GJDailleult comments

Posted in: Irish opposition on brink of election win See in context

They aren't "state owned banks". They are banks that received government guarantees.

There is only one reason for a government to guarantee a bank, that reason is called organized crime.

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Posted in: Bush nixes Denver visit, citing invite to Assange See in context

Bush tried repeatedly to make the tax cuts permanent, not just extend them til 2010.

The 10 year thing was a budget trick, which I was going to point out, but I see it was done above already.

Agree about the reason for not attending being disingenuous too. For all we know Assange was invited only because the organizers knew he wouldn't be able to attend, but they thought sending an invitation would give them some "cred". Real reason for not attending probably something else.

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Posted in: Facts overshadowed in debate over union bill in Wisconsin See in context

Even so, Walker has portrayed public employees as the “haves” and private workers as the “have nots,” saying government workers can afford trims to their salaries and benefits because on average they earn more than private-sector workers.

I see, the solution to some people not having enough money is for other people to not have enough money. But people with lots of money should keep all their money. Got it.

It is a bit silly to for the writer write a logical analysis of what is just a lot of illogical, ideological gibberish. This stuff is either about diverting attention from the planned asset stripping of Wisconsin's public assets, or worse, people like Walker actually believe what they are saying, and they are representative of the total economic illiteracy of the USA that is bringing us all down.

And no, I have no strong opinions about unions either pro or con, but I do have strong opinions about con-men / idiots who claim something that is not the cause of the problem is the cause of the problem.

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Posted in: Irish opposition on brink of election win See in context

The question is how did they even manage to get 17%? Should have been 0%. My Gaelic is a bit rusty (about 4 generations of no usage does that) but I thought Fianna Fail meant "soldiers of incredible moronic stupidity and mind-blowing levels of corruption".

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Posted in: Bush nixes Denver visit, citing invite to Assange See in context

smith, a "sheila" or "bruce" reference would have been very impressive indeed, but the comment made is still pretty good for an American (inside Canadian joke there, butt of the joke is not Americans). Even better would have been a reference to "The Prisoner", probably before smith's time, but wow, Karen Travers was gorgeous. Assange is basically the Karen Travers of the 21st century, minus the gorgeous bit.

Myself I have no problem differentiating the guy, Assange, from the organization, Wikileaks. Suspect he is not a guy I would want to have a beer with, but doesn't mean that he isn't be doing something useful. Not sure why that goes over so many heads, as my head is very close to the ground.

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Posted in: New Zealand earthquake toll at 145 dead See in context

“I think of the brick buildings, about half of them won’t be able to be saved,” Ingham said.

Just heard on the news the same thing. So before anybody posts a "what were they thinking putting up brick buildings in an earthquake zone?" comment, let's just make it clear that the city was built long before anybody had any idea it was located in an earthquake zone. The whole science of plate tectonics is really very new and only really accepted in the 1970's, before that the danger was not recognized or understood. A huge problem for New Zealand, and also Canada and the USA in the BC, Washington and Oregon areas.

If it is possible for anything good to come out of this disaster, it would be that it wakes people in those places up to the danger and focuses them on reinforcing buildings and taking other safety measures as much as possible.

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Posted in: Bush nixes Denver visit, citing invite to Assange See in context

smithinjapan, SolidariTea was just showing his knowledge of Australian lingo there, actually a pretty good line. Bush (I am using capitals, so don't get mad at me!) equals outback, in fact it is the much more common term when you are in Australia.

As for the banks being in a panic, the question is what could Wikileaks have that is worse than is already known.

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Posted in: Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights See in context

If the private sector pays less for comparable work then the public sector, does that mean that the private sector needs to increase its wages, or that the public sector needs to decrease its?

It means that the private sector needs to increase its wages. Lots of countries (ie. the third world) have low private sector wages, why would you want to emulate them?

The more important thing though is that in the debt-money system we have, all money must be borrowed by somebody. People can only borrow what they have the earning power to pay back. If you are rich and have money in the bank, then obviously the bank has to find somebody to borrow the money who will pay them more in interest than they are paying you in interest. Otherwise the bank will go broke (I will ignore the fact that in reality they already have). So by attacking unions and trying to force down wages, the American rich are basically attacking themselves, they just don't know it. That though has nothing to do with whether unions are good or bad, that question is politics, not economics.

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Posted in: Bush nixes Denver visit, citing invite to Assange See in context

Sherzer said Bush doesn’t want to be part of a forum that invited someone who has “willfully and repeatedly done great harm to the interests of the United States.”

