Crimson G
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Posts posted by Crimson G
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I thought Craig was pretty top-notch this episode, but I'd otherwise agree with the assessment already given... the music video sequence at the end was pretty decent, too.
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Really? No laughs for you. I was laughing for minutes on end when Sharon brought up Randy farting and holding her head under the covers.
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Pink Panther 2 at least had the funny scenes of him and Lily Tomlin.Severed Ways had a guy taking a shit. On camera.
I hope for End Game they go all out and have Kurt Angle using wrestling moves on people and saying it's true, it's true!
I also think WWE Films should also have the characers use wrestling moves. I mean, no one takes these films seriously anyway.
Yeah but I have not seen Severed Ways. Didn't Kane, Austin and Cena all use wrestling moves, I am sure they did.
The Rundown had the Rock Rock Bottoming some guy.
I just watched the End Game trailer and it's probably the worst thing I've seen outside of stuff done in my college film classes. "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood."? Really? It seemed like everyone (in the trailer, at least) had no clue how to read any of those lines and the cinematography was laughably bad for a horror movie/thriller/whatever they were going for. It looks worse than a reenactment on Rescue 911 or Unsolved Mysteries.
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One especially funny thing is that Jack might actually be the only guy in that locker room who's actually smaller than Juventud.Um. This is the AAA locker room, not the WWE locker room. You realize there's an abundance of minis and people built like Mistico in Lucha Libre, right?
Edit: Don't know why I originally capitalized minis.
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They're mothafuckin aliens! That shit reminded me of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Same in the middle of a forest with some aliens and shit.
Reminded me a lot of a much better version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a bunch of The Day After Tomorrow thrown in.
Also, what significance do the white rabbits have? I know it means something, but I can't remember what.Sex. Rabbits signify fertility. So, the kinds are going to fuck like rabbits to rebuild the human race.
That ending was weird as fuck.They were in the Garden of Eden.
And, damn there were some somewhat frightening moments in this, some amazing special effects, some incredibly (unnecessary) graphic moments, and some really poorly thought out moments in this movie. I thought the good outweighed the bad in the end, but wish they would have cast someone better to play the fatherly figure clearly needed for the role held by the emotionless Nicolas Cage.
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Ex post facto law is explicitly unconstitutional (article 1, section 9), but seeing as we've pretty much shredded everything in the Constitution, I'll simply say that I understand and agree with your point-of-view (in theory.)Nope, the ex post facto provision of the Constitution only applies to criminal sanctions. American jurisprudence leaves leaves a lot of leeway for these types of actions by federal agencies when authorized by Congress. See, for example, US vs Carlton.
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." This is straight out of the Constitution. A tax is a law, and this one is "after the fact" of the contract, so the contract is not subject to the law. All future contracts of $250,000 in TARP-funded companies are, however.
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At least Congress voted to tax the hell out of these bonuses, and thus recoup most of them.I too hate contract law. Let's fuck over all rich people because some of them made poor decisions at work. [/end sarcasm]
They fucked themselves over when they drove their business into needing bailout money in the first place. About a dozen of these executives at AIG took their retention bonuses and then split. That was paid by our tax dollars. And you are defending these guys? Are you yourself rich or something?
I wasn't trying to defend these guys except indirectly. The proper (and only constitutionally legal) way to break an already written and binding contract is through Chapter 11 Reorganization (aka bankruptcy court.) Ex post facto law is explicitly unconstitutional (article 1, section 9), but seeing as we've pretty much shredded everything in the Constitution, I'll simply say that I understand and agree with your point-of-view (in theory.)
These people failed and (most of them) do not deserve to continue their employment at AIG, let alone receive the bonuses coming their way. It is already a done deal however and this violation of the Constitution leaves the government open to lawsuit and further scandal because, if challenged in court, this 90% tax on executives at specific companies will not stand.
And, no, I'm not at all rich. I work at a gas station convenience store and have over $15,000 in college loans to repay, if that tells you anything. I simply care about upholding the rule of law (if I believe it helps support our natural and unalienable rights.)
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Even if he's using a middle-way definition for what the embryos are, that doesn't answer the question WHY it is wrong (or even why it is the equivalent to making a human life).His answer is right in the quote you gave from him (though selectively highlighted): "[it is] a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end."
