-
Posts
9951 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Posts posted by washparkhorn
-
-
2 hours ago, Incredulity said:
So explain 1970’s  tax rates and inflationÂ
Stagflation of the 70’s?  The Great Inflation?Â
ÂCost-push inflation with high unemployment is not the dreaded demand-pull inflation. That was the birth of the neoliberal winter. Â wrong policy then. Did not improve with high interest rates. Â improved with saudis opening up the oil spigot.
more later - sorry. Laker game.Â
-
20 minutes ago, Cajun said:
I KNEW IT!!!
What do I win?
The right to remain silent when the FBI shows up at your door asking how you came by that information.
-
Our premier ICBM’s are located out there. After the precision drone/missile attack in Saudi and with the ramp up of hostilities with Iran, it looks like we are testing defenses for our vital nuclear deterrent - ICBM’s capable of MAD.Â
https://www.warren.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/331280/history-of-f-e-warren-afb/
Â
-
Sulemani was not taken out because of the Embassy protests. He was taken out for the rocket attacks in December. His ticket was canceled before the Embassy protests.Â
-
2
-
-
12 minutes ago, ryskey said:
All that is fine, as long as the increased spending grows the economy by the same amount. Or rather, all things being equal, it increases spending, net of interest, in a way that keeps the money spent and taxed in roughly the same ratios as before. The increased debt still has to be mildly productive, or the equity in the system starts to actually decrease. Even though we've been growing our debt, the economy has been growing by roughly the same amount. We're in deep shit only when we keep adding debt to the balance sheet and the economy consistently grows slower than the debt.
Exactly. There has to be a need for what is produced.Â
Taxation is the drain when needed to take out excess money.Â
-
Diagrams and Dollars - How Money Works:Â https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/diagrams-dollars-modern-money-illustrated-part-1.html
It's really quite simple.
-
The killing was ordered at the end of December after the attack on the K-1. The embassy had nothing to do with it, but added fuel to the fire.Â
The K-1 attack.
Â
-
The shape of the battlefield as of November 2019:
QuoteMANAMA, Bahrain—Since May, the Pentagon has dispatched 14,000 additional U.S. troops, an aircraft carrier, and tens of thousands of pounds of military equipment to the Middle East to respond to what it says are alarming new threats from Iran. But despite the stepped-up U.S. military posture, the top U.S. general in the region believes the Iranian threat continues to rise—and Tehran is likely to continue lashing out.
“I think the strike on Saudi Aramco in September is pretty indicative of a nation that is behaving irresponsibly,” said Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, in a Friday interview, referring to the Sept. 14 Iran-sponsored attack on Saudi facilities that took half of Riyadh’s oil production offline.Â
“My judgment is that it is very possible they will attack again.” Â
McKenzie, who stepped into his new job in March, assumed command of the world’s most volatile theater at a particularly turbulent time. Over the past eight months, the Taliban has intensified attacks in Afghanistan, Turkey invaded northeast Syria, the Islamic State has threatened to resurge, and Yemen continues to be the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. But Iran is the one common thread undermining regional stability through direct attacks on its neighbors, supporting disruptive proxies such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and increasingly penetrating Iraq and Syria.Â
While Iran’s primary goal is to preserve its clerical regime, Tehran has long had hegemonic ambitions, McKenzie said. Over the last 10 years, Iran has invested heavily in ballistic missiles and other capabilities in order to threaten its neighbors. Indeed, according to a new report on Iran’s military power from the Defense Intelligence Agency—the first of its kind—Tehran significantly increased its defense spending from its recent low in 2014 to $27.3 billion, or 6 percent of GDP, in 2018.
In recent months, the regime has lashed out against a new threat: a U.S. maximum pressure campaign that has imposed heavy economic costs, including forcing Iran to slash its defense budget to $20.7 billion, or 3.8 percent of GDP, in 2019. In addition to Iran’s alleged attacks on commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Sept. 14 attack on Saudi oil, U.S. defense officials have been warning for months about “credible” threats to U.S. forces, but they have declined to say what exactly that threat looks like.
McKenzie shed new light on the threat, saying he is particularly concerned about the possibility of a strike involving large numbers of drones and missiles—much like the Aramco attack, which used dozens of Iran-manufactured cruise missiles and drones to devastate Saudi oil infrastructure.Â
U.S. officials are particularly concerned about the threat to critical desalination plants in the Gulf, said a senior U.S. military official in the region. An attack on these facilities, which could threaten the region’s primary source of drinking water and potentially cause a humanitarian crisis, would be a “gamechanger,” the official said.
