why the left is dying

LadyJazzer wrote: Hey, I monitor: "News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don't have to"

http://www.newshounds.us/

I know what they say... But since my gag-reflex threshold is pretty low, they save me the trouble.

You read out of context snippets of opinions. MSNBC has just as many opinion spewers but you never bash them because they share your opinions. Both networks are pretty clear about their biases while the MSM masks their bias indirectly by not covering stories that may tarnish the left (or they are late to the party when the story becomes huge)..

PrintSmith wrote: The problems with the latter are much fewer than the problems with the first, as we have all become aware of since abandoning any affiliation of our currency with a specie as a result of DC levying an inflation tax to get the currency to pay for both the "Great Society" and the Vietnam War in 1971. The benefit of having the currency bottomed on a specie is that the value of the currency against the specie can't be hidden or altered as easily as when the currency has no basis at all.

This is a greatly oversimplified view that leaves out quite a few important points in trying to paint this as a "liberal" idea. I guess I could remind you that it was Nixon who pulled us off the gold standard, but why bother, you'll just continue to spin it with increasingly longer, more boringly detailed, and exponentially more biased rationalizations for your view.

It really wasn't even necessary to try to spin so vigorously to prove your point. The problems of a fiat currency aren't really in debate. Although I might quibble that there is no guarantee we wouldn't be seeing equally serious, if different, problems if we had remained on a gold standard.

I wouldn't argue that freeing our economy from any basis in reality didn't auger well. But I would argue that the reasons why it was done were chiefly because it was becoming plain by that time that the capitalist paradigm of infinite growth in a finite world was starting to show some pretty serious cracks. There really wasn't a rational choice. You could say that even as far back as Nixon we were already "kicking the can down the street". The result has been as we have seen. But in fact it's more a problem with the capitalist paradigm than it is with fiat currency.

AspenValley wrote: So Fox News and Rush are busy "educating" their audience about a fringe group (which seems to have gone largely extinct in the early twentieth century anyway) like "socialist libertarians"? To what purpose, I wonder? Also, were they able to produce a living specimen of these dodo birds?

Don't know whether Fox, Rush or Beck are educating anyone on fringe philosophies, but any serious study of political philosophies would include at least an overview of such fringe ones as socialist libertarianism. Even if they don't have many proponents in the modern world, any examination undertaken for the purpose of finding or creating the best possible means by which to self govern would necessarily need the knowledge of the spectrum of possibilities from which to choose or create a hybrid. Sad really that the Democrats have abandoned examinations of this nature and hitched their party to a philosophy that history shows has consistently failed instead.

PrintSmith wrote:

AspenValley wrote: So Fox News and Rush are busy "educating" their audience about a fringe group (which seems to have gone largely extinct in the early twentieth century anyway) like "socialist libertarians"? To what purpose, I wonder? Also, were they able to produce a living specimen of these dodo birds?

Don't know whether Fox, Rush or Beck are educating anyone on fringe philosophies, but any serious study of political philosophies would include at least an overview of such fringe ones as socialist libertarianism.

I am pretty sure these "socialist libertarians" were referred to as "anarchists" when I was studying political philosophies. And since they are indeed practically as extinct as dodo birds today, I have had no cause to update that information.

I'll skip over the needless partisan slam of the second part of your post.

Listening to left wing talk radio this morning while on my way to get my car serviced, I was surprised to hear a liberal host blast MSNBC for some rather biased reporting/protecting liberal politicians. Surprised, but pleased that he could see the problems in his own profession and point them out. Has anyone ever heard Rush blast FOX? Does the right wing media ever take a good look at what they report and how they report it????

AspenValley wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: The problems with the latter are much fewer than the problems with the first, as we have all become aware of since abandoning any affiliation of our currency with a specie as a result of DC levying an inflation tax to get the currency to pay for both the "Great Society" and the Vietnam War in 1971. The benefit of having the currency bottomed on a specie is that the value of the currency against the specie can't be hidden or altered as easily as when the currency has no basis at all.

This is a greatly oversimplified view that leaves out quite a few important points in trying to paint this as a "liberal" idea. I guess I could remind you that it was Nixon who pulled us off the gold standard, but why bother, you'll just continue to spin it with increasingly longer, more boringly detailed, and exponentially more biased rationalizations for your view.

It was actually FDR that pulled the nation off of the gold standard in April of 1933 when he forbade banks to pay out gold or export it - right before he ordered that all gold and gold certificates be turned in for other money - at $20 and change per ounce - to increase the gold held by the Federal Reserve - and then inflated the price of gold to $35/ounce to inflate the money supply (Keynesian economics theory is that one of the best ways to fight off an economic downturn is an inflation of the money supply), followed a couple of months later by a joint resolution of Congress that abrogated the gold clause in public and private obligations. That move by FDR increased the value of the gold held by the Federal Reserve by roughly 70%, which allowed it to inflate the money supply. I know history is kind of boring, but it is important. And yes, Nixon did sign the order that stopped other nations from calling for their debt in gold instead of dollars, but that happened because so many nations were making a run on the nation's gold as a result of LBJ's guns and butter legislation and selling of debt obligations for the cash to fund them that there was no other option - which even the Democrats who ran Congress and authorized the action acknowledged. It's all history AV, not spin.

You're right about FDR, I mistakenly used the term "gold standard" when I referred to Nixon's actions.

And yes, history is not politics, but in the battle between politics and history, guess which always loses when someone has a partisan agenda?

There is a lot more to the evolution of our modern currency system than can be laid at the door of a few handy democratic scapegoats.

History - which is why people say that there was no coup of the Supreme Court by FDR and Congress and that Nixon was responsible for taking the US off of the gold standard. I know you corrected yourself after a recitation of the relevant history, but that is the manner in which Nixon's actions are most often referred to, which is contrary to the facts.

With regards to the last, the history of our currency is properly laid at the feet of the progressive movement. Wilson and Democrats created the Federal Reserve, FDR and Democrats took us off of the gold standard and LBJ and Democrats created a situation whereby our currency could no longer be redeemed in gold as it had been since 1879. That isn't spin, it is history

There was no coup... But thanks for playing.

Your move.... :Snooze

That you don't consider it a coup does not mean that the action fails to fall within the definition of what a coup is.