It is not giving proper dignity to human life to cultivate human cells for harvest. I don't really see how that's a gray area. (Unless you're okay with other undignified human treatment like slavery, the caste system, etc. Then I think the conversation has warped beyond Mr. Krauthammer's basic argument.)
But since it is NOT the same thing as making a human life, then why is it wrong?
He's trying to say that the rule to not make a human life covers potential life...but does it really?
How is "cultivating human cells for harvest" any different than donating blood or other things that involving people donating cells?
I think these questions need to be answered before anyone can prove extracting embryotic stem cells is the moral equivalent of slave---wait...whut?
So you'd be fine with creating embryos simply to utilize them in stem cell research, rather than what they're biologically meant for, which is to grow into a human being? It's treating (potential) human beings like they're no different from chicken eggs. We should simply use these things regardless of how we've gotten them and their legitimate functions in growing into human life. Mr. Krauthammer correctly said that this is treating human beings as a means, rather than an end.
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At least Congress voted to tax the hell out of these bonuses, and thus recoup most of them.I too hate contract law. Let's fuck over all rich people because some of them made poor decisions at work. [/end sarcasm]
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Even if he's using a middle-way definition for what the embryos are, that doesn't answer the question WHY it is wrong (or even why it is the equivalent to making a human life).His answer is right in the quote you gave from him (though selectively highlighted): "[it is] a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end."
It is not giving proper dignity to human life to cultivate human cells for harvest. I don't really see how that's a gray area. (Unless you're okay with other undignified human treatment like slavery, the caste system, etc. Then I think the conversation has warped beyond Mr. Krauthammer's basic argument.)
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I frankly don't understand his point of view. His argument is self-contradictory.I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.If there's some logical, middle-ground nuance he explained there, I missed it. It really sounds like he is trying to have it both ways.
I believe he's objecting to the use of humanity, not necessarily the state that these humans (or potential humans) are in within that same arena of scientific use. He's arguing that developing a human embryo to harvest it for genetic research or whatever other purpose is morally reprehensible, regardless of whether you believe them to be persons or not.
Mr. Obama's point, then, is that we can continue to have 'moral values' (such as in regard to outlawing human cloning) without sacrificing 'sound science'I believe Mr. Krauthammer agreed with Obama on this point (if this what he meant by such a muddled sentence), but disagreed with the way he allowed for such a wide possible interpretation of the new position of the federal government. Basically, his point was that science is not a replacement for morality and morality needs to be involved in a proper and careful interpretation of stem cell laws. Obama seems to have given science a morality of its own. (It's the same point made by Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park. "You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should.")
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Anybody read the article by Charles Krauthammer (I know I'm gonna get dinged for this one) regarding Obama's stem cell announcement. I thought it was actually a rather fair indictment on the man (until the last sentence, perhaps):
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Gorgeous George/Gorgeous Cunt/Whatever the fuck her name is did a porno and disappeared into obscurity after she split from Savage, but not before she loaded all of his furniture in a Uhaul truck.Gorgeous George married Doyle von Frankenstein from The Misfits, "wrestled" in 3PW before it folded, showed up in TNA as "Minsa", and I think she's still semi-active on an indy level.
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Can you explain further what you think the beneficial effects of housing deflation will be? I want to consider all sides of this.Owning a house might be put in the proper perspective again. Houses will no longer be treated as sources of credit, but strictly as living spaces. Houses will become affordable again. According to the article I posted above, perhaps houses will become smaller and use less energy.
That's about all I can think of right now. But, the point really is that this needs to happen and will happen because the housing bubble cannot be sustained, not necessarily that it ought to happen. I agree with you that it would be nice to continue building new houses and therefore support the people in the industries reliant on that business, but we don't have the money to do that. It would be nice if everyone had all their basic necessities taken care of and didn't need to work, but that's not reality.
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Came across this article, and it's great stuff on why renting is better than buying houses:
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Shawn Michaels' superkick started to gain magical powers around 1995.Shawn Michaels' foot also contains a "band" that sometimes needs to "warm up", at least according to J.R. And once they do, it's almost assuredly death to whoever is hit by that foot, be they wrestler, promoter, referee, or even timekeeper.
