The Goat Pen

Op Ed wrote:Everyone knows that China's goal is to strengthen its navy so it can control its own coastal waters 200 miles out. Our goal is to prevent them from doing that.

As of now we are winning, and our next step is to secure stronger ties with the Vietnamese.

Jungle Rat wrote:Why do we need to prevent that?

It's our way of showing that we have a bigger dick.

That's sad. Everyone knows we have the bigger dick.

"As of now we are winning, and our next step is to secure stronger ties with the Vietnamese."

I can imagine how that conversation is going to go down. "You know that little incident 40 years ago when we had a bunch of our troops and helicopters over there? Yeah, that was a mistake. Our bad. Let's just forget about that now and be pals"...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-0 ... risis.html

Even AIG says retirement age needs to be 80.

Probably because at 80 he'll already have been retired for 20 years and debating which Yacht he should donate to his granddaughters bake sale.

He also started with 70 (more likely & doable) and he was talking global, not particularly US. Shit, at this point, Greece should be 115.

I do think retirement age should be 72 for the U.S.

I also believe that we have to eliminate any rules related to receiving Social Security. Its your money, whether you make 180K a year at 66 or don't work at all.

Because we've tied these rules to people not earning income while drawing social security, we forced people into seeing this as a primary source of income and not a supplement as it was originally intended.

Let the elderly continue to work , perhaps at jobs that bring just as must emotional joy as it does financial security and there won't be so much pressure on Social Security.

we forced people into seeing this as a primary source of income and not a supplement as it was originally intended.

That's kinda funny, as Social Security and 401(k) were seen as a supplement in the 4 pillars of retirement savings. Pensions are going the way of the dinosaur and 401(k) is terribly biased towards those with higher incomes, a limit or destruction of Social Security will only shift a burden onto another governmental agency.

How do you misplace 300 cars?

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Have you ever bought a brand new cars only to forget where you put it? How about 300 of them? Probably not – unless you're Miami-Dade County, which was recently reunited with 298 vehicles it bought brand new between 2006 and 2007.

The county "discovered" this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there (see the source for more images). Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of Toyota Prius hybrids whose warranties either expired with very few miles on the odo or will very soon.

Looking to save some face, the county has rushed at least 123 of the hybrids into service. The Toyota warranty covered the hybrid bits for eight years or 100,000 miles, but we're not sure if that covers cars parked for five of those eight. We're also not sure what that much time in Miami heat and humidity does to an unused hybrid powertrain, but it can't be good.

The county, as you probably guessed, is looking into how it lost so many cars. The leading theory is that they might be part of Carlos Alvarez's time as mayor. He was the mayor during the period the Toyotas were purchased, but a 2011 recall election successfully removed him from office. Apparently the voters "felt, among other reasons, that he had been behind multiple acts of misappropriation of funds."

Heh, those Germans are up to their shenanigans in Europe again. They just may be more successful than Hitler this time.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47684988

sardis wrote:Heh, those Germans are up to their shenanigans in Europe again. They just may be more successful than Hitler this time.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47684988

working for a German owned company, I can tell you austerity measures are kicking our ass right now. Budgets have been cut by as much as 20% across the board in an effort to provide liquidity for our european offices.

Heh, the Germans are not particularly willing adopters of this deal. Their house is in order, but the rest of the Union is shit. The thing is, this is what should have happened back in 1999. The thought that the Union could centralize monetary policy, but keep fiscal policy divestured was stupid. Also, the Union was stupid to add Greece into the Union in the first place. They couldn't make the cut on the first go-'round and EVERYONE thought they were lying about their financial structure when they were allowed in a year or two later.

Don't get it twisted, though. Germany has owned Western Europe for years.

sardis wrote:Heh, those Germans are up to their shenanigans in Europe again. They just may be more successful than Hitler this time.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47684988

This time their teaming up with the Jews... Merkel is giving Israel a nuke-ready sub.

[youtube]vEwXa197uBU[/youtube]

Toe needs to answer the questions.

Shoot.

That was a huge gamble by the democrats. While the election is still several months away, they have set a tone for the election at this point. Couple that with the stock market tanking and unemployment spiking and Romney has to be feeling pretty good about his chances.

I was watching some talking heads last night talk about the GOP and I thought they had a great point. Now bear in mind, I don't really agree with alot of what Obama is doing, but they were saying the GOP is focused solely on stopping any initiatives by Obama so its odd to them that the GOP also laments that Obama hasn't done anything to get jobs or the economy back on track when the have essentially filibustered or fought for every action he has taken.

Yep

Seems like a budget would be a good place to start....oh yea, I forgot, Obammer's budget went down like 98-0 in the Senate...


f'ing Repubs...

1. Walker - Big gamble that failed for the Dems. Walker's acknowledgement of his missteps helped him. I actually hope he kills collective bargaining, just so those can see where this takes the constituency.

2. The Budget - We talked about this before. The Budget would never get passed anyway, that's why it goes down in flames like it does every year. Shit, you can just look at the status of Obama's appointments and see that the GOP side will block anything that comes from his office, regardless. I guess it could be argued that the Dems should line up to vote for the budget to show the differentiating line, but it's still a worthless gesture, legislatively. There is no way it is going to pass. I referenced Simpson Bowles the last time this thin argument was presented. That had no legs either. It did not make sense for Obama to try to get that memo moved into a bill, to a law. It would just be another legislative failure the GOP would point to (although, as it is a toothless tiger, the GOP points to it now as something that should be enacted).

3. The Parties - The GOP are better politicians than DEMs (combined with the fact that DEMs are pussies). It doesn't mean they govern better, but they do politics better. So, they understand that the facts of the matter mean nothing while the unemployment numbers are what they are. Shit, we sit on here daily pointing out subtleties, inaccuracies, fallacies and outright lies and still even people on here (people who can read and own computers) will trot out the same lines that were given full context or disproven before. Americans like the simple narrative.

I still don't care too much about the horse race in the Summer. After each convention, the respective pol will get a bounce in the polls, with each taking a slight lead over the other. Then come the middle of September until Election Day you'll see who really is going to win.

Right now, Obama is trying to see what narrative works best for Romney and Romney is staying solely on the "I can fix the economy" message without too much detail...or any real analysis of that plan.

This shit is like baseball before the Wildcard was introduced, to me: I won't pay any attention until September. Before then, it's just watching race because you enjoy politics.