Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

thoughts on http://theweek.com/articles/583243/what-hillary-gets-right-about-glasssteagall ?

My impression is it's a complicated subject where reasonable, well-intentioned, reform-minded people will disagree. I don't get the impression Glass-Steagall is critical to a sane and thorough reform of the financial services industry.

my understanding is most engaged ppl want legislation with a Glass-Steagall EFFECT, not nec its literal restoration.

I tend to agree with Ben Bernanke's take as expressed here:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/ben-bernanke-puzzled-by-democrats-glass-steagall-214996

I think there are smarter, more targeted ways to make Wall Street safer.

The mere fact of the FDIC should preclude allowing commercial banks to engage in investment banking, which is far less regulated and much riskier.

I think Dodd Frank has shown that it's possible to constrain investment banking in ways that make it less risky and compatible with taking federally insured deposits, for instance through the Volcker Rule and heightened capital requirements. As we saw in the last crisis, there is enormous pressure to bail out any bank of sufficient size, even if it has no federally-insured deposits (as for example Bear Stearns, AIG or Lehman). So to say "Those banks can go off and do risky stuff because they don't have insured deposits" clearly is a non-starter. Once you realize that all banks of a certain size need to be tightly regulated, then the focus on Glass Steagall seems a bit beside the point.

"iatee
Posted: December 1, 2015 at 5:37:17 PM
they did invest and pick a side, that ship sunk"

God knows we have had our differences but this is so fucking OTM it hurts.

Also, the result is hilarious. Not in a Donald racist trump is hilarious way, but in a watch the cockroaches scurry when they bring raid into their own house sort of way.

i think the new panic is very much tied to cruz. a few weeks back it looked like rubio would be the default candidate once trump/carson faded. now if trump fades cruz is the clear beneficiary, which in some ways is as disastrous since they can't spin 'he doesn't represent the gop really' as easily w/ the guy who led the govt shutdown.

well, there is of course the background fear. show of hands: who honestly believes that should this guy lose the primaries, he will not then turn around and run in the general election?

that anybody thought JEB! had any legs is also nuts, of course

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 1 December 2015 23:51 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Inevitable slapstick

josh marshall tries to link the current political environment to the Great White Death study that came out of princeton a while ago (Case-Deaton)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-can-t-understand-american-politics-without-reading-this-study

just digging around a little, the study does have its critics:

https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2015/11/06/age-composition-change-accounts-for-about-half-of-the-case-and-deaton-mortality-finding/

http://andrewgelman.com/2015/11/06/what-happened-to-mortality-among-45-54-year-old-white-non-hispanic-men-it-declined-from-1989-to-1999-increased-from-1999-to-2005-and-held-steady-after-that/

i read that yesterday, and came away feeling like it was the most hedged blog entry of all time (especially the last half, when he tries to get down to business)

This is a complex story. And to be clear, I do not think this rise in mortality among middle aged whites is driving the mix of anger and nihilism among US conservatives. Rather, I think both of emanating from a common cause, albeit one I can identify in the broadest possible terms.

...Reductive explanations almost always fall short. And I anticipate some will say I'm advancing such an argument today. I would only counter that I'm not suggesting a causal relationship. I'm suggesting that these two facts are closely associated and stem from a common cause. What sets these statistics apart is their apparently hard, numerical nature. We can make arguments about political dysfunction, unrealistic fears about political change, historically anomalous refusals to abide within constitutional norms, etc. But every theory about politics and political change is inherently subjective and compromised by our individual place on today's partisan political spectrum. Numbers aren't magic. Perhaps these numbers have some flaw or another interpretation. But that seems unlikely. White people and just white people - particularly at the ages and life statuses where the advantage of race has been most needed - have broken from a trend that is basically universal in wealthy countries for a century. That is real. And I don't think we can understand the contemporary crisis of politics without it.

there's this thing, this connection, that will absolutely blow your mind and is fundamental to understanding american politics
but i'm not saying one is caused by the other, just that they're connected to something...else, something subjective, but also objective, and above all something essential to our lives and indeed to the future of the humankind, but at the same time something that's part of the very foundation of humanity as well. please continue to read my web blog

Marshall's equivocations gave me a headache.

i will tell you this today: that headache most likely came from reading his words. i can't guarantee that it did, just like i can't guarantee many things. but just because i cannot give you a guarantee does not mean that i can't make reasonable assumptions about the future. for example, flip a coin. heads or tails? arguably, no one can say. but i can tell you with high confidence that if you continue to flip the coin, eventually about 50% of the flips will land heads, the other 50% tails, and that as the number of coinflips approaches infinity the ratio of heads to tails will veer ever closer to 1:1. in other words, that headache could have come from anywhere, but thoughtful analysis, hard numbers, courageous ideas - all of these things contribute to a version of the truth. and if all of that or even most of that is true, one of those versions of the truth says that your headache came from josh marshall's equivocations. but that's a big if.

lolololol

yeah that's his thing

i guess it's nice to sort-of quantify the ambient "boy, white people are in a state, aren't they" feeling we've got going

oh, definitely! my main beef wasn't with his qualifications and hedging on the background about what the study was and what the results could mean, but rather that after a few thousand words and buildup he forgot to get to the part where he makes a solid point.

