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[Putnam]

Mainiac, you seem to be focusing on the crazier conservatives. Being fairly idealistic, I believe both sides have some credit, though I'm definitely liberal. I'm sure the crazier liberals say ridiculous things, too.

But I don't know of any because I'm on the internet where everyone's liberal and no one complains about them.

[Glowcat]

People on the liberal side of the dualistic spectrum say lots of crazy things.

They're just ignored instead of given leadership positions.

[Dsarker]

I'm a conservative. I very rarely say utterly insane things.

[Nadaka]

There is some crazy on the "liberal" side, but I don't really consider them to be liberal. One of the requirements of a liberal viewpoint is that you be open to new positions. The crazy mostly comes from people sticking to their dogma in spite of evidence to the contrary. And that is very much anti-liberal.

Liberal crazy example: You should hear some of the crackpot stuff that comes out of the Green party. I voted for them once. 

[Descan]

My problem isn't with conservatives per se, though I don't tend to like them, especially libertarians. My main problem is how... mainstream the crazies have gotten lately. I mean come on, look at the republican candidates!

[kaijyuu]

I'll ignore all the ad-hominem and focus on the one point you actually made:

Honestly, even if we are making a judgement with zero knowledge, what are the odds of neither side being more prone to lies?  Pretty freaking slim.

Exactly the same? Roughly zero.


Let's go back to the issue that sparked this: The "7.7 trillion bailout." Until your post I had no reason to doubt that figure, so I didn't. After all, I've been fed it several times from several sources. So indeed, there's at least one example of liberals (as I've been getting it from liberal sources) jumping to conclusions and/or spreading lies.

I've no reason to believe that liberalism is less prone to jumping to conclusions on limited evidence than conservatism, just like what happened there. That's been my point from the beginning here about mentalities and methods. You can point out situations of conservatives doing this for personal gain all you want. The end, desired result is irrelevant; the method is the same. People WILL ignore contrary evidence, assume its falsified, etc until it's overwhelming (and sometimes past that), and they sure as hell will be reluctant to admit being wrong afterwords or apologize for it. All to avoid being seen as wrong. And if you DON'T do that in politics, your administration will be overly cautious, half hearted, and ineffectual. Jimmy Carter was a pretty honest dude, after all.



I suppose I will respond to one personal attack: I'm no moderate. I'm quite radical on quite a few things (talk to me in the progressive rage thread sometime). Remember that thing a while back about how you thought people being loyal to parties was stupid? I say the same for any group. I don't abstain from attacking one side and one side only as an attempt to be seen as neutral. I do so so I don't start following any particular group instead of what I, and only I, think. I still fail at that, truth be told, and often get caught up by what groups I tend to agree with say. Hence me buying into the 7.7 trillion dollar figure.

[mainiac]

I don't think being loyal to parties is stupid.  Whenever did you get that impression?

And I think liberals are perfectly capable of jumping to conclusions.  I myself just bought the 7.7 trillion dollar number hook line and sinker.  But the liberal world view is not primarily defined by believing things that are insane.  How many of the republican presidential contenders will admit that global warming is happening?  John Huntsman and he polls horribly.  Every one of them has put forward a tax plan that calls for more tax cuts and they all denounce deficits.  They repeat at every debate that the US has more social mobility then other countries despite this being proven untrue by all the academic research.  How many of them will even come out and say they believe in evolution for Christ's sake?

There is no equivalence between the liberal and conservative world view.  Liberals aren't always right (everyone is human) but the mainstream liberal views are made to conform to reality.  Whereas the mainstream conservative reality is made to conform to republican views.

[nenjin]

Republicans would argue that the Democrat positions on social welfare, government oversight and constitutional freedom don't truck with reality either. In some cases (social welfare) maybe they're right? On things like government oversight (and therefore the size of government) I think most would agree they're wrong. Constitutional freedom.....well...that's pretty much what every American makes of it themselves. Some people think it's freedom to see the 10 Commandments in front of your court house, some think it's freedom to not. Some people think it's freedom to have an AK-47 in their closet to shoot on weekends or in self-defense, others think its freedom to not have to worry about your neighbor being part of a radical militia or a pack of gun toting drunken idiots.

People are so deep into their own personal world views these days that it's hard to convince them what reality actually is. So I won't go claiming democrats automatically peg their politics to reality.

Especially now, with the Internet bill, the new NDAA, and all this other loathsome shit democrats seem to be lining up to support.

[Eagle_eye]

There are very few politicians in the public eye that I would really consider liberal. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and that's about it. The majority of the Democrats seem to be either moderate or slightly conservative. Regardless of what they say, they're still mostly on the side of big business and the wealthy, just less so than the republicans.

[Truean]

So the Fed never lent 7.7 trillion to the banks.  The actual number was quite a bit smaller, and was paid back a while ago.  To get to 7.7 trillion dollars, you are including loan guarantees, which aren't the same thing as loans, let alone "bailouts".  And both the loans and loan guarantee's that did happen were fully disclosed, it's just the specifics of exactly which banks got how much money that is now coming to light.  The scope of these loans was publicly available information that was published (which in retrospect I should have checked before wading into an argument on this subject) as they were happening.

Bloomberg estimates a 13 billion dollar profit on the whole mess for the banks, which comes out to about 43 bucks per american.  I'd be very surprised if there is anyone in this conversation who hasn't been ripped off to the tune of more then 40 dollars in various bank fees and service charges over the past three years.  And unlike those fees and service charges, these loans didn't come out of our pockets and did prevent a global collapse that was pretty freakin' scary at the time if you recall.

