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I assume everyone is drinking Blanton's as their sipping bourbon of choice because it's so drat smooth. Also supporting whoever suggested Lagavulin 16yr.
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May 7, 2014 06:05
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Bassetking posted:I'm sipping on Bookers. It helps ease the pain. Excellent choice. That honey vanilla vodka thing sounds superb as well. sweart gliwere posted:Blanton's is fine, but bourbon generally is either too sweet or lacking in character WRT Scotch and Rye. I love Bourbon but it fulfills different needs from Scotch mostly by not being Scotch. Sometimes I want something with a little less character. Plus Bourbon is easier to abuse when life is terrible. Haha, agreed. This is why I request it for every gift giving occasion. I think I'm getting a bottle for my birthday here soon. Mmm.
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May 7, 2014 08:49
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Bernie Sanders did an AMA on Reddit and the local population of crazies was shockingly well heeled. Maybe its just that Bernie magic: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/24zdnn/i_am_senator_bernie_sanders_ivt_ama/ Also got Lagavulin 16 for my birthday, its a good day.
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May 8, 2014 10:10
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So what are the Cayman's getting in return for being a tax shelter? If its just a flat fee couldnt the US government just essentially offer them a deal where if they abolish their tax haven status the US gov't would massively increase their international aid package above and beyond what they're currently gaining from the rich?
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May 11, 2014 05:45
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^^^^^ Ahh ok, I wasn't sure exactly how much interaction there was with the country outside of some accounting tricks.Install Windows posted:Money and it helps drive their tourism/hospitality industry. Presumably because the taxes we end up collecting will be more than what we give them. If that's not the case then it's clearly a terrible deal.
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May 11, 2014 06:04
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Good Citizen posted:Short answer is that this poo poo is really complicated. The US is one of the only countries in the world that has a worldwide taxation system instead of a territorial one. Also it has the highest statutory tax rate on corporations in the world and the largest amount of capital investment. This leads to all kind of fuckery. Fair enough, just trying to come up with ideas outside of changing our tax code. I should probably just ask my family. They're all accountants of one type or another.
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May 11, 2014 06:09
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In some slightly happier news, today an openly gay man was drafted in the NFL Draft by the St. Louis Rams. When they cut to the camera feed in his house on NFL Network and ESPN (this is a common tactic for big name prospects) he and his boyfriend? shared a kiss. That's right, ESPN and NFL Network aired a an interracial gay kiss and then continued to air it on highlight packages. Jersey sales are already absurd considering he isn't expected to start and might not even make the team from a pure talent perspective. 
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May 11, 2014 09:57
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Swagger Dagger posted:Baking does rule, but I dunno about less mindfulness since whenever I wing my measurements things turn out lovely. My favorite part about baking is that it's science and an oven, anything you gently caress up is on you. Absolutely, but the fun part of baking is once you understand the necessary ratios of a recipe you can start riffing at will. It's a good time. Plus its delicious. HBNRW posted:I always found taking my easel, a folding chair, and couple dime bags, then walking out into the woods to paint generally keeps me from jumping off a tall bridge. I served with a guy, he separated, that spends every Sunday smoking and painting with old Bob Ross videos. He's getting pretty good. Question for you all. I had a discussion with my father who claims he heard some report that one of the unintended side effects of gun control in Britain has been a huge upswing in armed robberies with a gun because the criminals know that no one else will have one. I asked for data which he couldn't provide and I pointed out that would still be an irrelevant point if robberies went up while actual deaths went down since robberies are clearly the lesser of two evils. The whole thing is clearly a produced talking point since my dad has for my entire life shown about zero interest in guns or gun crimes until the past few years when he's become more and more indoctrinated by right wing media. Anywho, the matter at hand. I found a lovely blog post about it where the guy has seemingly done some lovely as math on actual good data: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/inconvenient-truth-violent-crime-rate-in-the-gun-free-uk-is-800-of-the-heavily-armed-us/ I don't know how he's getting such a high violent crime rate from those seemingly solid UK crime stats when going by the FBI definition of violent crime it's nowhere near the rate he quotes. In addition one of the fun pieces of data from this UK crime data: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_296191.pdf Is the absurdly low rates of gun crime and homicides. Their homicide rate is less than 1 per 100k while ours, according to the FBI stats, is 4.7 per 100k. Anyway I don't know if this is some thing making the rounds or if the WSJ just picked it up, since that's my dads favorite media source.
