Lurker > SmartMuffin

The context is what I was saying. The same tired lefty argument that Elizabeth Warren got smacked down for introducing a few months back. That individuals don't get any credit for their accomplishments because "society" provided them the framework to succeed.

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From: Mr Lasastryke | #172

So, I'm curious... does Obama's "whatever you achieved isn't because of you, it's because of stuff other people did" logic apply to HIM?

Contrary to your belief, leftists, including Obama, don't actually deny the existence of talent or believe success is 100% the result of stuff other people did. What we do deny, however, is your belief that success of a person is always 100% the result of the achievements of that person and that circumstances have nothing to do with it.

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen."

That's an exact quote.

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From: red sox 777 | #170

Considering he basically didn't achieve anything......

One of my commie friends posted this on Facebook. I only got a few lines in before my brain exploded.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/05/29/a-long-list-of-president-obamas-accomplishments-with-citations/

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So, I'm curious... does Obama's "whatever you achieved isn't because of you, it's because of stuff other people did" logic apply to HIM? Like, when his supporters are reviewing his accomplishments as President, can we safely dismiss them as things he didn't actually achieve, but rather the product of the collective efforts of all of the Communists who came before him?

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Well even a broken clock is right twice a day!



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Rapid growth is capitalism's fault.

Rapid =/ unsustainable.

Pretty much every bubble in history can be traced back to some sort of central authority meddling in the free market.

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I see it as natural, as no one's fault. To get rapid growth, we need activities that naturally produce big recessions. The only way to make sure big recessions do not happen is to get rid of our periods of rapid growth.

To clarify, would you say that the rapid growth is "natural and no one's fault."

It's like the Kenyes and Hayek battle rap video. Go out and get drunk and party all night and OF COURSE you're going to wake up hung over the next morning. But that doesn't mean a hangover is "natural and nobody's fault." You could just avoid the drinking!



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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
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So, I just finished reading "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. It was pretty good. I was expecting a "bash the rich" sort of takedown of the evil, greedy, capitalists who made millions "betting against the American people," but he didn't really go that way too much. Instead, it was a much more realistic character study of some of the main guys who were out there saying "Hey, this is all a bunch of fraud and it's going to collapse," and nobody listened to them.

Well, he covers SOME of them at least.

Peter Schiff isn't mentioned. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory isn't mentioned. Ultimately, the narrative is still that incompetence and greed on the part of wall street caused the bubble and the collapse. Ben Bernanke is mentioned a couple times, but doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves for this whole thing. The government's role in all of it is largely ignored.

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xfd, now THIS is a yard sign



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OK. So they are the sucker who is buying the garbage.

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Ultimately, the government is ending up with the garbage, even if they aren't officially "buying" it. But I'm sure there are plenty of banks serving as middlemen who will go down along the way. Remember, all the way down the sub-prime hole the big banks were insisting that THEY weren't buying any of the subprime crap, that they were just making the market and selling it to other people.

And yet somehow, when it all came down to it, they all faced billions of dollars of losses in subprime loans that they supposedly weren't even holding.

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Peter Schiff destroys some stupid ho:



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From: red sox 777 | #138

Parts of Oregon are that liberal, eh?

I see more Kerry/Edwards stickers on a regular basis than anything for Romney! Although Ron Paul has a pretty decent presence down here. It's like, the commie-brainwashing is effective enough that no disillusioned leftist would turn to being a REPUBLICAN (because they are just the devil and absolutely everyone knows that).

But you can call yourself a libertarian, keep your hipster cred around campus, and like Ron Paul ironically. That's perfectly OK.

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So, I saw another Romney bumper sticker today. I was ready to get excited, then I realized it was the same car I saw before.

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Nothing today. Been busy!

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Yes, and Rachel Maddow only likes Ron Paul by comparison to Romney and is only paying attention to these stories in order to take shots at Romney in general and republicans in specific. She doesn't care about Ron Paul delegates being treated unfairly...

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They loved McCain during the republican primaries.

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Don't be fooled. She's no RP fan, she's just trying to take shots at the Republicans.

