>> ^brycewi19:

Can I put my donation on a credit card?


I'm sure there are complications, but it sounds like you could, in theory, do this.

>> ^Deano:

>> ^kymbos:
Am I the only person who does not give a shit?

It's a human being doing something incredible and breaking boundaries. Isn't that worth something?
What if this had happened before the Columbia disaster and the data about how you can bail out in the upper atmosphere had been used to save those lives (i.e they bailed out just before the ship tore apart)?
I think it's a wonderful and worthy stunt and funded out of all those Red Bull drinks


No, it's a stupid advertising gimmick. It isn't science or new or even interesting. It's been done and proven. USAF did exactly this in 1960. This just added a few hundred feet to their altitude. Russian probably did it sooner.

So no it's not a human breaking any boundaries or any thing novel. It is just advertising paid for by product sales. No different from a TV commercial expect it tricked you into talking about their product.

>> ^kymbos:

Am I the only person who does not give a shit?


It's a human being doing something incredible and breaking boundaries. Isn't that worth something?

What if this had happened before the Columbia disaster and the data about how you can bail out in the upper atmosphere had been used to save those lives (i.e they bailed out just before the ship tore apart)?

I think it's a wonderful and worthy stunt and funded out of all those Red Bull drinks

>> ^renatojj:

I dislike the careless use of the term "rich", it needs a more refined distinction.
A lot of people who are rich are honest and productive to society. They're also needed to help this country out of its recession.
Others are rich because they steal from society or benefit directly from the governments or the Fed, the institutions that steals the most.
So there are the productive rich (good), and the destructive rich or squanderers (bad)
Carry on.


When we use the term "Rich" we're usually not referring to just people with money. We're using it to refer to the Owners of the Country, those who buy the elections and expect what they paid for. Those who control the wealth of this nation and use the Managers to keep the mob at bay.

Also the Fed and the Government work for those owners of the nation and they have their own Welfare. Too Big to Fail it's called, knowing that no matter what happens, they will get bailed out by the Nanny state that they formed to protect them from the people and losing all their money.

@renatojj Ah, its nice to be called a socialist for once. Where I come from, they call me a right wing capitalist
Any economic system is as cooperative as the next. That is the definition of an economic system, a system where economic transactions take place, ie cooperation. So capitalism is NOT more (or less) cooperative than other isms. (And mercantilism and corporate capitalism (corporatism right?) are forms of capitalism ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism)

Definition of capitalism:
"an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state" - oxford dictionary
Emphasis is on "for profit". So yes, all capitalist are per definition profit seeking. Relentless is something that follows Darwin. Those who are more relentless get higher profits and have more money to grow, invest, invent, etc. They eventually push out less relentless profit seekers so the relentless ones are the only ones left.
And remember you said them first, not me. I just said that capitalism tries to achieve profit and as competition drives prices down one way to do so is to minimize cost, ie become more efficient. So there is always a drive for efficiency in capitalism.
I am not against profit seeking, I believe that capitalism is the system that pushes the most growth in most regions, be it economic growth, technological progress, etc. That also makes it a rat race, where you continually need to go faster to keep up. As I am getting older I see that running is not the only game in town. And in most cases it detracts from happiness more then other methods in the long run (though it brings more wealth). Given also the finite resource problem and it is a good discussion to have if capitalism is the best and only economic system we should have on this planet. Like I said, for another time.

"The Libor and derivatives markets scandals, are not examples of free markets at all, they're abuses where the bad behavior was encouraged by policy"

What? What policy? The entire idea of over-the-counter (OTT, the largest amount by far) derivatives was that they are traded without any supervision or visibility. Complete free market! That and the inability to value and understand the risk per unit made for instance the Credit Default Swaps so dangerous. These were perfectly legal, and are still in most cases. The market is still unregulated today. You can argue that in the end it wasnt a free market because they got bailed out. Bullshit. They got bailed out because the other option was to let the entire economic system collapse. Letting the system collapse is not free markets, its stupid. The damage would have been catastrophic. The markets wouldnt repair that, they wouldnt exist anymore. That is why people call the derivatives market an example of a free market that should have been more regulated, because they had the power to destroy everything and the incentive to take the risk (for profit).
The way the bailout happened (and is still happening) is total and utter crap, but that is a different story all together.

Which leads again to the same question: if not the (IMHO obvious) derivatives market, name me an example of a free market?

You could tax the rich out the ass, take all corporate profits and still not be even close to solving the debt issue. You are a fool to believe otherwise.

Comparing the USA to other counties is a moot point. Who cares about other countries. Each country solves its own issues. What look towards Greece and Spain as model socialized societies? Fuck that they are a sinking ship. Germany is the most financially secure country and that's because of their thrift.


