Opinions on cashing out some silver

mazorj wrote:
"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
oly wrote:
On Feb 16, 2:59 pm, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
oly wrote:
On Feb 16, 2:29 pm, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
oly wrote:
On Feb 16, 1:27 pm, "PC" wrote:
"oly" wrote in message

...
On Feb 16, 11:19 am, "PC" wrote:

"oly" wrote in message

...

More like Chicken Little...

Have you thoroughly licked your picture of Obama this
morning???

This speaks volumes about you.

You still can't bring yourself to admit that this economic
fiasco has a lot
to do with the Bush Administration. It is mildly amusing
watching you squirm in order to avoid admitting it.

Oh no, this debacle does have a great deal to do with the Bush
administration.

But my objections are almost all in regards to what the
Treasury
and Fed did during the last four months of 2008. Their actions
(or reactions) since the Lehman Brothers failure are simply
uncomprehensible.

Your objections are because you have a problem with white
conservative men in a position of authority.


I had no problem with George Bush, Sr. So you are wrong again.
You could not have possibly known I thought he was a good
president since you are close-minded. In my relatively short
lifetime other than the esteemed Sr. Bush I have not seen a
competent white conservative man in a position of authority.
And
no, Ronald Reagan does not count either. He was an icon and
nothing more.

Clinton was a *fiscal* conservative and our country prospered
under his leadership.

Bush Jr was a very poor president and leader in every aspect.
Admit it and move on. If it wasn't for Bush we likely would
not
have Obama in the White House. Think about that.

Butt

Freudian slip, I presume.

there's never a good reason to vote for a Franken or an
Obama.

So you advocate voting for Norm Coleman? You advocate voting
for
Sarah Palin in 2012? You obviously do not think things through
and just go with whatever the current FOX News talking points
are. Stop getting brainwashed by liars like Hannity and
Limbaugh.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hannity and Limbaugh are entertainers.

Entertainers whose disciples have become totally unreachable,
like
automaton zombies. I've lost three good friends to them, one of
those my favorite coin dealer.

James- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Oprah has the same effect on many people's wives. Perhaps your
friends will tire of Limbaugh and Hannity given enough time. It's
all a genre/ kind of schtick. I don't know anybody that is that
overboard, though I love to taunt the leftists with "Rush is
always
right".

I go back 40 years with one of those friends, who will not return
to
his normal self without some form of intense deprogramming. I
enjoyed 20 years of a great relationship with the coin dealer
before
he decided that the first thing that his customers would hear upon
entering his shop was El Rushbo yelling from the radio about
libruls. Then more recently he started delivering Bible-thumping
lectures about evolution, abortion, and homos. Such pathologies
rarely heal on their own. Sad.

James- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I'm sad to hear about those things, but it's gotta be more than
just
two men who play their form of schtick a couple of times during the
week. Your friends' reactions don't occur in a vacuum. They have
to
feel, somehow for some reason, that they have been betrayed,
cheated,
abandoned or lied to by our mass national culture. That has to
occur
first. Then the disappointed go off to find their messiah.

Happens on the left too, but the left has mostly co-opted what used
to
be the apparent center of civil discourse. So extreme leftists
don't
seem so extreme, despite the fact that they are.

Radio talkers sell a product that may even top sex as a basic human
need: the need to fit into a group, to be validated. All they have
to do is to be loyal in their fealty to their media gods, and their
needs will be fulfilled.

James, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were talking about
organized gangs, whether they recruit from the ghetto, from the ranks
of those ripe for religious cults, or from bigots like neo-Nazis and
the Klan.

Ya think maybe that's because they all operate through the same basic
dynamics using the same exploitations of human psychology, ignorance,
and greed?

Yes.

James

"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
Bruce Remick wrote:
"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 16, 2:35 pm, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
RWF wrote:
"oly" wrote in message
...
Hannity and Limbaugh are entertainers.

Actually they are mean-spirited, loudmouthed assholes.

Finally, someone here has said what I've wanted so bad to say for
so
long. They, along with a half dozen others of their ilk, are
responsible for the death of civil political discourse in this
country, and at a time when we need it most.

James

You fail to see that the mainstream media has done more to quash
civil
discourse than Rush or Hannity. The MSM makes the assumption that
there is only one way to think, which is on the left end of the
spectrum. The MSM dominates what little information reaches most
people. The MSM rarely mentions news from anywhere besides the
east
left coast and the west left coast of America. How many times do
you
see a story on the problems or interests of Houston or Milwaukee or
Cincinnati??? How many times a week does the MSM cover a foreign
story
of any form??? Thank goodness for the internet.
_________________

And for BBC World News

I say, Old Top, hear, hear!

Pun duly noted, the obligatory groan hereby conferred.

Now do one for NPR!

"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
RWF wrote:
"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
A clergyman of any stripe who is confident to the point where he
will
allow skeptical inquiry is worth his weight in gold.

IMO there is not now nor has there ever been a clergyman (or woman)
worth a pound of cat ****.

Perhaps not, but I beg your indulgence to agree that they all fit on
a continuum.

Strike the "perhaps not" part, James. The rest of your observation
was accurate and sufficient.

