407 replies to this topic

[Shryke]

Harry the Heir, on 04 August 2012 - 06:14 PM, said:

Shryke:

I'm not saying that Romney's background will have no effect on the election. I'm saying that the personal qualities of a candidate generally have a small effect on election results, one that is easily swamped by many other factors. This is a widely held view among political scientists who study elections. This post from Andrew Gelman is pretty representative.

I'm also not saying that all candidates are the same, just that all candidates fuck up, and the fact that Romney also fucks up doesn't tell us very much. The foreign trip that you described as a goddamn disaster will be forgotten in a couple of weeks, just like any number of other news stories that broke in July or August and then evaporated after the campaign. This is still well before most people start following the election at all closely.

It barely matters now. The US generally doesn't give a shit about what foreigners think.

What it shows is his basic incompetence at the whole campaigning thing. How does one fuck up a foreign handjob tour? He couldn't hit a single country without offending the shit out of someone.

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And yeah, Romney doesn't have "folksy charm" like George W. Bush did. But qualities like that are fungible. What strikes you as Romney being out of touch could strike somebody else as confidence. Media observers tend to see a candidate one way if he's losing and another way if he's winning. Obama was "serenely confident" in 2008 and "aloof and out of touch" in 2010.

Firstly, these qualities being "fungible" doesn't make much sense.

And secondly, charisma is definitely a thing. It's a huge predictor of success in many areas even.

Favourable/Unfavourable numbers among voters are pretty skewed against Romney.

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Or let me put this another way. At this time in 1992, Bill Clinton was widely seen as a loser, with favorability ratings that were basically underwater. During the primary, which Clinton won only after a long grueling contest that lasted well into April, the prevailing view was that Clinton was doomed:

Even after his opponents dropped out of the race, a large number of primary voters wrote in Ross Perot's name. After the primary was over, both George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot had double digit leads over Clinton. And yet we all know how this story ends. Clinton wasn't just an average candidate, he was a great candidate, a political rock star whose reputation lives on more than a decade after he left office.

I'd be very surprised if Romney turned into another Bill Clinton. But if even a great candidate like Clinton can seem like a failure in the summer before an election, surely it's too soon to write off Romney as a bad candidate.

That reasoning doesn't work. It relies on the idea that Romney could somehow turn out to be a good candidate, something even you don't seem to put any faith in while arguing it.

And you shouldn't. Romney's been running for years now. We know what he's like. And if anything, he seems to have gotten worse at it the closer we get to the election.

You wanna look at 1992, let's look at 2008 where Obama led McCain from like May onward. There were the convention blips, but other then that the polls were consistent that Obama was gonna win. And this year the polls are, if anything, more consistent.

[Noroldis]

Commodore:

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Hydraulic fracking is a good example of a once nonviable technology that matured in response to price incentives.

Hydrofracking is still unviable – from an environmental standpoint, that is. If you don't believe me, watch the film Gasland.

From an economic standpoint, hydrofracking has indeed (and unfortunately) become viable. Well, up until comes the time in the future for taxpayers to pay the bill to decontaminate all the soil that's been and will be polluted by hydrofracking.

Titus Pullo:

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Yup. Decades of tinkering. ... Negligible levels of progress. ... Certainly in terms of production rates and production estimations going forward.

Did you even read Paladin of Ice's post about Conservatives' obstructionist shenanigans concerning the development of alternative energy? Or did the logical "Conservatives in general and Republicans in particular have long been doing all they can to prevent the development of alternative energy sources, as directed by their Big Energy sugar daddies" conclusion escape you?

Edited by Noroldis, 04 August 2012 - 06:59 PM.

[Commodore]

Paladin of Ice, on 04 August 2012 - 03:42 PM, said:

Commodore, how do you feel about Republican senators trying to forbid the Navy from using alternative energy?

I have no opinion. Not sure what the point is of these massive link dumps of GOP politicians contradicting my posts. I don't claim to speak for them, or vice versa. At best they are marginally better than the alternative.

You can post all the links you want, doesn't change the idea that it's wrong to use taxpayer money to invest in private companies. Corporate welfare is never justified. If a company is worth investing in, why do they need to get their capital by force via the government? We have agencies all over the government with their own slush funds set up to just hand out dump trucks full of cash to whomever. It's not even earmarked by Congress, just approved by some faceless committee no one voted for. HARP, TARP, the Import Export Bank, the DoE Green Energy slush fund. It's insane, and a guarantee of fraud, waste, and abuse. But hey, just say you're "Investing In America" and it's all good.

I would love to see a law outlawing all bailouts, subsidies, and guaranteed loans. You would quickly see which companies/banks are viable and which are feeding off the taxpayer. And investment would be steered to legitimately viable entities. Alot of supposedly smart businessmen would be exposed as frauds who knew how to game the system.

It amazes me how people here think they have the pulse of the electorate and are so sure of the outcome in November. My posture is always to assume people don't agree with me (which is generally true).

Edited by Commodore, 04 August 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[Shryke]

If it's generally true, and we don't agree with you, then it holds that we should assume the electorate does agree with us.

By your reasoning.

[Narayan]

Commodore, on 04 August 2012 - 07:00 PM, said:

I would love to see a law outlawing all bailouts, subsidies, and guaranteed loans. You would quickly see which companies/banks are viable and which are feeding off the taxpayer. And investment would be steered to legitimately viable entities. Alot of supposedly smart businessmen would be exposed as frauds who knew how to game the system.

I'm not sure how you could agree to banks declaring bankruptcy millions of people could lose all their money in such an event. When you are an hardcore capitalist i guess you could argue fair is fair but I personally would see why any government would bail out such a bank. What needs to be done is government intervention to split up banks again in consumer banks and investments banks.
It's fucking ridiculous anyway since the 2008 crises banks have gotten bigger instead of smaller. Government needs to step in and split them up

[Harry the Heir]

Shryke, on 04 August 2012 - 06:54 PM, said:

That reasoning doesn't work. It relies on the idea that Romney could somehow turn out to be a good candidate, something even you don't seem to put any faith in while arguing it.

No, it doesn't. I never said that Romney was a good candidate. (Nor am I saying that he's going to win, although he might.) I think Romney is an average candidate, not particularly good or bad. What I _am_ saying is that it's easy to exaggerate a candidate's flaws at this stage in the process, and particularly easy for partisan opponents of said candidate to overlook their appeal.

[sologdin]

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You can post all the links you want, doesn't change the idea that it's wrong to use taxpayer money to invest in private companies. Corporate welfare is never justified. If a company is worth investing in, why do they need to get their capital by force via the government? We have agencies all over the government with their own slush funds set up to just hand out dump trucks full of cash to whomever. It's not even earmarked by Congress, just approved by some faceless committee no one voted for. HARP, TARP, the Import Export Bank, the DoE Green Energy slush fund. It's insane, and a guarantee of fraud, waste, and abuse. But hey, just say you're "Investing In America" and it's all good.

cute, the persistent market utopianism.  corporate welfare is the rule of capitalism, rather than the exception.

[TrackerNeil]

Commodore, on 04 August 2012 - 07:00 PM, said:

You can post all the links you want, doesn't change the idea that it's wrong to use taxpayer money to invest in private companies. Corporate welfare is never justified.

Finally! Commodore admits that philosophy, and not fact, guides the formation of his opinions.