Hey! See here, November 17, 2011 6:31 PM. Whaddemmeye, chopped liver ovah heah?

Also, offtopic: Is anything more stereotypically "feminine" than obsessive manipulation of feelings?

Cridster you pick interesting stuff I'll have to read later, but on the Steinem piece? didn't get through it yet but this made me cringe, coming from an interviewer: "Her looks, though. Let's get them out of the way first."

Why do we give a damn how she looks? I thought we WEREN'T supposed to care about that? Takes the weight out of the piece, doncha think? Dunno, I'll have to read it in full later to see what it's about.

As far as our guarantee of Ex-Im bank... OI! Why is it always the taxpayer that has to back this stuff up? If the banks want that sort of thing they should be PAYING us to insure them.

Awesome.

Not.

Fire. Them. All.

Somehow I'm guessing that if the OWS clowns started to actually go after the folks they should be going after - in Congress and the White House - all the money for the free food and supplies; the union support; and the ridiculously supportive media coverage - all that would very quickly dry up.

Here's how to understand what's going on: Imagine I'm a shoe exporter. I ship shoes to stores in Europe, and then I wait a few weeks to get paid by the stores. But what if more orders come in, and I need to restock the shoes right away, before I get paid for my last shipment? I could just borrow from a bank. But another option is that I can just sell my invoices, in effect, to the bank. If the shoe stores owe me $1,000, I might sell Citibank, for $950, the right to be paid by those shoe stores. That's called supply-chain finance, and it's a quintessential capitalist arrangement.

Now imagine I'm a shoe exporter under this system. I know I'm going to sell my receiveables to Citibank for a discount, so I bump the price a little. Citibank doesn't mind because they have limited risk with 90% of their receivables guaranteed by the government.

[My $1,000 in the previous example is now $1,200 and Citibank buys it for $1,000 with $900 guaranteed by the government. On a good deal, they make $1,200 on a $1,000 investment. On bad deal, they still get $900. I get a $1,000 which covers my actual costs.]

Since Citibank has limited risk, they're willing to purchase more receivables for their portfolio.

I'm willing to sell more to them. I get my money faster and without any foreign currency or foreign banking issues.

I start accepting more orders on credit than I would ordinarily have accepted. And selling them to Citibank.

Pretty soon, I'm starting to depend on the timely cash flow from those receivables sales and the increased sales since I can now accept more credit orders.

So, I start accepting credit orders from less-credit-worthy customers. There's no risk to me, since Citibank will buy them.

And why would Citibank buy these riskier receivables? Because there's little risk to them, having 90% of the amount guaranteed by the government. Some price adjustments may occur, but otherwise the deals will get made.

Before long Citibank starts packaging the invoices and selling the packages. It's a low risk cash flow instrument for investors (90% guaranteed). Citi can mix the riskier receivables with the A+ ones and create a package acceptable to even a risk-averse investor (especially with the 90% guarantee).

Now, I'm buying more and more shoes to export - with a corresponding degradation in the quality of the shoes. WIth lower quality shoes, the customers don't see a rapid sales turnover and are slower to pay. No worries to me since I've sold the receivables to Citibank. No worries to Citibank since they've sold the packaged receivables to investors.

Then, the shoe market collapses ... or at least my part of it does since I'm now selling crappy shoes to destitute retailers. The retailers can't pay the invoices. Investors are now stuck with a stack of worthless receivables. No worries, the government will bail them out.

So everything works out for everyone, right?

Sound familiar?

But for fuck's sake...

Just another scenario and argument for a Too Big to Fail Tax. Something McCardle advocates.

Summary: Any profits go to the friends of Obama, and any losses go to the taxpayers.

Work harder, slackers. More losses are on the way.

> Something McCardle advocates.

Three word sentence! Are we supposed to ask 'What do you mean by that?!?!'

Don't be gay.

The cops, Man.

I used the term in a letter to Forbes magazine in 2006 which letter is online. Does DeMint have a prior use3 of the term?

I'm claiming credit, dammit.

Cite.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0724/022.html

Second letter.

Props.

@SwissArmyD

If you would read the entire piece instead of skimming, you would see that the writer is commenting on the fact that feminism has loosened up as to the minefield that is mentioning a woman's looks.

@Crid

She says we need to be angrier about the fact that abortion rights are degrading quickly and that we are at a "tipping point" where we could easily go back to pre Roe v. Wade era.

