, which got some airplay last week.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:43 AM) Ok? You're still stereotyping a LOT of people based on a very small minority. But this is nothing new. You guys have been doing this since the summer of 2009.

Short term or long term? Two very different questions.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:33 AM) Um, isn't that exactly what a good debate question should do? Good debate questions shouldn't intentionally set up candidates in a lose-lose scenario

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:33 AM) It's not a crazy scenario, a fair number of people decide to forego health insurance for that reason, and if you remove the possibility of rejection for pre-existing conditions that becomes a key flaw in the system...where you can go without insurance until you get really sick. Well isn't a standard conservative response to the individual mandate or general lack of insurance in the younger population "they don't need it!" Maybe that's what Wolf's clumsy question was trying to get at?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:31 AM) That's just an extremely insulting hypothetical in the first place. What percentage of people fit this mold? Less than 1%? People don't pay for health care because they can't afford it. Was Wolf just baiting the audience and the candidates with this ridiculous scenario? It seems like it. It's a terrible question mean to trap the candidate into providing either a morally reprehensible answer (let him die!) or forcing a more nuanced or equivocal position that the tea party crowd wouldn't react well to.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:24 AM) 1. Do you really think that the crowd at a tea party debate - and the personalities who would tend to be at something like that - are an accurate representation of the entire movement? This is a fair point--this is going to be the most active, most vocal and, likely, most conservative members of the tea party, not the standard conservative who'd answer a poll saying "yes" to "do you support the tea party?"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:22 AM) So when the news shows a bunch of Muslims jumping up and down in front of a crashed US helicopter, or there are mass celebrations for attacks on US (or generally, the West) targets, I can assume you'll be fine with me concluding that all Muslims are terrorists that hate America and the West and want them to die. Yes? "All Muslims" is a much larger and more diverse set than "politically active Americans who identify strongly as tea party members"

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:17 AM) I agree on Romney, he will likely take the nomination. I also agree that 2008 had a lot more reasonable, Presidential-looking and acting candidates in both partiesm than we are seeing from this sorry sack of candidates from the GOP for 2012. It's pretty disturbing just how far to the right the GOP candidate group has shifted from the race only 3 years ago.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:11 AM) There are plenty of clicks out there too about the community reinvestment act. It is also hard to forget people like Jesse Jackson calling the banking system racist because they wouldn't lend to minorities with bad scores. I know there's plenty of clicks on the CRA, study after study after study has found that it isn't to blame despite Republican cries to the contrary. It still comes back to Wall Street figuring out that they could use mortgages and securitization as a printing press for years.

The tea party is generally pretty authoritarian, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to see cheers for executions or for the death of people who chose poorly. It fits with that sense of justice and punishment.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 09:04 AM) Really, McCain, 9iu11ani, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee came off as at the Bachmann/Perry level? I don't buy that. No, that's what I'm saying, they weren't calling Social Security a ponzi scheme, calling basic Fed actions treasonous, thinking that defaulting on the debt is a good idea, etc. I'd expect saner Wall Street-type money to flow more readily to Romney this time around as I can't see self-interested wealthy bankers/financiers really jumping behind a Perry or Bachmann

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 08:44 AM) There was an odd effect with Mittens's fundraising in 2008 that might well be repeating itself now...he scored a big early fundraising lead in 2008 from a handful of friendly business donors and Mormons maxing out their contribution to him at the start of the race, but he was never able to grow beyond that. So he started with a big fundraising lead but that quickly evaporated because he couldn't expand his donor base. Time will tell if that gigantic stockpile of money is more than a temporary blip. Last time around, Romney wasn't the only candidate who didn't look and sound legitimately crazy.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 08:40 AM) How lazy are you that you can't even use google? http://www.businessinsider.com/uncovered-t...the-cash-2009-5 Victory and Alpha were talking about the (false) claim that the CRA or more generally the government forced the banks to make a bunch of high-risk mortgage loans to poor people and that it's really not their fault at all that they handed out $500k+ NINA loans, chopped them up into a million pieces and then paid to get them rated AAA so they could be sold as an incredibly secure investment. The government absolutely did lean on some banks to accept the TARP funds, but that's a different discussion.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 13, 2011 -> 08:28 AM) ESPNStatsInfo ESPN Stats & Info There were 8 combined return touchdowns in Week 1 games (3 KO, 5 Punt), the most in any week in NFL history. So much for the new rules ruining the KO return game, I guess. This was also Urlacher's first game in which he recorded an INT, a fumble recovery and a TD

The bait and switch of school "reform"

a quick skim (will read more later): this is a straw man, hopefully the rest of the article presents a legitimate argument.

If we learned anything from Europe, it's that nations that can't print their own money are significantly more limited than nations that can, especially nations with zero or negative bond rates. the bond market seems to be clamoring for a new stimulus, with the head of PIMCO calling for it explicitly. Why do these guys get a bunch of attention when they're worried about debt but ignored when they're calling for stimulus

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2011 -> 02:41 PM) There were also plenty of economists who said the plan wouldn't work for reasons other than being too small. But their models haven't matched reality, unlike the Kenyesian guys. Those bond vigilantes are right around the corner... We're undertaking big austerity measures. Europe's tried that and failed, predictably. We own the presses, there's always more money to spend, which is exactly what this new plan does. But yeah, that's still basic Keynes and why we shouldn't have run deficits under Bush.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2011 -> 02:40 PM) We haven't exactly done things the conservative way either since Obama took office, so it is kind of hard to just blow them off during this recession. How do you know the problem isn't backwards here? Because their predictions have been wrong, over and over and over? I will agree 100% that housing is still a concrete block dragging everything under water.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2011 -> 02:29 PM) So the White House is spineless, but that makes everything OK? really? The White House is spineless. What does that have to do with the validity of basic macroeconomics or whether or not macroeconomists were saying "it's too small" before, during and after the ARRA's passage?