Calax
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Posts posted by Calax
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"Krauthammer"
I bet his daddy capped quite a few of Krauts during WWII.
Actually... it's actually daddy was just an American GI who hammered a bunch of german chicks... resulting in Charles.
Also https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame?language=en
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<whistles innocently>
You realize she's made an entire career being a speaker about internet flashburns right?
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Russian economy was the fastest growing in Europe before the revolution. They really didn't accomplish anything the other European countries didn't accomplish except starve their own people repeatedly. The standard of living was always way behind the West, and any so called technological or scientific accomplishments came about because huge resources were dedicated to that instead of improving people's lives, very much like North Korea developing nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles while their people are starving. And I'm pretty sure you'd get better healthcare in any public clinic in the US than in Cuba, certainly they don't have any modern drugs or equipment.
... Just gonna point out a lot of this was because the Russians got hit by the same factors as Europe, and responded in the opposite ways... in the 14 and 1500's. Basically when "Middle class" was becoming a thing because the plague ravaged Europe couldn't continue to support a feudal society. The Russians turned around and clamped down HARD on the lower classes ensuring that Serfdom survived for a LONG time (through Napoleonic times even). One thing Russia has always been good at is MASSIVE shifts in their industrial and logistical chain (these were the guys who managed to make a multi-thousand mile supply chain stretch from Moscow to Paris... with horses and carriages) in a VERY short amount of time.
The difference between the Soviet mentality, and the American one is that ultimately, "IN Soviet Russia!" the ideal was that you're making something awesome to make the entire nation benefit. In America, you make something awesome to shove extra money in your pocket. Admittedly I haven't done much research on the mentalities of the soviet population at the time, but it seems like it would have been an easy thing to convince the average population that they are just pieces of the machine working towards a better future, even if they sacrifice the self for it.
God, I'm gonna be happy to stop hearing about how terrible person X or Y is on my radios at work. Seriously, even the pop stations have Bernie and Hil-dog talking about how we should vote for them (and the alternative station has... of all people JEB! throwing out ads.)
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Isn't it too late for Biden to get on the ballot if Hilzilla is forced to withdraw? I thought the deadlines passed last fall.
Nope. Ultimately it's up to the party about where and when to set the deadlines for everything. The only time anyone is really locked out is at the convention when they declare their nominee. It may reek badly of something, but nothing is set in stone until that nominee appears.
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Too many quote walls to be readable on mobile... stop it!!!
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:darque:
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The funny thing is if Bernie Sanders dropped dead right now the very first thing I'd think is Hillary is behind it somehow. There is a very long list of suspicious deaths of people who were on the wrong side of the Clintons. None of it has ever been proven but where there is that much smoke there is a fire somewhere!
To be fair, I heard somebody posited that this primary is basically "Hillary!" for the democrats, and if Hillary is pulled off the ticket because of something stupid (Like her political opponents getting her charged with treason) Biden will show up like "WHATTUP! I'm your new establishment!" and take all her votes while undoing all the damage the republicans had put together on her in one fell swoop.
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@Calax that really sucks. Hopefully nothing comes of it. S--t happens right?
Got written up because I rear-ended the person (which is, in hertz dictonary, automatically my fault no matter the weather). But otherwise I'm just back to work as normal even though our "manager" is off getting cars because the caucuses have eaten everything rentable for the entire state (seriously, I barely cover my reservations and you're outright screwed if you send your vehicle to the shop right now... Ohhh you got a Tahoe in the shop? Well, here's a Hyundai Accent to tide you over!)
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Managed to get in an accident in a car at work. Weather turned to scrap and I still had to go out and pick people up. Following the process, don't think I'll lose my job but the cops cited me for "Failure to slow in conditions" (a non monetary ticket).
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This has nothing to do with what we are talking about right now but it is a great column from Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe today: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/01/24/obama-vowed-healer-chief-never-made-effort/0XR8wPoJwRVkFoPMVJaD2H/story.html
It's a good read.