Obama is the most leftest liberal this country has ever had. To make his presidency worse he has turned his back on Israel and given the wink and nod to the radical Muslim brotherhood to rise up and take over some countries in the middle east.

Domestically had has done shit except given everyone a large personal tax called healthcare. Everyone will have to pay up. Employers will bail out of providing insurance and we will have to pay it all.

Jobs What jobs The US is running negative. More jobs are lost than created. His policies have failed.

The unemployment would be a lot higher if they counted those who have stopped looking altogether.

A lot the money he has given out were to state labor unions and to useless failed green jobs.


>> ^RFlagg:

This. No matter what Fox and Rush and all the other screw over the working class so 1 or 2% of the population doesn't have to pay an extra 3% tax people say, Obama isn't a Liberal. He campaigned as one, but aside from bringing this country in line with every other country in the world except the communists and Islamic ones by ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (which even McCain said he would support when the military said it wanted to end it, but then didn't support it when they asked), he hasn't really done anything liberal.
I love how some on the right say even Liberals don't like Obama... yes, because he isn't the liberal people voted for, he's a centralist/left leaning Republican, at best a far right leaning Democrat. Now how much is Obama's fault is hard to tell. It could be he is a far right leaning Democrat, or he could just lack the balls to stand up the Republicans (likely), or he could be a victim of the promise the Republicans made when he won in that they would never negotiate and never give in and never let him win, that they would do everything they could do make sure his Presidency was a failure (even more likely).
I.

Thanks to all who commented!

A few extras:

Romneycare: was a state-level experiment, which is permitted. It is also, AFAIK, a failure that had to be bailed out by the feds.

Obamacare is really just Heritage/Romney Creation: rather than try to argue the small stuff...if somehow "HeritageCare" had made it to the Supreme Court, I would have expected it to crumble because of the unconstitutional mandate just the same as it should have under KING Obama.

It's really about expansion of government power: Presumably this law was to stop "freeloaders" of the health care system. If that's the case, what difference will be made insuring 30 million 'deadbeats' at gunpoint, who can't/won't pay a tax/fine any more than they would originally buy health insurance?

Hundreds of businesses got obamacare waivers, creating a dual caste system where the burden of this horrendous law will lay across the backs of the middle class and small businesses. The "evil corporations" that liberals were hoping to punish evaded them once again, in clear violation of the 14th Amendment (equal treatment under the law).

Paltry 'savings' from an extra 500 billion in new taxes: The 11 to 20 million estimated illegals will continue to bankrupt our hospitals via "free" emergency room visits.

Will you promise to leave the country when Obama is re-elected? I don't have to leave America. Unless obama is given a bus-ticket back to chicago come November, America will leave us. It already has.

Romney won't fix it: The end of the Republic is already on its way. Romney may forestall it a little while, but it's coming.

>> ^Xaielao:
Sounds awfully familiar and similar to what happened here in the US. But then I realize.. these are virtually the 'people' who did the same thing a few years ago here. Maybe the EU leaders will have the balls to teach some of them a lesson instead of bowing and prostrating like our leaders did.


What happened back in 2008 happened pretty much throughout the world, it wasn't confined to the US. EU banks were bailed out by the bucketload!

What's happened this time round is that Barclays Bank has been caught up in 3 major scandals all in relatively quick succession, and politicians are finally having to make noises and pretend that they're doing something about it. We'll see if it's more than just noise in the coming months, but somehow I doubt we're going to see any heavy-handed approach from the UK's current ConDem political alliance.

Edit: Tony Robinson isn't a politician, he's just an intelligent guy who's able to say what he really feels, unlike politicians who can't say anything without pissing off someone!

@vaire2ube tell you what, hand over the overwhelming power government gave to bankers to someone else, say farmers, workers, teachers, nuns, it doesn't matter, it will be abused eventually and social injustice will happen in a large scale. Will you be hating on nuns too for screwing up the country's finances?

You don't resent corporations or the power they earned. Like you said, they're not inherently evil. You resent the power corporations don't deserve that they can only get from government.

Why are bankers greedy? Because greed and fear of loss balance each other out, it's like that for every human being. Bankers don't fear loss because they know they can always get bailed out, so their greed goes rampant.

If a government agency gave you a "license to kill" with no repercussions whatsoever, pretty soon you'd be offing people left and right like a sociopath too (mostly bankers and CEOs, right? ).

Regulations are crafted by big corporations that lobby government. So why would you resort to the problem to supply the solution?

