Why can't they be both?
The 'middle class workers' in the bay area struggle to pay for housing, food, and other 'requirements'. If they have other debt, it could easily be impossible for someone making $35K+ a year to keep an apartment, much less support a family. Often, once they become homeless, they lose their jobs and their situation goes into a downward spiral beyond their control.

I think it's more like if they would stop redistributing the wealth to themselves from their workers.

If they would stop being greedy f'tards, then more people would have money to buy the things that move the economy and nobody would need government aid in the form of food stamps and welfare (save those who are honestly mentally or physically unable to work).If you want to build an economy the keyword is "build". You don't build a house by building the attic first magically floating there, then the foundation and walls to get up to it, you start with a foundation, then walls. If the people at the bottom have money to do more than barely survive, they buy things that actually move the economy, they buy things at retailers, who need to hire more people; those people buy things which results in transportation and warehouses hiring more people, those people buy things; manufacturing starts hiring (if the rich f'tard didn't send those jobs overseas, which the conservatives blame on the government rather than the rich guy who sent the job overseas for some reason, it's not like the price of that shirt went down when they sent it overseas, they just pocketed the extra wealth for themselves) and those people buy even more expensive things.

Our right wing economy favors investors and large business over the needs of the vast majority. It doesn't matter how much GM stock investors buy and trade, GM won't make more cars and hire more people until enough people can buy cars.

As we slide more and more money from the people who actually spend money in the economy and make it move, to people who just horde and invest, the economy will continue to spiral down. More and more people will require food stamps and welfare due to the actions of the rich, but the conservative right will blame the workers and former workers rather than pushing blame onto the people who are refusing to pay living wages, who push jobs overseas so they can personally pocket more wealth, and complain about the people they aren't giving living wages to and the people they laid off need government assistance, and the conservative voters go right along because the pulpit and Fox News has brainwashed them into believing that a party that disobey's everything their Jesus taught them is the Christian party.

The growing wealth and income gap is the biggest challenge facing our nation, and indeed much of the world. Of course most of the rest of the world does a better job of caring for the work force than the US does, paid maternity leave in all but 4 nations, paid vacation time in most of the world by law, paid sick time in most developed economies, minimum wages tied to inflation in much of those countries, a minimum level of health insurance for every man woman and child without having to buy from for-profit corporations (most actually use a single payer, which sort of ignores the fact that our individual mandate that we have now was invented by the Republican party, and is financed the same way they wanted to do it and the tax penalty for not participating is the same...the other nations that use individual mandates do so via not-for-profit insurance)... We do so much to protect the rich and investor class in this nation... sickening really.

thing is though. I don't think many presidents are remembered for "continuing" things. They're usually remembered for starting something or stopping something.

he'll definitely be remembered for reversing W's downward spiral

I was with him until the end where he said "time is on our side"....sorry, but time actually ran out to 'fix' this issue decades ago. Now the best we could hope for is to mitigate the damage and not continue to exacerbate the effects by adding more CO2 and other green house gasses. Once the ocean warms enough to melt the methyl hydrates, the oceans catch fire (warming them even more) and the methane both destroys the air and starts the super green house effect, sending us on the death spiral towards a Venus like atmosphere. It's getting really close, people. In some places it's already happening. Put your fire suits and gas masks on.

No.. that's a different argument entirely. Religion at least has a baseline of morality you can fall back upon and say that it can promote at least a modicum of good.

This broad, however, literally preys upon those who are in a grief spiral, offering promises of comfort through nothing more than deception.

Don't get me wrong, push comes to shove, I'll tear apart religions with the best of them.. but I can at least see a small merit in religion.

I'm a big fan since Downward Spiral and still absolutely love The Fragile, which is one of the best albums ever made IMHO. I listened to Hesitation Marks once, didn't hate it, and saw them perform live in their latest tour.

Though it does indeed sound like a lot of Reznor songs, this is is a remix/rearrangement of 'Copy of A', in which Reznor sings about everything being a copy of a copy (of a copy, etc.) Get it?

