This "proposed" tax has about as much reality to it as Santa Claus. This is a bright shinny object that will be nothing but a distraction for now (and later is REALLY later) that no serious follower of legislation can possibly believe would get 30 votes in the Senate in almost any form.
THE VOTES ARE NOT JUST NOT THERE ... NOT ONE SERIOUS LEGISLATOR EVEN THINKS THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE THERE. NO ONE IS EVEN LOOKING FOR THE VOTES. THE PARTY WHIP DOES NOT EVEN HAVE IT AS A MINOR AGENDA ITEM.
Chris Dodd (D-CT) can do real damage with an insane approach to regulation. He understands what this economy needs about as well as I understand particle physics -- not at all. I think some regulation is both needed -- at least on credit default swaps -- and inevitable.
But a bill that starts in committee using a horrible template that the FUCKING CHAIRMAN HAS DRAFTED is how poison gets produced in DC. Even after later amendments and an eventual House/Senate conference, a bill that get through a committee as important as Banking and as badly conceptualized as this one is very dangerous. MAYBE EVEN LETHAL FOR THE ECONOMY AS A WHOLE!
BUT THE KEY POINT IS IT CAN HAPPEN. THIS SETUP IS WHAT THEY TRADE.
Children under the age of five can afford to follow the bright shiny object that undulates before their eyes ... not adults. This thread is truly childish and worse, in these serious times, potentially dangerous.
Learn how these legislative bodies actually work. Begin to understand the process as it actually happens. Teach your wife and friends the basics. Talk about real stuff at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with your extended family.
Let those around you that engage in childish conversations -- stupid sound bites with no substance -- about the legislative process know that you hold literate people that continue to suck on such pacifiers beneath contempt. Get down to brass tacks and stop being part of the great unwashed. This FUCKING thread goes on and on and it is ludicrous how it corrodes logical thinking.
THERE IS NO REALITY HERE. NO ONE WHO CAN MOVE LEGISLATION WANTS ANYTHING THAT RESEMBLES THIS. HOW HARD IS THAT TO UNDERSTAND.
This country is falling apart before our eyes. In the last 30 years it has been degraded to the point that essential parts of our society barely function. I asked a really smart guy that I know that is hip deep in this "health care fiasco" and he compared it to giving a million people bus passes but not taking into account that there are only three buses.
Forget his politics ... they are very different than my own. The important thing is that this is a smart man who is not a whore ass lobbyist who has been involved in health care legislation for over 30 years.
If you talk to guys who truly understand the criminal justice system they say similar things. It's broken and crumbling.
The prisons are post graduate crime courses. We put people in jail in NY for tiny amounts of grass and let child molesters walk with a suspended sentence. Are we fucking kidding?
Homeland Security? It is a fucking joke. Virtually every time a media outlet "tests" the airports they get everything through. These assholes couldn't stop Castro coming through with an Iron Lung and an Uzi.
Think about it: The fucking media can fool them. How bad is that?
It is every support beam that a society needs to survive rotting through. The food supply of this country is contaminated in so many ways it is hard to know where to start. The amount of antibiotics needed just to keep the nearly dead livestock alive till we can kill'em is frightening.
They feed cattle corn and the bacteria level goes up 600% because their digestive tracts are not made for corn.
Farm raised Salmon are now being fed corn. The poor (not the absolute bottom but the working poor) in third world countries have healthier diets than most Americans.
Does anyone remember when we had borders? No country can survive if it does not forcefully protect its borders.
Talk to commercial fisherman. They don't even want their sons to step foot on the boat. They don't believe the industry will exist in 15 years.
We pass a clean air and water act and then don't enforce it. Forget crude from the Middle East. In less than 20 years it will be water from Canada.
We have rating agencies that do not view it as their job to downgrade credits that are deteriorating. There is NO FUCKING WAY that Japan can be a AAA credit unless you are using Martians to look at the numbers. Every serious Japan watcher knows that rating should have been taken down five, if not ten, years ago. Good chance it will come down in 2010 and they'll pretend the elections made them less fiscally reliable.
They make us look like a nearly debt free society. Rolling over that debt starting in just a few years is going to be harder and harder and maybe impossible. It is a joke to think that the ratings have a meaning.
Legislation passes in this country every month that does serious damage to the heart and soul of America. It winds its way through in the standard ways with the backing of committee chairmen and coalitions fashioned by lobbyists. Poisonous shit that sucks the life blood of this nation while the great unwashed get to look at the the shiny object the "distraction of the day".
We passed a bill to give seniors prescriptions that will cost a trillion +++ over a decade and made NO ATTEMPT TO PAY FOR IT ... NONE!
We now have over 200,000 violent and potentially violent gang members in the US and no effective way to combat their growth. These are not petty criminals. They have structure and leaders. What happens when one of the big gangs (one Mexican gang has tens of thousands of members between here and Mexico) gets a twisted genius at the top. It can happen. And left unchecked odds are it someday will happen.
Please ... no more 300 page threads on bills that are fantasy. The real stuff is burying us. Yes this is a country with real strengths but no nation can allow the foundation to rot year after year without having the collapse of the entire structure become more likely over time. It really has gone this far. Unless one proposes an armed insurrection (and I do not) then the only chance is to learn how the system is being gamed by powerful people on both sides of the aisle and teach two or three or ten others -- friends, family, neighbors -- how it really works. And ask them to teach their friends ... their co-workers.