Like how the MSM absolutely LOVED John McCain in 2008... right up until the second he had the nomination secured.

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From: DeepsPraw | #111

Pretty sure that was sarcasm, but I never know with Smuffin

Actually it was just plain ignorance. I just assumed, incorrectly, that IE was still dominant in that regard. I don't really keep up with these things.

I didn't know you were religious, Smartmuffin.

Trying it out. Seeing if it'll take. Some of our best libertarians are religious, including 2/3 in the topic title!

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From: JDTAY | #106

Audit the Fed? Who are we gonna get to do that? I really don't trust the IRS to be neutral there.

I'm sure the mises institute could round up a huge number of economists who would be willing to do it for free.

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
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On another note, I saw a Mitt Romney bumper sticker for the first time in my life today.

Can't wait till this guy gets destroyed and all the libertarians can laugh and say "we ****ing told you so" to the idiots who nominated him.

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From: JDTAY | #100

I think IE's problem is that it's a victim of its own success. All the viruses and adware are made for IE because everyone uses it.

Of course, all websites are made to be compatible with IE as well. With IE, you essentially never have to worry about going to a website and some functionality not working properly.

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Aries is walking a pretty fine line though. Like when he tries to get the crowd to stop chanting and stuff. I don't know if that kind of behavior is sustainable as a face...

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At what point will Eddie Guerrero's glory no longer occupy your sig?

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I think one thing that works VERY much in favor of DX is that there was almost zero stupid ****. No Joseph Park. No Hulk Hogan. No Sting. No Jeff Hardy. No Brooke Hogan. One BRIEF Dixie appearance that was mostly about her putting over Aries and not about her stupid storyline.

WRESTLING MATTERS.

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uh, no, I DON'T give them a pass for that. Intentionally making two months of crappy shows to help one good one be a little bit better does not seem like a winning strategy to me.

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Really? That seems pretty high. I wasn't that impressed overall!

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I haven't watched O'Reilly in many years, but yikes, I don't remember him being THIS ridiculous...



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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
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Colorado Avalanche (Indianapolis)

lolwut?

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
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man

as excited as we are to consider the possibilities for the guys who were just in the main event match

allow me to rain on everyones parade by bringing up how AWFUL the sting/ninjas inevitable BFG match thing is going to be. I wonder what poor bastard face is going to get drug into that with him.

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Is it really spoilers to talk about events that just aired?

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ok, so im about to buy my first "minor" ppv in several years. Good job, TNA!

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From: MartinFF7 | #039

From: TimJab | #028

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Justice#2007

Holy crap

Did Angle lose all his titles one by one or was there a convenient "title vacating" scenario like I envisioned?

Also, does this imply Vince Russo and I have the same line of thinking...?

one by one

p sure jay lethal beat him for the x-division on like the very next impact

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
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Except that Punk became WWE champion rather than getting released <_<

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From: DeathChicken | #032

More likely he'll turn face, and then be one of those John Morrison faces where they forget everything that made people like him while he was a heel, then he'll be fired

oh god

this is so going to happen :(

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I guess unemployment will go down no matter who you vote for,

Only because the numbers are rigged.

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From: TomNook7 | #087

how does the government help make monopolies possible? (i believe you; i'd just like to know for the sake of stomping liberals in arguments)

There really just is no such thing as a "natural" monopoly. Now, it's obviously true that many industries benefit from brand awareness, economies of scale, and other factors that make it very difficult for competitors to enter, but not impossible, and CERTAINLY not impossible if the entrenched companies did something idiotic like censoring the Internet.

No, in those cases, the only reason there would be no competition would be if, say, a government passed a law saying "each town can only have one cable company" which, you know, they did.

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Tensai winning MITB would be pretty hilarious just to see how the Internet reacts to it...

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From: Bidoof | #495

edwardsdv posted...

Its funny that you ran through the whole lineage here when...the only reason ANYONE cares about cares about this angle is AJ.

And, when you get down to it, the biggest problem with the world title scene is that it is being built around the whims of AJ. There is no focus or attention really being given to the title or the men competing for it.

