Free Republic

I doubt many people who know me in real life would call me clueless, either.

I think I’m about done with this site after 7 years. Like any good bar that goes sour, it’s not the ownership that’s to blame, it’s the crowd of regulars who’ve moved in. Plenty of good ones here, but too many who’d prefer to call other FReepers names. Don’t care if you’re polite or not, you’re an asshat. I suggest you come up for air once in awhile for your health.

Good day.

"He’s expected to be right, which he is 99.6% of the time"

Yes. But being right isn't enough. You have to be able to convince people that what they've heard all their lives from gradeschool on through adulthood is WRONG. Just vilifying the opposition isn't enough (even when you're dead right).

If you want a real spokesman, read P.J. O'Rourke. He predated Rush by at least half-a-decade and does a much better job of easing people into conservatism.

I was a Christian by birth, but awe of the Almighty really came to me as a student of science in college. And most of the evils in the world seem to me as a rejection of God in favor of Darwin, so I can relate to the author.

"I'm calling you a liar."

Careful what you say. I'm sure nobody who knows me in real life would call me that.

Started listening to Rush about 1992 or 1993.>br>
I won't take it back and say he's perfect and God's gift to conservatism. Did I blaspheme or something?

BTTT!

Sad, but true. The remaining productive people here are stooges. This is no longer a place for good honest folks to build a life.

"Is there really any country as dedicated to civil liberties as the USA, even under Obozo? (No sarcasm; I’m genuinely curious.)"

I'm not sure who said it (probably TJ or Reagan) but any government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away.

There is no government in the world with the resources Uncle Sam has. Yes, there are a few places left in the world that are free-er than the US right now. Not many, but a few. And the institutional kleptocracy here is just plain nasty. Maybe not as bad as Soviet Russia, but close.

The fiancee and I are planning to go overseas and try a few countries on for size. And honestly if things don't improve here in a major way in the next 5 years we'll probably expatriate. This country no longer values decent working people. We'd like to go somewhere we're appreciated.

You mistake me as anti-Rush. I’m not. And I tune in at least once a week. He’s good at inside baseball. Just not a good spokesman to the uninitiated. RWR had that nailed-down.

"Please explain, what sort of depth do you feel he is lacking?"

Ideological/intellectual depth. He can be a bit of a winsock/blowhard at times. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan and appreciate his value to the party. Been listening to him since the early 90's. He's great at preaching to the choir. But he's not the kind of guy that's going to win anyone over to our side.

"It would look like the Communist Manifesto when its over"

Agree. With the Dems controlling the House and the Executive this is grandstanding at best, and suicidal at worst.

Inflation is imminent. But not because M2 spiked. That just means that more of the nation’s wealth has been expropriated and handed over to the banks.

Inflation (at least for basic inputs) is going to go through the roof because of spiking demand for commodities in Pac-Rim Asia where there is no recession to speak of. And that’s more due to our trade practices over the last 40 years than monetary policy.

I have no idea who this bimbo is, but Rush does go off on tangents at times, and is frequently over-the-top. He’s a radio personality, and is expected to be bombastic, God bless him.

But he’s not particularly deep, and shouldn’t be the voice of the party. That much I’ll concede.

"But states are different: they can’t print their own money."

Sorry, sarcasm detector not working tonite. Are you saying that's a good thing?

"We have to work toward our principles and we won’t get 100% of anyone for idealism."

What I'm trying to say is that it appears he's deliberately frontrunning TEA. He'll do plenty of grandstanding on conservative issues until we have solid majorities in the house, and then turn into a "reach-across" artist like McCain. I'm glad he's in the Senate rather than Crist, who was openly hostile to conservative causes, but that's as far as I would go.

I agree that introducing a BBA with a Dem majority in either house is just grandstanding.

But I like the idea of a BBA in general. We have one here at the state level, and it works. Always plenty of crowing from the usual quarters when we go into recession and they have to make mandatory cuts, but cut they do. And it’s kept us out of the kind of fiscal trouble that’s plagued many states the last 5-6 years.