"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
RWF wrote:
"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
oly wrote:
On Feb 16, 3:50 pm, "RWF" wrote:
"oly" wrote in message

...

Happens on the left too, but the left has mostly co-opted what
used to be the apparent center of civil discourse. So extreme
leftists don't seem so extreme, despite the fact that they are.

Well oly, if I had to choose between a liberal government and
its
socialistic programs or the unfettered capitalism championed by
the
neo-cons, I go with the liberals every time.
Reagan, Bush I & II were bad for the country. Bush II's
administration was particularly egregious when it came to civil
and
human rights violations.

I'm not wishing to pick a fight with you RF, but what occurred
under
Bush II was not unfettered capitalism, not by any means. It was
crony
& insider capitalism with a deep thick icing of government
subsidy
and
spending frosting. It was the kind of cake that might turn into
a
fascist crepe suzette if you cooked/ heated it long enough.

Boy, you called that play correctly!

Dubya, Cheney, Rumsfeld are all war criminals and should be tried
as such.

To my way of thinking, they'd have to be tried first, categorized
afterward.

Fair enough - the outcome would be the same.

"RWF" wrote in message
...
"oly" wrote in message
...
Hannity and Limbaugh are entertainers.

Actually they are mean-spirited, loudmouthed assholes.

I hate it when his Mr. Hyde side agrees with me. :-)

"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 16, 1:16 pm, "PC" wrote:
"oly" wrote in message

...

You're the perfect foil Brucie. Maybe you will miss the boat, but
since you have to have the last word, this thread can be run ad
infinitum, hopefully alerting those with a little more mental
flexibility.


All I see is Bruce asking for some subtance behind the rehtoric you
spew and
you repeatedly failing to produce.

The only thing that I am "producing" is a warning to fellow coin
collectors that they really should hold some PMs. More than normal.
I am Cassandra to your and Bruce's Priam.

That's not the sense of what I get from your postings here, oly. From
the tone and content, you seem to be expecting a major collapse of the
system, which would warrant far more than socking away a pound or two
of PM.

"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 16, 1:13 pm, "PC" wrote:
"Johnny Doe" wrote in message

...

Bruce, you are confusing the value of LABOR with the value of
MONEY.
Your example shows that LABOR has maintained its value over the
years,
in that you can trade an hour of today's LABOR for the same goods
that
you could trade an hour of LABOR for in the past. The value of
MONEY,
on the other hand has DECREASED by 90% in your scenario, in that,
if
you put away 5 cents fifty years ago, instead of buying a candy
bar,
today it only buys 1/10 of a candy bar. Don't you see that the
money
has lost 90% of its value if you can only receive 10% of the
products
that you could have purchased with it 50 years ago?

But if you also earn 90% more money then it is a wash. So which is
more -
the loss of money or the increase in wages? Answer that then you may
have a point.

It is not a wash for people who have saved in terms of paper money.
Old people, retired people on fixed incomes who rely on their savings
are systematically cheated through continual debasement. Not everbody
is working throughout the 50 year period. People age and can't work
any longer. Not everybody has a pension plan, let alone a good
pension plan with a COLA. Even people who are still working shouldn't
be cheated on the money that they saved ten and twenty years back.
Money that does not have a reasonable ability to store value over time
isn't "real" money.

And reasonable people will differ in their definition of "reasonable".
If over a 100-year stretch, a monetary system annually loses only
about 2-4% of its value to inflation except for a few short periods of
higher inflation, is that "reasonable"? IMO that has been the modern
history of the dollar. I think that's what Bruce and some of the
others are driving at.

Sure, Weimar-style hyperinflation reduces money's value to zero, but
not all of us are predicting that it's in the cards here.

"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 16, 2:35 pm, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:
RWF wrote:
"oly" wrote in message
...
Hannity and Limbaugh are entertainers.

Actually they are mean-spirited, loudmouthed assholes.

Finally, someone here has said what I've wanted so bad to say for so
long.
They, along with a half dozen others of their ilk, are responsible
for the
death of civil political discourse in this country, and at a time
when we
need it most.

James

You fail to see that the mainstream media has done more to quash
civil
discourse than Rush or Hannity. The MSM makes the assumption that
there is only one way to think, which is on the left end of the
spectrum. The MSM dominates what little information reaches most
people. The MSM rarely mentions news from anywhere besides the east
left coast and the west left coast of America. How many times do you
see a story on the problems or interests of Houston or Milwaukee or
Cincinnati??? How many times a week does the MSM cover a foreign story
of any form??? Thank goodness for the internet.

Ah, the old "MSM are lefties" argument.

First, the media never was the solid bloc that Rush et al. make them
out to be. For almost a century now, mainstream American journalism
has been well spread across most of the bell curve except for the
extreme shoulders. (In earlier years it tended to cluster toward
either shoulder, probably with a significant dip in the middle.) Your
local rag might be more pronounced to the left (or the right) but
taken as a whole across all news sources, you could (and still can)
find every slant from the moderate left to the moderate right. The
only excluded parts have been the true extremes, e.g., communism or
the polar opposite of fascism. But any political camp has its share
of individuals who don't see this and don't truly understand that all
points of view have a place in the national discourse. It just so
happens that the right has been far more adamant and vocal in its
blinkered criticisms of news reporting.

