Rob's House

No, you've shown that a relative handful of people say it is too inconvenient for them to bother with. I agree that is unfortunate and to be minimized, but is not in itself the end of the conversation. And I asked you the question about whether you'd support the law if it caused 10k not to vote but eliminated 100k fraudulent votes and you said no. If that's not your stance I may find it easier to find consistency in your position.

I'm trying to get you to lay down a definable principle. So far you've drawn some really blurry lines that show that you're not concerned with accuracy of voter representation as evidence by the fact that you'd rather have 100,000 legit votes invalidated by fraud than to have 10,000 choose not to vote because it was made slightly more inconvenient. So what's the ultimate end. Telling me you think it's a right means very little. As has been explained, you already have to register and show up at a poll which already eliminates some voters but I don't hear you rallying against those measures. Rather, your opposition seems wholly arbitrary and after many days and several pages of back and forth posting I don't think anyone here could articulate your opposition any more specifically than to say you don't like this measure. And that's fine if that's your only reason, it's just not interesting, nor is it worth defending beyond telling us you're entitled to feel what you feel.

Sowell on Friedman. It's a little OT but here's as good a place as any. http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/08/01/milton_friedmans_centenary

Well we've already suggested free IDs for those in need, so I'll take your answer to be no, it's just how you feel.

Perhaps I was too broad. An example of appropriate intervention might be TARP. The pre-equilibrium recovery is the part I can't get my mind around, but whatever. We've beat the **** out of this issue. And although it's not why I'm here, posting does sharpen your debating skills. Well, unless you argue with Park in Norfolk - It can be fun in the same way running up your stats on Madden in Rookie mode can be fun, but it's not very rewarding.

Cake. Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, GNR, Sublime, The Violent Femmes, and LL Cool J all had their day in my stereo, but Cake takes the cake.

That's actually not what you said, but that's cool. So we shouldn't enact any measure that directly or indirectly causes anyone not to cast a vote. Any rational basis for this or is this just how you feel?

+1

It's far more detailed in that blip than Kerry's plan to have a plan ever was. And we're still over 3 months out. Come to think of it, it's more detailed than the Ring-a-Ding Kid's was 4 years ago...or now for that matter. But hey, any excuse is a good excuse to take a swipe at Romney.

So you're saying if you can't guarantee 100% elimination of all voter fraud you shouldn't do it at all. Any rational basis for this or is this just how you feel?

Obviously you're entitled to your opinion, and no offense, but you've demonstrated that you really don't understand what a recovery is or how money works. I'd love to hear a reasonable theory by which a market recovers prior to correction, or how artificially delaying the correction expedites recovery. You've honestly not so much as attempted this and have instead deferred to "experts" who also choose to throw out a few alternate measures supported by moralizing rather than logic. If it gives you some comfort to believe government (& by extension, you) have the power to circumvent the natural laws of the world that is certainly your choice. But wanting something to be true is a horrible basis for belief. Edit: And your last bit is a typical liberal straw-man argument that amounts to saying you're unwilling to address the arguments that counter yours and are going to try to save face & slip out the back door. You should strive to be better than that, and an anonymous message board is a great place to develop those skills. It will help you in your career as well.

What's really sad is that these polls effectively influence opinion. It seems silly to choose your candidate based on a poll but a lot of people do. We, as a race, give ourselves way too much credit for rational thought. I read a book called Influence that helped to make sense of this. Not that I see it happening, but I wonder how the left would feel about the electoral college if Romney were to win a clear majority & still lose. Somehow I think their principled stance would evolve.

Sadly, I think the real dumbasses are the people in those groups that still want to vote for Obama. I see them like Detroit fans clamoring for four more years of Matt Millen.