No thanks. Rubio’s a mole. Don’t say you weren’t warned when he sells conservatives out.

Thanks! FReeped!

Is there a link to the petition somewhere?

“No, no, no. We doan wanna run aginst DAT one!”

FReepers lining up to take the bait already.

How has letting the Dems pick our candidate worked out the last two elections? Rubio is a mole.

Welcome to the Service Economy?

"Eager? Yeah, for a job that pays way more than they’re worth right out of college, and most won’t consider food service or stockboy or any of the things that put food on the table while LOOKING for a better job."

Hate to say it, but with today's HR practices, taking those kinds of stopgap jobs after graduation will seriously hamper a person's chances of landing a professional job in their degree field. Waiting tables after graduation is the kiss-of-death in business circles especially..

Not saying it's right. But that's the way it is. In a world with 50-100 applicants for every opening, HR managers are prone to soft discrimination as a method for whittling the application pile down to a manageable stack before they start calling people in for interviews.

"No need for a job?"

No jobs to meet their needs. A minimum wage gig nowadays won't allow people in most locales to live independent of their parents. And there's plenty of competition, even for those jobs, from displaced experienced workers.

I have one cousin in this age group who's been laid off 3 times in the last 3 years due to businesses being closed or restructured. She and her hubby living with their 5-year-old at her MIL's house. I'm amazed she hasn't just given up altogether (yet) and gone on the welfare dole.

Over on ZH, TD is always harping (correctly) about a population mentally unable to grasp the difference between marginal and real.

Our economic community has a similar problem discerning cyclical from structural.

There’s nothing on the horizon to drive any sort of recovery in the near term.

Christian Right?

More like the sob-sisters of the Christian Left.

And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

"In 2004, George W. Bush got 44% of the Latino vote."

Of course he did. W was a pandering crypto-marxist (globalist), not a conservative. Which goes back to the other point. Only a Chicago republican would consider Bush nominally conservative.

Not saying there is no such thing as truly conservative Latinos (I've known a few over the years), they're just very rare. For whatever reason, conservative politics is just not compatible with Latino culture.

From a conservative standpoint, any form of amnesty is just opting for suicide over slow creeping death. If you really think it's going to buy votes for the Republicans... How is the party that won the Civil War, freed the slaves, and ending Jim Crow now faring with the Black population?

"I'm out here in the western suburbs of Chicago"

Explains a lot.

"Basically, in their hearts Latinos are born conservatives"

I think many on our side would like to believe this, but voting patterns just don't bear this out in real life. Latinos vote Socialist. Not just here. Pretty much everywhere in the latinosphere. Every once in awhile they'll put a fascist strongman or a commie dictator in power. The rest of the time, they vote Socialist.

Detroit is destiny.

White flight started in a few inner-city neighborhoods. Then Whole interior sections of cities. Then entire cities. Now we’re on to entire states like California where the productive are fleeing.

When I started coming on this site, I figured we had maybe 5-10 years to get things turned back around nationally. In restrospect, I may have overestimated. I think it’s probably time decent productive people start making arrangements to man the lifeboats.

I think we may start to see “white flight” on a national level as opportunity continues to dry up here for wage earners. And our political scene is devolving into a 3rd world banana republic.

Conservatism will never die, but the GOP may. Our national body politic is incapable and unwilling to vote for decent principled governance. Our nation has already been turned into something I don’t want my children growing up in.

Not sure how many feel the same way I do, but it is telling that 40% of the 18-24 population of this country would already prefer to live elsewhere. And the 24-35 demographic is starting to move abroad in record numbers. Unlike coming to America, leaving the country requires a marketable education and demonstrated ability to support one’s self. These are our best and brightest fleeing the country in search of economic opportunity.

