That whole "Momo" thing is stupid. Everyone knows there's only one Momo.

There is so much to like here. The music sends it over the top, but the clothesline and the casual, almost gleeful, tucking of pistol into waistband whilst wearing a hair net is sublime.

*backup=[...snipped...] from http://bbs.boingboing.net/t/ah-the-sound-of-a-dot-matrix-printer/139111/4

*dead

Torture is good for getting someone to name any person they know. It is not good for getting useful information....so it's only barely useful if you torture someone weak who knows the name of others you are looking for, and gives them up. That's useless information, even to a monster like Saddam. He would never know if the important names were withheld and only acquaintances named, so would be forced to murder the entire country eventually. Only unknown hermits would be "safe".

Your example assumes dissidents with families would be allowed to have sensitive information.
Clearly it didn't work, too. There was a strong opposition to Saddam he utterly failed to destroy even though he tortured without pause. You create more enemies than you could ever catch by torture. Smart leaders start to wonder if torture for information is worth the cost. (Hint, it's not)

Torture for coercion, a different topic, that often works, but only until the tortured decide death is preferable and try to revolt, which requires you to keep them in N Korea conditions to keep any revolt from winning. Hardly a net gain for even third world nations.

Bob said that her line of argument (selling regulation policy changes for self enrichment), is less of an obvious motivation for someone who enters politics already wealthy.

That's a perfectly fine statement to make, as there is less to gain.



Net effect wise, nothing has changed for the average person. So I would argue that POTUS is more ineffectual than able to make things exponentially anything.

-scheherazade

Trumps net worth 3 Billion . At least he earned his $.

U.S. congressional salary is 174k today

McCain, In 2016, the senator was worth $14.8 million.
Pelosi , Net Worth: -$58.7 million to $72.1 million
Ried net worth is between 3 and 10 million dollars.
This does not take into account the back door funding that enrich family members.


Most political figures have all lined their pockets over the years. It is call a swamp for a reason.

We have an identical problem here in Aus too.

I was wondering why they didn't have some means of disarming him after pinning, especially given he could have thrown the weapon at them. A net would make sense, Retiarius style.

Idiots. Just throw a net over him and stop wasting time. And turn that damn siren off. You're waking the baby!

And if you're the kind of person that believes in punishment, line the net with fish hooks.

The underwater sounds are awesome! Great sound effect.

I'd like to run that through Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch but I need to figure out how to get the sound file from the video.

Slowing the video speed down creates a reverb effect which sounds sucky. (technically speaking of course)

http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

that was the lamest shortest video of a blurry mess.. it could have been ANYTHING. It is a small netting of spiders above a bush, nothing impressive here.

I guess they might think about catch nets now. If the airbag was a little less inflated he probably wouldn't have bounced so much.

I still watch them on Friday nights from http://pouet.net's top picks. They're not good as the 90s though like Future Crew's Second Reality.

Even if Americans wouldn't accept the level of taxes and other wealth distribution methods that happen in Denmark, I think that we'd almost certainly be net better off / "happier" / have a higher standard of living if we moved in that direction at least a little bit.

Yes, Americans want to be rich. But, the 1% is going to be relatively equally happy whether they are 10 times, 100 times, or 1000 times richer than the 98th percentile just below them. Today, that disparity is massive. In eras that the GOP likes to remember as the good ol' days, say the 1950s, rich was still rich but nowhere near as far beyond the middle class as it is today.

High(er) taxes, particularly on income in those top percentile tax brackets, allow for the superior infrastructure, health care, and educational opportunities that benefit *everyone* and allow for the "American Dream" of anyone being able to make it big with a good idea, a lot of hard work, and a little luck. I don't think that recipe for success actually pans out in modern America, and that is a shame.

I disagree that there is net benefit from illegal immigrants.

Yes, they do pay taxes. They do not collect retirement benefits.

They also tend to not pay for medical insurance and their jobs do not provide it (for the most part). Generally when they have medical issue, they either go to a free clinic that is there for poor people or they go to a non private hospital emergency room. They cannot be turned away. This cost gets passed on to people paying for their insurance and hospital costs because Hospitals hike up insurance costs to make up the difference. It also causes massive delays at the ER, making it harder for them to deal with people really needing emergency care.

They do utilize public schooling without paying similar amounts of costs. For example, here in Austin, most of the areas that are predominantly Hispanic do not have to pay the same level of property and school taxes as I do. I don't even have kids, but if I lived in East Austin, my taxes would be significantly lower. It has led to East Austin starting to have a Gentrification problem as people/businesses move their to exploit the lower taxes.

Many illegal immigrants carry the minimum or no insurance. My wife's car was totaled some years ago, almost killing her, by an illegal immigrant who had no insurance. We had to use our insurance for her treatment and for the replacement of her vehicle. The man who hit her disappeared.

They utilize fake id and ssid to get welfare benefits. They do get caught now and then, but they flee the area and get new info.

They also do get married to citizens and then, if they get divorced, they flee to avoid child support/alimony. I know of at least 3 friends/acquaintances that had this happen in the last 10 years.

I don't think they are more likely to commit crime than anyone else, but they are more likely to flee the country if caught.

The money they do earn is, in many cases, spent at local ethnic shops that usually are also owned by illegal immigrants. It has become so prevalent that many local stores have tried to modify how they are setup to attract illegal immigrants.

It has been shown that they save and send money out of the US, many times doing their best to avoid any custom duties that would be attached to larger sums.

Because they are violating the law and crossing the border, we spend a massive fuckton of money trying to stop them. This is probably the largest outlay of cost and the one everyone feels, even people living outside of a state affected by illegal immigration.

To be fair, maybe I am getting a skewed picture as I live in a city that has basically said "Fuck the laws, ya'll c'mon in and live here!"

Honestly, if we aren't going to stop them or deport them, then just fucking give them legal status so they are treated like everyone else. At least then they can be hounded by bill collectors too.