(:

I've been listening to NIN for almost 20 years. I didn't know what to make of the album at first (wtf? major key?) but it grew on me. I'm not the angsty teen I was when I started listening to them. Nor is Reznor the same man who once penned 'Hurt.' He's got kids now--though I don't expect that he plays 'Closer' for them at home.

Regarding 'Hesitation Marks' as something of a resolution helps the album fit in the NIN discography.

Reznor has been Broken, fallen into a Downward Spiral, discovered The Perfect Drug, thought he was Fixed, but discovered that he was still Fragile, recovered again With Teeth, started over at Year Zero, Slipped a bit, looked at his Hesitation Marks and remember that he has tried, and survived, Everything.

And this is a wonderful parody of his style.

I just saw the slingatron as you posted it a while back (the video you posted was private, but the link worked). While an interesting idea, they did seem to ignore a few things, most importantly the value of air resistance at sea level (or near it).
The issue is this...normal space vehicles travel at slow (relative) speeds when in the lower atmosphere, this limits drag and friction caused by air resistance. When spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere they must do so carefully, at specific angles and speeds, in order to avoid too much friction or they'll burn up (no matter what you make them of) or bounce off. When they are at high speeds, it is in extremely low air pressure, and vice versa.
This slingatron plan puts the craft at maximum speed in maximum air pressure. That's going to cause massive shock loads on the craft from turbulence, and also major friction and heat. I get the feeling those are insurmountable issues that ruin this plan.
A better plan I've heard of is basically a giant electro magnetic rail gun (cyclotron or straight linear accelerator) that is sealed and vacuumed as close as possible to 'empty'. If such a device could have it's exit point high enough (say, out the top of Mt Everest) it MIGHT avoid most of those pitfalls, along with the massive G load caused by spiral track acceleration (coupled in some slingatron drawings to an even higher G load 'launch ramp' at track end).
Just a thought for a tech minded 'buddy'. Enjoy.

Should have left out a couple loops -or added more cars- until the front engine connected to the caboose, and made it TRULY never-ending.

Also, at 3:10 you see the track heads off into the rest of the house, the spiral is just his pièce de résistance.

inevitable downward spiral,...spinning...spinning....

I know, following your next burn out and flush your new nomme de sock puppet will be Swirley.

Yes, Swirlry, that's it.

My complaint is the over fishing of the waters, not just in their areas, but in International waters as well. Everyone else has agreed to slow or stop certain types of fishing but the Japanese just walk in and scoop everything up , with a "more for us attitude."

And fishing / killing animals that were bread for food stocks is much different than killing wild animals en mass, intelligent or otherwise. Remember the Buffalo? I would be just as put off if Canadians, rounded up hundreds of Caribou into herds and outright slaughtered them as well, humanly, inhumanly or otherwise.

I believe the Japanese have not solved the "feed it's population" problem, because it relies to much on the over fishing of the oceans. They are having to travel further and further out to catch enough fish to feed their population. So, it's unfortunate, but a slowly spiraling population is not all bad in an over populated area that cannot sustain that population.

I love that they use so much from the sea, I love Japanese food. I just wish they would have a better consideration for the environment. The oceans, although filled with food, is not a viable and sustainable source for food in the long run. They can't even begin to monitor the ecological damage they are doing.

Thank you for being the only voice of reason in here.

Interesting video and all, but that was going to be my only comment:

I take issue with her saying the plane was spiraling. That's just offensively stupid. In the words of Jessica Savitch, this is prime time television here, folks!

"Spiraling into the ocean".
Ohhhhhhhkay....

Despite the fact that it's entertaining to watch, these are actually pretty terrible.

I've never had a good one, they're typically either cut unevenly, so half the potato turns out more like chips, and the other half undercooked. Oily, they weren't spread out far enough so tons of oil got trapped in the actual spiral, or soggy, but that one isn't really about the potato itself, more the fact that the oil they're using to fry it is either too cold, or they don't leave it down long enough.

Whenever I see them at ribfest now, I just walk past them and grab a Bloomin' onion, or whatever it's called instead.

I saw another spiral cutting device video, being spruiked in India actually, so the proprietary machine isn't strictly necessary:



(video from LiveLeak)