Call it a “brain drain” or “white flight” or whatever, but it will continue until our gov’t and banking system quit waging war on wage earners. So maybe the GOP is right in trying to replace conservatives as their base. The old ones are dying off, and their potential replacements are leaving the country in droves.

The hidden cost of “cheap” Chinese imports.

I’d love for Obama to get out of the way, too. But my motivation is employment, not oil prices. Fact is, those are set mostly by Asian demand at this point.

If the global market will clear at $100/barrel, then that’s what we have to pay. Drill, baby, drill (for jobs if nothing else). Neither bumping up US oil production by 25% nor building the proposed pipeline projects is going to drive gasoline prices back under $2.50/gal again. That would take a massive falloff in overseas demand and strengthening of the dollar.

I do agree with you that REQUIRING a portion of our agricultural output to be turned back in to fuel (at a net negative EROEI probably) is insane. We mostly have farm state senators to thank for that nonsense.

Oil’s traded internationally. And since we liberalized our trade laws, and started sending tons of money to Asia for manufactured goods, there are now far more oil consumers than there were 20 or even 10 years ago.

Oil consumption in Pacific Rim countries has more than doubled since 2000. That means we have alot more competition every single day for every barrel of oil coming up out of the ground. Per-capita oil consumption in Pacific Rim countries remains low compared to US standards, but they a whole lot more ‘capita’. Pac Rim Asia now consumes more oil than the US by a fairly large margin. So really, it’s Asian demand more than anything else setting global prices for crude (and most other commodities) right now.

So when you combine the new overseas demand with all the new money creation going on here in the US, it’s really a wonder we’re not paying more than we are.

$2/gal gas is gone for good absent some major worldwide deflationary event (like a genuine global economic crash). And really, 5 years from now I think we’ll be looking at today’s $3/gal as being “the good ole days”. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see $5/gal unleaded come New Year’s Day 2015.

It is what it is. If we want to point fingers, we can thank Fed monetary policy over the last 15 years, globalization, Clinton, Bush, and Obama (and Wall St). Plenty of blame to go around.

The author’s right. Our national accounting complex needs a complete overhaul. GDP is a bad metric for measuring household prosperity. And at the end of the day, it’s the well-being of individual households, not some strawman beneficiary like “the economy” or “the markets”, that counts.

Most so-called Hispanics are white or at least mostly white. Overtime, with the proper policies, they should blend into the rest of the white majority of this country

Maybe do some reading on Spanish and South American history? Maybe some demographic research into US Latino voting tendencies, too. You think these folks are going to start suddenly voting for good governance because...?

"Exactly. If they are willing to do this, and they clearly are, then there is no reason to levy taxes. Print the money you need to operate government. The cost will be defused across the entire dollar-using world.

They levy taxes to manufacture demand for the FRN. It's part of how they keep the dollar positioned as 'the coin of the realm'. Taxes are paid in dollars, so people need to come up with dollars to pay them. Keeps them from wandering off the dollar plantation.

"What really needs to be done is to change our legal immigration policies. Basically we need to go to a merit based system like Canada and Australia have vice the kinship system we have now and we need to reduce significantly the number of legal immigrants from 1. 2 million a year to around 300,000."

BTTT!

There's no way any society can sustain that kind of influx of foreigners. We have a huge glut of unskilled labor in this country. Mass immigration is so 1850.

"To say there is no inflation is to ignore the commodity markets."

BTTT!

Double-digit commodity inflation. The only things that haven't inflated much in price are goods manufactured overseas. So not much overall "consumer" inflation (as measured by official CPI), but plenty of "producer" inflation.

Companies getting their margins hammered by commodity inflation move to protect their margins. They cut costs anywhere they can, and that mostly means cutting payrolls and R&D budgets. These companies don't hire, don't innovate, and eventually close due to margin compression. Supply-shock happens when PPI outstrips CPI. Some people use the expression "stagflation", but I like "supply-shock" better, as it can happen even during periods of relatively low inflation (that is if you trust the numbers coming out of the BLS). Manufacturing firms are especially vulnerable, since their consumption of commodity is much higher as a percentage of overall expenses.