Actually, the question is whether he has done any great harm to the United States. Seems more like he has done great harm to many other countries, but as for the USA it seems he has exposed that the USA seems to have a reasonably competent State Department, out in the world gathering information. They aren't reporting on the USA itself, though that would be very interesting if they did.

Otherwise, enjoyed the assessment of smithinjapan's thought processes, keep them coming. And some friendly (seriously) advice, the "whackos on the far Left" line is past its sell-by date.

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Posted in: Bush nixes Denver visit, citing invite to Assange See in context

So he doesn't want to be part of a forum that invites people with different views, even though that person will not be attending. An odd idea of what a "forum" is, and an odd response from a person with an odd idea of what a forum is.

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Posted in: Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights See in context

Hahahaha. Are you trying to convince the majority of taxpaying voters in Wisconsin that you are smarter than them, that you know better how to spend "their" money and that they should do what you tell them to do?

I am not saying I am smarter than anybody. I am saying their opinion is irrelevant. It is like asking asking the passengers on a plane how long they want the wings to be. "Right wing" political systems collapse economically, "left wing" political systems collapse economically. The only relationship between politics, and the economic and monetary systems, is that politics can screw things up. This is just a case of politics making a bad situation worse.

GJ, you are often interesting to read, and frequently make good points.

And it may surprise molenir that, even though I almost always disagree with his opinions on the USA, I find he usually is the guy making the most sense whenever he turns up on other, non-USA focused, comment threads. But on this one, I think you have things backwards. The imbalances between the private and public sector, whether they are real or not is unimportant, are not a sign that you have a public sector problem, they are a sign that you have a private sector problem. And nobody is doing a single thing about it.

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Posted in: Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights See in context

That's the majority of the state of Wisconsin.

Then the majority of the state of Wisconsin is wrong.

But thanks for making the point for me much more competently than I have been doing. Manfromamerica is like most people, he thinks what we have here is a political problem of right vs. left. He is wrong, what we have is an apolitical problem of the economic and monetary systems. Those systems are like any other systems, they are issues of engineering not politics. The difference is that in other systems, money is made by designing the system well (ie. you make no money if your airplanes keep falling out of the sky), while in the monetary system you can get very rich by designing it badly. The politics though are what is laid on top of the system, a question of how to divide up what the system provides. What has happened in the USA is that the system has been damaged, maybe beyond repair, which means it makes no difference what political system is laid on top of it.

Scott Walker is just another guy who thinks there is this stuff called "money", and that if he keeps it away from one tribe then there will be more for his tribe. This has been happening for hundreds of years, the inability to understand the difference between economics and money, and politics, and it always ends badly. It will again here and then the people of Wisconsin will elect a Democrat, and he won't know what he is doing either.

Too much money to be made in not knowing what you are doing.

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Posted in: Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights See in context

This entire Wisconsin union situation is something being pushed by people with absolutely zero understanding of the economic situation, zero understanding of how the USA got to this place, zero understanding of the role of unions in how they got to this place, zero understanding of their own precarious financial position, and zero understanding of the extreme dangers that lie ahead that may wipe them out themselves. The question of whether unions are good or bad is a real question, but it is basically an ant when compared to the elephant question. Scott Walker and the people behind him and who support him have no credibility whatsoever.

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Posted in: U.S. Air Force awards $35 bil airborne refueling tanker contract to Boeing See in context

What? No complaints about $35 billion of hard-earned private sector tax dollars being spent. I thought the debt and deficit was "killing America".

Don't worry though, it isn't your money anyways. Your money was spent long ago. It is your debt though. Somebody at the Fed just pushed a key on his computer and there it was. A debt that can never be paid pack, at least not in cash.

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Posted in: Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights See in context

About 10AM in Japan, same pattern seems to be emerging as was seen on yesterday's comment thread on this topic. The superiority of Adam Smith's invisible hand vs. a top-down, centrally planned hierarchical structure being shown again.

A couple of things, one that the "Walker was only saying in private what he says in public" defense seems to be coming out in a lot of places. Aha, so a man can be openly insane and still be elected governor in the USA. This is very interesting. Second is about the myth of the "powerful" unions, which this article repeats. There is an amazing chart that shows the number of strikes involving over 1,000 people in the USA from 1947 to the present. From 1947 until the early eighties (this being the time of Sarah Palin's "Real America") they ranged from a little under 200 to about 475, with the average about 350. Then in the early '80s they fell off a cliff, until today, when there are none. There are no strikes today of course because the unions are so POWERFUL that they don't have to, har, har, har. Or maybe there are other reasons????

