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[Darvi]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

[Urist_McDrowner]

Is this a tactic now?  Demonizing people because they don't agree with you?

Why not. It's true that it's irresponsible and unpatriotic. You make it sound like this a juvenile, weak, and utterly silly thing like "Romney killed my wife"

[RedKing]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

You're right, let's keep taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, driving up our national debt. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

It was certainly good enough for the GOP from 2000-2008.

And no, doing SOMETHING is not always better than doing nothing. There are lots of somethings that would be worse, in fact. Wasn't that the argument in 2010 as to why the "Democratic trifecta" had to be stopped? "OMG Obama can pass anything he wants, we're all gonna be forced to marry gay Muslim communists and pay 90% taxes to fund a national pornography fund!!!"

The Affordable Healthcare Act was doing *something* instead of nothing. And yet to hear the reaction to its passage, you'd think he'd just sacrificed a baker's dozen of newborns to the Dark Lord Ba'al on the White House front lawn.

In short, he had two years to do a lot of somethings. And he did. And the GOP gnashed its teeth and wailed and played the scare game like a boss and it got them the House. And then after the 2010 elections, "doing nothing" became the modus operandi. And now you want to twist the narrative of Republican-induced inaction (to "put the brakes on the Democratic dictatorship") into Obama-induced inaction and make a Republican trifecta on power seem like a good thing??!? Shameless. Absolutely shameless.

[Jervill]

Four states are holding primary elections today.  Connecticut, Florida, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

There is only one candidate in my primary (MN-01 [D]), so I'm not voting.  Anyone in the other states have anything to say about the races there?

Also, a national pornography fund sounds like an excellent idea.

[GreatJustice]

Do you know why all those projections of the economy crashing go to 2037?

http://ruk.ca/content/us-budget-and-2037

In this well-produced video about the U.S. budget, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan says “I asked the Congressional Budget Office to model the economy going forward, so they have these computer programs that simulate the U.S. economy; the computer program crashes in 2037 because it can’t conceive of any way in which the U.S. economy can continue because of this massive burden of debt.”

This may very well be true. But I’m wondering whether the simulator might be crashing, instead, because of the well-known 2038 problem, described in Wikipedia like this:

The year 2038 problem (also known as the Unix Millennium Bug, Y2K38, Y2.038K, or S2G by analogy to the Y2K problem) may cause some computer software to fail at some point near the year 2038. The problem affects all software and systems that both store system time as a signed 32-bit integer, and interpret this number as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970. The furthest time that can be represented this way is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. Times beyond this moment will “wrap around” and be stored internally as a negative number, which these systems will interpret as a date in 1901 rather than 2038. This is caused by Integer overflow. The counter “runs out” of usable digits, “increments” the sign bit instead, and reports a maximally negative number (continuing to count up, towards zero). This will likely cause problems for users of these systems due to erroneous calculations.

I’ve no idea whether this is the case, but hearing “2037” and “crash” invoked in the video has got me wondering.

There we go, they've even politicized the end of the 32-bit UNIX system clock.

You guys are making a big deal over this, considering the fact that computer predictions of the economy have a distinctly poor track record.

I think it's more that it's an intellectually dishonest/ignorant (take your pick) attack based on a technical glitch. It's akin to saying "The Mayan calendar ends in Dec 2012. OMG WERE DOOMED".


Maybe it's just the wave of negative ads I've had to endure during the Olympics (at about a 10-1 ratio, btw....all the crap about Obama's "wave of negative ads" is bullshit. Every time I turn around there's a Crossroads GPS or Restore Our Future attack ad.), but I'm increasingly convinced that we're just fucked no matter what who wins. The system is so goddamn dysfunctional that it really doesn't matter which ineffectual figurehead is stuck at the top.

I mean, I think Obama's a pretty cool guy, eh kills Osama and doesn't afraid of anything but he has a hostile, obstructionist Congress and the Dems just do not have his back. Too many blue-dogs mean any perceived majority the Dems might have used from 2008-2010 pretty much didn't exist. And even if miracles happened and the Dems regained Congressional majority in 2012, they'll still be too busy being Democrats to give him a unified force to back him up.

While I don't think Romney/Ryan are a pair of baby-eating lizard people, they wouldn't be my first choice. Or second. Or even third. In part because of their membership in a political party that has become a shining, festering beacon of everything wrong in the US political system. I will never be a Democrat, but I have long considered myself an Anti-Republican.

