If only I agreed with you....but sadly these things are NOT off the table, clearly. In fact, it's the minority rights being infringed upon that may have determined this election, so to say they are settled is simply wrong.
They SHOULD be settled, and among educated people they are, but the state of education in this country is pretty sad, as you can see from the results of this election. Trump won among the uneducated, and they are the majority.

What should terrify people is a statement he made last week, that" won't it be great when we are one nation, under ONE god", implying he plans on somehow making us monotheistic as a nation.

The electoral college is set up for EXACTLY this eventuality....that a smarmy snake oil salesman might dupe the uneducated masses into electing someone dangerous, so we are supposed to have a firewall of educated thinkers that, no matter what the vote, can elect any candidate they wish. Unfortunately, they have never done that, and now seem to have forgotten that elections like this are the sole reason we have an electoral college, not a direct democracy.

I wonder what happens when Trump gives his deposition about raping the 13 year old girl in the early 90's in December....if he admits to raping her, or is found to be guilty of it, does he still get sworn in, or do we have President Pierce? Can someone please accuse him of multiple felonies and get him convicted quickly? That seems to be our only hope, and President Pierce doesn't sound much better...only slightly more sane.

What makes you believe and trust in Trump's motivation to do this? I accept that the figurehead of a larger than life, brash character taking the fight to the industrialists is a nice (if a bit Ayn Rand-ish) mental image that fits a romantic view of things.

But is it any more realistic to believe that a man motivated all his life by the desire to consolidate wealth and power would altruistically suddenly decide to reach out and make drastic changes to create a world which works for the poorest, least educated member of society? On balance of evidence, is that more likely than him turning out to be another Bush? Who i hope we can agree probably didn't make life any easier for the average working family considering wealth inequality has increased steadily since say the early 90s? Is a man at the top of that wealth inequality gap more likely to increase or decrease said gap?

Bernie's supporters feel the urgent need for radical change that essentially deals with social equality. They feel like people like Trump have been manipulating the system against them all their lives - whether that's a fair accusation or not. They're going to need convincing that Trump knows what to do and will do it. Policy documents would probably help his credibility.. it might not be the normal way of doing things but these aren't normal times. I don't see Bernie supporters, sick of being lied to, buying into phrases like "trust me" and "i know".

He won my state's primary.

My town he had huge black , guatemalan support. My neighbor legally immigrated from Guatemala during the 90s civil war, used tourist visa, then found work who signed to sponsor his h-1A temporary work visa then applied and took naturalization test and now a legal voting taxpayer.

He told me about the over 400 rapists fled Juarez into US and it's a nonstop stream as the Femicide continues and cartels own the governments he hates Mexicans with an extreme passion due to something bad happened in Guatemala long ago he won't share but he's super Trump supporter and campaigns door to door. It's actually quite inspiring and his English isn't perfect but he hates political correctness speech infringement, claims we are near the levels Guatamala was at just before civil war. He had a son that was executed over a joke in early 90s. He as tons of stories, I old him he should definitely write a book. He'd probably make a bit of money

I'm starting to think he's creating a monster.

Anyway, Nintendo Headquarters! I got a tour of it in the early 90s. Fun story:

As a kid I used to take motor-home summer trips with my grandparents every year. At the beginning of the summer in 1992 (just prior to the SNES release of Street Fighter 2) my grandfather said that, through some contest via the Nintendo Power subscription they had been getting me for several years, I'd won a tour of the Nintendo Headquarters. So our trip that year became the drive up the coast of California, Oregon and Washington to visit them.
I hardly saw much, it was a pedestrian tour, but for me it was about as amazing as you'd expect for the time. I did however notice something odd about the experience, and through cousins and other family members I learned later that, most likely, my grandfather pulled a fast-one on everyone.
The likely reality that I was able to assemble myself over years later was that we just showed the fuck up! My grandfather went in and said "I just drove my grandson on a 4-day trip just to see you guys. You wouldn't deny us a tour after all that trouble, would you?"

This is giving me some serious flashbacks to downloading midi files of pop songs from one of the local BBSes back in the early '90s.