Exactly. This kind of angle would be just fine between two upper-midcard guys who need help getting over. Like, this deal would be fine for a Dolph/Christian feud or something like that. But not only do Punk and Dragon NOT need this at all, but we're talking about your big, prestigious title here...

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Monopolies are dangerous

I agree. Monopolies are also ONLY possible if the government creates them. They can't exist in a free market. The reason we have near-monopoly situations in ISPs is because the government decreed it to be so.

This is a great article. I particularly like how it draws attention to the immense inefficiency (both in terms of money and life) of covering people for emergencies but not for treatment of conditions that, ignored, will lead to emergencies; I think that often isn't understood.

Well, you don't have to "cover" people for routine services. It is far more practical for those to be paid in cash. Like car insurance. I feel like this case has been made so many times that I feel kind of silly for repeating it, but your car insurance doesn't cover gas and oil changes, even though going without them will lead to much larger problems. When it covers everyday, routine care, it is no longer "insurance" but rather it is a subscription health plan.

I'll admit I'm a bit surprised to see you link it, though, as it mostly reads like an argument for some level of socialised medicine (although, granted, socialised medicine that comes at a lower cost than the current US system, which even a staunch libertarian might see as an improvement). But maybe you have a different take? I'm curious, if so.

The main reason I linked it was for the first part. The leftist media constantly tries to persuade the public that America under Republicans is some completely free and unregulated market, when nothing could be further from the truth. We're already a lot less free than many countries whom we view as "socialist" in comparison to us. Also, I just wanted to give Morgan some credit. He's not a liberty-movement guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he does an excellent job collecting the facts and presenting them in a clear way.

I'm not sure how, in principle, the government censoring the Internet is worse than corporations doing the same. You can argue "corporations don't force you to use the Internet so they aren't infringing your liberties there" (of course in quite a few jobs you are forced to use the Internet but bear with me), but... the government doesn't force you to use the Internet either.

IF we had a free market in internet services (see above), and many companies started censoring the internet, and "uncensored internet" was a product in high demand, new companies would emerge to offer said product. New governments cannot emerge to offer alternative products. They shoot you if you try and do that. Let me just ask you one thing. Who ordered the construction of The Great Firewall? Was that Comcast? Or was it a government?

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From: DeathChicken | #472

What diva division? I mean that honestly, Kelly Kelly is gone, the Bellas are gone, Natalya is never on TV, Beth is never on TV, they...won't put Kharma on TV for some unfathomable reason. Your division is now AJ vs Vickie

Layla/Beth is happening every once in awhile. I feel like this whole AJ thing might be a somewhat reasonable thing to do if you plan on having her like, dominate the divas division (sucky as it is) for the rest of time, but they clearly aren't doing that. I can't even fathom what the endgame on all this might be, and I'm pretty sure they don't know either.

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...comparing christian to kofi and somehow not getting that the AJ angle literally can't work without the belt being the centerpiece says you're drinking something alright.

Whether the belt is necessary for the AJ angle to work is beside the point. The POINT is that having your title belt be used for the purpose of helping a diva get over (when that particular diva isn't even especially active in the divas division) is an insane thing to do.

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From: thundersheep | #014

From: Punnyz | #012

its basically stupid people selling to stupid buyers and succeeding

There isn't anything stupid about getting more money than your crap is worth.

Yeah, especially given that CL ads are free. I mean, what do you have to lose listing your PS2 for $200 or whatever. The 30 seconds it takes for you to make an ad? And hey, maybe some idiot out there actually buys it!

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I feel like there are never any appropriately-priced items on CL. Things are either ridiculously cheap or way too expensive.

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One of the left's greatest achievements is somehow convincing people that government (whom you are forced to interact with at the point of a gun) is more accountable to people than private business (whom you are never forced to interact with at all).

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From: Jakyl25 | #009

Let's not forget The Bum Bum Song.

I had been trying, and nearly succeeded. Thanks for that.

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I'm generally less interested in the actual wrestling part of pro wrestling, but looking at a card with Roode/Aries, Angle/Joe, and AJ/Daniels. Like, any one of those could easily end up being MOTY.

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