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Why the GOP IS the root of all evil...
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windoggi



Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743

PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 7:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
Windoggie, that's a funny photo, but could we see that guys face please? I bet no teeth, and big eyes that are a quarter inch apart. I doubt he's at a Romney rally, because he'd have his ass kicked by me and most others if we saw him there.

Let's have some videos of Sharpton and Farrakan, or Occupy, who have asked rape victims not to press charges. It comes from both sides my friend.

I think that the left's loonies are a bit more benign. (obvious mad bombers at both ends of the political spectrum excluded...thats a whole nother level) The anger and racism, worn by mr tshirt, and found in abundance elsewhere, has become the face of the Republican party. At least to this dog.

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DanWeiss



Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Posts: 2296
Location: Connecticut, USA

PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 8:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mrgybe wrote:
DanWeiss wrote:
A woman I know who lived in Africa for much of here life observed yesterday that the present language and tone in the US reminds her of the environment in Rwanda just prior to the massacres. To her relief, at least Americans haven't yet ordered one hundred thousand machetes from China.

Dan, I agree with most of your post. However, this part cannot stand unchallenged. For your acquaintance to draw any parallels between the situation in Rwanda and the racial climate here is utterly ridiculous. She either doesn't understand this country and it's people, or the propensity for mob violence that is part of African life, particularly when spurred by centuries of tribal conflict. I was in Central Africa while the massacres were occurring. There is absolutely no comparison with contemporary US.


Well, of course there is a comparison. You may not agree with a particular conclusion drawn from the comparison, but that doesn't mean one cannot compare situations of starkly different outcomes or degrees.

The comparison was one of analogy. Americans to a large degree are not arming themselves to slaughter their fellow countrymen, but a few are and have been for years. Call them the fringe, a bunch of nut cases or mere idiots. It doesn't matter. My point in making that comparative analogy was to highlight the tenor of political communication these days.

Just look at the slinging that we do on this section of the website. Most people, including you and me, have been labelled something less than complimentary. Of course, the only reason we're here is because we are mostly windsurfers who care about the sport and about our country. We can sling arrows with luxury because, minor personality issues aside, we will sail together without punching each other in the nose.

The rest of society employs the same vitriol in its language. Mocking others, dehumanizing the other, misrepresenting the essence of the others' basic views (Isobars, ahem) by employing superlative language and labels.

The interaction between the Hutus and the Tutsi go back about two centuries before the first colonies were established successfully in North America. Not all was difficult between the groups as not all was difficult between the majority and minority in this country. Yet, the majority in Rwanda, the Hutu, elected politicians who blames the Tutsi for all the economic and social apostasy. The death of a leader in 1994 kicked off their horrific civil war, just as it often happens over the centuries. The spark ignites the furnace.

As the comparative anaolgy made expressly clear, we are not arming ourselves with an eye toward massacre. Oh no. Our guns are held as weapons of defense against the hordes who threaten the self-importance of a small number of individuals. Or so the story goes.

Thankfully we are not Rwanda in 1994 nor do I believe we are close, which is your point.

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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When one uses an analogy one is inferring similarities. In Rwanda 800,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in 3 months for no other reason than ethnicity. While I agree with you on the deterioration of civil discourse in this country, I would not have selected the Rwandan genocide as a point of comparison. To do so diminishes the horror of that event.
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DanWeiss



Joined: 24 Jun 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, the one making a statement implies, the one listening infers. Smile

Otherwise, it was not my intent to diminish the hundreds of thousands who suffered such horrible fates.

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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2012 10:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

DanWeiss wrote:
Actually, the one making a statement implies, the one listening infers. Smile

You are absolutely correct...........my knuckles would be stinging if I had made that error in school!
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windoggi



Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743

PostPosted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mormons don't lie, do they?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2012 9:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very interesting piece in yesterday's Chronicle:

Quote:
Sunday, October 28, 2012


DeLong: Inequality: Living in the Second Gilded Age


Brad DeLong:

Inequality: Living in the Second Gilded Age, by Brad DeLong: A third of a century ago, all of us economists confidently predicted that America would remain and even become more of a middle-class society. The high income and wealth inequality of the 1870-1929 Gilded Age, we would have said, was a peculiar result of the first age of industrialization. Transformations in technology, public investments in education, a progressive tax system, a safety net, and the continued decline in discrimination on the basis of race and sex had made late-20th century America a much more equal place than early 20th century America, and would make early 21st century America even more equal — even more of a middle-class society — still.

We were wrong.