McKenzie cautioned that Tehran’s actions are unpredictable. “I wouldn’t discount anything from Iran,” McKenzie said. “When a nation behaves that irresponsibly, you have to be very cautious when you evaluate what they might do in the future.”
So far, the U.S. response to Iranian threat has been “scoped”—designed to send a strong deterrent message but not to provoke fresh attacks, McKenzie said. The additional forces the Pentagon has sent to the region are mostly defensive: an aircraft carrier strike group, fighter and bomber squadrons, as well as air and missile defense batteries.
McKenzie sent the carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, on a transit through the Strait of Hormuz last week for the first time since it deployed to demonstrate U.S. naval power before it heads home. The Lincoln, which will soon be replaced by a new carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, was diverted to the Middle East in May to respond to the Iranian threat, but had remained in the Arabian Sea.Â
But so far, these moves have had “mixed” results, McKenzie said. Tehran has successfully been deterred from attacking U.S. forces, but not from taking provocative actions against regional partners.
Perhaps part of the reason Iran has continued to raise the temperature in the region is because it has so far not faced any significant repercussions. Even Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, usually a staunch ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, criticized the president’s last-minute decision not to launch a retaliatory strike after Tehran shot down an expensive U.S. surveillance drone in June, saying the regime saw it “as a sign of weakness.”
In addition to shoring up U.S. defenses in the region, McKenzie is working to rally international support for countering Iran. So far, six nations have signed on to the United States’ International Maritime Security Coalition, a multinational naval force designed to provide security for commercial ships in the vital Strait of Hormuz: the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, and Albania.Â
Speaking at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Saturday, McKenzie stressed the impact of Iran’s recent attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf on the global market, noting that insurance rates for oil tankers have increased by a factor of 10 since May. He praised the efforts of the maritime coalition so far, calling it a “good, albeit nascent” measure, and urged regional partners to band together against Tehran.
“Unfortunately, sometimes the Iranian regime has proved itself to be the bully in the neighborhood. And the only way to stand up to a bully is to do it together. ” McKenzie told the audience. “It’s a great big world, and there’s a lot of water to cover.”
Under the maritime coalition, initially dubbed “Operation Sentinel,” the coalition keeps two so-called Sentinel ships at each end of the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, typically a high-end U.S. or U.K. asset such as an Arleigh Burke destroyer, McKenzie told Foreign Policy. Those warships are linked into an “elaborate overhead intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance architecture” that allows the coalition to monitor activities in the Gulf.
“Our intent to shine a spotlight on malign and illegal activity,” McKenzie said. “We don’t have enough ships to be everywhere all the time and we don’t seek to be, but what we found though is that when people are worried about attribution of their acts, they tend to behave better.”
Depending on the daily threat level, the coalition will “fairly frequently” send warships to escort commercial vessels through the Strait, McKenzie said. However, it’s the “unblinking stare overhead” that serves as the most effective deterrent, rather than the presence of warships, he stressed.Â
“Since the [coalition] has begun over the last couple of months we have been able to move stuff through the Strait of Hormuz pretty much without interference,” he said.
Experts have expressed skepticism about the International Maritime Security Coalition, noting that the United States struggled initially to shore up any international support for the effort after it was announced this summer. While several countries have since signed on, there is still little representation from Europe and none from Asia.Â
European nations such as France have indicated that they will participate in a separate, EU-led maritime security initiative, primarily to distance themselves from the U.S. maximum pressure campaign. But the senior U.S. military official expressed skepticism that the effort will get off the ground, calling it “perpetually nascent.”
The initiative also raises the risk that the U.S. military could be dragged into conflict if the Gulf states engage in hostilities with Iran, experts said. Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, questioned the “competence” of some Gulf navies.
“They could certainly sail with the tankers, but if they got into trouble over it, the question is who would support them and how,” Cordesman told Foreign Policy in June.
Iran’s malign activities don’t end in the Strait of Hormuz. McKenzie is also concerned about Tehran’s actions in Syria, particularly moving in weapon systems that directly threaten Israel, and in Iraq, where the regime is quietly penetrating Iraq’s elected government. And in Yemen, Iran is working to undermine recent progress toward peace between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and Houthi rebels, which Tehran has supported with arms and other resources.Â
“As usual, the major actor that’s working to sabotage that is Iran,” which wants to prevent a relationship between the Houthis and Riyadh, McKenzie said. “Left to their own devices I think the Houthis might be able to come to some relationship with the Saudis.”
Although McKenzie believes the United States has robust defenses against Iran, there is only so much deterrence can do when faced with an irrational actor.
