you only play online if you subscribe to gold, and odds are they're not going to do that.

Besides, it's up to the parents to decide that. I was playing Tenchu when I was like 10/11, and that's one of the goriest videogames of the era, and (As far as you're all concerned) i'm not a mass murderer.

Now.. as for getting a PC, there's a lot less for a kid his age to do on a PC really. There's games for like 3-10 year olds, and then games for 16+ year olds, but not a lot in between. A console is a great starter platform for any gamer of any age. Complete content control by the parents, it's got a built in feature that you can set to only allow your kids to play X-amount of time a day, and, for the most part, they've got a lot more kid friendly games (Viva pinata, Marvel games, all the lego games etc.)

This kid.. Seeing him warms my heart. That's one appreciative little guy. and from the sounds of it, he's earned it. Sounds like he's had some hospital trouble in the past, and who knows, maybe that's why he's so concerned they bought it, because they probably had to pay medical expenses in the past and he'd know how much it would cost. Power to the kid, Enjoy it
>> ^westy:
surly he is to young to be playing a game that involves blowing the shit out of everything and swearing at people online?
also although im sure an x box is gr8 fun he would have done so better having a pc, that way he can play games but also learn with it and not just have his brain fall out.

This guy is such a smug jackass. What he meant to say was: "You can keep trotting out your facts but the only fact that matters is the money is still flowing and as long as it does I'll keep hitting the American public like they are my own private pinata."

>> ^BansheeX:
>> ^jwray:
Free markets can coexist with progressive income tax and government services. Libertarians tend to conflate economic liberty with flatter systems of taxation and a lack of needful public services like healthcare.

We need more socialized medicine like we need a hole in the head. The model you're suggesting is forced appropriation to create a national credit card of sorts that works until the country can no longer repay its debts in real terms (or more accurately, until its creditors realize this to be the case and stop financing the country's debt and artificially low rates). We're far past the point of having domestic credit, this is the very late stages to depend on exponential foreign credit. Our desire for life-prolonging procedures is unlimited, but our productive capacity to finance it is not. That is why prices are so high and quality so poor in government models. If it's just a national credit card whose compounding interest we finance by continuously finding more foreign investment, what's stopping a servicer from charging as much as he can and when does the foreign credit being "invested" in that increasingly expensive, non-exportable service eventually tap out?
We're like Madoff with a printing press, every time a bond matures we print another one. Since we severed gold-backing in 1971 but retained reserve status, we just export paper promises in exchange for goods, and until now foreigners have snatched them up. This is the fundamental realization that separates libertarians from stupider parts of the population: benefiting in the short-term at some greater long-term expense is not a good trade-off. Eventually it gets to a point where you get so hooked on that lifestyle that the credit junky rejects the withdrawal symptoms come time to save rather than consume. So the government just tries to inflate away the debt and you get bubble after bubble until the bond market itself is a bubble. Because if bond interest is insufficiently compensatory for the devaluation of the currency it promises to pay, why the hell would you buy them? If the effect of devaluation is only hidden by the fact that foreigners are hoarding rather than spending them, that's circular logic to suggest that dollars aren't losing value so long as you never use them to bid up the prices of products.
People wonder how countries like the UK and the USA went from rich creditors and manufacturing powerhouses to leading debtors who run deficits to consume rather than increase exportable production. All in a relatively short period of time. This is precisely how we did it, and as much shared blame you can point on needless military adventures post WWII, a borrow and spend health care model can only lead to squalor.
Recently, a relative of mine had a few procedures done on medicare (the second procedure was begotten by an infection caused during the first one). The doctors sent a bunch of excess equipment to our house and we couldn't return it. Some of it was still in its packaging, and the steel thing that holds up the intravenous bags? Wouldn't take that back either. The cost of her hospital stay and multiple invasive procedures was $150,000. Her out of pocket was only $100. It would take me a decade to earn that much after taxes, it was put on the national charge card in one week. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is going to end badly. People like David Walker have tried to warn people and were ignored for years. People's ignorance and sense of entitlement is too great now to elect someone who will stop the currency crisis before it happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-NqdmEDq4
You may now continue hitting your neo-con pinata.


I'm not talking about letting the government write a blank check for ridiculously overpriced private healthcare services.

Government shouldn't spend a penny on private health services or private health insurance, or interfere with them at all. It should just set up its own separate clinics that offer basic services at low cost and subsidize preventative care. This could be done for a tiny fraction of the cost of the Iraq war. Sweden spends a lower percentage of its GDP on healthcare than the USA, yet has 3 years longer life expectancy and half the infant mortality. That's socialism for you!

>> ^jwray:
Free markets can coexist with progressive income tax and government services. Libertarians tend to conflate economic liberty with flatter systems of taxation and a lack of needful public services like healthcare.


We need more socialized medicine like we need a hole in the head. The model you're suggesting is forced appropriation to create a national credit card of sorts that works until the country can no longer repay its debts in real terms (or more accurately, until its creditors realize this to be the case and stop financing the country's debt and artificially low rates). We're far past the point of having domestic credit, this is the very late stages to depend on exponential foreign credit. Our desire for life-prolonging procedures is unlimited, but our productive capacity to finance it is not. That is why prices are so high and quality so poor in government models. If it's just a national credit card whose compounding interest we finance by continuously finding more foreign investment, what's stopping a servicer from charging as much as he can and when does the foreign credit being "invested" in that increasingly expensive, non-exportable service eventually tap out?