Anytime that red line sits higher than the blue one, it's bad news for goods producers (and the employment market).

Rubio = Dem mole or GOPe patsy. Either way, he’s toast if he tries to make a run for POTUS.

"Shortly after the layoff, 290 of the 300 former employees applied for Social Security disability benefits and they all used the same doctor..."

I think we can assume that would be roughly the ratio of Dem to Republican voters if they were granted statehood.

Puerto Rican sovereignty now!

"I'd like to do engineering work"

Then why go work in the patch? A petroleum engineering degree is the next best thing to a winning lottery ticket these days. I'd check the "career" section of company websites for the majors (Shell, Marathon, Anadarko), or get in contact with the local SPE chapters in the areas you'd like to move to. At very worst, you could probably land a (well-paid) internship while you work on your P.E. license. They're recruiting just about anyone with an engineering degree (not just PE degrees).

You may have to move to one of the hubs if you're not already living there. Denver, Dallas, Houston, OKC.

My cousin works as a lead driller up in Williston. They fly him back and forth from Colorado and they put him up in his own trailer at the drill site. But he's been working his way up the ladder for 15 years.

This is his advice if you're dead-set on spending some time in the patch:

Pack your stuff, and head on up. Buy a copy of the local paper and start making calls when you hit town. You'll have a job before sundown the next day. Take your own housing with you, or housing costs will eat you alive. Make sure you take a pickup and a camper or a travel trailer. Make sure your camper has a shower too, because public showers run anywhere from $10-$20 a pop. You don't need contacts in the biz to land a job up there. Just a good back, a driver's license, and a (reasonably) clean criminal history and urine stream. You will probably have to start out as a mudder. That's where everybody starts out. Unless you have some top-notch metalworking and mechanical skills, in which case you might catch on with a well service outfit.

(pinging thackney who may have some ideas as well)

That boy ain’t never been right. Crazy was his long suit, even back in his useful days.

Now he’s the poster boy for everything wrong with the GOP. The battle lines have moved since 1992, and he’s standing on the wrong side.

"How do all those disillusioned folks cause more money to be circulating in the economy - ‘cause folks are damn disillusioned now and the velocity of money has been falling like a rock for two or three years = that’s what’s called DEFLATION!"

Monetary inflation is growth in money supply, a stock variable, not velocity. Velocity is a multiplier. Price inflation is a function of monetary supply (a stock variable).

World FOREX holdings started shifting away from the dollar a decade ago (about the time the Fed went full retard mode). The truism in economics is "bad money crowds out good". Which means the velocity multiplier will increase (and so price inflation, which is what is usually being discussed when the term "hyperinflation" is brought up). Anyway the shift in FOREX reserves away from the dollar is a sign that the process is already underway.

But the timing is a little tough to pin down. If a transnational trading currency indexed to something real (like a basket of PM's or commodities) arises that will allow international contracts to settle, people/banks/governments outside the US would start dumping dollars en masse.

"Pay minimum wage to hire someone clean up an office during work hours and you won’t find any takers since they are having more fun on welfare, food stamps, medicaid, obama phones, free tuition, xbox whatever."

The "jobs Americans won't do" urban legend is still alive and well, I see.

Post an ad up in the local paper (or on craigslist) in just about any major metro area, and I'll bet you get a minimum of a couple dozen responses from people ready to go to work tomorrow. I can tell you from hiring experience that your statement is a myth.

I advertised a job for 50-cents an hour over minimum wage back in 2007 when the economy was supposedly still "good", and got 20 calls a day for the next 3 days. I have friends who are still either hiring managers or own businesses and have recently hired. Some of them getting literally hundreds of applications for jobs paying that pay anywhere from $8-$12 an hour. I have another friend that manages a branch for a day labor company. He says he normally has 3 times the number of people he can put to work sitting in his lobby by 6:00 AM.