I agree that government is the solution, the solution being "protect our freedoms". Because the minute they do things like give a central bank monopoly over the money supply, that's taking away our freedoms and handing it over in the form of unjust power to some institution.

BTW, I'm sure GlaxoSmithKline isn't going for the "badass" reputation of killing people. Three billion seems like a pretty steep fine, no matter how much money they're making.

ceo bonuses correction.. thank god! ---- wait, what about the bank bail out where the ceo's just kept the money for themselves. unfortunately they did loose there job, or they didn't. obama's admin just hired them.

I think their issue is probably based a lot of illegal immigrant workers, places using them can hold deportation over their heads, pay them a lot less, work them a lot more, and avoid minimum wage US workers.

Minimum wage is a useless tool if they can bypass it by hiring people who willfully don't seek it for one reason or another. Deportation even if they are a legal immigrant due to lack of job keeping them here on their work visa.


Then the other is the "taxes are so high" excuse, where your paycheck isn't broken down properly and they are taking things out that they shouldn't be and just blaming it on taxes. Or overtime goes unpaid because "We don't pay overtime, yet we'll work you 80 hours a week and never inform you of this." Or you work through breaks and lunch, but they subtract lunch/etc from your pay because they need to do so to appear to be meeting labor standards if anyone ever looks into them. So they can use the "He worked through lunch? We didn't pay him for it...why would someone do that? He must have taken lunch."

And people who can't speak or read english or have poor comprehension. They spend more effort on ripping these people off because whose going to listen to them? They can't communicate well enough with their employer to argue one way or the other. Non-English speaking is a huge bias in the US work force, and I can somewhat see it. But there's still labor practices, if you don't want to hire someone who can't speak English...don't. But it's easier to break labor practices and rip them off if you do, which is why they hire them.


And they get away with it because they are 1) Huge corporations or 2) So shady without seeing it first hand someone wouldn't know something is up because their reports are so full of lies. Both categories will also fuck with your unemployment benefits despite it not costing them anything to let you have them. Why? Because it makes other people in the company unwilling to risk quitting with cause and trying to draw unemployment while they pursue legal matters against them. If they can keep you poor and on the edge, you don't have the ability to do anything about...you'll be out on the street before anything happens. And it's pretty hard to do anything court related if you don't have a mailing address, plus all of the other things that will happen to you, your kids, etc if you choose to try to fight and lose your job over it.....like inability to find work ever again because you complained and they let people know you did. And good luck proving they are hindering your ability to find work or that you are on some sort of unofficial black list.


I don't doubt for a minute that what they say is 100% true. It's already taking place out in the open with CEOs and what not raking in money and driving down wages of everyone else or laying off major swathes of their work force while they post record profits. And no one in government is batting an eye at that display of greed and the questionable nature of the finance industry still dictating the terms of the economy even after they got bailed out massively and changed nothing.


Corporate corruption is going to be a bitch to handle when the government relies on it for it's donations/bribes.

The problem is, you had every single one of those things before the bills I rattled off.

Those bills were about letting people kill with impunity, giving the police the ability to say "papers please" to anyone without a warrant or probable cause, abolishing public-sector unions entirely, and using State AG offices as tool of national political activism by trying to undo a Congressional battle you already lost.

After all, if you're so sure it's unpopular, why not just wait until the people give you the votes in Congress to just repeal it? Why try and go the 5-4 judicial activism route?

>> ^quantumushroom:

It's simply not possible for the left (or a large chunk of it) to believe people really want guns for self-defense, border security, rewarding only legitimate paths to citizenship, unions that aren't bailed out by taxpayer monies and health care reform that (a) a majority actually wants and (b) follows the Constitution.

>> ^quantumushroom:

What the left seems to forget in their haste to blame conspiracies/corporations is, no matter who funds what, nothing can stand without the support of public opinion.
It's simply not possible for the left (or a large chunk of it) to believe people really want guns for self-defense, border security, rewarding only legitimate paths to citizenship, unions that aren't bailed out by taxpayer monies and health care reform that (a) a majority actually wants and (b) follows the Constitution.


This would make sense if there was no such thing as the manufacture of consent or the conditioning of the human mind. We as a public are terrified of everything, we're so much more scared of everything stupid than any other countries people as a whole. It's not coming from nothing, it's our media...turn off the TV.

What the left seems to forget in their haste to blame conspiracies/corporations is, no matter who funds what, nothing can stand without the support of public opinion.

It's simply not possible for the left (or a large chunk of it) to believe people really want guns for self-defense, border security, rewarding only legitimate paths to citizenship, unions that aren't bailed out by taxpayer monies and health care reform that (a) a majority actually wants and (b) follows the Constitution.