IMHO Liberals, generally speaking, care about what they are saying is true or not.  It's why I consider myself a liberal.  This is why I get pissed when I see people railing at stuff like that 7.7 trillion dollar figure.  If liberals aren't better then this, who is left to be the voice of reason in our politics?  There is seriously bad stuff going on and the banks are to blame for a lot of it.  But we need our complaints to be grounded in reality.  If you attack indiscriminately, pretty soon you start attacking things that are good for the public.

1.) "The Fed would have given out $7.7 trillion to banks only in the unlikely scenario that the banks asked for the maximum possible loans and that every one of them subsequently defaulted."

Unlikely? Isn't this exactly what we were afraid of and why we gave them however much we did? Unlikely?
Loan: If someone doesn't pay you back, you're screwed if you can't collect.
Loan Guarantee: If someone doesn't pay you back, you're screwed if you can't collect.

2.) Go ahead and  really screw up banks, we'll loan you half the entire country's production if you do.... <---- Issue.

3.) We've all been ripped of by banks for at least $40.... This is a strong point?

4.) The story also explains that the largest sum total of actual loans made on a single day was $1.2 trillion in December 2008.

In a single day... 1.2 Trillion. Great....Is that all, well at least it "isn't 7.7 Trillion." We should be grateful for that....

5.) I'm sorry, how much exactly did we loan them? The article still doesn't exactly say. If the point of the article was to clear up misconceptions, then they really could've linked to this report.

[Gregory Stroganov]

Republicans would argue that the Democrat positions on social welfare, government oversight and constitutional freedom don't truck with reality either. In some cases (social welfare) maybe they're right? On things like government oversight (and therefore the size of government) I think most would agree they're wrong. Constitutional freedom.....well...that's pretty much what every American makes of it themselves. Some people think it's freedom to see the 10 Commandments in front of your court house, some think it's freedom to not. Some people think it's freedom to have an AK-47 in their closet to shoot on weekends or in self-defense, others think its freedom to not have to worry about your neighbor being part of a radical militia or a pack of gun toting drunken idiots.

People are so deep into their own personal world views these days that it's hard to convince them what reality actually is. So I won't go claiming democrats automatically peg their politics to reality.

Especially now, with the Internet bill, the new NDAA, and all this other loathsome shit democrats seem to be lining up to support.

Everyone's always been wrapped up in their own perspectives. The upper class has always wanted more wealth and power and prestige above all, the lower class has always wanted enough food to survive, and the "educated" middle class has always had some fanciful philosophy that was going to bring everyone together to live happily with one another.

They've always viewed the rich as the enemy and the poor as their allies, and they've always been wrong on both counts. The rich provide jobs and keep the peace. Anyone who's read enough history knows what happens in a time of "permanent revolution", like some Egyptians were calling for. And the poor don't care. They just want food and shelter, and as long as they have that they don't get caught up in any of these movements. They've got more important things to worry about. It's bored young middle class students who have time to make the world a better place.

The only thing the poor care about is God. And the poor who care about God, care about him a lot. The middle class doesn't care about God, they don't need him as much and they're more interested in movements that they think are the "next big thing". Of course, they think the movement is going to replace God in the hearts of the poor, whether it's Communism or socialism or Nazism. But the only thing that motivates the poor is hunger. Or God.

The Democrats want to build a better world using government as a tool. The Republicans want to revert to an idealized better world of the Industrial Revolution. Neither side is right. Neither side is rational or irrational. They both have agendas, they both have special interests, they both are driven by ideology, and there's nothing really wrong with any of that.

They each need to get the poor on their side. So the Democrats give bread, and the Republicans use God. The Democrats giving bread makes a lot of sense, the Republicans using God makes no sense at all, but everyone pretends it does because it gets their dude into office, and it can't be done it without the Evangelicals.

That's my theory, anyway. Please feel free to smash it all to smithereens. Obviously, it's a very simplistic model of a more complex world, but I think it works pretty well.

Enjoying this conversation, by the way. I actually lived in Zuccotti for a week and half, so I kind of got to see this at work- the middle class working hard to save the poor, the poor leaching off of them because they're hungry. I say it cynically, but it was actually very heartwarming to see how they took care of the homeless. I don't mean anything I said in a bad way, it's just an observation about human nature. Humans are still my favorite people ever.

[mainiac]

Truean, you are saying that two things that are veeeeeeeeeeeeery different are the same.  Please stop.

[Duuvian]

So, back to excess reserves. Is there any reason you can think of mainiac that we should not cut the interest rate on excess reserves back to 0%?

[mainiac]

Oh we should cut it below that and start charging a .25 rate on excess reserves.  But it's a fairly small fish compared to a host of more important things.  Payroll tax cut extension, unemployment benefits, bank transparency, helicopter drops, etc.

[Truean]

Truean, you are saying that two things that are veeeeeeeeeeeeery different are the same.  Please stop.

It's fine if you don't get how they're the same: the result in default.
Ever co signed for someone who didn't pay? Same thing, you pay.
I'll say that to anyone, including a judge in a court of law.
You do understand I defend foreclosures all the time right?

If the RESULT is the same, then any differences don't matter. <---- entirely valid point.

Because you don't agree isn't a valid objection, same stuff with the medical consent a few pages back man.