I think most of the comments that Jeff used were essentially the President letting off steam. Consider that he's been stuck in this position of power, with more than half of the people he has to work with deliberately declaring in the media "We won't work with him, we will make him a one term president and oppose him at every turn!" You'd get frustrated if every thing you tried to do was refuted out of spite simply because of your political viewpoint. And while you're trying to be a humanitarian and make peoples lives easier and better, you're getting stymied simply because the other side doesn't want you to succeed (not out of the kindness of their own hearts).
He's working with a group of politicians who declare that 9/11 first responders were national heroes and treasures, and yet they only extended the health benefits for those guys after a massive campaign by Jon Stewart. And even then the bill didn't get into what they were promised it would get into.
Right there Calax you are doing the same thing he is: Rejecting the notion that opposition to anything he wants to do is rooted solely in racism or personal animus rather than and well thought out but opposing viewpoint. You see him as the "good guy" who only wants to help people. That makes anyone opposed to doing that or going about it his way the "bad guys". That is exactly why we Americans will be shooting at each other again in the future.
Yes and no. Yes, I do think that he's being targeted out of political expediancy rather than somebody genuinely disagreeing with him. And I'm not pulling this out of nowhere, it's why the vocal party base (ie the most radical members) of the republican party (Like WOD) consider John Beohner to be an utter failure because they didn't get 100% of what they wanted.
And here's an example from 2010 of how the Republican party had been operating towards Obama
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromise-pledge-044311
I'm not saying that republicans are inherently evil, or that they have **** ideas or whatever, what I'm saying is that for the entire Obama administration, Obama has had to deal with a political machine that's not dedicated to compromise or advancing their own political agenda, it's singular goal was to stop him and his agenda at all costs. Meanwhile your globe article is grumbling about how Obama is grumbling and teasing about not being able to get common ground. Our entire political system is designed for compromise, but the current tone from the republican side of the aisle is "My way or go **** yourself!"
Bush got the exact same thing from the Dems after 2006. Clinton got it from the Republicans after 1994. Although to both of their credit Clinton and the 104th Congress did manage to get a few thing s accomplished not the least of which was a balanced budget. This acrimony is not new but it is getting worse. But Obama has been the nastiest about it yet and nasty begets nastier.
I honestly don't ever remember anyone in the Democratic party saying "I will oppose everything Bush says or wants to do" in 2000-2008. Or the Republicans doing the same for Clinton in 92-2000. Admittedly I was still in High school for most of that, but I don't think the prevailing attitude at the time was "any compromise is a failure". The first time I heard that Rhetoric was when the Tea Party became a "thing".
I mean this is a congress that has utilized the Filibuster more than any other, and for stupider and stupider reasons (I think Lindsay Graham "Filibustered" 3 court appointments because of an investigation... which didn't need to be done).
The entire point of the globe article that you posted was that It's Obama's fault for the growing divide between Dems and Reps. My rebuttal was that he hadn't done any such thing and that the repuiblican legislature was dead seat against him personally being able to do anything as President, which has led to a lot of ill will on both sides.
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This has nothing to do with what we are talking about right now but it is a great column from Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe today: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/01/24/obama-vowed-healer-chief-never-made-effort/0XR8wPoJwRVkFoPMVJaD2H/story.html
It's a good read.
I think most of the comments that Jeff used were essentially the President letting off steam. Consider that he's been stuck in this position of power, with more than half of the people he has to work with deliberately declaring in the media "We won't work with him, we will make him a one term president and oppose him at every turn!" You'd get frustrated if every thing you tried to do was refuted out of spite simply because of your political viewpoint. And while you're trying to be a humanitarian and make peoples lives easier and better, you're getting stymied simply because the other side doesn't want you to succeed (not out of the kindness of their own hearts).
He's working with a group of politicians who declare that 9/11 first responders were national heroes and treasures, and yet they only extended the health benefits for those guys after a massive campaign by Jon Stewart. And even then the bill didn't get into what they were promised it would get into.
