You have that so backward, it's not even funny.

Smart, dedicated and above all ruthless people will find a way to become rich, if that's their goal. They will find loopholes, exploit others and do whatever it takes. The best the government can do is simply to insure they don't trample too many people along the way.

On the other hand, most people will never be rich. Most do ok, but there will always be a section of the population who are poor, uneducated or simply unlucky. But the government can provide a safety net for them to insure they're not living in abject poverty. It can insure they are paid a legal minimum living wage.

>> ^lantern53:


Gov't can only keep you from becoming rich. It can't keep you from becoming poor.



btw, I assume all the libertarians here are in agreement with Bloomberg? After all, Zucotti park is privately owned, and if they want to kick out a bunch of smelly hippies, it's their property right?

>> ^bcglorf:


Bin Laden's death was different than this how? I suppose that he wasn't an American citizen and that he allegedly had the opportunity to surrender during the firefight?
I agree with bareboards2 here in vehemently rejecting the whole special status of American citizens versus any other unlucky schmuck.
The whole 'confusion' is that the Whitehouse refuses to even acknowledge the assassination question, not even to deny it. Meanwhile the reporter assumes it as part of his questioning. The confusion is utterly intentional and deliberate on behalf of both parties. Politics are stupid, even when discussing vitally important matters.
What I want to compare these kind of events to is serving arrest warrants for criminals that refuse to be taken alive. Both Bin Laden and Awlaki would have been arrested the second they set foot on American soil. Since they both refused to be so nice as to come over and face trial, and more importantly, plotted and executed acts of violence against American assets while abroad, America was in tough spot. The deaths of these two is not so terribly different from any common criminal charging out of a hostage situation with guns blazing and a grenade in his hand.


Don't make assumptions, please. I spoke loudly over OBL's assassination. But in this particular case it's a very specific encroachment against the protections of the social contract (aka the Constitution), and that's what I'm talking about here. Specifically.

>> ^blankfist:

It was a government sanctioned assassination of one of their own citizens. He wasn't charged with a crime and sentenced. Do we have the protection of rule of law or don't we? This is exactly the problem I have with this whole social contract thing. What happens when the government breaks that contract with its citizens?
quality doublepromote


Bin Laden's death was different than this how? I suppose that he wasn't an American citizen and that he allegedly had the opportunity to surrender during the firefight?

I agree with bareboards2 here in vehemently rejecting the whole special status of American citizens versus any other unlucky schmuck.

The whole 'confusion' is that the Whitehouse refuses to even acknowledge the assassination question, not even to deny it. Meanwhile the reporter assumes it as part of his questioning. The confusion is utterly intentional and deliberate on behalf of both parties. Politics are stupid, even when discussing vitally important matters.

What I want to compare these kind of events to is serving arrest warrants for criminals that refuse to be taken alive. Both Bin Laden and Awlaki would have been arrested the second they set foot on American soil. Since they both refused to be so nice as to come over and face trial, and more importantly, plotted and executed acts of violence against American assets while abroad, America was in tough spot. The deaths of these two is not so terribly different from any common criminal charging out of a hostage situation with guns blazing and a grenade in his hand.

i wouldn't say i disagree with you, but technically all footage of the towers collapsing is snuff. This video is sad and scary because its one of the few videos that makes you think if you where one of the unlucky ones.

>> ^Sagemind:

I know this is historical but someone's gotta say it - Snuff
Starts dry, Goes frantic and then...
Don't listen to this if you don't want his final screams burned into your memory.

Ron Paul has a couple huge good ideas. Obviously the US needs to cut its military. Obviously they need to get spending under control.

And then he has some libertarian silliness. Opting out of medicare (or social security) sounds fine as a general idea. Sounds like freedom. But people will gamble their lives this way, and when they do either the system will get cheated (eg. firefighters will put out your house even though you didn't pay your voluntary firefighting coverage) or we'll have outcomes nobody wants (eg. burnt houses, dead children, starving and homeless seniors). Maybe that sounds melodramatic, but that's what we're talking about.

And when I've seen Ron pressed on this kind of thing before, he's retreated to some fairly eye-rolling crap - like "Oh, in my day, doctors would do work for free for people who really need it". Again, that sounds fine and folksy and nice, but doesn't really fit the bill in large scale practice. You can't run a system predicated on "the exceptions" being handled by good will and spontaneous co-operation.

In Canada (where I live), 1000 unwilling healthy people who would, on their own, probably choose to spend very little on health care effectively subsidize one person with a strange and expensive illness. Why should they have to pay for that unlucky person? It's not a fair situation.

But it's the best alternative I can think of.

And I find it baffling how many right-leaning Americans I talk to who are both Christian and staunchly against having to help someone in desperate medical need (especially if it's something that's "their own fault" - it shouldn't be possible, apparently, to get medical help if you are a smoker or obese or have "Bad AIDS"). And they try to reconcile that crap with their professed beliefs - garbage like "Oh, Jesus was all about personal responsibility" or something.

In one of the few things where some Jesus thinking could really help public policy, so many nominal Christians are just super happy to ignore the guy - because it's not fair if their money gets wasted on saving people's lives.

@dannym3141

Can't quote that behemoth without trying to figure out all the embedded coding to only pick your newest stuff.