“Deterrence assumes there is going to be a rational actor on the other end,” he said. “There is a basic recklessness and irresponsibility to their actions that makes you very concerned about what they might do tomorrow or the next day, and that’s very concerning.”Â
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/23/very-possible-iran-will-attack-again-top-us-general-says/
Â
-
10 minutes ago, maninblack said:
In reality there's a game plan for a war with every country in the world. I'm not kidding. Some like Iceland may have only one initial scenario that gets updated every decade or so but other countries that are on the hit list like Iran have multiple plans that are updated frequently.
Agree.
It would be lovely if the Constitutional Body responsible for declaring war weighed the options and voted on a course of action, rather than the President. Congress was vested with the power to declare war for many reasons.Â
-
The establishment plan to attack Sanders will be to go after his strength - his supporters. Much like Clinton did to Trump supporters by calling them deplorables, the Establishment believe victory lies in Panera Bread voters. They cater to the already well off, as the foundation beneath their feet crumbles. Sanders aims to build from the bottom up - to reach the disaffected.Â
QuoteThat Sanders’s path to the nomination relies on activating the disaffected is old news by now. Yet how exactly his campaign plans to make that a reality has been closely guarded. Interviews with dozens of senior campaign officials, volunteers, and Sanders allies reveal a well-resourced and complex organizing apparatus that has been five years in the making, the most ambitious effort yet to link face-to-face movement-style organizing with technology not available to previous campaigns. If Sanders does manage to pull off a victory, it will be thanks to the faith he invested in his volunteer supporters to do more than any campaign has asked before — and his organizing operation will get, and deserve, much of the credit.
The emphasis on organizing, and the financial dedication to it, hasn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the campaign. The organizing team takes up a sprawling amount of space in the Washington, D.C., headquarters, a result of the national, distributed strategy requiring, paradoxically, more national staff to coordinate the operation. Volunteers are meant to supplement paid organizers in order to scale the possibilities exponentially, not replace a traditional field program. Indeed, the campaign, unlike in 2016, is not lightly staffed. More than 800 people are in its employ, with more than 250 in Iowa, roughly 140 in New Hampshire, and 54 field staff in California.
. . . “What we need to communicate is that this, this year, for two days — your primary and the general — it’s worth it to believe. Just suspend your disbelief for two days out of the year, that’s all I’m asking,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Sanders picked up on her theme. “Alexandria a few minutes ago made the point, and I want to make it again,” he said. “There are a whole lot of folks out there who have given up. You know them. Some of you are in this room — given up on the political process, my vote doesn’t mean anything, politics is bullshit. Why do I wanna vote?”
He said that when they leave and tell friends they went to a Bernie Sanders rally, they should be ready for them to wonder why they bothered. “Why’d you waste your time getting involved in that stuff? You explain to them you’re sick and tired. Tell them to stop complaining and get involved in the political process.”
If they do, he said, they can win. “The truth is we can win this election if we have the largest voter turnout in the history of this country,” he said. “We are strong in Iowa, we are strong in New Hampshire, we can win here in Nevada, I believe we’re going to win in California, do very well in South Carolina. We can win this Democratic nomination, but we can’t do it without increased involvement in the political process.”
Increasing the size of the electorate, said Sanders, is everything. “On caucus night, turn on the TV early, and if the moderator tells you there’s a large voter turn out, we win. If they tell you there’s a low voter turnout, we lose. It’s really as simple as that.”
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/03/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-2020-presidential-election/
Good read.
-
13 minutes ago, Junior Miller said:
That goes 100 percent against every law of economics
We haven't always been austerity driven Keynesians. Economics, like any other nascent science, is constantly examined. We are moving into the post-Keynesian phase with differing schools of thought now competing for places at the table. Â Why? Â Because the alarms about deficits have not come true.Â
We are still at greater risk for deflation than inflation. And - the olden rule for economies is - Inflate or die.Â
From https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a34n54/modern-monetary-theory-explained
“The government can afford to pay for any program it wants. It doesn’t have to raise taxes,” Kelton added. Because politicians on both left and right don’t get that, “Kids go hungry—bridges don’t get built.”Â
Although rarely heard on mass media, among economists this viewpoint is not particularly controversial. Oxford economist Simon Wren-Lewis told me in an email. “Most mainstream, non-ideological economists would agree the US needs more infrastructure investment, and the best way to finance that is through public borrowing.” He continued: “Most people think austerity is mainstream macroeconomics, although it is not. Those who are anti-austerity look for some alternative theory, which MMT provides.”