Right there Calax you are doing the same thing he is: Rejecting the notion that opposition to anything he wants to do is rooted solely in racism or personal animus rather than and well thought out but opposing viewpoint. You see him as the "good guy" who only wants to help people. That makes anyone opposed to doing that or going about it his way the "bad guys". That is exactly why we Americans will be shooting at each other again in the future.
Yes and no. Yes, I do think that he's being targeted out of political expediancy rather than somebody genuinely disagreeing with him. And I'm not pulling this out of nowhere, it's why the vocal party base (ie the most radical members) of the republican party (Like WOD) consider John Beohner to be an utter failure because they didn't get 100% of what they wanted.
And here's an example from 2010 of how the Republican party had been operating towards Obama
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromise-pledge-044311
I'm not saying that republicans are inherently evil, or that they have **** ideas or whatever, what I'm saying is that for the entire Obama administration, Obama has had to deal with a political machine that's not dedicated to compromise or advancing their own political agenda, it's singular goal was to stop him and his agenda at all costs. Meanwhile your globe article is grumbling about how Obama is grumbling and teasing about not being able to get common ground. Our entire political system is designed for compromise, but the current tone from the republican side of the aisle is "My way or go **** yourself!"
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In the greater scheme of SJ and true equality if people like us didn't feel we were being discriminated against is irrelevant but if large numbers of white, male gamers did feel this then we need to condone this as its wrong?
If, aside from dramatically underdeveloped reading comprehension skills, the gamer persecution complex that has been, over the decades, steadily fed by the complaints of right-wing moral guardians like Jack Thompson, and a negative bias against anything that has the whiff of social justice to it (causing it to be interpreted in the least charitable light possible), there is no reason for them to feel that way, I hardly see a need to condone it as wrong.
Has the article been written in a way that pretty much made it impossible for civil disagreement and mutual respect to dominate the tone of the discussion? Surely. Was it, perhaps, needlessly inflammatory? I can see that. But was it morally wrong? That's an interesting idea, which, I feel, is fundamentally at odds with the dominant perspective of GG that the creation of more content, by itself, can never be morally wrong.
The only time I'll honestly consider "Equality!" a valid argument for changing a protagonist's gender or adjusting a story to fulfill a magical set of criteria that a feminist agenda sets, is when they also allow female antagonists to get brutally beaten, butchered, and murdered in the same ways as male antagonists do.
Basically, the only time I'll take any argument of "Equality" seriously is when this montage can have the genders randomly picked, rather than "Only guys can get the **** beaten out of them in imaginative ways!"
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This has nothing to do with what we are talking about right now but it is a great column from Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe today: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/01/24/obama-vowed-healer-chief-never-made-effort/0XR8wPoJwRVkFoPMVJaD2H/story.html
It's a good read.
I think most of the comments that Jeff used were essentially the President letting off steam. Consider that he's been stuck in this position of power, with more than half of the people he has to work with deliberately declaring in the media "We won't work with him, we will make him a one term president and oppose him at every turn!" You'd get frustrated if every thing you tried to do was refuted out of spite simply because of your political viewpoint. And while you're trying to be a humanitarian and make peoples lives easier and better, you're getting stymied simply because the other side doesn't want you to succeed (not out of the kindness of their own hearts).
He's working with a group of politicians who declare that 9/11 first responders were national heroes and treasures, and yet they only extended the health benefits for those guys after a massive campaign by Jon Stewart. And even then the bill didn't get into what they were promised it would get into.
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Far Cry Primal. Rise of the Tomb Raider (for PS4, Xbox Heathens) Mankind Divided, Xcom 2 Total War warhammer, Uncharted 4, Mirrors Edge.
Also Mafia III and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.
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Syndicate just felt... lacking in punch. There was no real growth to the characters and the missions seemed to basically fall into "Jacob screws something up, Evie fixes it and kills a Templar". At least Unity had something more of a consistent story to it, although Rogue was better.
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I don't think I mentioned Ace Combat Zero's music in this thread... because the game hadn't come out yet.
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Point of Order...