I had one of those cursing keychains back in the early 90s. Was doing IT support at work, sitting next to this executive who was having trouble with her computer. I leaned forward to point at the screen, forgetting the keychain was in my shirt pocket and suddenly hear "fuck you!" I froze and was at a loss for words. I think there was enough background noise where she didn't hear it, for which I was grateful.

insane, back when I was in highschool there was no cops/guards/etc

We even had a smoking section, and guns could be brought on campus.

For smoking section you just needed a letter from parents that they knew you smoked. and on recess the smokers all hung out there.

To bring gun to school, it was during any hunting season. You had to have note from parents that they know. The gun had to be visible, either gun rack in back window of truck or in passenger seat. Rifles and Shotguns only no pistols.

You had to have your Hunter's Safety Course card, Your Hunting License both on you to give copies at office.

You had to leave your vehicle keys with the front office and submit to random vehicle search of the hunter's vehicles only.

So while everyone could go to their cars at recess, or if you had extra empty elective, some of us juniors would drive up to Hardees before lunch and grab fast food then be back before 4th period started, but the hunters had to leave their keys with front office and they could not retrieve them until end of school.

So much more freedom.

Smoking was banned on campus for students only my 10th grade year, but Teachers had the smoking lounge in building. There was a teacher's lounge on each hall, the back hall F where weight lifting, welding, home ec, and vocational classes were was where the teacher's smoking lounge was. Most students friendly with teachers could sneak in there and smoke anyhow.

crazy times.

I had a 84 Camaro and kept a flare gun under seat my dad owned a boat and had couple extra flare guns. So I had that for some crazy reason thinking if someone attacked me, at point blank range I'd put on a huge firework show


Then there was the stereotypes that were proven right not wrong.

The jocks hung out together, the headbangers/smokers hung out together, the nerds, the band folks like me as my senior year I was drum major
and the blacks stayed together all in separate cliques at lunch and recess and before/after school.

stereotypes even went further.

the only highschool girls with babies (during time I was there I stress) were black girls, they had to build a daycare from the old mechanic shop behind the highschool for them. And even though this was the early 90s in the south, you'd hear over the Intercom every 6 months "All Black female students to gym at this time please" where they'd get lectured on abstinence, or condom use, and std's and such.

the only time rest of the student body went through that was in 10th grade they'd take the boys one day, and girls the next day.

We had a blast though as the guys, the protection/std talk was given by one of the football coaches, and during the talk with the guys and showing various "shock images" of std's on penis on the TV, when he got to the "sex ed" portion, he flipped in a Nina Hartley porn intro where a nude Nina Hartley showed the correct way to place a condom on. haha was hilarious looking back before "political correctness" went out of control.

I loved highschool and college.

Graduated high school in 94, got associates in 96, took year off then got bachelors in computer science in 99.

But 89-94 (our highschool here in the deep south is 8th through 12th) most are 9-12, but not here. It's still 8-12th here. So it's nothing seeing 12th graders dating 8th graders. Freaky yea, but not unusual.


If you got into a fight, if a coach was around he'd let the fight finish, unless it got a bit too over the top then they'd break it up. You didn't get suspended, you lost recess privileges usually 3 days plus the starter of the fight got 10 licks of the paddle in principle office, the other only got 1 to 3, or if person was just dominated and got ass kicked you just got detention.


Kids didn't act up at all most times. And the reason was Corporal Punishment. Not private paddling either.


Once I was having a bad day, me and "highschool" sweetheart were having a bit of a spat. We sat next to each other so we were bickering a bit during class. Teacher had yelled at me to shut up and do the work. I sighed "Leave me the fuck alone"

bad move.

She called me to front of class and I got 5 licks of paddle in front of everyone. They'd stick finger in your belt loop and yank it up tight to put that extra sting on it. Embarrassing as hell! Even female older teachers who didn't paddle hard, it was just too embarrassing to get paddled, so kids behaved.


And of course if you refused paddling which you could but you'd take a zero for the day's work. few of those in a semester and no matter how hard you worked you were flunking that semester.


But the system worked.

It wasn't until they went crazy insane on political correctness, stopping corporal punishment, and putting cops/rent a cops/guards in schools and after the No Child Left Behind was signed into law, they severely dumbed down kids forcing the smartest to learn at the slowest kids pace. Doc's prescribing SSRI's like candy to kids in MASSIVE quantities, that schools in today's culture are crazy.

