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Friday, September 14, 2012

A Little Facebook Politics Experiment

Yesterday, a college friend of mine*posted this on Facebook:
Mitt Romney: Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple. Sold second base to a multinational, outsourced first base to India.
He got a couple of replies from like-minded individuals and since he and I weren't all that close, I decided to ask an innocuous question to see if there was anything real behind his snark. The guy didn't handle it well.
Me: What did you think of the Fed's decision to engage in QE3 today?

Him: Seriously? Stocks rose -- what else do you need to know? Or am I supposed to be intimitaded b/c you read the WSJ or Financial Times? Trickle down doesn't. Thirty years have proven it. Ayn Rand can't write and took Medicare and SS when she got sick and old. What's your point?
Despite my profound allergies to it, there are some legitimate reasons to engage in QE - the crash destroyed wealth which can lead to destructive deflation and a good solution to that problem is the creation of replacement money out of thin air. I was trying to see if he could articulate that point or if he even knew about QE. The end result was anger and cliches.

I unfriended the guy. It was clear there wasn't going to be any meaningful conversation and I don't want to get my blood up every time I click on Facebook. I do more than enough of that here.

Ayn Rand can't intimidate me by trickling down!
* - We played softball together for a few years and that's about the extent of our friendship.

10 comments:

  1. Ummmm... QE3 is trickle-down, genius.

    We need to impose a minimum IQ for voting.

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  2. WC, I'd never thought of that. Good point!

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  3. He sure slapped you down. You must feel so stupid.

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  4. I just can't get that guy's comment out of my head. It's like he's got ideological Tourette's. I'm surprised there's no reference to the Koch brothers or Fox News. And then at the end, he snaps out of it and realizes you asked a question.

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  5. LOL - how dare you ask an innocuous question. You raaaaaacist.

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  6. I love that phrase, "ideological Tourette's". I'm sure if I'd kept the conversation going, Rose would have been proven right and racism / homophobia would have come up.

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  7. I'm a little confused by the whole thing.... The Fed's just going to spew money until people have jobs?

    Near-zero interest rates are killing savings, credit card interest rates sure aren't anywhere near zero, and I suspect businesses are more concerned with what the rules are if they hire more people. The regulations (which still haven't been released) sound like a non-linear mathematics nightmare where the rules change every time you hire some unknown number of employees.

    If Bernanke were thinking, he'd spend all that money on Food Stamps, since everybody knows you get $1.70 from every $1 of them ;-)

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  8. Anonymous10:17 AM

    isn't he just plagiarizing off of pear jam's "Bushleaguer"?

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  9. KT,
    I hope you don't think this of me.

    I love "ideological Tourette's". It applies so well to both sides.

    I do seem to recall you had this same reaction of from Dr. Z. I suspect some people just don't understand your sense of humor.


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  10. Kelly, I don't think that of you. You've made the effort to rationally discuss things with the crazed wingnuts in the SLOBs!

    :-)

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