I remember pomegranates being very expensive in the US, to the point that they were a "once a year on Thanksgiving" kind of thing for my family. But that was in rural Kansas - maybe they aren't so expensive in cities with more fresh fruit import infrastructure.

Now that I am living in Thailand, they are cheap and readily available. And interestingly enough, the flesh around the seeds is clear or possibly with a very slight red/pink hue -- but not at all like the deep red they were in the US version.

So, here I've gotten into the habit of just ripping the fruit open with my bear hands and eating handfuls -- no staining issues. But, this will video definitely come in handy if I want to be a little more dignified when cracking one open. Thais call the deep red version "Indian Pomegranate" (translated), so maybe the US sources most of their imports from there.

well thank god i visited your page!
oooo../claps hands
what a delight to read your response!

i agree with almost everything you expressed.
oh thank you my friend!

economics has never been my strong suit.i know..shocker.
but i AM quite literate in history and government and of course politics.
while you are correct that a socialist state can become a fascist one,so too can a democracy.
it is really the forces of ideology which can push a state to either a fascist or swing despotic.
but i get your point.

i do apologize for my oftentimes rambling.maybe because i am a little out of my comfort zone when it comes to economics,so i rely on my history and governmental knowledge to fill in the gaps.
your last post really cleared so many misconceptions i was having during this conversation.

i knew we were more in agreement than disagreement.
and we are.

1.the banks need to held accountable.
check.
2,which by inference means the governments role should be as fraud detector and protector of the consumer.
check.
3,you didnt mention it but i hope you agree the corporate charter needs to be rewritten in a way where they are NOT a person and therefore shall be removed from the political landscape.
check.
4.this will (or should) re-balance our political system (which is diseased at the moment).
5.which will return this country to a more level playing field and equate to=more liberty.
6.this will open innovation,progress and advancements in ALL fields AND due to competitive forces ,will lower prices.

how am i doing so far?

now.
since we have to talk about politics when we talk about markets.
my old professor dr paul (great man,miss him very much).
he reduced politics down to one simple question:
"what should we do"?
or in terms that we have been discussing:
"what is governments role"?

thats it.
now people like to make it more complicated,especially people getting paid good money to postulate on sunday morning tv shows,but thats it.

being an anarchist is not one dimensional.
the anarchism YOU are speaking of is the extreme.
i am more the libertarian socialism flavor.(yes..you didnt convert me)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
the anarchist may see a form of government that no longer works.that is weighed down by its own hubris,greed and corruption.
the anarchist finds it perfectly acceptable to tear down that government to build a new one.

and why not?
if something aint working the way it was meant to,get rid of it and try another.

now you wanted to know why i feared and unrestricted free market.
(which is how i was talking your previous post and confused me greatly).i see now i may have misinterpreted your commentary so my next point may be a moot one.
if so..i apologize.

if we put everything on the table as an unrestricted free market.we would be going back to feudalism.
the flaw in capitalism is not just the boom and bust but the exploitation of the common man,or worker if you like.

not only would the most vulnerable of us be exploited but it would make the class structure even WORSE than it is now (which by comparison is not too bad when compared to,say..somolia).

we see pockets of this happening now here in the US:
http://youtu.be/GVz_yJAxVd4

imagine having to pay for any road you drove on.ALL of them.all owned by different companies and subsidiaries.every one of them a toll road.
the market would dictate what burden could be held sufficiently in order to turn a profit.
what percentage would be prevented from driving those roads due to lack of funds?

see what im saying?

lets take this template and put it with firefighters.
would having a firehouse every couple of miles be profitable?
i mean,how many fires are there actually occurring on any given day?
so the firehouse would have 2 choices that i see.
shut down the more rural and spread the firehouses more thinly OR charge a monthly fee.
since a nominal fee would be the most likely avenue,what about those people who cant afford that fee?
does the firehouse BILL them?
"sorry for the loss of your house ..pay us".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwJrPa8Ps7A

and what about police?
they already have become revenue generators and protectors of the privileged.
what happens to poor folks in an unrestricted market?
police wont have a station in any inner city areas.no profit there.
no no no..wait a minute!
there would be HUUUGE profit there!
/smacks head
what was i thinking!
of course!
just like our prison system the police would be paid by the state PER arrest.
to be reimbursed on a quarterly basis!
BRILLIANT.
then poor people could be commodities!

nope nope nope.not gonna work.
that would mean the state would have to impose a tax or something to generate the revenue to pay for the arrested subjects.

hahaha im being an asshole now.forgive me.

ok.lets talk schooling.
lets privatize em!
free market baby!
based on the local population and average income we can fill those seats.
aaaand maybe get rid of NCLB and standardized testing,which i loving refer to as the giant ball of bullshit.
now this would be GREAT.

wait a minute.
what about the poor families that cant afford the tuition?
what do they do?