America today is at least as unequal as, and may be more unequal than, it was back at the start of the 20th century when Republicans, such as President Theodore Roosevelt of New York condemned the power wielded by “malefactors of great wealth,” and Democrats such as perennial losing presidential candidate William Jennings Bryant of Nebraska denounced shadowy conspiracies that had somehow manipulated the financial system to rob the typical family of its proper share in America’s prosperity.

Four major and a host of minor factors have driven rising inequality over the past third of a century: ...[continue reading]...

One complaint: It's more than just economics. In my view, Brad doesn't put enough emphasis on the changing political tide over the last few decades, and how that has altered public policy towards institutions such as unions that were able to help workers get a fair share of the output they produce (unions aren't even mentioned in the article). The explanation for rising inequality makes it appear that economics -- factors such as winner-take-all markets in an increasingly globalized world and skill based technical change -- can fully account for the problem. I don't see it that way. Economics surely contributed to the inequality problem, but the idea that those at the top haven't received a penny more than they earned, that their incomes can be explained by economics alone, is hard to defend. Workers incomes have not kept up with productivity -- they did not get a fair share of the output they produced over the last few decades -- and that means some other group got more than it deserves. Given the stagnant incomes at lower levels and widening inequality from growth at the top, it's not hard to think of who that group might be, and it is not the least bit surprising that this just happens to be the group with the largest amount of political influence.

I don't have any problem with the statements made in the article about taxes on the wealthy and educational opportunity for working class households -- we need more of both -- but we also need to reform our institutions so that they work for all of us, not just the (ahem) job creators at the top.

(To be fair, Brad acknowledges that there has been a misallocation of resources with too much going to finance and health care administration, and not enough elsewhere, and he also notes that the political power of the wealthy make it hard to change the tax code. But for the most part his argument about rising inequality relies upon economics, and the political and institutional arguments are not emphasized. Again, I am not quarreling with the economics, I just think the political and institutional factors deserve more weight.)

But this is an old debate with Brad DeLong and others on one side, and Krugman. et. al. on the other, e.g. see here:

To a good neoclassical economist, the statement that the relative price of a factor of production--like the labor of the elite top 1% of America's wage and salary distribution--has risen is the same thing as the statement that the relative productivity of that factor of production has risen. But we need to distinguish between these statements in order to make sense of the ongoing argument between Andrew Samwick on the one hand and Paul Krugman and Mark Thoma on the other.

In a nutshell: Is the statement that there is a higher return to education today merely an assertion that the rich today earn more in relative terms than their counterparts in the past? Or is it also a statement that the rich today are more productive in relative terms than their counterparts in the past?

Andrew Samwick takes the first definition, and concludes that rising inequality is the result of a higher return to education. By his lights, he is clearly correct.

Paul Krugman and Mark Thoma take the second definition and conclude that that rising inequality is not primarily the result of a higher return to education but instead primarily the result of socio-political factors that have raised the relative price of what the rich and well-educated do. And they too have a strong case. Piketty and Saez's latest numbers estimate that top 13,000 American households have multiplied their relative real incomes nearly fivefold since the 1970s. Then they received some 0.6% of national income. Now they receive nearly 2.8% of national income--an average of $25 million each, compared to roughly $5 million each had the relative income distribution remained at its 1970s levels. What are the CEOs, CFOs, COOs, elite Hollywood entertainers, investment bankers, and the very highest levels of professionals doing differently now in their work lives that makes them, in relative terms, worth five times as much as their predecessors of a generation and a half ago?...

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Mulekick84



Joined: 18 Mar 2006
Posts: 407

PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2012 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Romney tweeted yesterday that anyone in the path of the Hurricane should immediately retreat to their 2nd or 3rd homes to avoid danger!
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2012 11:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mrgybe wrote:
...my knuckles would be stinging if I had made that error in school!

With those knuckles so scraped, I'm surprised they don't constantly sting.



Mulekick84 wrote:
Romney tweeted yesterday that anyone in the path of the Hurricane should immediately retreat to their 2nd or 3rd homes to avoid danger!

I saw that. He said to board the horse, fasten down those jet skis at he summer camp on Winnipesaukee, strap the dog to the roof, jump into the Cadillac SUV, and immediately head for high ground, and to hell with the middle-income neighbors if they don't have a few Cadillacs for emergencies.

Oh, and leave a forwarding phone number with the bankers in Switzerland. And the ones on the Islands, too.

I wish Obama would think ahead like that. He probably could have stopped this storm if he had.
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2012 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

windoggie wrote:
Mormons don't lie, do they?


Missed a few.
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