I do not know how many will actually read a long and rambling diatribe like this but, if you have, take what I say as sincere. I might be wrong, I might be crazy ... but I honestly believe we are at or even past the 11th hour. I believe there is little time left for us to get a grip. And I do not believe this fantasy thread is a grip. It is a piece of shit
THE VOTES ARE NOT JUST NOT THERE ... NOT ONE SERIOUS LEGISLATOR EVEN THINKS THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE THERE. NO ONE IS EVEN LOOKING FOR THE VOTES. THE PARTY WHIP DOES NOT EVEN HAVE IT AS A MINOR AGENDA ITEM.
Chris Dodd (D-CT) can do real damage with an insane approach to regulation. He understands what this economy needs about as well as I understand particle physics -- not at all. I think some regulation is both needed -- at least on credit default swaps -- and inevitable.
But a bill that starts in committee using a horrible template that the FUCKING CHAIRMAN HAS DRAFTED is how poison gets produced in DC. Even after later amendments and an eventual House/Senate conference, a bill that get through a committee as important as Banking and as badly conceptualized as this one is very dangerous. MAYBE EVEN LETHAL FOR THE ECONOMY AS A WHOLE!
BUT THE KEY POINT IS IT CAN HAPPEN. THIS SETUP IS WHAT THEY TRADE.
Children under the age of five can afford to follow the bright shiny object that undulates before their eyes ... not adults. This thread is truly childish and worse, in these serious times, potentially dangerous.
Learn how these legislative bodies actually work. Begin to understand the process as it actually happens. Teach your wife and friends the basics. Talk about real stuff at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with your extended family.
Let those around you that engage in childish conversations -- stupid sound bites with no substance -- about the legislative process know that you hold literate people that continue to suck on such pacifiers beneath contempt. Get down to brass tacks and stop being part of the great unwashed. This FUCKING thread goes on and on and it is ludicrous how it corrodes logical thinking.
THERE IS NO REALITY HERE. NO ONE WHO CAN MOVE LEGISLATION WANTS ANYTHING THAT RESEMBLES THIS. HOW HARD IS THAT TO UNDERSTAND.
This country is falling apart before our eyes. In the last 30 years it has been degraded to the point that essential parts of our society barely function. I asked a really smart guy that I know that is hip deep in this "health care fiasco" and he compared it to giving a million people bus passes but not taking into account that there are only three buses.
Forget his politics ... they are very different than my own. The important thing is that this is a smart man who is not a whore ass lobbyist who has been involved in health care legislation for over 30 years.
If you talk to guys who truly understand the criminal justice system they say similar things. It's broken and crumbling.
The prisons are post graduate crime courses. We put people in jail in NY for tiny amounts of grass and let child molesters walk with a suspended sentence. Are we fucking kidding?
Homeland Security? It is a fucking joke. Virtually every time a media outlet "tests" the airports they get everything through. These assholes couldn't stop Castro coming through with an Iron Lung and an Uzi.
Think about it: The fucking media can fool them. How bad is that?
It is every support beam that a society needs to survive rotting through. The food supply of this country is contaminated in so many ways it is hard to know where to start. The amount of antibiotics needed just to keep the nearly dead livestock alive till we can kill'em is frightening.
They feed cattle corn and the bacteria level goes up 600% because their digestive tracts are not made for corn.
Farm raised Salmon are now being fed corn. The poor (not the absolute bottom but the working poor) in third world countries have healthier diets than most Americans.
Does anyone remember when we had borders? No country can survive if it does not forcefully protect its borders.
Talk to commercial fisherman. They don't even want their sons to step foot on the boat. They don't believe the industry will exist in 15 years.
We pass a clean air and water act and then don't enforce it. Forget crude from the Middle East. In less than 20 years it will be water from Canada.
We have rating agencies that do not view it as their job to downgrade credits that are deteriorating. There is NO FUCKING WAY that Japan can be a AAA credit unless you are using Martians to look at the numbers. Every serious Japan watcher knows that rating should have been taken down five, if not ten, years ago. Good chance it will come down in 2010 and they'll pretend the elections made them less fiscally reliable.
They make us look like a nearly debt free society. Rolling over that debt starting in just a few years is going to be harder and harder and maybe impossible. It is a joke to think that the ratings have a meaning.
Legislation passes in this country every month that does serious damage to the heart and soul of America. It winds its way through in the standard ways with the backing of committee chairmen and coalitions fashioned by lobbyists. Poisonous shit that sucks the life blood of this nation while the great unwashed get to look at the the shiny object the "distraction of the day".
We passed a bill to give seniors prescriptions that will cost a trillion +++ over a decade and made NO ATTEMPT TO PAY FOR IT ... NONE!
We now have over 200,000 violent and potentially violent gang members in the US and no effective way to combat their growth. These are not petty criminals. They have structure and leaders. What happens when one of the big gangs (one Mexican gang has tens of thousands of members between here and Mexico) gets a twisted genius at the top. It can happen. And left unchecked odds are it someday will happen.
Please ... no more 300 page threads on bills that are fantasy. The real stuff is burying us. Yes this is a country with real strengths but no nation can allow the foundation to rot year after year without having the collapse of the entire structure become more likely over time. It really has gone this far. Unless one proposes an armed insurrection (and I do not) then the only chance is to learn how the system is being gamed by powerful people on both sides of the aisle and teach two or three or ten others -- friends, family, neighbors -- how it really works. And ask them to teach their friends ... their co-workers.
I do not know how many will actually read a long and rambling diatribe like this but, if you have, take what I say as sincere. I might be wrong, I might be crazy ... but I honestly believe we are at or even past the 11th hour. I believe there is little time left for us to get a grip. And I do not believe this fantasy thread is a grip. It is a piece of shit
