Thanks Teri Buhl, but be careful referencing Kaiser Report. It’s not FDL approved. Feel free to mention the New York Times as much as you want, but the clique may come in an start making snarky comments if you mention the Kaiser Report. Nothing referencing the Kaiser Report gets front paged at FDL and nothing ever will. Matt Taibi is the absolute limit. Too few degrees of separation to Alex Jones. No, no. Can’t have that around here. Everything must be done to restrict progressives from having discussions with people who don’t describe themselves as progressives. FDL goes from the New York Times to Matt Taibi. Anything outside that and they bring in the professional name callers.

Trevor,
I find it interesting that you haven’t mentioned Robert Mueller’s name once, despite the fact that he has been the head of the FBI for over a decade. What’s your assessment of him? Is he the person most responsible for this “manufactured war terrororism”?

The republican debate about militias, standing armies, and mercenaries goes back to Machiavelli. Not surprising, those trying to whip people into a frenzy against the second amendment are the very same people who have overseen the transfer of so much of the US/NATO war machine to mercenaries. Not surprising, the republic is breathing its last. Of course, if you think like Piers Morgan, there is nothing to learn from history and the American founders concerns about how tyranny grows, not that Morgan has ever read any history.

Progressives shouldn’t lie to others or to themselves. The debate is broader than just guns in the society. The debate is about the response to government tyranny. And one can actually be in favor of guns and against tyranny. I’m sorry, things aren’t always as simple as FDLers would like to pretend.

Once upon a time I thought issues might be carefully considered at Firedogalke. Unfortunately, the place has been overtaken by garbage name calling, and the general drift is now one of mindless agreement with Piers Phone Hacker Morgan and Alan Pro Torture Dershowitz. Of course politics makes for strange bedfellows, but when one finds oneself in bed with Morgan and Dershowitz, one should really do a bit of soul searching. Realities are complicated.

Firedoglake has long since given up facing the complications. And now, the tone of the place makes it just seem like a Daily Kos for gray hairs and a po-mo crowd that still thinks it is 1993. Why think? If somebody is a couple of steps to the right, or far to the right on one dimension among many, call them names. If somebody is a couple of steps to the left, call them names. The shrillness of the place has chased away many knowledgeable and otherwise polite people. The message was sent that the “debate” at FDL will be extremely narrow. And so FDL is now simply far too narrowminded a place to have a real debate about Morgan vs. Jones. If the debate ever got good, the name callers would show up and destroy it. Have to go elsewhere to find a real discussion of it. Curious isn’t it, that everybody is talking about it today, but FDL has less than 20 comments?

Ah, the Firedoglake Sunday Talking Heads post, training progressives to understand that they are forever to be on the outside looking in. Wouldn’t a post on the best progressive threads from around the web be more, uhm, progressive? Firedoglake compromised, rather surrendered, a long time ago and is compromised in so many many ways. As usual, forgive my dissent. But this attitude hurts progressivism and it seems to be by design.

What will you teach them about gold? Not to fight over it?

Ask Andrew Maguire

A look at http://static1.firedoglake.com/common/images/editor/italic.gifthe fraud. An idiot like Krugman wouldn’t give some silly argument about how the oil markets can’t be manipulated with futures contracts because he, or at least other economists, could actually see it. One should experience as many things as possible comrade. That’s all I’m saying.

He dodged my question too about whether economists are afraid to talk about the Federal Reserve.

And frankly, while the FDL book salon is far and away the most civilized part of the forum, his dismissive tone about day trading is sadly so typical of economists. The cliche is that those who can’t do, teach. But what of those who never even tried? Could you imagine a music theorist who doesn’t play any instrument? That’s today’s economist. He a priori knows that he couldn’t learn anything from day trading? Many day traders read the economic news closer than anybody and see interrelations. It’s a dangerous attitude. And the stakes are too high not to start calling bullshit on it.

Good questions Ludwig.

Isn’t the reasons that corporations are sitting on so much cash is that they don’t trust each other? I’m probably not stating this correctly, but haven’t the markets for short term paper dried up?

There is very little collateral backing those derivatives. The ratio is maybe 10-1 or more. It has all been rehypothecated numerous times in London.

You should do it. Just with a few hundred dollars. In fact I would very strongly recommend it to everyone here. Just enough to make it meaningful. I was not trained as an economist. But by doing some day trading I was able to see first hand in quite dramatic fashion just how rigged and manipulated the whole system is. Vegas has nothing on our so called “markets”.

Have you ever done any day trading Mr. Wray?

Mr. Wray,
Thanks for being here today. According to former Belgian central banker Bernard Lietaier, he was told personally by his former classmate Paul Krugman to not talk about the money system, that it was a taboo topic, and that if he did talk about it, it would hurt his career. Are economists, afraid of talking about the Federal Reserve system for fear of doing so having negative consequences on their career.

Must see viewing for FDL members, the Krugman bit beginning about the two minute mark: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/former-president-of-the-central-bank-of-belgium-on-why-the-money-system-is-a-tab

Just for the record, FDL writers and readers should do a little research and determine how many times their economics superhero Paul Krugman has written about this because it certainly seems their hero doesn’t think fraud in the 100 billion dollar range is worth mentioning. And then they should ask themselves why they take their cues from him.

All of which raises the question of why the hell FDL ever installed the Facebook links and thereby helped Facebook grow. Last time I checked, progressives were supposed to care deeply about privacy. Facebook clearly never has. Why did FDL jump on the Facebook bandwagon Jane?