It's been a long, long time since this country had such a glut of people willing to work for peanuts.

I really, really like reading Smith’s thoughts on economics.

He’s not an economist, but despite (maybe because?) of that he comes across with a lucidity sorely lacking in most econ circles. I agree with DannyTN, that piss-poor trade policy is also partly to blame for our current national employment woes, but Smith nails it on the head in terms of the overhead cost dynamic of government, and our inability to sustain low-value labor because of our high societal carrying cost (cost-of-living and maintaining a behemoth gov’t).

"But, in this day and age, it is a toss up whether the courts will uphold the 4th amendment"

BTTT!

I didn’t think these kind of FUBARs were even possible in the age of satellite navigation. Why wouldn’t a ship this size have onboard systems that would warn them away from hitting a reef?

"I think the GOP likes to perpetually come in second in a two party race and let the Democrats implement the Big Government they really want."

Winner!

Hard to play the patronage game if the pork fountain were ever shut off. Notice how the "other side" can always find at least one "defector" for crucial votes?

"And we are just creating more Dem voters."

I don't know how supposedly reasoned people can overlook the inevitable consequence of amnesty for 20 million people who would vote democrat by a 2-to-1 margin. I think some are hoping it would help shore-up SS, but I've read reputable studies that concluded amnesty would be a net drain on SS funding.

I agree with you. Cut off the jobs, food stamps, and welfare checks, and they will leave on their own.

"He noted that at least 40 percent of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country came on legal visas but then overstayed."

Sounds like a good enough reason to seriously curtail legal visas. That program needs to be rolled back to a level that can be adequately administered. But that's not what he's proposing.

"His plan would give a temporary “nonimmigrant visa” to illegal immigrants, which would allow them to remain and work in the United States. They would have to wait a “significant but reasonable” period of time before they could apply to become legal permanent residents, going to the back of the line in the existing system. Once they became residents, they could go on like other legal immigrants to naturalize as citizens."

Can someone please tell me how his plan differs significantly from McCain/Kennedy?

"Seems history is repeating itself. Every young mom I know, including my own daughters, have college degrees but do not work. They want to be stay at home moms. Such luxury was alien to me but then they are all married to successful men. I was a divorced working mom. Maybe they don't want to be me but Gen X-ers are lazy is my take."

Gen X aren't "young moms". We were born anywhere from the mid sixties into the seventies, and we're solidly middle-aged at this point. I'm self-employed, but most relatives/friends my age are working 60-plus hours per week trying to keep up on bubble-era mortgages taken out in the 5-10 year runup before the housing crash. We tend to active lifestyles, in the extreme, preferring leisure activities like mountain biking, triathaloning, and "adventure tourism". "Lazy" isn't the word I'd use to describe us/them.

The generation I think you're referring to are the millennials. Most of them never had jobs in high school, and I think that contributes to them showing up at their first professional jobs with very little in the way of work habits or skills, and seem to have trouble working independently. They also seem to feel they're entitled to mid-career pay/responsibility the minute they set foot on a job. Most of them are good kids, and I think they're surprisingly conservative socially/politically. Not sure I'd call them "lazy" either, as some of them keep up insane work/social schedules - but sheltered, pampered, and naive come to mind.

"Who knew the smart people were all here, while the millions of others doing all the buying are the stupid ones?"

Here's where the smart money has been since 2005:



I think the tacit rule with Fed easing is that the ibanks have to keep the bond market flush or risk having the tap shut off.

Bonds are also a "safe haven" investment, so in a risk-off environment, portfolio managers can point to the marginal gains, and doctored official inflation numbers, and say "well, at least we outperformed XXX this year, and protected the original capital investment". They couldn't care less if their clients are realizing real gains, so long as that big fat paycheck keeps rolling in. RISK AVERSION is the key to longevity in finance.

Meanwhile, if you check what these PM's actually have in their personal holdings, you'll probably find they're long commodities and emerging/developing markets.