I used to be a big fan back in the early 90's. Haven't followed the team much for a long time but am super happy to see them come back and win the series and rooting for them to go all the way!

I remember a VHS tape my father owned, made by Penn & Teller to allow you to perform magic tricks with your friends. It was made way back in the early 90's and when they were doing things on Showtime, I believe. It required you to do the same thing you've just mentioned to successfully pull off the trick.

Anyway, as I just mentioned, the tricks on that VHS tape were done the same as what you described. You "must" take the word of whomever you're listening to as "the truth". Because if they do lie, about certain elements, a trick can be performed by them and you may never be able to figure out how the trick is done. Unless you realize that someone you off-handedly let tell you a "fact" and you automatically allowed this "fact" to be the truth without any scrutiny, is finally re-looked at to see if it's validity still holds up.

Penn & Teller have you perform this same "trick" or psychological manipulation in their VHS tape magic trick to use on others and as you mentioned we are assuming that Penn & Teller are indeed on the up & up when another person on their show performs a magic trick... If they lie to us, as you mentioned, a trick can automatically be accomplished since we've given Penn & Teller a "free pass" to tell us whatever they want.

As you mentioned Penn & Teller do in fact use this methodology to perform some of their tricks and as I mentioned they even sold "magic tricks" that used this very same idea to create a magic trick or an illusion. So I wouldn't put it past them that they may indeed use this same thing on their own TV show...

We just have to hope they won't.

the video effect is bad chromatic aberration which is an artifact of a bad lens. it's standard for movies and TV shows with no budget. blood dragon was just drawing from the same influences (80s-early 90s action/fantasy movies/TV, foreign action fantasy movies, taiwanese movies, hong kong movies, telugu movies, possibly nigerian movies) and the underground popularity of synthwave, chillwave, even italodisco, and chiptune. kung fury could have pull some influence from blood dragon but both are based on 30 year old cliches so that influence is a bit meaningless since the source material is so redily available.

They went over this in Episode 3 quite a lot. It was the reason Anakin turned to the dark side...the fear of the loss of his love. It may not be explicitly forbidden, but it's certainly discouraged and frowned upon. While telling the child he could get married as a Jedi was a sweet thought, it's not really being honest.

I found it insane that 'low income' was anyone making under $72K per year!
It really does sound like the housing project is a slap back at his neighbors for not letting him expand his studio. Where his ranch is, there are no services, no stores, and probably no busses. I went there in the early 90's, and it was not near town at all. Today it's nearly a gated community in the hills with multi to hundreds of million dollar homes. It's a nice thought, and I hope it does help some people who are struggling, but purchasing land in or near town to build it really seems more reasonable and helpful to those really in need, like people living on or near minimum wage in the bay area. Those people won't be able to live in these low income homes, because they won't be able to get to work reasonably from there unless they're doing something about that problem too.

this kitch 80s/early 90s aesthetic has been around for a lot longer than blood dragon.

I remember him getting a lot of crap in the late 80s / early 90s for his music being in those scooter commercials. He was far from being a corporate shill and getting a little kickback was well deserved.

I don't necessarily disagree with you. My opinions, while oft contrarian, are really just open ended processes without judgement or declaration. They are hardly even opinions, as I almost always simultaneously believe and hold dear multiple conflicting ideas about particular subjects. An enlightened doublethink as it were. Everything is a theory worth pondering. Thanks Socrates. Thanks for making me not know anything.

Now while tenure certainly holds clout, it can also blind us to the moments in time which were shorter but sweeter than any of the fine tuned complexities of empire. The Internet as we know it, with youtube and Facebook, for example, may be the fixture but I'll always think kindly upon those early 90s, when it was the awkward but mysterious world wide web.

So, cool, yay for fixtures, but I'm a founders man, not a member of the club after its maturity. The Thomas Paine -- Cool, the revolution is over, now fuck yo couch. Where's the next one?

Other examples where the fixture isn't necessarily the only method to decide value by: Van Halen's prolific career versus that first, highly exceptional, fast and heavy album. Or the short but sweet years Ronnie James Dio or Glenn Huges sang for Black Sabbath -- Ozzy is the fixture, but those short moments of time where something strange and magical was created with other diverse geniuses, prior to or after the bread winners, those are the moments of fascination.