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May 12, 2014 08:20
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God said let there be a most punchable face and lo it was so. Look at that thing. I don't even need to know who he is to get the urge for face punching. Knowing just makes the urge that much stronger. I wonder how cathartic it would be to give Cruz a black eye. I wonder if his employees and coworkers have to constantly fight the urge to slap the poo poo out of him. I cant look away.
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May 12, 2014 21:18
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Rap Record Hoarder posted:I've met Ted Cruz in person and this is only a pale shadow of how punchable his face is IRL. It's like comparing a candle to the sun. Are your hands permanently balled into fists now?
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May 13, 2014 02:26
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Not to interrupt the always productive gun chat, but I loved this: http://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5717674/obamas-plan-to-let-putin-hang-himself-is-working It would be wonderful to see a large, real world, positive impact of globalization being its ability to check unfettered aggression.
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May 18, 2014 20:06
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Fried Chicken posted:The takeaway though should be that if other countries have the same or greater gun ownership rates, without our mass shootings and violence, something else is the problem The answer is always mental health combined with a society that glorifies violence. You can't fix the societal problem but you can sure as gently caress work on the mental health issue. I mean we don't even have good mental health programs for vets much less the average person. baw posted:Reince has laid down the gauntlet, we can question Hillary's health. How did they feel when people questioned McCains health during his last run? I realize that Priebus is saying now that it was fair, but Im curious if they had problems with it during. Relentlessboredomm fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 22:58
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Miltank posted:Systematic poverty. So you think as poverty gets worse there will be more shootings? Interesting. So far as poverty has gotten worse its had no effect on violent crime rates. Do you think shootings are an outlier to that overarching trend?
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May 19, 2014 00:08
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Miltank posted:Poverty in densely urban areas coupled with the drug war and the intense ghettoization of the black community are huge factors for what makes up the US murder rate. Hmmm, good point. I see what you mean about the systemic poverty issue since we as a nation incarcerate the poor for anything and everything along with denying them access to even a hint of mental/medical care which only exacerbates the basic problem of ghettoization by housing discrimination. Fried Chicken posted:It depends which shootings you are talking about but Mark Ames makes a case linking poverty, income, work stability, worker protections and stress from all of the above with workplace shootings in Going Postal Interesting, that makes a lot of sense. I've had that drat book on my list forever. I guess I'll pick it up after I read this new Taibbi book. Which, sidebar, is all about the increasing poverty rate and the ways in which the entire system now favors and protects the rich while actively crushing the poor. Its great thus far.
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May 19, 2014 01:25
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Apparently as a registered Independent in AZ I get the option to vote in either primary without changing my voter registration status. I can only pick one though. I'm leaning towards the Republican primary because its Arizona and that's where all the money/power resides.
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May 21, 2014 01:16
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Interestingly after this mass shooting the media is doing their usual bit where they demonize every cultural habit the shooter has instead of addressing gun issues BUT this time that means they're actually bringing MRA/PUA poo poo to light. If we can at least get the nation at large to loathe and revile these pathetic fucks that would be better than anything else that has come out of these shooting events over the past few years. It is kind of mind blowing to think about how many huge shootings there have been in just the past three years.