Why has austerity become convention wisdom outside of economic circles? Â We are gullible. We think of federal spending like household spending. It is nothing like your household budget. And billionaires like Peter Peterson have promoted the propaganda against debt for so long - we think of it as gospel. It's not.Â
-
19 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:
Man, I'm a little surprised at the reactions in here. This guy was a terrible human, had organized and was organizing more killings of Americans, orchestrated all kinds of shit in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc, helped organize Iranian proxy terrorist attacks all over the globe, and had just organized this 'spontaneous' attack on the Embassy and 95% of the people in here are pissed off because the assumption is there was no planning, forethought, or concern for repercussions. Trump is no neocon and he will not send 100k plus troops or whatever we had in Iraq. Iran overplayed, and has been overplaying, their hand and Soleimani was the head of the military command. This 3 days of mourning is buying time to figure out a response that will allow them to save face. While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do. They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.
I assume the concerns are the same that Gen Stanley McCrystal had 12 years ago when he had the chance to blow him up, but thought better of it.Â
Rubble makes trouble in this area of the world. I hope we have a plan to achieve the military objective and get out. My gut tells me we don't.Â
-
What Goldman Sachs and the Fed already know - (note, they use this to benefits the extremely wealthy rather than Main Street America). A quick rundown of how money really works:
QuoteÂ
Conventional economic wisdom holds that high federal “deficit spending” runs a serious risk of triggering inflation.
The fiction of dangerous deficit spending rests upon the false assertion that federal income taxes are used to pay for U.S. government spending. As the story goes, if government spending far exceeds tax revenue, it puts our economy in danger and the government may even have to resort to “borrowing” to cover the gap.
Today, only Modern Monetary Theory economists and their followers are courageous enough to reveal the fact that taxes do not fund spending at the federal level. Taxes do play a key role to keep inflation in check and to maintain the stability of the dollar by removing excess cash from the private economy. But once your taxes are recorded, they go to the same place points earned by football teams at the end of the game.
The U.S. has a sovereign currency. That means that our currency was established by law and the federal government is the monopoly producer of the dollar. New dollars are created whenever it pays an obligation.
It doesn’t write a check on an account that tax money was deposited into. There is no such account.
Thus, the question often posed -- “How are you going to pay for it?” -- is irrelevant. Our government can pay for anything that is available for U.S. dollars any time and in any amount. It can never run out of money. It can never go bankrupt.
Being the sole issuer of the currency also means that the feds never need to borrow. They can create more of it any time.
The hitch is, spending must first be authorized by Congress.
What is referred to as the “national debt” is actually the national savings, private cash invested in Treasury bonds, not loans to the government.
Inflation can occur when there is too much money available in the private economy in relation to the amount of goods and services available to spend it on. If goods are scarce and money is abundant, that money chases the goods and tends to drive up prices.
MMT economists look at deficit spending differently. The historical data show that the U.S. government is typically in a state of deficit spending. And it is only when such spending goes too low that problems arise.
There have been only four years of government surpluses since 1970.
Those were the much-heralded Clinton surpluses. However, as Modern Monetary Theory economists would predict, they were immediately followed by a recession.
In fact, as economics Professor Stephanie Kelton has stated, since 1970, every period during which federal deficits were less than an average of 3.1% of GDP was associated with a recession. The obvious conclusion is that higher government deficit spending coincides with better times for the private economy. Higher “deficit” spending puts more money in the hands of individuals and businesses and generates economic activity.
Although the deficit for 2017 was 3.5%, the CBO projects that from 2018 through 2020 the deficits will be under 3% each year. That is recession territory.
Unfortunately, regions of the country, such as ours, have not yet fully recovered from the last recession. This is not good news.
In this light, the urgent calls to reduce the deficit are disingenuous and harmful. The data is there. The politicians know the economic facts and use them to the advantage of themselves and their donors.
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
-
Just a reminder - a couple of weeks ago more than 180 Democrats in Congress voted to take out the language in the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited military action against Iran without Congressional approval.
