StrangeSox

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2018 -> 01:19 PM) lmao. The headline of the article is quite literally Donald Trump Didn't Want to Be President Right, I don't think it's a great headline.

More excerpts: lol how'd that work out for you buddy? Ann Coulter making sense here: I refuse to believe this is a real thing that happened but it probably is!: The secret of the hair is revealed: President Angry Grandpa: Or maybe President Toddler is more accurate:

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2018 -> 12:43 PM) This doesn't jive at all with the collusion stuff. If he didn't want to win, and didn't care if he did, why Russia? "resigned to and accepting of losing" by the end of the campaign seems more accurate than "didn't want to win." An excerpt: which matches up with this somewhat famous snapshot from election night as the results came in:

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 3, 2018 -> 01:00 PM) Please don't give me any of the North Korean "reasoning" on this matter. Cmon. Kim Jong Un wants continued power, more power. He would definitely launch a nuke at Hawaii or the mainland. You can't even pretend to think Jong Un is reasonable. I concede Trump should not be president but I'm not going to give any benefit of the doubt to the man who has at least a 40/60 chance of ending the world as we know it -- Rodman's buddy Kim. The NK regime actually appears to be more rational than that. You don't have much power if you're a giant glowing crater in the ground, which is what would happen if they ever attacked anyone. He appears no less reasonable than Trump, anyway.

The cost-curve for health spending has been bent down substantially, which was one of the major goals of the ACA. It's now more inline with GDP growth. Per Kaiser.

The Fusion GPS founders released an editorial in the NYT today defending their firm's work and attacked Congressional Republicans for "chasing rabbits" in an attempt to set the story straight on what their company did, how Steele worked for them and when and how authorities were alerted. Goes hand-in-hand with the quotes from Bannon regarding money laundering being a major focus of Mueller's investigation and what might ultimately bring charges against Trump or his family. Trump has had very shady business dealings for decades. The Republicans’ Fake Investigations Similarly, there are reports that Democrats on the House and Senate committees investigating possible Russian collusion and interference will be issuing minority reports detailing the numerous ways that Republicans have deliberately sabotaged the investigations in order to protect Trump.

Are you looking at any of the streaming services instead? Our Comcast contract is up at the end of the month and I'd like to dump cable, too.

Steve Bannon (!) calls the Trump Tower meeting "treasonous" and says they should have alerted the FBI immediately. Yglesias pointed out last week that when Trump advisor Papadopolous drunkenly bragged about Russia having dirt on Clinton and their attempts to influence the US elections to the Australian ambassador, that ambassador immediately alerted authorities. The Trump Campaign....didn't.

Boy that North Korean leader sure is goofy and crazy and cartoony He essentially spent all day live-tweeting Fox News yesterday. He hasn't had anything on his schedule aside from lunch since he tweeted "back to work!" nine days ago. greg, I know you won't ever listen, but NK has nuclear weapons as a deterrent, not because they're crazy enough to launch a first-strike against the US. It's the same reason they have tons of artillery pointed at Seoul. "You hit us, we hit you back hard." The world has condemned NK, again and again, and sanctions have been ratcheting up for years. The world is also turning its back on the US and recognizing just how much US leadership has diminished around the world in the past year thanks largely to our goofy idiot cartoon leader, too.

Check out the size of my nuclear button, baby

Big new political science study on "Fake News" is out ‘Fake News’: Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests Key findings: -heavily concentrated among w/most conservative info diets -Facebook key vector of exposure -fact-checks did not reach those exposed this is a pretty interesting finding that supports other previous research on how effective fact-checking efforts are and persuasion efforts focused on presenting factual rebuttals in general are: I'm not sure if this research dug into it, but previous studies have found that when you present someone who strongly believes in something with contradicting evidence, it's more likely that their (incorrect) belief will be strengthened, not lessened.