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May 28, 2014 04:43
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MaxxBot posted:Is it that inconceivable that I want to hear the argument of people that disagree with me? I understand that a gun control argument would derail this thread. That's why I simply want people to tell me their reasoning while I sit here and listen. I want to understand your position without ruining the thread by starting a gun control argument. I do not feel some obligation to defend my side of the argument, I just want clarity on what exactly you are supporting and what policies you want enacted. Massive mental health reformation, poverty legislation, and more spending on actual firearms research. Most gun bans I'm iffy on since we have zero data but I'd support an all around hand gun ban even though its so laughably unfeasible I might as well ask for a dissolution of the electoral college system replaced by a multiple runoff system for elections. All that said, I don't loving care anymore to have gun debates. The gun people have won, end of story. Its not going to improve unless we get a modern Black Panther type group of armed minorities.
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May 28, 2014 05:35
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Apparently Jim Webb is thinking about running for President: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/19/former-sen-jim-webb-thinking-about-white-house-run/ I'd still personally prefer Sanders or Warren but I would absolutely vote for Webb over Clinton if only because Webb is the reason the Post 9/11 GI Bill exists. He proposed and pushed the largest piece of legislation to help vets in decades.
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May 28, 2014 22:22
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^^^^Im with him.Shifty Pony posted:No we don't but I've been considering starting one given how relatively hosed up the housing market is for everyone in it. Hahah holy poo poo is this real? It is New York formerly under Bloomberg so I shouldn't be surprised but that's so over the top.
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May 28, 2014 22:41
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Rhesus Pieces posted:I'm sure those who are now stuck renting will be pleased to find out who their new landlords are! I would almost admire their rapacious persistence if it weren't bleeding the entire country to death.
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May 28, 2014 22:47
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Why does D&D go through this process of kvetching about vets benefits every few months, especially with vets who agree with you? Beyond a few isolated cases among the officer corps most military are middle class or poorer trying to scrape out a decent living with what little is left to them. Yes, a lot of those benefits should be available to everyone. Having a section of society that is getting free education only strengthens the argument that everyone should get it. The military collects data on all aspects of the GI Bill and so far the takeaway is that its a net benefit. More money is produced as a result than it costs to put a vet through school. Also the military is absolutely an entirely different beast than regular work. Its not necessarily easier or harder, it's just wildly different. I've done lovely jobs before the military and after. They're not the same. There is no employer in the country that can come to your house, tell you how to clean it, and then punish you for not doing it according to their personal whims, a punishment that often involves garnishing wages. It's the total and complete control over your life that makes it different. Some people actually like the control because they don't have to think and can just go on auto pilot. Personally I loving hated the loss of freedom.
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Jun 1, 2014 09:35
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agarjogger posted:And since the Republicans have been trusted to carry the torch for the troops, you're pretty much dead hosed as the rest of us. Yea, I'm actually surprised they haven't managed to scale back the benefits during this recession. They've toyed around with the idea of messing with retirements but nothing so far.
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Jun 1, 2014 10:04
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Fried Chicken posted:No, they actually cut them. The bill to "reverse" that only restored existing retirements and left future ones cut Oh I hadn't heard that last little bit. So what is the current retirement for future military members? Is it the 401k style plan they were floating a while back? I actually support cutting back on the retirement benefits so long as everyone currently in is grandfathered into the old plan. That said, my support comes from the knowledge that a shittier retirement means less of the truly bright and capable people will stay in for 20 increasing the ever present brain drain. Hopefully that in turn will expose the massive system wide inefficiencies papered over with stacks of money and the broken backs of enlisted. Before I joined the military I was all about cutting the DoD budget and now after I'm all about cutting the DoD budget but for wildly different reasons. \/\/\/Ahh thanks, that sounds only a bit worse than the current iteration. Relentlessboredomm fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jun 1, 2014 |
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Jun 1, 2014 17:37
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anonumos posted:My ex-marine/cop/Liberty University freshman high school friend was upset about the trade. Apparently the guy they're getting back abandoned his unit and tried to quit the war. Then he got captured and now we're sending back 4 TOTALLY GUILTY ter'rists to get his winy rear end back. Or something like that. It's always fascinating to me which members of society are considered worthwhile by people. This kind of human is alright but that kind is distasteful so my typical moral rigidity just flies out the window when discussing that kind. It must be wonderful to have so little self awareness and not even recognize the internal hypocrisy.