We're like Madoff with a printing press, every time a bond matures we print another one. Since we severed gold-backing in 1971 but retained reserve status, we just export paper promises in exchange for goods, and until now foreigners have snatched them up. This is the fundamental realization that separates libertarians from stupider parts of the population: benefiting in the short-term at some greater long-term expense is not a good trade-off. Eventually it gets to a point where you get so hooked on that lifestyle that the credit junky rejects the withdrawal symptoms come time to save rather than consume. So the government just tries to inflate away the debt and you get bubble after bubble until the bond market itself is a bubble. Because if bond interest is insufficiently compensatory for the devaluation of the currency it promises to pay, why the hell would you buy them? If the effect of devaluation is only hidden by the fact that foreigners are hoarding rather than spending them, that's circular logic to suggest that dollars aren't losing value so long as you never use them to bid up the prices of products.

People wonder how countries like the UK and the USA went from rich creditors and manufacturing powerhouses to leading debtors who run deficits to consume rather than increase exportable production. All in a relatively short period of time. This is precisely how we did it, and as much shared blame you can point on needless military adventures post WWII, a borrow and spend health care model can only lead to squalor.

Recently, a relative of mine had a few procedures done on medicare (the second procedure was begotten by an infection caused during the first one). The doctors sent a bunch of excess equipment to our house and we couldn't return it. Some of it was still in its packaging, and the steel thing that holds up the intravenous bags? Wouldn't take that back either. The cost of her hospital stay and multiple invasive procedures was $150,000. Her out of pocket was only $100. It would take me a decade to earn that much after taxes, it was put on the national charge card in one week. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is going to end badly. People like David Walker have tried to warn people and were ignored for years. People's ignorance and sense of entitlement is too great now to elect someone who will stop the currency crisis before it happens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-NqdmEDq4

You may now continue hitting your neo-con pinata.

Oh sure, Blankfist and Darkhand get their names spelled right.

But I got the video. Suckers.

The internet is like a pinata that doesn't stop pouring out candy. And we're all scrambling on the ground for it.

See you at the next fight. Say, pistols at dawn?

^hehe, gwiz pinata

sorry, gwiz, but like most spleen-venting sift talks, the problem you address exists more because of your actions, than despite them.

and here is one big reason why.

"^no. If it doesn't show up as a duplicate in the "validate embed" or the duplicate screen, then I don't go on wild chases after a potential duplicate."

you're too smart for me to have to walk you through this, gwiz.
but if you had but searched for "south park vampire" then you could've avoided duping it. not only that, but your subsequent upvote would've helped keep it from languishing in zifnab's p-q. or you could've promoted it the fuck out of his p-q at once. that's what i do, with anything i was going to sift that hasn't gotten 10 yet.

if you can't spend the 15 seconds it takes, to search for something before you post it?
kulpims and everyone else who winds up spending longer than that, calling dupeof's to clean up, should get turns whacking you with Nerfbats like a bespectacled pinata.

it's about faith not popularity so i don't see how anyone can claim holding a mirror to someone's attitude is hate speech. religion is voluntary. race is not.

You don't get it. Hate speech is when you deliberately and maliciously cast groups of people in negative contrast based on stereotypes, prejudices, and the language of a propogandistic demagogue. Could be racial. Could be religious. Could be political. Doesn't matter what the subject matter it. Hate speech is the wrongful miscasting of large sections of a population with the intent to get people to 'hate' the group.

When you do that, you are actively seeking to whip up public opinion against the group in question. You create a demonic strawman caracature of your target, and lead people to make fun of it, persecute it, belittle it, and (at the worst) attack and destroy it. Human nature leads people to carry over this extremely negative behavior from the strawman to actual real people who are nothing like the rhetorical pinata.

Case in point. Some of you have been spoon-fed the caracature of the 'born-again fundamentalist' on TV, in movies, and other media and now reflexively treat ALL people of faith as if they were your caracature. The actual reality is though that the caracatured 'hate speech' version of religion you denigrate only applies to the tiniest, most infinitesimal particle of the religious world.

That's what hate speech does. It teached the weak-minded, the gullible, and the easily manipulated to 'hate' things that they really have no understanding of at all.

It's clearly a fairy pinata creature, normally invisible in our day-to-day lives...

Yeah, I have no idea either.

>> ^jonny:
>> ^captbarbiturate:
I'd like to see him work with these kids
I'd rather see him strung up as a pinata for one of these kids bday parties - and all the kids get aluminum bats.


lol sounds like a fun game!!
just in case anyone is interested here is the latest on things in my area.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fi-autism6-2008jul06,0,6212320.story?page=1

>> ^captbarbiturate:
I'd like to see him work with these kids

I'd rather see him strung up as a pinata for one of these kids bday parties - and all the kids get aluminum bats.

I remember watching this show the day it came out after school. It was awesome! Animaniacs was the last great cartoon show after Tiny Toons IMO. Anyway this video doesn't have my two favorite scenes:

Good Idea: Whistle while you work.
Bad Idea: Whistle while you eat.

Good Idea: dressing up as a pirate for Halloween.
Bad Idea: dressing up as a Pinata for Halloween.
(cue little kids beating mr. skullhead with sticks =P)

What's so wrong with this? He died for your sins! We should all celebrate this glorious event every day of our lives! In fact, I'm gonna get a Jesus pinata for easter this year.

deathcow: I was thinking "Wow, what if you stuffed a pinata full of wasps? It would sound like this!"

.....lol. Oh, man.

This was gross/funny until he mentioned them "planting it there to get his apparatus", then it was comedy gold.

I love his explanation as to why he did it "You know...the game wasn't on...it was late...what was I supposed to do?" "I was entrapped by a dog pinata". Um...how about, you know, not have sex with the dog pinata?