As far as gimmick matches being criticized, how about any match (chain, strap, etc.) where you have to drag your opponent around and touch each corner. How is that humiliating other than being technically a loss? If I was a wrestler, I'd let my opponent touch all four corners. You still haven't beat me in a wrestling match, just a gayer version of the tug-of-war. I get the concept, I just don't understand how there's any magnitude to the match.
Same with _____-on-a-pole matches. Whoop-de-doo! You can climb up and grab something suspended on a stick! Let's throw a party for you!
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First of all, unless you're single-handedly financing the mortgage bail-out, you really don't have room to say "I don't think that I should be forced to pay". The American people are collectively paying for this, and even that's arguable since its going to be financed with debt. No one is going to send you a bill in the mail for this thing.The fact that we're going to be paying for this with U.S. treasuries (the public debt) and, more likely, massive inflation means that I'll be paying for this just as you will be. It's something that's not going to benefit me in the slightest, especially when it utterly fails. I don't think it's a good idea and I'm being forced to pay for it no matter what, through public debt assurances, future tax hikes to pay for that debt (assuming we ever try to do that), and, again, inflation.
Second, you still don't seem to get how keeping more foreclosures from happening in the future helps the country overall economically. Whether the benefit outweighs the cost is a debate that needs to occur, but we're not doing this to insure "their financial success," we are doing this to keep the crisis from getting worse.We have a real problem is this country of people not recognizing how the effects of economic and social problems tend to hurt not just the people originally affected, but often spread to the rest of society.
Actually, I'm not opposed to preventing future foreclosures through stricter monitoring of the financial sector and tighter rules on how and why banks can lend. Neither of those things will alleviate the situation we have now. In all likelihood, they'd probably exacerbate the problems by further restricting credit and raising interest rates. But, those are the things that need to be done to produce a vibrant and lasting economy, rather than a future bubble economy (like this administration wants to re-inflate.)
Preventing foreclosures already scheduled to occur, however, is what's currently on the docket. This is an attempt to stabilize housing prices which are, quite frankly, still far too high and need to fall even further before demand will begin to match the amount of supply out there. The government cannot create that demand, it can only provide the illusion of its existence and even then it has to pay for it with something, usually either debt or inflation. So Plan B is to eliminate the problem of a still-growing supply-side (the foreclosed-upon houses) by paying the difference of between what the borrower ought to pay (by his agreement) and what they now can pay. The difference is paid to the lender absorbing that loss (i.e. the bank), but still doesn't address the much lower level of demand in the housing market, which will continue to dip (whether people are in houses or not), or the economy as whole, which needs to start to turn around before the housing market can turn around. (The housing market will not lead the way out of this depression.)
The problem is, as Peter Schiff frequently points out, Americans are broke. They can no longer afford their luxurious lifestyles with the debt they've accumulated. The final nail in the coffin will be once the rest of the world stops buying our debt and looks to dump the dollar as their reserve note, which is already well on its way.
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But unlike the weatherman, their predictive statements might influence events.Perhaps. But, if you're taking people like Jim Cramer seriously then you're an amateur who shouldn't be involved in the stock market in the first place.
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This doesn't exactly fit the topic at hand, but Christian and Ricky Ortiz mocking Jack Swagger because of his lisp for laughs is ridiculous. How is that a face move?Speaking of which, Lita made fun of Kanyon's lisp in 2001 as well even though she was a face.
Wait. Hold on. Lita made fun of somebody's speech pattern?! Do you have video on this?
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No, he isn't to blame for all of the bad information out on his network, and that wasn't the point. The point was given how much bad information was out there, is he really justified to call people who got caught in this mess "losers"?Santelli is basically saying we shouldn't be concerned with people about to be foreclosed on, and completely ignores the negative effects all of these additional foreclosures will have on lending institutions and everyone else's home values.
Santelli is saying, "I wasn't immediately affected, so I don't care." Is he too dumb to see the effect this problem will have on everyone else in the long run? (Given the history this country has of not recognizing how the effects of economic and social problems tend to spread to the rest of society...not is he probably really that dumb, but he has a lot of company.)
I disagree. It's one thing to say we shouldn't be concerned. It's another to say that we shouldn't be propping them up and supporting their bad decision, whether they were properly given the facts or not. People get swindled all the time. And I don't think it's ever a good thing. But, I don't think that I should be forced to pay for their bad decisions or even bad fortune. I am not responsible for insuring their financial success.
