Guard Dog

Are you referring to the influnece of lobbyists and big money "campaign doners"? I'm not necassarily trying to spake a debate but I am curious what you're driving at. I guess I missed it. @LoF, I am not going to make the argument that the New Deal was all bad or entirely ineffective. It created many important labor laws and employee and consumer safeguards we still rely on today. It also did ease the misery to a small degree. But as a means of generating economic growth it did more harm than good by limiting business expansion and punishing succesful investing. The US has a market economy, I know your thoughts on that, but it will never change. In simplest terms if people are not buying and selling the economy shrinks, jobs are lost. WW2 put everyone to work and the war effort became the largest consumer of that. That is one of the arguments constantly trotted out by conspiracy theorists who believe FDR knowingly allowed Parl Harbor to happen. I seriously doubt that one myself. I could go into much more detail here, this era of US history is one I've always been facinated with and read a lot about but I am just not in the mood for long posts today, and I doubt you want to read them.

Without a doubt. And vice versa. My ideal US government is: House: Republican Majority by 20-30 seats Senate: Democrat Majority by 2-5 seats ( enough so the Vice President will probably never be a factor). Supreme Court: Constructionist majority by at least 5-4, 6-3 is better, but not more than that. Give me all that and I would not care who is in the White House. Remember Awesomeness, the Executive does not wield very much power. Influence yes, but not much power. The real power in the US is in Congress, the Executive was meant to be a check on them. When you get one political party running everything the results are almost always all bad.

Actually no. WW2 ended the depression, the New Deal really just extended it in an attempt to prvent it from getting worse. Some interesting (at least I thought so) reading if you ever have the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forgotten_Man As for the topic, we are stuck with that miserable statist SOB until 2012. If current polling holds the Repubs will recapture at least one house of Congress next year. That at least will mitigate the damage Obama can do to us. If the Repubs capture the house and erase the super majority the Dems have in the Senate I'll sleep a lot better at night. Divided government; the only time when everyone in America is safe. To tell the truth, as long as Congress is controlled by the other party, I don't care who is in the White House.

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Hah, that's a matter for the courts! Not to give you any ideas here, but: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9707/24/yemen.mars/

Sorry Lord of Flies, after careful consideration and reading everything you posted I have decided that Communisim is just not for me. Judging by the responses here I'd say I represent the majority opinion here (for a change). So.. sorry we could not make a deal, good bye and good luck with that whole workers paradise thing. As we say here in the US, "Better Dead than Red".

Just got out of a two hour meeting on purchasing new planar Kathrein XPol antennas for WiMax applications. I gave a 20 min presentation on the electrical properties and specs of the antenna. It was really exciting and facinating stuff, I nearly dozed off myself. That would have been a sight.

Last Weeks Results: Kelverin: 12-4 GD: 10-6 Volo: 10-6 Season Standings: Volo: 130-61 GD: 128-63 Kelverin: 128-63 Going into week 14, Volo maintains a slim lead but it's still anyones race!

Nah, it would never happen. I'm well armned and determined. The best they could do is take it over my dead twitching corpse, and as many of theirs as I can get. That's why such a thing will never happen in the US. Take LoF as an example. He is probably not willing to kill me to create a communist state here in the US. He is almost certainly not willing to give his life to create one. On the other hand I am more than willing and very able to kill him to prevent it, and would sacrifice my own life to stop it with a smile on my face.

You have to admit, it will be very funny if a private enterprise manages to return humans to the moon before any national space program does. Especially is they make a huge....PROFIT from it.

My bathtub is leaking. I spent the whole day chasing that down. Turns out the leak is in the diverter valve and it's been leaking into the wall for some time now. This will be fun to fix. What a POS this house is.

I'm curious (and I'm trying to take you seriously here) I own a house and 25 acres of land. Far more than most people do. Most American homes are on .15 - 1 acre lots, or are co-op. Now for all that I have a modest salary (for someone in my profession, Electronic Engineer) and I saved for a long time to buy this place. Now since I obviously have so much more than say a janitor can afford (since I have a college education that I paid for myself) would you consider me rich? Would someone like me exepct to have all they worked for seized by spontaneous revolutionary forces or governmnent?

Edit: Nevermind, I misread Kills post.

It's been colder than usual here. We got a few inches of snow over the weekend which is very rare. Damned global warming.

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091207/D9CED36O0.html Very cool stuff. I'd go if I had that kind of money. But the truth is, as this becomes more commonplace the prices will drop. Just think, in a few years they will begin offering orbital flights. Lunar flights my be just a decade or two away. Perhaps even industrialization on the moon which has an abundance of fissable material called tritium. The future is bright.

