Calax

Honestly, I just hope if they do something like this, they at least put a headstone in there for me.

V6. It's my daily driver now, and having it on ice with to much power won't help that much.

Nope, not lucky enough to date the hot insane ones... just the insane manipulators Although I did end up recently purchasing myself a 2014 mustang to have fun in. It's amazing how many people look at it and say "I wish I could have one" even though it's not badly priced.

Three years, most of my friends, and a criminal record.

Basically, The lass manipulated the crap out of me. It's the sort of thing where I wrote it off as "normal" because I didn't have any frame of reference. Basically it got to a point that if I wanted to do anything without her, she'd find a reason to pitch a fit about it and summon me back. She also would find reasons to change jobs about every 4 months, while also constantly justifying why we needed to get different services that cost a pile (out of my pocket, not hers). Ultimately I sat her down to say "I'm not enjoying this" and after I shot down her first response of "I don't do that" she declared, "If that's how you feel, I'm out" and took off. There's a lot more to it, including therapy, and a steady stream of lies, but it be what it be.

Currently bopping around in Super Robot Wars 30, Crusader Kings 3 and a wee bit of the Warcraft.

The fact that (at least in America) the discussion of salary has been discouraged also leads to things like pay gaps based on race and gender. You don't know you're being paid 20% less than your coworker, unless you talk to that co-worker about how much everyone is getting paid. Lotta stuff has changed since I've been on this. Still in Minnesota, Single again (that was.... an unpleasant relationship) And trying to be more social.

Me and the girlfriend watched all of Lucifer over the course of a few weeks. Prior to that was two seasons of Blacklist. Lucifer is Good, although I think they start to fall into their formula to much by the third season. It's based on the Vertigo series and the original ending (season 3's ending) is kinda bad. Netflix picked it up for a season and a half, although that lingering half is still being edited. It's basically your standard "police procedural" set in LA, with Lucifer forcing himself into cases because he likes to punish people (as the former lord of Hell), eventually he becomes a Sherlock style "consultant". Blacklist Is enjoyable but not. It moves far to slowly for it's arcs to really feel strong, and the further along it goes, the more obvious it becomes ego-stroking. I watch it, but the girlfriend gives me glares when I start pointing out how much the show loves Raymond.

Makes sense, Genndy Tartakovsky is the creator of both shows.

Look up John Oliver's bit about Public Defenders. Yes its a very surface level skimming of the various issues that may be a bit mis-construed, but he singles out a few cases. Specifically a guy took a plea for a lesser offense because it would let him go home and see his kids that night, rather than fight to be declared innocent. Because if he fought the charges he wouldn't be able to go home, and could see his kids enter the system because daddy's in jail.

Not exclusively, but it does mean (especially alongside his military service) that he's not been just shrugging his way to his role. He was a Gay Man active in the Navy during Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

I wasn't speaking in a political analyst "This man should have won" sort of mentality. I was speaking in terms of who would govern the best. He's a young (relatively), gay, combat vet, and had a pretty good plan to move forward from the pieces I saw. I do think that he'll be a perennial return for the next few cycles just because of his youth, and he could do to get a higher title before his name (Governor probably) for the experiance. From the primaries, push comes to shove, Biden won out of inertia more than anything. Sanders had his base pre-built, Warren wanted Sanders base and to steal some from the middle. Pete was building momentum but couldn't pause the Biden intertia, Amy, Booker, and the rest could barely get a word in edge wise in debates. Even in her home state, I saw more Pete ad's than Amy.

Isn't this in the Deadpool game? Where he extends his censor bar to "Properly hide" his masculinity?

I would argue that right now the primary system ensures that only the two main party candidates get the office of the president because the primary's provide so much news coverage. Within the primaries the most reactionary members of each party (Trump and Sanders for the past two) maintain a really simple and easy position towards the final, because they are far enough from the center their base isn't going to move. The more moderate candidates either quickly figure out who among them is going to be their standard bearer, or they spend so long fighting themselves that the extreme member seems unassailable by the time a leader is sorted out. Personally I think Pete was the best option for President, and would win if we had all the primaries on the same day. But the way things worked out Meh. And GD, if you really want to go back to "usurping powers" you're probably gonna have to move your point back to Teddy Roosevelt.

Look up "Outfoxed" on youtube. It's old (I think it was circa 2006?) and anti-Fox News/News Corp, but it goes through and explains how these techniques are used. They specifically target O'Reilly as he was their biggest commentator for a long time.

Or Space Marines. Or IG or Storm Troopers You "breach and clear" a chaos cult or genestealer nest while trying to save your planet for humanity.

Honestly, when I saw the reviews on it, my brain declared that his needs to be the basis for a 40k game.