QUOTE (Tex @ Dec 31, 2017 -> 07:08 PM) While that is a nice picture the current reality is coal (dying out), oil, nuclear, and blocking rivers for hydro. I was surprised to learn there are two reactors being built with about twenty more being planned. So while we both will agree that solar and wind is prefered, that may not be reality. Consumers will take cheap electricity being produced any which way when their demands increase. Natural gas has been expanding substantially for years now and is largely what's replacing coal. It's the cheapest energy on the market. I don't know that there's much of a push for new hydro, either, given that all of the best sources are already dammed. There were four reactors being built, but Westinghouse went bankrupt building two of them at VC Summer last year and that project was stopped. South Carolina rate payers will be paying for the half-built reactors for years. Their was a coming "nuclear renaissance" in 2005/2006 with a ton of planned expansion, but the economic collapse in 2008 followed by ridiculously cheap natural gas and dropping costs for wind and solar have basically killed it. Even some fully functional nuclear plants are shutting down because they just can't compete on a cost basis. Kewaunee and Vermont Yankee have both shuttered within recent years, SONGS and Crystal River shut down after failed upgrades, Diablo Canyon announced they're not going to extend their license beyond 2025 (or whenever it expires).

Since when was anything patriotic or about the country 100% about "the troops," anyway? The national anthem isn't an ode to the military.

Papadopolous was more important within the campaign and his attempts to coordinate with Russia were more extensive than previously reported. And it wasn't the Steele dossier that kicked off the FBI's investigation in 2016. How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt

For what it's worth, they've stopped taking new contracts for College Illinois and can't guarantee fulfillment beyond people already enrolled in college as tuition has risen much faster than originally projected.

You can just take a look at what vanguard does in the appropriate target date fund and match it in your own to save a little bit, or you can pay that slight expense ratio increase cost and just get the vanguard target date fund. I do that as closely as possible in my 401k, in our IRAs I just do the target date vanguard fund because it's "set it and forget it for 35 years"

Hoekstra was the guy who ran this really awful ad in his last campaign. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=...GC4JuFggxzacM7- Shocking that he'd keep saying racist things.

As Trump’s chances of winning the GOP nomination grew, the the Wall Street Journal buried an editorial highlighting his underworld connections nym.ag/2Bo8kVU

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 21, 2017 -> 12:13 PM) No, but I would have lowered the rate and raised cap gains to fund gains on lower end.. Conceivable bill. Lower corp rate to 27%, raise cap gains to 19% and 25%, I don't know what math looks like, maybe raise top two brackets to 36.5 and 41. Increase EITC and Child Tax credit, cap MITC and eliminate 529s. Raise standard deduction, keep personal exemption. Mortgage interest deduction should be gone entirely, I think basically every economist agrees it's bad public policy that just distorts the housing market and inflates home prices. I'd support that as part of a broad tax reform plan that actually simplified things and, on the whole, made our tax code more progressive instead of regressive. Ideally 529's would become irrelevant because we'd properly fund state school systems so that they weren't prohibitively expensive or even go back to the old UC "free for every resident" days.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 21, 2017 -> 12:02 PM) God no. It was a disaster of a statutory rate that was too high and way too many deductions for everything. If you owned a good set of lobbyists, you could make it so that the bigger your company was, the smaller the tax rate you paid. We fixed the statutory rate that was too high and opened even more gaping holes with this bill. It basically fixes the problem of anyone who is incorporated having to pay taxes. If you're a believer in helping small businesses grow, this bill is a major obstacle now as big businesses now have a much larger tax advantage. The "simplification" part, the part where we're wasting huge amounts of resources on finding tax loopholes - that actually was made worse by this bill. pretty much my thoughts as well

Automation is going to do some pretty awful things to the work force, more than it's already done in a lot of sectors, and there's no easy answer there. If we automate away the need for a lot of jobs, how are those people going to make ends meet? Weirdly enough, Jewel has pulled out their self-checkout lanes in a lot of stores and replaced them with expanded express checkouts.

US life expectancy dropped for the second straight year. This is the first time it's happened here since influenza caused it to dip twice in the 60's, and it's essentially unheard of in modern developed countries. A 26% increase in opioid deaths seems to be the main factor. http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-li...udy0247PMVODtop

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 21, 2017 -> 10:31 AM) Trump, Diplomatic Genius: https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/943877719292563456 Final vote: Essentially every one of our closest allies voted in favor of this. Hardly anyone voted against.

Not even just protesters. Journalists covering the event were charged as well as people who weren't even there but talked about it or helped organize a protest in some way. They faced potentially decades in jail. This is great news.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 21, 2017 -> 11:02 AM) Well ATT is going to pocket some of the money obviously Huh didn't even recognize that your hypothetical worked out to the same amount as the "$1.5T/125M households" math, neat