You got that right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnxlFbYjVY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCyh3HYtSes...feature=related

Has anyone ever cried after a sporting event? And not because you lost money . I have. Once. It was after Uwe Krupp of the Colorado Avalanche ended the Florida Panthers playoff run in '96 in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals. But I came close last night when Florida lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship. Man, they were so close. Kudos to Nick Saban and Alabama though. They came in with a brilliant strategy that was flawlessly excetuted by their players. Afterwards I watched the Nebraska-Texas game and came to the conclusion that neither of those teams deserved to be playing even on the same day as Florida or Alabama. What a stinky game.

Wrong again. Two of the largest and most influential Unions in the world are right here in the USA along with thousands of smaller ones. What we don't like is coercion. You guys lost me on the consumer union idea with this: "a consumer union, with legally binding group behaviour". With that phase Wals idea goes from organized boycotts (which are perfectly fine) to yet another mob of pushy @$$holes telling other people what they can an cannot do with their money and the legal authority to force somone to conform. When you get right down to it, the biggest thing I have against government is that all too often it is nothing more than a tool for a small group of idealogical zealots to ram their politics down everyone elses throats. Thats why it should be given as little power as possible. It should be strong enough to do what it must, but no so strong as to become overbearing, or worse. We used to have that but we blew it starting with FDR, then after Nixon it really began to fall apart.

Oh here we go again, profit is evil, ruin the envorment, yadda yadda ya. Can you hum that to the tune of La Internationale? Is that right? Well then, lets try a little experiment. Why don't you post a few examples of deregulation here in the US over the past thirty or so years and explain how they got us "in this mess". Which mess were you referring to anyway? I could think of several. The funny thing is Harlequin you are so close to being right about something but I'll bet the facts about who is really behind deregulation will blow your mind. Specific examples please Harlequin, not vauge talking points about evil business and benevolent politicians. I can come up with three right off the top of my head. Remember, I posted several times government does have a role to play.

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You missed the point completely. It's: Freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom

Funny thing, if we had never played games like Torment of FO2 we would not even realize the shortcomings of FO3. I guess ignorance is bliss after all. @Killlian, I agree I had fun playing FO3, and of course I'll keep buying the titles, but there were times it was a little hard to swallow. Bad writing/dialoge does not kill a game. A bad plot will. And for all of FO3s flaws it's main plot wasn't terrible. It just wasn't great.

Holy S**t! Haven't you read anything I've said? Business is better than government because it does not COMPEL you to do anything. You can CHOOSE to patronize it or not. Government does not give you a choice in ANYTHING. "Do as we say or we will destroy you." Consumer union with leagally binding power over people behaviour? What the hell does that sound like to you? @ Everyone else: Of course businesses care about making money! You know where they stand, where you stand with them. You have something they want, they are offering you something you might want. Obsidian Entertainment is making Alpha Protocol to make money! They are not doing you a favor, they are not doing it to mke the world a better place. If you buy it they will make a profit off of it. It absolutely boggles the mind why that is a bad thing to a few of you. If you buy it and enjoy it then thats great but thats not why they did it. Whats more, they are not FORCING you to buy it. If you don't like the company or what they do, you do not have to buy their product. Thats called freedom. Do you enjoy the same relationship with your government? Any government? No. As many of you astutely pointed out, government does not care about making money. Indeed, they can waste and lose and misuse money with near impunity because when it runs out they just tax you more. If government does not care about making money, what do they care about? If you think it's the citizens you are either a fool or willfully ignorant. If it is the latter, please repeat after me: "BAA". What government cares about is control. Control over you, over you money, life, actions, your very thoughts. In the last three US administrations, seventeen years now, can you name one thing, ONE FREAKING THING the US government has done that resulted in less governemnt control over something. There is only one thing, tax cuts. Under Clinton in '97 and under Bush in '01. Of couse that has been countered by tax increases so its a small thing. I don't understand you guys. Regulating business is the proper role of a government. Anti trust laws, enviormental regulations, fair trade and even labor laws are necassary. But it sould be a silk leash, not an iron chain. But this mindset that the government is the paragon of good and virtue looking to protect you from the big, bad, business that only cares about ...profit. It makes no sense. Business cannot take your freedom away, they cannot take your money away. Your government can, so who is the bigger threat? "Government is not compassion ... Government is nothing more than structured, widespread coercion ..." -- Glen Allport

This just made me cry. I USED to have nights like that. Damn you Shryke!

BG1 w/ tutu, Unfinished Business, and NPC project installed.