I've never had an abortion, but I've had a couple of scares--single, poor as dirt, trying to scare up the money just in case. I can only imagine what it's like for girls in less progressive areas, where *technically* it's legal, but good luck finding help.

Look boys, you can either let us scream about the fact that abortion should be easily accessible, which it currently very much isn't, *or* you can bellyache about child support and gold digging women and how family courts favor women.

And sometimes we get emotional because men are retarded. No emotion whatsoever behind that last statement btw, as it's a cold hard fact.

Crid, you get all het up about just about everything Amy writes here. Everything you do is filled with, uh, passion.

Please to be explaining to me how you can dominate a forum with said passion, but when women fight for actual rights in the actual world, it's us being "emotional and manipulative?"

And how does anything Gloria Steinem, or any other female for that matter, do or say affect you personally? (Answer: It doesn't.)

What you are doing, Crid, which you'd recognize if you actually dug into the feminist movement (which most women are conflicted about on some level) is that what men like you are currently doing is "making the personal political." Do you recognize that phrase?

The difference, honeybun, is that the core of the feminist movement is to fight for actual rights, where you seem to just be mad because, because, why, again?

"She says we need to be angrier about the fact that abortion rights are degrading quickly and that we are at a "tipping point" where we could easily go back to pre Roe v. Wade era. "

Is that really true, though? Feminists have been beating that "tipping point" drum ever since 1980, and absolutely nothing has changed. In fact, arguably abortion rights have opened up further since them -- third-trimester abortions, which were unimaginable in 1980, are now legal and available. The DoD pays for abortions for military personnel, and Obamacare will pay for abortions, assuming it isn't repealed. That Mississippi law will be overturned by the courts based on existing precedent, just as attempts by other states have been.

"Tipping point" is the same alarmist bullshit that the global-warming totalitarian wannabees use to strike fear in people. This is just something that feminists are using to keep supporters in line, and foreclose any questioning of their leadership.

> She says we need to be angrier

Right. That's a profoundly feminine way of approaching things, and not an admirable one. Women whose favorite tool is the manipulation are, as a rule, naive. It's like a football-crazed 13-year-old boy who decides that the best response to a problem is aggression... And the kind he wants to deliver is a flying tackle followed by a savage beat-down.

Your recitation of her words is kind of amusing. It's like you've been marinating in the rhetoric for so long, you don't recognize the aroma. Oprah in the early days was famous for exhorting her audience: "Are you angry yet??!!?"

> you get all het up about just about
> everything Amy writes here.

Only when she's wrong. It's been going on for years. I don't know why she puts up with it. It's fun practice for both of us.

> Please to be explaining to me how
> you can dominate a forum

If only.

> which you'd recognize if you actually
> dug into the feminist movement

Buttercup... Turtledove... Sugarbee... My life began in a profound and electric context of feminism. I've forgotten more of its tedious aphorisms than you're ever going to remember. And I'd spell out all the details in plain language except [A] I don't think I like you very much, [B] they're incredibly mundane and [C] I bet you really haven't considered many of these comments, and are only offering this critique as a bid for a seat in what you'd imagine to be Amy's Chair Circle of Big Sisterhood.

(She doesn't have one, which is another reason to hang out here.)

Tell you what, start reading everything with my name on it about here, and go forward. We'll take it up again later. M'kay? Great. Thanks oodles.

Re: OWS

17 hours ago, this image as plastered all over the web

http://i.imgur.com/J3AE5.jpg

Three hours ago, the officer's name, email, and residential address were freely available across the web as well

What an ass. I am about as pro-police as you can get, and I'd like to hang this one up by his balls till he's dead. If OWS gets this guy fired, it hasn't been all worthless.

Wow. That is just VILE.

While I agree it's vile -- why did the cop have to resort to an industrial size can of pepper spray?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Maybe the students were asked, warned, and otherwise asked to leave? While I agree that what the image captures is brutal -- there is a difference between pepper spraying the students after they have been asked to leave and refusing and just doing it for the hell of it.

If you came onto my private property and were setting up a tent without my permission -- I would ask you to leave and you refuse. I then tell you to get off my property now or I'm calling the deputies. The deputies then show up and tell the person he has to leave. They write him a ticket and he still refuses to leave. What is the next step? Spray him with pepper spray or shoot him?

This is another group of useful idiots.