Certainly worked for El Presidente

True, but then it could also be seen as doing your Civic duty, akin to sitting on a Jury.

As of right now, I don't know what state I'll be living in, what job I'll have, or how many humans I'll be supporting in two weeks time. I HATE that.

Assuming they aren't paid. It would be a HUGE social program, but imagine if kids in high school picked their service during senior year. The kid who loved to yell "OORAH!" would wind up in the military, the girl who REALLY liked the environment would be a councilor at an outdoor-ed program etc. Not forcing anyone to explicitly go into one role or another, but it would force a distance between the kids and their parents to make them more self-reliant, and to get experience in the industry they may choose for the future.

National Service can mean many things. Be it a year in the Peace Corps, Americorp or the Military. Depending on how it was done it could also open a pile of opportunities for those who are less fortunate to have opportunities to experience things outside their own situation. A suburban kid could end up doing outreach in a bad part of Chicago, or a gangbanger could find himself doing humanitarian work in a disaster zone. It saddens me that everyone automatically takes these sorts of proposals and immediately declares it's going to be military conscription to fight in Wars.

Incoming Rant: So, I've been absent from forums for a while, had a full time job that ate a lot of time and got myself a girlfriend a few years ago. Did all the domestic things (own a house, two cars, cats, the works). Girlfriend has kids, kids that she lost custody of due to a bad judge and just a terrible situation in general. Over Christmas we put together the money for her to go after said kids with a good lawyer. The lawyer told us we were going to need to move to the South if we wanted a reasonable chance to see the kids, so we started making plans to go down there. The kids dad and paternal grandmother are real pieces of work. Hearsay is that the grandmother had her son (who's a nurse) kill his dad via od on morphine. Dad is/was crazy abusive (as in slammed my gf into a few things hard enough to dent them). Dad has ultimately signed over his rights as a parent to the grandmother because she keeps them to live off the government benefits having four extra's brings in. Well, last week we started talking to one of the daughters and the circumstances have been changing rapidly. Turns out, dad might be getting tailed by the police for seducing girls from the local highschool. If the investigation is real (we only know this because the eldest daughter overheard something) then there is no custody fight and I have to make an trip down to collect the kids and figure out our next steps in terms of moving houses (if we're going to stay in Minnesota, or move somewhere else). All of this uncertainty is killing my ability to sleep or pay attention to everything. Made worse by the fact if we continue as planned (moving south) then I don't even have a guaranteed job. *heavy sigh* Sorry, don't mean to throw such heavy stuff around, but needed to get this off my chest somewhere.

Hard to say. They have a necessary place in society, but that place can easily be used to create terrible times. Realistically you need to change the culture of the police in general, which is hard to do with the design of the system and it's advocates. But then this is a question that really depends on your interactions with the police you've had in your life time.

The thing is that policing should be more of a community effort. Most street level crimes that a local police force deal with should be dealt with by those within the community rather than those from without. It's why police forces are local rather than nationalized. The issues arise from the fact that police forces hold themselves apart from the local community, and are incentived by politicians to show "progress" through changes in activity. There are tales from New York City where the NYPD would go into an apartment block and arrest everyone, just to have their arrest numbers up in a region to look like they're doing their jobs (the people would be released without charges the next day). In more recent years they've become increasingly militarized in an effort to "combat terrorism" and because several of the programs put in place post 9-11 (civil asset forfeiture and transfer of surplus military equipment) push the cops to find reasons to arrest you and take your stuff. Most of the forfeited goods can be sold at auction with no controls on what happens to the proceeds (so, da chief wants a margarita machine in the break room? He can have it), and the surplus military equipment can only be kept if the department can prove it needs it. So you have a small town in Ohio performing swat raids on something as simple as serving a warrant because the happened to see a dog and a busted light. Add to this an institutionalization of the Cops being a community of their own, and you have a recipe for a system that ignores or covers up the bad apples in favor of the "greater good". There are tales of cops being driven from their positions for reporting on or citing other cops, or of the department doing their best to protect "one of their own" from a damaging situation (Mohammed Nur in St Paul for example). Thus many in America feel like the police have a blank check to act as they please without repercussions, and police unions are happy to keep it that way. Any attempt at reform is quashed by a media blitz from former cops and union personalities declaring that those who are pushing the reforms want to see more bodies in the streets. National Guard and Army are used in extreme circumstances effectively to add bodies to the equation. For stuff like disaster relief and lockdowns it helps get work done, and the fact they're outsiders helps enforce otherwise difficult to swallow rules. A national guard officer will force Granny Smith to go back to her home, while Officer Johnson could be more lenient because it won't do no harm in his view.