taks

hehe, yeah, right. don't i wish. politicians represent the people that pay them the most, not the hoi palloi. taks

di, perhaps, i don't recall. she's around, so we can ask. she's older, too, like near my age or in the 30-something bracket at least. taks

season before. golfcart accident? ay caramba, hadn't heard that. i need to call my brothers to find out the scoop. they're probably screaming, but overall happy that at least we have mizzou to root for. heck, we'll probably have a new rams coach this year, too. murray should catch his stride, so maybe st. louis sports are looking up! i know it's OT, but how 'bout them trojans, hehe... taks

penn & teller had a BS episode on "the good ole days." rather humorous, though i would call it more of a "slow news day" sort of episode. dunno about darque... someone said something about her being published? isn't she young, like still in high school young? well, i guess this board is almost 5 years old now, so like recently in high school young? taks

that michele and i aren't talking, or that we made it 9 years? wanting to chase the missus around the house is why we aren't talking, btw. what was i thinking, expecting something fun on our anniversary. silly me. taks ps: tonight is pool night. the liquored up part begins around 5:30.

what's that blow-hard got to do with anything? obama's voting record (and his general positions) is all that matters. you ideologists just don't get anything that involves facts, do you? taks

looking back, the ID posts were, essentially, his last. wow, his arguments were moronic. i remember that debate thinking "how many circular arguments can this guy pack into one sentence?" taks

i wasn't trying to imply that the thread in which he and i did battle was the reason he left, just that it all happened about the same time. he got real touchy in all of his postings, which was contrary to his otherwise rather level-headed posting style. i should add, i didn't participate (at least not that i recall) in the thread that actually broke the camel's back. taks

btw, enoch, there are those that would argue the cycles of inflation (growth) and deflation (recession) are planned precisely for what we are seeing now. should their conspiracies prove true, it is a means to implement full socialist control over the US without actually admitting what is happening. taks

btw, THIS is the circular argument i mentioned previously. how can this even be related to capitalism when laws were passed requiring freddie and fannie to hand out loans to high-risk clients? this is pure socialism. but the media over there won't report that, will they... nope. taks

it's got nothing to do with democracy, either. the same kinda thing can happen in a totalitarian government. also, there weren't any checks or balances on freddie and fannie, at least not many. mccain and bush both tried to limit their growth. obviously that didn't happen. these sorts of controls just don't work. they ultimately inhibit the system's capability to self-adjust. instead, we get the adjustment in one fell swoop. these loans shouldn't have been given out, period. btw, i was the beneficiary of a killer loan, but i'm also responsible enough to know where my limits are. we just went adjustable this year and guess what... no problems. taks

ah, i was just about to say... he was going by enderandrew at the time... http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?showtopic=37226&hl= taks

search on my posts... i don't remember the context but he went off the deep on regarding something about the eye, i think. taks

that's not true at all, but what is achievable is far less regulation than we have now. government, however, is bound by obligation to seek a means to "smooth" everything out. not that it is mandated explicitly, but it always seems to strive towards saving us from ourselves by measures such as these. it's just not possible. poke here and you get an anomaly there, poke there and something strange happens here. the system needs to regulate itself, which it will do if government would get the heck out of it. it is not surprising that the smaller, local/state banks are all doing well. the banks that were not required to hand out subprimes are all fine... why is that? ahem. taks

hehe, i'd love to say "you're on to me" but i'm being investigated right now for a... wait. never mind. nothing to see here. move along folks. there always has to be some regulation, just to prevent fraud, but what we have here is what happens when you try to constrain such a large, dynamic system. yes and no, i think. no, i agree that this wasn't a result of "capitalism." there were actually laws requiring freddie and fannie to accept loans from high risk clients. it was deemed "discrimination against the poor" to deny them a loan based on their risk. NO KIDDING! they're the ones that can't pay their loans back. they didn't need a house, they needed a freaking apartment! anyway, the "greed" was from politicians. they benefited from this over the years, big time. freddie and fannie lobbied against bush when he wanted to pull in the reigns. they knew they'd get bailed out if it came down bad, and they probably knew it would come down bad, too. it's bad, real bad, but i don't know what else to do. what scares me is that the idiots in charge are the ones the put into motion the very things that caused this mess. the fox is guarding the henhouse. dems want to gripe about mccain injecting politics into the discussion, but the problem is a result of politics in the first place. hypocrisy. taks