And third parties at the Federal level are just a semi-dignified way to piss in the ocean.

I think our best days as a nation (in terms of standard of living, global preeminence, etc) are behind us. We're the British Empire, circa 1930. My concern now is how well we handle the demotion and how gracefully we accept the end of unipolarity.

Quite frankly, the choice between Obama and Romney is no choice since they both lead to the same thing.

Obama: Mild tax increases counterbalanced by no spending cuts means the deficits continue to rise, and the economy is ultimately doomed to crash because the underlying causes of the '07 recession weren't addressed. The drug war will continue in earnest against even states trying to legalize because Obama's a hypocrite, and the US will continue to expand its global presence and bomb places (though not quite so enthusiastically as Romney).

Romney: Mild tax cuts counterbalanced by very, very minor spending cuts means the deficits continue to rise and the economy is ultimately doomed to crash because the underlying causes of the '07 recession weren't addressed. The drug war continues in earnest because Romney's an idiot appealing to the base, and the US will troop around the world starting wars and pissing people off. The anti-war left comes out of hiding because they have a nice evil corporate boogeyman to protest, and the anti-tax/spending right goes into hiding because Republicans are apparently incapable of frivolous spending.

The only difference, at the end of the day, is whether economic troubles are blamed on "Obama's collectivist economic controls" or "Romney's laissez faire policy".

[Rose]

Can I make a request to all of you?


Calm down and chill.

[Nadaka]

"something is better than nothing" when that something is the pillage of my country and is false. I would rather have 4 more years of deadlock than allow republicans free reign to destroy my country. That is exactly what is at stake right now. The very fabric of the American dream of liberty and justice is in the balance. And the conservatives are trying to burn it all down. Obama may not be my hero, but Romney is most certainly the greater villian.

[Zangi]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

Its going to go down really well on these forums...

[Urist_McDrowner]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

You're right, let's keep taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, driving up our national debt. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

It was certainly good enough for the GOP from 2000-2008.

And no, doing SOMETHING is not always better than doing nothing. There are lots of somethings that would be worse, in fact. Wasn't that the argument in 2010 as to why the "Democratic trifecta" had to be stopped? "OMG Obama can pass anything he wants, we're all gonna be forced to marry gay Muslim communists and pay 90% taxes to fund a national pornography fund!!!"

The Affordable Healthcare Act was doing *something* instead of nothing. And yet to hear the reaction to its passage, you'd think he'd just sacrificed a baker's dozen of newborns to the Dark Lord Ba'al on the White House front lawn.

In short, he had two years to do a lot of somethings. And he did. And the GOP gnashed its teeth and wailed and played the scare game like a boss and it got them the House. And then after the 2010 elections, "doing nothing" became the modus operandi. And now you want to twist the narrative of Republican-induced inaction (to "put the brakes on the Democratic dictatorship") into Obama-induced inaction and make a Republican trifecta on power seem like a good thing??!? Shameless. Absolutely shameless.

Sorry, what I meant to say was "Something that the CBO said would be effective.", so that rules out the vast majority of Democrat policies. Not the Path to Prosperity, however.

[Urist_McDrowner]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

Its going to go down really well on these forums...

What do you have against my saying it's unpatriotic and irresponsible?

[Nadaka]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

Its going to go down really well on these forums...

What do you have against my saying it's unpatriotic and irresponsible?

Conservatism is unpatriotic and irresponsible.

[Urist_McDrowner]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

Its going to go down really well on these forums...

What do you have against my saying it's unpatriotic and irresponsible?

Conservatism is unpatriotic and irresponsible.

You didn't answer the question.

[Darvi]

Way to address a subject that nobody was talking about at the moment.

[RedKing]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

Its going to go down really well on these forums...

What do you have against my saying it's unpatriotic and irresponsible?

You mean, other than being an intellectually dishonest rhetorical device intended to place the opponent on the defensive and inherently devalue anything they say? You could at least try to couch it in more subtle language. Such as when I was going to ask what size of leaded hood you'd like to be measured for.

[alway]

What are you talking about, that has been a tactic since the dawn of mankind.

Its going to go down really well on these forums...

What do you have against my saying it's unpatriotic and irresponsible?

Conservatism is unpatriotic and irresponsible.

You didn't answer the question.

Answering questions is unpatriotic and irresponsible.

I think you are starting to get the point now.