I love Jon Stewart but this ain't no thang. My interest was already piqued and held years ago, before him. He's great though and far better than a single television show.

@RedSky

The need to be kept afloat by European funds is pretty high on the list of things Syriza is keen to do away with. Varoufakis was clear on this pretty early on, at least 2009 as far as I know. They treated it as a problem of liquidity instead of a problem of insolvency, and therefore any funds funnelled into Greece were basically disappearing down a black hole. They are bleeding cash left, right and center, and the continuous flow of credit from Europe doesn't help a bit in its current form.

As of now, they can't pay shit. Any additional credit has to be used to pay back interest on previous credit. Their meagre primary surplus is less than their interest payments. With that in mind, some of the ideas floating around sound rather intriguing, especially given the horrendous failure all the previous agreements have produced. These ideas include: cap interest payment (1.5% of primary surplus), use the rest for investment or humanitarian relief; no payments on debt below 3% growth, 50% of agreed upon payments at 3-6% growth, full payments at 6+% growth.

Yet even those ideas are purely theoretical, because there is no growth in Greece. The celebrated growth in Q3 2014 of 0.7% might very well be a fluke, as Bill Mitchell described here (prices falling faster than incomes). For Greece to be able to have any meaningful growth, they'd require not just a complete reconstruction of its institutions (structural reforms), but also massive investment.

And there's where it breaks down again, since you rightfully pointed out that the Germans in particular won't spend a dime on Greece, especially not with investment in Germany in equally dire shape (shortfall of about a trillion € since 2000).


Which brings me to another point: Germany vs France.

Productivity in both countries was en par in 1999, and productivity in France in 2014 was only slightly below German numbers. "Living within your means" is a very popular phrase in the current discussion, which basically means living in accordance with your productivity.

Subsequently, there should be a similar development of unit labour costs within a monetary union, with growth targets set by the central bank. In our case, that would be just below 2%. Like I've previously said, Greece lived beyond its means in this regard, and significantly so.

But what about France and Germany? The black line marks the target, blue is France, red is Germany. That's beggar-thy-neighbour. That's gaining competetiveness at the cost of your fellow Euro pals. That's suppressing domestic demand in order to push exports.

German reforms killed its domestic market (retail sales stagnant since early '90s) and created an aggregate trade surplus to the tune of 2 trillion Euros. That's 2 trillion Euros of deficit in other countries. And we're looking at an additional 200-210 billion Euros this year. If running trade deficits is bad, so is running trade surpluses.

Ironically, there's even been legislation in Germany since 1967, instructing the government to balance its books in matters of trade (and other areas). They've been in violation of it for 15 years.

With this in mind, everytime a German politician calls for the other countries to run trade surpluses just like Germany, I get furious. Some of them, on the European level, even have the audacity to say that everyone should run trade surpluses, and all it takes to get there is massive wage cuts. That's open lunacy and a failure of basic math. No surplus without deficits, no savings without debt.

And while we're at it, it's not the savings rate in Germany that bothers me. It's the moral superiority that is being ascribed to running surpluses in every way imaginable. Every part of society is expected to have a positive savings rate, because debt is bad. Well, if everyone's saving and nobody's accruing the corresponding debt, you get the current situation where there is no investment whatsoever, a gargantuan shortfall in demand given the national productivity, and a cool 200 billion Euros of debt a year that foreign actors have to rake up so that Germany can have its massive growth of 0.5-1.5% annually.

Finding borrowers for all that cash is getting more difficult by the day. The ECB's QE is basically one big search for new borrowers, since everyone either doesn't want to borrow or cannot borrow anymore.

If Germany wanted to help the Eurozone, they'd start by increasing their ULC vis-á-vis the rest of the countries. Competitiveness should be regulated through the foreign exchange rate, not this parasitic race to the bottom within the zone. Ten years of 4% increase in wages, annually. That ought to be a start.

Additionally, allow the ECB to fund the European Investment Bank directly, instead of this black hole of QE.

Or go one step further and seriously consider Varoufakis' ideas, including the old Keynesian concept of a global surplus recycling mechanism.

But all that is pure fantasy. I don't think a majority of Germans would support either of these measures, not with the overwhelming fear of inflation this society has. Add the continuous demonisation of debt and you get a guarantee that very few countries might be compatible to be in a longtime monetary union with Germany.