Breaking the unions and the outsourcing and globalization that went with it are all part of the giant scam used to maintain "prosperity" without price inflation following American peak oil and the oil price rises of the '70s. The problem is that the people who came up with the scam knew it was a scam. The generation of today don't. Republicans are basically the "Ore Ore" caller who really thinks he is your grandson. No, he doesn't think it he KNOWS it!!! Cue reaching for J-E dictionary.

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Posted in: Gadhafi forces, foreign mercenaries strike back at revolt near Tripoli See in context

Drugs, Bin Laden, and why am I not being treated like the Queen of England, she has been in power longer than me. I mean, not in power like I am not in power. Lunatic. Also, doing the "speech" by phone and not TV makes it look like he is losing control quickly and is in hiding.

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Posted in: Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights See in context

Republicans are crying "class warfare", but are really wanting to create a country of the "haves" and "have-nots"

That is what they think they are doing. What they are doing in reality is just creating a country of "have-nots", they are going to go down hardest in the end. Economics and money is a system, no different from nature or anything in engineering, political left-right structure is just a small component of the overall system.

But hey, you know what they say about inherited wealth.

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Posted in: Wisconsin governor pranked by caller posing as donor See in context

Thanks JT, this was the most informative article and comment forum I have seen on your site.

And I know that yabits and globalwatcher agree.

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Posted in: Wisconsin governor pranked by caller posing as donor See in context

Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my. After I posted my comment above went to another site to check on the news and the YouTube video was posted, so thought I would check it out... "Communism fell because Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers".

Sorry, I can't comment anymore, I am laughing too hard.

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Posted in: Wisconsin governor pranked by caller posing as donor See in context

Republican governors may try to go after powerful public employee unions as part of their budget-cutting policies.

If they were really "powerful" then they wouldn't have to be spending their time fighting against idiots like Scott Walker. They would just pick up the phone and make a call, and they wouldn't have to deal with Walker.

As for the Koch brothers, they are not "businessmen", they are terrorists. Money junkies, nothing more. The purpose of business is not to promote the collection of money, the purpose of money is to promote the activity of business. Basic fact that has been understood for thousands of years, but somehow beyond the comprehension of the American alchemist class. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan have a lot to answer for.

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Posted in: Wisconsin lawmakers take up bill to cripple unions See in context

The taxpaying voters made it clear that they wanted lower taxes

No, they made it clear that they didn't understand who and what is the cause of their problems. If they understood they wouldn't have voted Republican. That might be changing now though.

Shouldn't have voted Democrat either. But at least "tax and spend" is better than "don't tax but spend, spend, spend, and give stuff away to your crony "capitalist" welfare queen pals".

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Posted in: Wisconsin lawmakers take up bill to cripple unions See in context

I'm with you Badsey 100%, but take a look at what your up against.

Posters who claim not to see the hypocrisy of "fighting against unions to protect taxpayers" while they they don't care a bit about fully taxpayer paid-for assets being sold off to neo-lib welfare bums at bargain prices. And another poster claiming that the taxpayer should take the opportunity to rip off those private sector rubes by unloading outdated assets on the fools. Like they can't google the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal and get that info themselves, and are going to walk into a bad deal.

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Posted in: NZ earthquake toll at 98 dead, 226 missing See in context

Sorry about the confusion there, but when I heard about the liquefaction problem I started thinking about the Tokyo situation, and also Vancouver and my home town of Victoria, where some parts are built on landfill. Also, I am not sure, but I think Seattle down by the two stadiums is on landfill as well. I think I read somewhere that Christchurch was on an alluvial plain or something, and made the jump to landfill, so again sorry about the error.

Anyways, was just talking to my sister down in Australia, she said my brother-in-law was on the phone just after the earthquake reports came out, calling the Dunedin branch office to check on staff safety in the Christchurch office of the company he works for. Couldn't get through to Christchurch. He was told that in Dunedin they thought they were at the epicenter of a big quake, when they heard they weren't they knew it was going to be a bad situation.

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Posted in: NZ earthquake toll at 98 dead, 226 missing See in context

As a Canadian from British Columbia who lives in Tokyo, I have been watching the news from Christchurch pretty closely. My main concern is of course with the loss of life and the hope that as many people can be rescued as possible, but there are also a couple of extremely troubling points coming out about this earthquake. One, is the amount of liquefaction taking place and the instability of the buildings on landfill or less than solid ground. The last big earthquake in Tokyo was the 1923 earthquake I think, the modern Tokyo of tall buildings and areas of landfill such as Odaiba has never experienced a major earthquake. Two, is the first thing I noticed from the pictures was how much it looked like home (a point made by a writer at the Vancouver Sun also), especially all the brick buildings. For those who don't know, the Cascadia fault that lies off BC, and Washington and Oregon states is thought to be the world's most dangerous, but with no major quakes since European settlement.