If there's legal recourse, then take it. But let's not invent ways to prop up people who made poor decisions on the backs of people who are, at this point, still okay in their house/rent/whatever setup. It encourages those who can still afford their mortgages or still have positive equity in their house(s) to make those same mistakes because the people who did so already have profited from them (at least for a little bit.)
In the medical industry, they call that "malpractice". Lawyers call it "fraud". For some reason its illegal when THEY do it, but not when bankers and stock brokers do it.The system as a whole is broken, however. The reason is the Fed, government restrictions and guidelines on the banking system, and long-standing banking policies such as seen with the FDIC (which is broke) and the whole fractional reserve system. Additionally, these people are not making prescriptive statements like when lawyers give legal advice and physicians give medical advice. They are making predictive statements. The equivalent would be trying to sue the weatherman because his forecast for sunny skies was wrong.
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The point Stewart made was that Santelli was saying the home buyers (i.e. "losers") should have known better, when the public was being bombarded with bad information by the network he works for. He was right, too. I have a big fucking problem with putting all the blame on individuals following the advice of experts and getting screwed, while the so-called professionals who traded the bad debt around the financial industry and told us all that everything was going to be fine are treated like innocent victims.And there was nothing populist about being an ignorant Social Darwinist loudmouth.
You cannot hold Santelli responsible for everything that goes on on the network he happens to work for. He doesn't run the thing and can't tell people like Jim Cramer to stuff it unless he's given a chance to respond to Jim's comments. This is asinine.
Rick Santelli is no more responsible for the quality of reporting on CNBC than Jon Stewart is for the quality of programming on Comedy Central. Should Jon Stewart be denigrated because Larry the Cable Guy works on the same network as him?
Regardless of who is spouting what information, people can't just blindly take what "experts" have to say and follow it. They have to do some investigating of their own and, if they don't, they receive the punishment that ignorance brings. The real losers are the people who bought into the lie that homes had inherent equity that would always remain at the same level, if not increase over time. It should just be common sense that when dealing with a commodity (like a home), prices rise and fall according to the market. Not believing prices will ever fall is either willful ignorance or sheer stupidity. And yes, it was precipitated by even stupider sales pitches and incentives, but those came from the government, not the TV networks. The Fed is to blame.
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Man, Czech's gonna hate me for this, but Jon Stewart was owning CNBC and other financial media douches the other night.I disagree. He was being a dick to Santelli for canceling on his show, but didn't show any clips of Santelli to criticize. It was mostly CNBC anchors, rather than financial commentators, which means that these people weren't even "experts" on what they were talking about. Don't get me wrong. Almost no one on that network has been remotely right about the situation (and at least Stewart had the decency of not playing a bunch of Steve Liesman quotes back-to-back), but taking a bunch of out-of-context and ill-thought-through remarks and making snide comments about them does not constitute an "owning."
Really? Resorting to Jim Cramer quotes? There's whole youtube collections of Santelli actually owning Cramer on his bad calls and his backtracking.
See here: Rick Santelli VS Cramer Unedited Clips
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You have to define Communism there. High tax rates on businesses certainly isn't the only factor in motivating where a company is and how it produces. Obviously, wherever a company is, by its very existence, it is an attempt to make as much money as possible with the capital it has. If the United States has a high business tax rate, but is an economic center for the world, a business will see it to be more profitable to locate itself here than in, say, Ireland, where taxes are much less. Obviously, there are loopholes to go around this like outsourcing labor to less developed countries, but the flow of workers is mainly within developed countries, and the numbers really aren't that significant.It might still be profitable for a company to locate here, but it's not optimally profitable. That's the point of the Laffer curve---to display that where tax rates are ought to be beneficial to both businesses/individuals and the government.
The demand curve of the economy is in trouble now because of expectations. If people are afraid that they may lose their jobs, they're going to save. If people are afraid that prices are going to go up, they'll save. If they're afraid that their hours may be cut or their salary may decrease, they're going to save. I'm trying to find any sort of general information for price increases/wage decreases for the last 6 months, but I'm not coming up with anything, and I don't want to argue a point without something to back it up with. If anyone would like to present some, that would be nice.Wait, found some, courtesy of the SF Fed. http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economic...ews/graph_1.pdf
So, according to the SF Fed, prices are dropping. Might want to construct your argument again if you're going to trust my source, because it undermines your entire premise. Also, any sort of credence to "the government is trying to convince them that what they're seeing is not reality and these things are still good investments" would be useful too.