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Jun 1, 2014 19:19
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Samurai Sanders posted:I guess what I question is, do those flag draped coffins actually have an effect on future decisions not to go to war, or is it like mass shootings where the anger and sadness is mostly just ritual and doesn't actually influence policy? It definitely feels like the latter. I think Iraq and Afghanistan proved pretty definitively that most people don't give a drat. I mean how much was it mentioned in the past election? For the current midterms? For the 04 election? They've done a great job of isolating military from civilians to the point that there's not a huge effect on most people's lives when we go to war. Only those in the military and their immediate families give a drat and they're an insignificant portion of the population. The rest is fine with assuaging whatever lingering guilt they have over American soldiers dying by buying a few ribbons and waving a flag.
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Jun 1, 2014 20:31
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The response to mass shootings is a really fantastic analogy. A whole lot of death followed by a cultural ritual of shallow mourning and we're good to go. That onion article hits it on the nose: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens Almost perfectly works for military intervention.
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Jun 1, 2014 20:36
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^^^^^Even if true, it was still a loving decade. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence that we won't just do it again.Hodgepodge posted:I seem to recall it being well established that Americans prefer wars that they perceive as being winnable via air-superiority to those that are not because they entail less American casualties. But I can't remember the source, so I could well be wrong. If it is the case, then this would likely extend to drone warfare as well. And when politicians come to the people asking which kind of war they want or the people take that preference and vote or protest based off of it then it'll be something more than a meaningless gesture. I definitely understand the argument that with some of the human element removed from our side war might be both more frequent and of a longer duration. Unfortunately you're essentially arguing to maintain a certain level of human suffering based on that fear and that makes me more than a bit squeamish. It also presumes that this human suffering acts as a sort of check on future war mongering and I quite frankly see no evidence of that anywhere. Relentlessboredomm fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jun 1, 2014 |
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Jun 1, 2014 20:41
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A Bag of Milk posted:David Graeber has a new interview with the Salon and it has some pretty interesting insights. It's long, so I won't quote the whole thing, but here's an excerpt: God this hurts. A whole country run on spite. I suppose it doesn't surprise me, it's one of those things you instinctively understand but the incisiveness of it is a shot to the heart.
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Jun 2, 2014 01:15
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" isn't too far off. But how to even begin with something like that? We're currently discussing how human suffering affects Americans emotionally. If people can't even empathize with Iraqi civilians, then where are the roots of the altruism revolution?
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If your blood pressure is a little low then you should pick up the new Taibbi book. This thing is a rage inducing machine. He, in his usual Taibbi way, demonstrates all the various ways the system is failing but its mostly focused on the Justice System. I'm starting to think Obama or more specifically Eric Holder is the worst thing to happen to the criminal justice system in decades. It's overwhelming how hard the shift has been. They've taken a slow drift and accelerated it exponentially.