Not writing that to try to scare people, but it is definitely scary. Hopefully the authorities in Japan, Canada, and the USA, can study the New Zealand quake and find ways to be better prepared if possible.

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Posted in: Wisconsin lawmakers take up bill to cripple unions See in context

Repubs should be careful here, people can change political views very quick when they perceive that politics is affecting them directly, and is not some abstract thing on the TV that affects other people. Happened with the so-called Reagan Democrats who blamed Carter for all their problems, happens all the time.

Or maybe Walker thinks there are no Republican voters working for the Wisconsin government.

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Posted in: What’s really at stake in Japan’s revised pornography laws? See in context

The underlying thing here is that there is such a large market for violent sexual content in Japan. What are the social reasons for this?

It might partly be a result of the mosaic censorship itself. Obviously if you can't show the actual act (which rightly or wrongly is the whole point of porn), then you are going to have fewer customers than you would otherwise. So Japanese producers over the years have had to come up with other ways to attract viewers by appealing to certain, let's say, sexual deviencies, one of them being violent content.

Not saying there aren't social things going on also, but just that if they got rid of the mosaic I think the Japanese porn industry might over time clean itself naturally somewhat as it would be easier to make money just by selling straight porn and naked women. On the other hand though, may just end up with violent content with no mosaic. A tough one.

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Posted in: Gadhafi appears on TV to dispel rumors he has fled See in context

Going to bed late because I was watching Gadhafi's "speech" tonight, it was amazing, was wondering what century I was living in, is it the 21st or 11th?

I'm sure there aren't any Libyans spending their time on his site, they have more important stuff to do. But just want to say I support them and hope they can string the SOB up on a rope, or put a bullet through his head.

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Posted in: Neither side budging in Wisconsin union fight See in context

"Reaganomics" was about nothing more than increasing the debt and the money supply .....I am having trouble understanding your posting here, GJDaileult.

globalwatcher, is it quite simple. The trend of ever-increasing US government debt started with the Reagan administration and has never stopped. The charts don't lie. When you increase debt you increase the real money supply hugely because this government spent money gets put into the banks and allows the banking system to make many more loans. Problem is this will lead to price inflation. Thing is there are two kinds of price inflation, one is for stuff you need to buy and consume (makes people angry), the other for stuff that you can buy and sell later (makes them happy). Trick is where the inflation goes. By breaking the unions after creating a recession through high interest rates (hey I need a job!) they made the inflation not go into wages but into assets like houses and stocks. A neat trick until it blows up, which is inevitable, but until then everybody says "hey things are great".

The Nov. elections put many republicans in control of state governments because the American taxpayer/worker/voter realized the over-the-cliff spending the democrats were doing was hurting the economy and the country.

And Americans also realized that Harry Potter is a very good wizard. Fantasy is not going to save anybody. Like I said the charts don't lie. If I was a Republican (or Democratic) strategist, I would be very worried right now. "Right wing" parties in all countries have been selling aspirational political messages for 30 years, and the "left-wing" ones have been saying..., well I don't know what they have been saying other than let's copy what they have been doing. When Joe Blow wakes up and says "hey I am not on the team I thought I was on!!!", then Beck gets turned off and the Che shirts come out. And nobody will think they have been hypocrites or flip-floppers, they will all think they have now figured things out. Game is changing very quickly.

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Posted in: Arrested U.S. official in Pakistan is actually CIA contractor See in context

cnc, you didn't get the meaning of my post. The article says that a third person died when they were hit by a car coming to help Davis. So what has happened to the driver of the car?

I am guessing here, but that might be what is behind the standoff. The Pakistanis want to know who he was and the Americans won't tell them.

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Posted in: Quake in New Zealand kills at least 65 See in context

Australian ABC news24 station on the ABC website has lifted the geoblock, and can be watched worldwide. They are carrying the live feed from New Zealand television.

Appears the Christchurch youth hostel was badly damaged, sounds like there will be foreign tourists among the victims. Many people still trapped, gas mains broken, liquefaction, and have run out of ambulances. Very bad situation. Have lived all but three years of my life in high-risk earthquake zones, but have never experienced anything serious. Thoughts will be with everybody down there today.

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