Anyway, I just wanted to address the last line of it. I have no first hand knowledge of Amsterdam, but according to their wiki they limit their coffeehouse (weed, food, coffee/drink, no alcohol) to only selling small quantities of weed and other rules:

In the Netherlands, the selling of cannabis is "illegal, but not punishable", so the law is not enforced in establishments following these nationwide rules taken from the wiki page:

no advertising
no hard drug sales on the premises
no sales to anyone under the age of 18
no sales transactions exceeding 5 grams
no public disturbances

For some offenses, a business may be forced to close for three to six months, for others, completely; all this is detailed in official policies.

-------------------------------

So it's not as if they allow anyone, anywhere, anytime to do whatever they wish....it's controlled to some degree. They also have closed shops due to proximity to schools and I believe I've read articles where they want to close access to coffeeshops to tourists. So......I can only assume the mindset of many tourists toward drug use is a nuisance at a minimum. And there will be those who argue is anti-drug mindset, etc.

And it might be a little bit of a lot of things, but I think it speaks to a failure in education namely the complete lack of when approaching a lot of "un-approved" topics. Where you end up with polar opposite opinions, 1) no one should do it ever, 2) everyone should do it, as much as possible. It applies mostly to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and sex in the US. It evens out a little in people (and if it doesn't it usually goes really bad) when they get past college-age when it comes to alcohol, tobacco and sex, but drugs seem to stick with them whether it be to the forbidden nature of it or addiction.

I guess with sex, unless you end up with something incurable you can recover (even a pregnancy). Tobacco you can quit, but it does have consequences for some who are genetically unlucky. Alcohol, liver issues but worse are drunk driving and just overall bad decision making that could lead to a record.

And then drugs, illegal or prescription, sometimes people become too reliant on them...especially if they affect pain and mood...and they often even get intertwined where the brain associates lack of mood suppressors/enhancers as pain. Personally I don't see why many people would risk using their drug of choice regularly if it means potentially losing their job when a drug test comes around or other consequences...and that's where I see it as an addiction when they want the job and the drug but at some point they will conflict and unwillingness to change one to keep the other.

Anyway, it's one of those things where you could go back and forth on it all day long. But in the end I think it boils down to how much other people's choices affect others. If using whatever doesn't have a noticeable impact on others then fine. But you run the spectrum of smoking in restaurants to drunk driving as to how much of an impact is noticeable. And on that, I am done posting about this as it's guaranteed to turn into some sort of political/religion discussion.

lol omg that is one unlucky sob wow to get strukc 2wice he must be like made of medal lol

I'm glad I posted this, as I had no idea some users were experiencing issues with this feature. Siftbot is in the process of doling out recommendations to every member, so if you are one of the unlucky few without any, you'll have them before too long. (It will take a few hours days.)

I'll update again once Siftbot is finished so you'll be certain when you are supposed to be seeing some recommendations. Thanks for the feedback!

I really like these guys... Hmm... four trips to Beggar's canyon and only 5 votes? That's pretty unlucky!

Length 3m41s

I think you just got unlucky. I've had a bad string with Samsung including phones and laptops breaking quickly and a hard drive failing but when so many people seem happy, it's hard to really draw aspersions.

Asus has been fine for me, although the last thing I bought from them was a motherboard quite a while ago.

I do give them cred for being more innovative than most of the other hardware makers. They've got a whole bunch of novel slates/tablets coming out or already released, they essentially invented the netbook, and now they came up with this which really does seem pretty nifty.>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^kronosposeidon:
Still looks pretty half-assed to me, but I'm sure there are plenty of geeks who want to be the first nerd on the block to get this.

Nah, man, not if you accept the implication that 'geeks' know what they're doing.
See, Asus is well known for making garbage that just barely lasts through the warranty period before total failure. I learned this the hard way many years ago as the owner of 2 Asus video cards (the second of which was the warranty replacement of the first) and an Asus motherboard which I believe died within a week of the warranty expiration. The first video card died after roughly 60 days (90 day warranty) and the replacement lived maybe another 4-5 months.
Their netbooks seem to be a recent exception, though I understand support is still useless if you do have a problem. Maybe someone else manufactures them.
The big question here is what will you do with your fancy cardboard box when the crap inside of it sizzles?

three weeks from that point on the bear would be slaughtering the child.

I like the video, makes me think of my grandchildren grandchildren if the world is so unlucky to bare them, by then bears will be domesticated and genetically engineered not to grow past a certain pubation period and keep the mindset of a cockerspaniel.


Yay future.

It doesn't. He can't even get it in the keyhole. The door was left unlocked by the unlucky residents.>> ^spoco2:

spoiler



But how did his key work in the other house?

Very nicely done, over the top, ridiculous.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'qi, stephen fry, alan davies, lucky, unlucky, ww2, atom bomb, survived, man' to 'qi, stephen fry, alan davies, lucky, unlucky, ww2, atom bomb, nuked, survived, man' - edited by calvados

Oh! I stand corrected. I thought there were a LOT more tickets than that given out. My bust for assuming. Then, yeah... boner move. >> ^eventualentropy:

>> ^Fletch:
He went with the odds. Lost. Not a dumb move, necessarily. Just unlucky. Still got $200 bucks out of it, which is more than all the other non-winners got.

Well, given that the two cars are worth around 50k each, and only 100 tickets were given out in total, the expected value was at least a grand. So yeah, not the best decision on his part