We get what we deserve.Â
Now that troops are in harm's way, we owe it to them to give and do everything we can as a nation to protect them. We have civilian control of our military. Civilian leaders must protect those they place in harm's way - whether they voted for or against the NDAA or the provision that was stripped out of the authorization.Â
As for the idiots who stripped out the provisions in both parties, they deserve to be voted out of power.Â
-
1 hour ago, Anastasis said:
Watched it tonight. Didn’t previously appreciate how deep Haspel was in all that shit.Â
I know she had a come to jesus moment after, but she (and Durham) stuck by the Agency decision. Legal was knee deep in that decision. Durham is facing a similar situation here. If the allegations are true here, we have a larger problem of control and I am sure Durham (as did the FISA Court) will require better controls. Not telling the President for years that we were conducting torture is horrible. If a cell was working against domestic election results with the IC having some knowledge and perhaps participation, then we have an earthquake.Â
I take it Haspel now has the situation under control. She understands what unlimited power and funding means in a democracy. 2016 needed more oversight - and probably Congressional and Court approval. It is a nasty stain on the transition.Â
There is no way Brennan should get his security clearance back. Probably not Hayden either.Â
-
5 hours ago, bad_teammate said:
Bernie should select a black woman from the Midwest. A woman with powerful speaking skills who can inspire crowds.
The Bros are united: We want Nina.
Â
Love Nina - but she is better suited for Senior Advisor role. Communications Director would allow her to tailor and discipline the message. She kicks all sorts of ass on the ground, where it will be needed most. And she is damn good in person and in media. She would be the de facto most powerful figure in a Sanders Administration. She knows the message and why it works. VP (except under Bush II) is a PR job. Nina knows policy.Â
But if she is the VP pick, hell yes.
-
1
-
-
5 hours ago, SubliminalHorn said:
I don’t see Warren as his veep pick if he wins the nomination. I see him choosing Klobuchar
Warren is a good establishment pick for Sanders. She is more to the right than most people think. She has the trust of the Establishment that runs Washington and the banks will come around to her. She balances the ticket nicely politically, as a Sanders Presidency would propose a bottom up approach. She has been caricatured by Wall Street and the Tea Party remnants as anti-capitalist. That's a Republican talking point without legs. Her work in 2008 was an olive branch to the self-described "masters of the universe" who have wreaked so much hell on this economy. She is a reformer, she knows where the bodies are buried (especially with Biden's bankruptcy bill - the most devastating legislation we have seen to the working and middle classes in 70 years).Â
I think Warren would be the perfect pick for a Sanders VP. Reform will require talented folks. She is certainly that and more.Â
But I get the Klobachar vibe. I think Amy will start distancing herself from her corporate sponsors if she is serious about 2020. Those betting on continued corporate control of elections are losing the battle on the left and the right. The Third Way/New Democrat and Republican-lite models are dying.Â
-
we are all saying the same thing.Â
Â
-
10 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:
I guess the idea behind using betting markets as a predictor is that people are rational actors with money?
Â
lol imagine that
Â
Yeah - not much reliability after 2016.Â
"One U.S. prediction market PredictIt, Clinton was trading at 81 cents before the debate, jumped as high as 87 cents during the sparring match, and settled at 83 cents after, said PredictIt spokeswoman Brandi Travis in an interview. That suggests an 83 percent likelihood she’ll win on Election Day.
Another U.S. market, PredictWise, on Thursday morning put the odds of a Clinton victory at 91 percent.
Irish bookmaker Paddy Power is so confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, its spokesman (official title: PR & Mischief Champion) noted a come-from-behind Trump victory would “trigger the biggest political payout in bookmaking history and leave Paddy Power with some very expensive pie on its face.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-online-betting-parlors-clinton-expands-her-lead-over-trump-bigly/
Â
-
25 minutes ago, Message Board User said:
Â
Fundraising woes for Warren this quarter. Everything is temporary if you give it enough time.Â
-
"The Report" - a film starring Adam Driver regarding the Senate investigation into the CIA's torture program is not helpful to John Brennan, at all. Brennan is played by Ted Levine ("Buffalo Bill" (serial killer) from the Silence of the Lambs), who is even more terrifying in the film produced by Steven Soderbergh.
Â
The current CIA Director, Mueller and even Durham played a role in that matter.Â
A different affair but consistent with how the IC works to fulfill its mission. It is not kind to Zero Dark Thirty.Â
-
1
-
-
2 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:
Does anyone in America dress well enough to be considered a Fascist?
Pantsuits come to mind, but that is just horrible taste in fashion.Â
-
1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:
The Sandra Bullock version is better. Â
Cormac McCarthy's The Road is the origin point for soul-searing hopeless suffering.
-
2
-
2
-
-
Entertaining movie.Â
Ana de Armas made it fresh.Â
Our monetary system is insane
in Cloak Room
Posted · Edited by washparkhorn
And I agree with bern’s concerns of shocks to the system making inflation a risk with any economic theory. The Jobs Guarantee is a shock absorber for stagflation. Demand-pull inflation is drained off with taxes under MMT.Â