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Jun 3, 2014 01:20
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joeburz posted:Rage inducing is one way of putting it. I had to put down the book a few times because of a combination of bewilderment and anger, it's loving surreal. The description of the justice process for the poor in the city was something else. The whole process by which they just scoop up random minorities in poor neighborhoods to meet quotas with no concern for innocence or guilt is eye opening. Then they throw them into a prison with a minor misdemeanor charge and bail set above their means essentially forcing them to plea out and pay a fine rather than fight the bullshit charge since they'll have to sit in prison until the trial. It's just sickening. It makes me want to be a public defender. I'm on the immigration bit now and it's going to make me cry tears of rage. Relentlessboredomm fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 01:59
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Just a small point of contention. They've increased the basic training length for the Air Force from 6 weeks to 8 weeks. That was only done maybe ~5 years ago.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:07
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Radish posted:How is Holder personably responsible (I'm honestly curious)? This sounds like another thing the GOP is bitching about but for absolutely the wrong reasons. So back in the day when he was a Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno he wrote a memo. It came to be called the Holder memo. This was 1999. It outlined a number of things that could allow for more aggressive prosecution of white collar crime. Unfortunately through a series of events including Holder himself railing against certain pieces of his own writing while working for a private firm, it came to be an entirely different beast. It had one very very important piece in it quote:Prosecutors may consider the collateral consequences of a corporate criminal conviction in determining whether to charge the corporation with a criminal offense. Which is entirely reasonable on its face but it came to be the justification for the farce that occurred post crisis. At first this meant, "hey don't gut an entire company when there are five ring leaders we can charge" but escalated to "any criminal charge will hurt the company and its employees" and has even gotten to "we can't foresee the ripple effects of hurting one company on the economy at large". So now we have a wonderful justification for turning a blind eye to instances of fraud on a staggering scale. If the company is big enough and important enough well then a criminal charge might hurt the economy so its best to just take a large fine and avoid the court case. Taibbi digs into this in much much more detail. Its the first part of the book. The other bit that's making me hate the Obama administration justice system is their hyper aggression towards immigrants. There is a federal immigration rule called 287(g) that deputizes essentially anyone with a badge to arrest undocumented aliens on behalf of ICE. MA and NY tried to opt out and were told in no uncertain terms that there was no opt out. It allows local police anywhere in the country to go after immigrants for any reason. Busted tailight? Deported. Rear ended? Deported. The reason I point my anger at the Obama administration is the numbers. They've crushed all the records in a handful of years. Obama's administration has hit over a million deportations since 09/10. The expedited stipulated order of removal which allows for the ICE people to process you faster while waiving all of your rights has also been used far more. 2000-2010 they used it to deport 160,000 people. In 2011 alone they used it on 390,000. Oh and illegal aliens have no rights in the system because "Removal proceedings are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them". Seriously, gently caress Holder and this justice department. Also, read the book.
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Jun 3, 2014 07:39
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Luigi Thirty posted:I don't understand why you'd want to read these books, it's like okay more proof the world is poo poo and will never improve and that you can't do anything about it because leftism is 100% dead and we'll all be corporate slaves living in company towns in 50 years. Now what? I have to avoid this crap or I'd never get out of loving bed or drive my car off a bridge. There are a few different reasons although first off I don't agree that it will never improve. One, I am fascinated by systems particularly the powerful ones that are almost invisible in my daily life. Taibbi fleshes out a lot of a system I only see in very fragmented pieces. Two, there are actually things you can do to improve individual lives. Public defenders that truly protect the poor from dragnet policing make a genuinely positive impact and help staunch the bleeding. They can't change the entire system by themselves but it does make an individual impact. Three, I don't find anger at injustice to be a negative emotion. It's a powerful motivator. Four, the more I discover about the current system the more informed my decisions become about how to deal with it. Do I leave? Do I become more politically active? Do I rabble for violent revolution? Do I run for politics? Etc. Five, things will change. Impermanence is the essence of life and it applies to all things. The politics of America is very different now than 40 years ago which is wildly different from 80 years ago. Will the system get better or worse? Who knows, but it will absolutely change. And lastly I try to look at it as the darkest of dark comedies and hope I live long enough to see the punchline.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:26