his point, i guess, is that this statistical trend of U.S. middle age white people dying at increasing rates, in contrast to the decreasing trends seen in other races and in other countries, is tied to the anger and outrage that many U.S. middle age white people seem to feel. he doesn't want to imply causality, which is good, because until this study came out a few weeks ago (or whenever it was), i don't think that anyone noticed that some white people were dying at higher rates than before! it seems to be news to everyone. it's not like any of the middle age white anger/outrage comes from an conscious awareness of decreasing life expectancy, and i doubt that there's some sort of subconscious "we're all dying...i feel it in my aging, slowly rotting bones...the u.s. government must paaaaay" undercurrent either. the anger of the tea party and the like comes from many different sources, discussed here and elsewhere ad nauseum. so i don't understand marshall's highlighting of this study and pained attempts to connect it to broader conservative anger trends. what's the point?

i guess this probably doesn't belong in the primary thread, whoops!

have any of you guys moved off yr position "no one can get the Republican nomination"?

He didn't even mention the heroin epidemic xp

somebody will get the Republican nomination. I'm pretty sure of that.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/ted-cruz-there-is-no-doubt-planned-parenthood-was-selling-baby-parts/

would love to see PP bring a lawsuit for slander against Cruz

so i don't understand marshall's highlighting of this study and pained attempts to connect it to broader conservative anger trends. what's the point?

i didn't read the article bc the excerpt was enough to give me a headache but if i were going to draw a link i'd suggest that the same thing that is causing lower life expectancy is presumably a quality of life issue that is also producing the general fear + anger we're seeing.

like for example if you're experiencing acute poverty (which is not what i think is at play here) that will obviously contribute to an affectual state - maybe despair, or anger, or resolve idk these things work differently for different people + cultures - and will cause you to die earlier. you're not angry because you're going to die earlier. but your anger and your early death are linked.

would love to see PP bring a lawsuit for slander against Cruz

this

Would love to see Cruz get dropped out of a helicopter.

oh wow, Cruz is an insane person

Christian Death Cruz

In lieu of a PP lawsuit, I'd accept Cruz's arrest as an accessory to the next attack on a PP clinic.

well, the Christian right needs martyrs.

you know, there was one martyr greater than all the rest. in fact, he was the greatest man who ever lived. and his name was Ted Cruz.

read that to the tune of "Big Bad John"

Agree with Mordy that the angry white dudes on the Trump train are not experiencing poverty, and I would add that they're (mostly) not experiencing acute health problems.

Newt/Limbaugh/Tea Party/Trump, it's all the same dudes with exactly one umbrella grievance, into which they put all their inchoate other grievances. Dudes like them have been running pretty much everything for a thousand years. So any slight diminution of that status feels like a theft. Climate change? Trynta to keep me from driving my big ol Ford. Gun control? Trynta keep me from shootin. Affirmative action? Trynta horn in on our jobs. Taxes? Trynta take my hard-earned money. Regulation? Trynta make me make slightly less money or dump slightly less waste in the crick. Sensitivity on race, gender, etc? Trynta keep me from tellin jokes.

They just want the party to continue, but modernity keeps threatening to ever-so-slightly inconvenience them, and every slight inconvenience is unforgivable. Honestly I wish they were dying sooner.

"Here, grampa, have some more butter!" - me at Thanksgiving

lol otm

haha yes

Hey now, let's not push these guys out the door. There might be other things they're afraid will be taken away that we don't even know about yet.

Good stuff in here: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2307

They just want the party to continue, but modernity keeps threatening to ever-so-slightly inconvenience them, and every slight inconvenience is unforgivable. Honestly I wish they were dying sooner.

Ditto anyone who thinks that this era is worse than any other era. "The world is just going to hell, things are falling apart. Just you watch, society's gonna break down any second now." Okay whatever, grandpa. You're like 35, which is AT LEAST 40 years too young to be spouting that "BACK IN MY DAY" shit. I told someone that last Friday, I think it really pissed him off.

Things were so much better when I was eight and had no concept of the world outside of my bedroom.

that quinnipac poll confirms my suspicion that americans are brain damaged

"It doesn't seem to matter what he says or who he offends, whether the facts are contested or the 'political correctness' is challenged, Donald Trump seems to be wearing Kevlar," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"Dr. Ben Carson, moving to center stage just one month ago, now needs some CPR. The Doctor sinks. The Donald soars. The GOP, 11 months from the election, has to be thinking, 'This could be the guy.'

Tim Malloy obviously wasted here

You think the Boomers are bad, GenX is gonna be even more ornery.

The Kurt Cobain generation? complaining about quality of life? I just can't imagine.

dump slightly less waste in the crick

where are u from, puffin?

I remember well when, immediately after Mittens lost the 2012 election, the GOP commissioned a group of consultants to read the numbers and explain why they lost and what to do next. Their widely trumpeted conclusion: the Republican Party needed to hitch its wagon to comprehensive immigration reform and reach out to more Spanish-speaking voters, muy pronto.

lol

totally worked

hey guys look this piece of shit has something else he wants to say

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/trump-on-isis-we-have-to-kill-their-families.html