seems we really did know this was coming as early as 2001... http://www.seanet.com/~jimxc/Politics/Sept..._3.html#jrm6531 taks

who? the company i work for? taks

uh, no, identical political views... just stated differently. taks

you mean, as quoted by democratic congressmen? of course... so far the "deal" looks like the american taxpayer gets to bail out yet another government failure. yes, this is a government failure. they try, try and try again to force some regularity into the economic system and it just.doesn'.t.work. companies have zero incentive to behave as they should since they know uncle sam will come running to the rescue. maybe mccain did screw up the deal. maybe that was a good thing. taks

uh, we don't have anything even close to pure capitalism here. once again, displaying your ignorance. that's exactly the way our politicians want it. makes it easier to take your money when you don't understand the way it works. man, that's a very, very simplistic view that just isn't correct on most levels (except that there are cycles). first, the "entirety of U.S. economic history before 1932" was not entirely unregulated by any stretch of the imagination. next, the US wasn't even close to a typical economy during the industrial revolution. we were swamped with immigrants which made the labor pool huge compared to demand for labor. capitalism was doing fine, but like any system that has feedbacks, it takes a while to adjust. large inputs/changes to a feedback system will cause erratic behavior. the US was, as a whole, growing much faster than any system could manage. not so today. taks

well, i was soloing BG2, without cheating no less, as a swashbuckler. i just got into the watcher's keep and hit the level 50 cap. i haven't even done suldeneselar yet. no fun anymore tyring to see how good he'd be at the end of the game. i suppose there's merit in seeing how quickly my dude can take everything down. sometimes i still have to reload a stretch because i get dominated or mazed (when you solo, both are game ending problems, though imprisonment is game ending even when you have buddies along). taks

you mean, the kind of degradation where, in spite of all our problems we're still growing, we control nearly 1/3 of the world GDP, and we still double the economic output of the EU with half the population? yeah, kinda sucks to be us, doesn't it? i'd call it **** envy if you were a girl. taks

ah, in fact, that is where i saw it. not sure why i was over there, however. how many people can call themselves enderwiggin? taks

ah, but here's where the wool has been pulled over your eyes (much of the world's, actually). see, we've never lived in a society where things have been "unfettered." never, really. the reason people believe that this is true is because it seems sensible, and we always hear about the horror stories of "true capitalism." the problem is that the horror stories all come from the "fettered" system. we've been programmed to blame the boogeyman. the reason that this line of reasoning really doesn't hold is probably a bit more complex than i can explain, but in general it goes like this... corporation A does not give a whit about you, true. the fact that it ONLY cares about its bottom line is, in actuality, good for you. why? because it also needs you, and people like you to buy its products. it will therefore strike a balance that gives you what you want (product) while maximizing what it wants (profit). the fact that it is amoral is even better because you then always know what its goals are - profit. there's never any hidden agenda. it's up front. YOU have control over corporation A simply because YOU have the right to decide whether or not you're getting the most that you can get (or what it is that you want) in the first place. if you don't like it, don't buy it. corporation A never has a vote. it is 100% on you. someone try the monopoly idea... really. try it. that's an easy one. taks

eldar switched to another name, and i think went on to do some travel. i don't think he's gone totally. hades latest suspected alt is killian kalthorne, though there could be a few hundred others (he was visceris at one point, and a dozen others that i can recall over the past 10 years). enderwiggin got all wigged out about something. at the same time he and i had some evolution/ID debate going. he was otherwise a very scientific seeming guy, but it was like he cracked all at once and just blew up at everyone about everything. oh well. i saw somebody named that the other day... some other board. i am, and always have been taks. my actual nick was mendolf in 1999 but i always signed as taks. taks