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The DoJ's sudden refusal to prosecute corporate fraud in the Obama administration also has another piece to it. The head of the Criminal Division of the DoJ is an important position that often determines whether to prosecute or not for the large financial cases we're talking about. That position, up until this March, was filled by Lanny Breuer. Breuer was not a well known prosecutor, which is ideally what you'd look for in the position. As we've seen in this thread, being a prosecutor is a tough job and requires a certain kind of person otherwise you end up with someone unwilling to go after people with high powered lawyers for fear of failure. That's Breuer. Even better, his history is one of representing high profile guys under congressional investigation like Roger Clemens. He's the guy who got up in front of the press to crow about the HSBC decision. He's the same guy who got up in front of the press when UBS got busted for the LIBOR scandal which the British regulators had them dead to rights on, and said quote:Looking at the severity of the conduct, looking at the collateral consequences, we think we arrived at a very robust, very real, and very appropriate resolution That resolution was to fine UBS 1.5$ billion with ZERO criminal charges. It didn't even have to admit wrongdoing. So part of the issue is they're pushing this idea of collateral consequences and part of it is they got non prosecutor, corporate shills in the top prosecutor spots. Now the concern is that there isn't anyone good in the usual pipeline of federal prosecutors for the position because the Obama administration hasn't actually prosecuted much if any white collar crime in the past 6 years.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:50
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:What I meant is that the claim that police harassment against poor people is getting worse over time is hilariously ignorant. It hasn't been very many decades since explicit vagrancy laws were constitutional, and those laws were in place after Black Codes/Jim Crow, which of course were trying to reverse loving slavery. Well, there is this:   and combined  So, things might be better but there's a hell of a lot more poor people in prison than there was during eras with more race crime and that's in spite of an overall lowering crime rate.
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Jun 4, 2014 00:06
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djw175 posted:Since I'm rather young, I have to ask. What happened in 1980 to just loving spike that way? Was it some specific thing or a multitude of things? You'll notice on the bottom graph where the years are a little bit easier to pick out that it's actual 1981. That's when Reagan took office. Also which spike? Those big spikes in crime before they decline or the MASSIVE spike in incarceration? I'm speaking to the incarceration spike.
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Jun 4, 2014 00:15
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StarMagician posted:Fox Butterfield, is that you?  I subscribe to the more statistically consistent theory of atmospheric lead drops causing a reduction in violence. Isn't this a big Fox News meme? Rhesus Pieces posted:Why does crazy poo poo like this so often happen in Florida? Seriously, has anyone actually studied this? The northeast exported all of their trash to FL and it mixed with the delightful bits of the south present in FL. Relentlessboredomm fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 4, 2014 02:28
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StarMagician posted:It's a reference to James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column, which itself references an article on this subject from 2000: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/10/us/number-in-prison-grows-despite-crime-reduction.html Not arresting 1.2 million people and releasing 1.2 million people who have been imprisoned isn't remotely the same thing. One is dumping a million people onto the street with likely nothing as a safety net, a criminal record, and a significant amount of time spent in a violent system that does little to nothing to promote rehabilitation. If those 1.2 million people had never been arrested in the first place, no I don't think there would be a statistically significant increase in crime rates.
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Jun 4, 2014 03:34
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computer parts posted:It depends why the crime rate fell in the first place. If it actually was because you locked up a bunch of poor young men (groups that are extremely correlated with crime) then yeah having them off the street probably did help the crime rates (ignoring the ethical component for a second). Well it fell in almost every industrialized country in the world at a similar rate and whether or not you think it's the lead absolutely no one else is imprisoning a huge number of young men. If harsher sentencing is the answer then it's an answer only in America which is loving laughable.
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Jun 4, 2014 04:49
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computer parts posted:I'm not saying lead isn't a factor, really it's the opposite - I'm debating the idea that crime levels would be unchanged if a lot more people were free to commit crimes, the vast majority of which would be heavily leaded due to their environments (i.e., they're poor). I mean this is a hard thing to prove either way. Personally I don't think it'd create a drastic change, particularly for modern day crime rates where lead is less of an issue but again it's essentially impossible to prove. Either way, the solution to the problem isn't to have the highest incarceration rate in the world. That's really the take home point here.
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Jun 4, 2014 06:46
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