It's not a matter of whether or not houses have value. It's a matter of where's the optimum price. House prices continue to dive and sales continue to be slow largely because what is currently perceived as fair market value by sellers is different from that of buyers. The market is still correcting the misvaluation that resulted from the extreme increase in demand (demand that was artificially induced). Sure, you can take a current assessment based on what houses in the area are currently selling for, and if government was taking property via eminent domain for legitimate purposes that would be how you would go about it. But that's not what's being discussed here. You're talking about having the government buy houses at current assessment levels to create a floor. Problem is, if that price is higher than where supply and demand meet all you're doing is giving a temporary increase in demand to maintain uncorrected prices that are not reflective of optimal fair market value. Because the market will still fall to equilibrium regardless of such tinkering, all this would do (as was explained by others) is delay clearing the market. Once we actually find the real floor, as decided by the market and not wishfully thinking politicians, people can start doing business again and that's when you see recovery. You can't recover until you correct and you're trying to put speed bumps in the path of the correction hoping that it will magically stop the downward movement and kick into reverse. I'm sorry, I don't really know how else to explain it.

Dude, we get it. You have for whatever reason decided that the accuracy & legitimacy of elections is secondary to making sure anyone & everyone gets to punch their card. Problem for you is that most don't agree & you're fighting an uphill battle. I find it funny that we're all in agreement that the don't have an ID crowd will lean heavily Democrat.

Dude, you are so out of your element. Your problem is you're more concerned with defending your ideology than understanding what's at play. Market prices are created by what? That's right, the market. We track the data to try to figure out fair market value, the central planner can't set it, only hope to make a good estimation. Problem here is you're trying to stabilize market value by having government purchase property at market value at a time when prices are falling to market value. If you think this very fundamental truism of price function is nonsense I'm afraid I'll have to bow out of this conversation for the same reason I'll not indulge a flat earther.

This is the key to the misunderstanding of this issue. It requires knowledge a central planner can never have. As far as housing markets go, this recession is basically the returning of house prices, that have been grossly overvalued due to artificial demand created by lax lending standards. You want to pay a market price, but we don't know what that is. Only the market can tell us. This is a perfect example of how you can't grow the economy through tinkering because you can't create wealth out of thin air. A lot of people made a lot of money over a short period of time on housing. It's pretty obvious that the real values were not increasing as rapidly as the price was. You can't pump all this money into housing without taking it from somewhere else UNLESS you've created corresponding new wealth, which wasn't happening. Something's got to give and that something is this correction. Basically, everyone that took massive proffits on the housing bubble (and that's everyone from individual families, house flippers, financial institutions, etc.) did so on the backs of the people who bought high & are in upside down mortgages. As far as your proposed interventions go, it sounds good in theory, but there's little reason to thing "we" (govt.) is capable of accomplishing what you suggest at all, much less with any kind of efficiency. And the fact that your stated goal is to put a price floor means your goal is to prevent finding equilibrium in the market, which is itself the ultimate cause of the problem.

Hence my comment a few weeks ago that the economy would be better if he'd done nothing.

All your info comes from people. If you know the people providing the info are agenda driven liars, only the most gullible of dupes would accept it at face value.

That math is racist

I'm skeptical largely due to the intentional misrepresentation and evasion by so many proponents of global warming theory who have opportunistically seized the issue as a way to expand their own wealth & power with ridiculous "solutions" that, even if you accept their premise, would hamstring our economy while doing virtually nothing to address the stated problem - kind of like Obamacare. Or to put it more simply, once you use a Mercator projection to show proportionality I'm no longer interested in anything you have to say.

Dude's claim that the correlating curve flipped him makes me suspect he may be full of **** because that's old news. If I knew about it five years ago I suspect he did too. I'll suspend any definitive judgment until I see his data & rationale first hand, but all too often these guys see a correlation & assume causation. It's been argued that the temperature change causes the CO2 fluctuation; not the other way around. Maybe Tom will stop by & give us his insight on the matter.

No one's arguing otherwise. Green party?

For CO2 reduction you are correct in regards to market forces. As to the other aspects, the market will sort those out just fine without help. As far as CO2 reduction, (which I'm not willing to concede is necessary until someone presents honest data supporting the theory, which Algore et al have yet to do, but for the sake of argument let's just assume it's true) solar panels & windmills are all fine & good, but if you really want to put a significant dent in CO2 emissions we're going to have to go nuclear. And NIMBY isn't the issue. We have a nuclear plant outside Richmond & the land around the lakes cooling the plant are primo real estate. The side where the hot water comes out of the plant is even more expensive b/c they get to live on a heated lake. What's going on here is BANANA - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.

And like a typical liberal you want to force everyone else to cater to the dregs, regardless of the cost or level of the dregs' appreciation.