If there has been any change in journalism in the past 30 years it has
been the corporatization of news reporting. What used to be a noble
and worthy endeavor - serving the public's right to know - has been
demeaned by the bean counters to a profit center, pure and simple.
News operations have almost entirely been bought up by holding
companies whose only interest is in jacking up rates of return. That
has had two serious consequences. First, reporters and their editors
have been cowed into downplaying or even avoiding stories that can be
taken as critical of their corporate masters or the conservative
economic systems and policies that maximize corporate profits.
Second, the relentless demand to increase profits has resulted in
massive cuts in news staffing and other resources. This has caused an
alarming narrowing of the spectrum of news reporting. Which of course
well serves the interests of the powers that be, be they politicians
or CEOs.

The combined effect of these two developments has been to narrow the
width of news reporting on the bell curve of views, and also to shift
it to the right. This, oly, is a lesson that I know from the history
of journalism and which you apparently know little about. That's not
a personal attack - most Americans don't understand the theory and
practice of how the First Amendment has worked in our democracy - but
you're way off when you start harping on the "librul media" falacy.

(For the record and to anticipate the nay-sayers, first, this is only
the tip of the iceberg when discussing the media. It goes a lot wider
and deeper - the effect of the Internet alone is worthy of a book -
but in the end my conclusions still stand up. Second, like anyone
else, I can find exceptions to everything I've said here. That
doesn't make them right, they're just exceptions. The real world
tends to be messy that way.)

Again, Rush and Sean are just entertainers.

Without any trace of irony or condescension, let me say that it's good
to know that you know the distinction. Unfortunately, millions of
Americans don't. In addition to his past excesses, Limbaugh now has
taken for himself the self-proclaimed mantle of de facto leadership of
the Republican Party. He and others have gone so far as to state that
they hope that Obama fails. That is like a peacenik saying "I hope
that millions of Americans die in Iraq and Afghanistan to prove the
evil of your war-mongering." Both views are despicable and
unpatriotic. Yet we have millions of Ditto-heads nodding in
slack-jawed agreement every time Pope Limbaugh speaks his
anti-American "infallible truths". If there is a real threat to our
republic, it's not liberals or conservatives or Obama or the healthy
discussion of disagreements. It's the narrow-minded ignorance that
seems to be emerging everywhere and is more emboldened than I've seen
in my lifetime. I suspect that it's just a natural consequence of our
30-year recent pendulum swing to the right in the long-term cycles of
American politics. I hope that's all it is. If not, then it won't be
long before my voice drowns out yours in proclaiming that the end is
near.

On Feb 16, 5:50*pm, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:
RWF wrote:
"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
A clergyman of any stripe who is confident to the point where he will
allow skeptical inquiry is worth his weight in gold.

IMO there is not now nor has there ever been a clergyman (or woman)
worth a pound of cat ****.

Perhaps not, but I beg your indulgence to agree that they all fit on a
continuum.

James

Hmmm... John Witherspoon, Robert Bruce (minister at St. Giles) ...
where to begin?

"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
oly wrote:
On Feb 16, 3:50 pm, "RWF" wrote:
"oly" wrote in message

...

Happens on the left too, but the left has mostly co-opted what
used
to be the apparent center of civil discourse. So extreme leftists
don't seem so extreme, despite the fact that they are.

Well oly, if I had to choose between a liberal government and its
socialistic programs or the unfettered capitalism championed by
the
neo-cons, I go with the liberals every time.
Reagan, Bush I & II were bad for the country. Bush II's
administration was particularly egregious when it came to civil
and
human rights violations.

I'm not wishing to pick a fight with you RF, but what occurred
under
Bush II was not unfettered capitalism, not by any means. It was
crony
& insider capitalism with a deep thick icing of government subsidy
and
spending frosting. It was the kind of cake that might turn into a
fascist crepe suzette if you cooked/ heated it long enough.

Boy, you called that play correctly!

As for the liberals, Mrs. Thatcher said somethign about liberal
redistribution always working really really well until a society
reached the point where nobody produced anything anymore. Next
thing
you know, there is nothing left to redistribute (except, maybe,
worthless paper money).

And laissez-faire capitalism can work, too, up until the point where
only the capitalist owners can afford what their "market rate" workers
are producing. It's a two-way street. James has it right in his
comment below. Which is why I always have to roll my eyes whenever I
hear arguments from either camp that pretend that we're living in an
ivory-tower world where economic theory trumps reality and proposals
are rejected solely because they represent "liberal" or "conservative"
thinking. Pure forms, whether they be laissez-faire capitalism or
Marxist communism, are intellectual constructs. Like the perfect
circle and imaginary numbers, they are abstracts that exist only in
the mind. We can and should try to use the best of both theories to
devise solutions that work best for society as a whole. But advocates
on both sides shouldn't lie to us that we can and should eliminate all
traces of either approach to economics.

"Redistribution" will never work, whether propagated by the Right or
the Left. It's a utopian scheme that totally ignores human nature.

James