You're looking at inflation from a Keynesian/Monetarist perspective, while I'm viewing it from an Austrian perspective.
Here's a great article explaining the basic viewpoint of Austrian Capital Theory:
Ignorance of Money and the Rejection of Austrian Economics by William L. Anderson
Also, I don't agree with you saying that it's not a liquidity problem. For instance, (let's look at credit liquidity) my father's business has a line of credit of several hundred thousand dollars. Say the bank that this line of credit belongs to decapitates it, and knocks it down 30% less available money in the off-season of the business cycle. That 30% is devastating. That's enough to bankrupt a company, or at least get a bunch of people fired. (Thankfully, that didn't happen). Have that happen to a series of businesses, employment jumps up, and the whole cycle gets worse. Bank of America and Citi are poised to lose billions over the next few years, and there is zero chance that they're going to have enough capital to cover those losses. The private investors aren't going to be able to restore capital to these banks, and if they are to become any sort of effective again, they need capital and the government is essentially the only source for this capital.Here's another article with a graph and explanation that the "credit crunch" was not a contraction of credit, but a stagnation in the growth in the amount of credit available for lending. The problem is not with the supply side of the economy, but with the demand side. The banks were in no position to absorb the shock of the economy not growing, since their business is lending, so they've begged the government for additional funds to support the debt which could not be called in and restore their debt to capital ratios to the point they should have been at in the first place. In the meantime, they've managed to create a crisis of confidence in the stock market and the housing market (by having to pull back to realistic standards in order to actually recoup money from their ventures.) They have tried their utmost to reverse this trend, but it's simply good business to stick to these standards for economic growth. They present less risk because they require less exposure. Unfortunately, we're following the same mistakes that got us into this situation, though people no longer have the credit scores necessary to acquire these loans nor are the banks being encouraged to give these loans out recklessly because they'll be taken to task for it. It's a lose-lose situation for them and it forces the government to keep throwing money at the problem, only to have it be absorbed by the black holes that the banks have become.
In terms of interest rates, I think it's fair to say that we're in a liquidity trap for home loans. Interest rates are basically zero, and they aren't having any sort of effect whatsoever.I do think, however, that what we have now isn't nearly enough. The taxpayer is being forced to bear far too much risk, and the FDIC should just go ahead and temporarily nationalize these shitty banks (which it has been doing).
The FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover the insolvent banks, we'd need to allocate large amounts of money to do that. BofA and Citi, two of the five largest banks in the world, are on the edge of collapse. WaMu already collapsed and is slowly dragging JPMorgan Chase down with it, but it's nowhere near the level the other two are at yet. We'll see what comes of these "stress tests", but I'd predict we'll probably try nationalization at some point. If not next week, maybe the week after that. Nothing's set in stone anymore.
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A) Ayn Rand was an author and totalitarian philosopher, not an economist.I'm pretty sure Objectivism is about as far away from totalitarian as you can get. Maybe you mean another word here? Atlas Shrugged is often listed as one of the finest pieces of fiction dealing with economics. I don't think she, or people like Yaron Brook who's been everywhere discussing this on TV, are naive or unpracticed in the field of economics.
B) Don't lump Glen Beck in with libertarians. He loves the Iraq War (and all the deficit spending that goes along with it), the war on drugs, and pines for a multi-billion dollar wall between Mexico and the US. Neocons and libertarians are not the same, no matter how disingenuously the neocon panders to libertarians when they go on his program.Glen Beck is certainly no libertarian, but he's definitely had quite a few libertarians on his program lately, and he's been buying into more and more of the philosophy as this recession progresses. Obviously he still has his pet interests (and god knows he loves our defense spending), but he's far more libertarian than someone like, say, Sean Hannity. I only "lumped" Beck in with that category since he addresses these points daily in his TV show, radio program, and newsletters, and gives these people a platform to allow their voice to be heard. I don't believe he's leading the charge.
MLB April 5-11
in Sports
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I'm just here to give a thumbs up sign of approval for the good start the Mariners have got off to this year. Hope it keeps up since I'll be attending the home opener where
Carlos Silva will be the starting pitcher.