Does Bill Gates control what his company invests in? Or does he run it through an investment firm that doesn't give two stinky farts about idology, only about getting more green.
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Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. It's surprisingly good.
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Yes, I'm sure the immigrants that travel for days over remote deserts and mountains will encounter a fence and be like "oh no, a fence, better turn around now." Those fences need to be heavily patrolled in order to be any use at all.
Why are you so quick to burn money on stupid projects like this? Take some fiscal responsibility, show me the proof that this will somehow help the American economy in any meaningful way.
And it's not like we're just talking about cyclone fencing here. The closest I can conceptualize to this in terms of how it's been made and of what for similar purposes would be something like the Folsom or Hoover dam
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Sorry to hear that, yeah I hope that will be the last one. Maybe your dad could see it as wake up call to change his lifestyle?Dad went to the hospital last night for weakness in his left side (my mom's words). They didn't think it was much and sent him home. Neurologist today says he just had his first stroke... not a big one but...
He doesn't need much of one. As it is he runs two or three times a week, his cholestoral is better than mine and he weighs less than either me or my brother by a long shot (to be fair, since I've been cleaning cars I've gotten a lot more workout) This is just him being 65 catching up to him, but it scares me.
Part of me wants to figure out how to get back to California at least for a weekend this spring, but there's a matter of A) money, and b) I don't know where I'll be working at what level... (I'm being fast tracked for management right now)
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I dont really know a lot about or understand the brewhaha over the "wall". But per wiki, we've already constructed a significant Mexico–United States barrier of various different construction walls. Why is everyone paniced over "Trump's wall"? Whats he doing different? Does it incorporate drones some how?
I don't think it's "Panicked" or anything. Instead they view it as an example of the absurdity we should expect from "President Trump". The underlying factors of things like illegal immigration etc are known and incredibly complex, as is the discussion of allowing immigration and at what rates. Trumps only response to the entire question is "Stick a wall in front of them and that'll do 'er!" like some jumped up trucker on moonshine. And he somehow expects that they'll magically pay for it too. That's the reason it constantly comes up, it shows how Trump is the bull in the china shop without any clue.
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Dad went to the hospital last night for weakness in his left side (my mom's words). They didn't think it was much and sent him home. Neurologist today says he just had his first stroke... not a big one but...
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So what, we've lost millions of jobs while building up enemies like China.
He said he'd abide by the agreement, of course it depends on Iran's compliance.
Even Obola finally saw the wisdom of that strategy, only ISIS controlled oil fields would be bombed.
It's a security issue, our government obviously has no idea of who's getting into the country.
The wall is absolutely necessary if we're going to have a country left. He won't actually be able to deport most illegals but at least he can start enforcing the law.
You do realize that the only jobs we've "exported" is basic manufacturing which is mostly handled by machines at this point (Seriously, a US auto plant worker is something akin to 20 times more productive than their Chinese or Mexican counterpart). And that within the next 4-6 years Chinas economy is going to contract drastically because they can't pay for the stuff they're buying.
Do we seriously want to see gas prices get to 4 bucks a gallon again by bombing oil production? As it is, Iraq's economy is in ruins, blowing up what little they have isn't going to endear ourselves to anyone.
Can you not see his targeting based on religion has some... Godwinnian implications?
And how are we going to pay for that? By pulling money from the Dwight D. Eisenhower freeway system? It's not "YO MEXCOCO! YOU PAY FOR WALL I BUILD KAY!?" and the magical Mexican money rolls in.
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This debate needs to a touch less moderation. There's been way to many "And we're out of time, Moving on!" while the candidates are still talking and the actual debating is getting left in the dust.
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Jesus, O'Mally, shut the hell up about your bloody green energy grade.
US Elections 2016
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
Dear Sanders Campaign...
I realize I'm registered as Democrat. Why is it that you're the one who's constantly calling me to come caucus for you, without any previous contact with your campaign, or previous evidence of actually being capable of being politically active. To be fair, I may go caucus for Hillary just because you're a **** who keeps calling me.
-Oliver "I won the f***in lottery" Swanick