well in an unrestricted market and pesky government out of the way what do YOU think is going to happen to a system driven by self interest and profit?

welcome back child labor!!
and the 80 hour work week!
and beatings for not making quota!
and how awesome is it that that poor family of 5 gets to live with grandma,grandpa,uncle lou and aunt sara and there 3 kids all in one 3 bedroom house.
its 1913 all over again.
happy days are here again.......

ok ok.dont get mad at me.that was mostly tongue in cheek.
i realize after your post tonight that you are not suggesting an "unrestricted" free market but a free market.

and i am ok with that.
if we can limit government intrusion.
allow companies to tank when they fail.
rewrite the corporate charter (or dissolve them completely,or as i suggested previously make them accountable and put back the phrase "for the public good").
reign in bank fraud and make the rules to keep em honest.

in my opinion the only thing we really seem to disagree on is when it is in regards to labor.

i tried a few years ago to buy my friends bar/eatery with most of the employees.
did you know what i found out?
we were not allowed.
could not get the permits.
the owner even offered to finance us all..
nope.
how about them apples.illegal to have an employee owned business.

that is changing though.
employee owned businesses and co-opts are popping up like recurring herpes.

i dont know why it was illegal in this area and i dont see how employee owned companies would threaten a free market.

but as you figured out.
economics is not my strong suit.

and my man,cant tell ya how grateful i am to have had this conversation with you.i learned tons,about you and your views and even some about free markets.

thank you my friend.thank you.
namaste.

For someone who has admitted to being too much of a pansy to kill his own supper, you exhibit an enormous understanding of what goes through the head of someone that enjoys such a hobby.

I've got a story for you. When I was a child, I lived in a rural community full of hunters. Not my family. My parents taught me to love and respect animals. We had a couple of dogs I loved dearly. If stray cats showed up at our door, we fed them and gave them attention. If an animal was injured, we nursed it back to health. In school there were a small group of boys who came from a family of hunters. They were taught to hunt from a very young age and animals had no value to them, other than to be enjoyed as a meal. They would torture animals for the fun of it...throw rocks at the birds and squirrels to score points, stomp on them to finish them off and then skin them so they would have their trophies. They would pull the legs off live frogs. Pour gasoline on defenseless little animals and light them on fire. They got off on making animals squeal and would brag about it to whoever would listen. They also bullied kids at school. They didn't feel any empathy and got a rush from inflicting pain and making children cry and scream. One day I was walking home from school and saw the boys with a gas can. They had cornered a feral cat that I had been feeding and were about to light it on fire. I intervened which led to a violent confrontation and thankfully the cat got away. I hollered for a neighbor to help which scared them off but I still ended up being beaten quite badly. When I got home, one of my dogs was missing. We couldn't find him for days. I later found his charred remains in the adjoining forest to my property.

In case anyone was wondering, my user name "carnivorous" is a long standing pet name given to me by my wife (don't ask). I am not a vegetarian, I eat well balanced meals and have a garden where we grow a lot of our own vegetables and my wife bakes bread and other baked goods on a regular basis. We do make an effort to eat less meat and find other sources of protein such as beans, eggs, nuts and cheese, but when we do eat meat we don't let any of it go to waste and appreciate the animals who lost their lives for our meal. As I stated previously in the thread, I am not opposed to hunting if an animal is killed humanely for the sole purpose of providing food and I would prefer that an animal had a glorious life in the wild, ending in a quick and painless death. The issue I have with shang is not about the hunting, but his enjoyment of the violence associated with hunting and what he is teaching his children about violence and aggression. My children have beautiful innocent little hearts and care about the feelings of people, animals and even insects and I am proud of how I've raised them.

Think me a bully if you will but I have always been the sort that stands up for what I believe in and I will not apologize for that.

"David Blaine's How to Use Magic Tricks to Get Laid with Rural Teenagers."

@enoch

Well, note that the "governs best, governs least" quote IS Thoreau speaking, and although I think it's nonsense (I don't personally want to live completely outside any social structure, I don't think it's practical to separate myself from all of the advancements of society), I DO still think that Thoreau was a brave and noble person for believing in something and seeing that belief come to fruition. That's freedom.

But, when you're constantly putting down a system that you seem to wholeheartedly disagree with, but still support, that's hypocrisy, again, acc to me.

I brought up the issue of taxes because that's what Thoreau did. It's not terribly complicated. He felt that the system of government he was a part of was corrupt and restrictive, so he chose to not participate in it by not paying his taxes. He was jailed because of it, and when his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson bailed him out of jail he was upset. He WANTED to remain in jail because he didn't want to contribute to the social system he disagreed with so.

So when blankfist compared himself to Thoreau: http://videosift.com/talk/Gov-t-stopped-funding-charity-private-donations-surge-500#comment-1185054

I felt, and am reminded every time I see this type of propaganda, that there are a few ways of looking at this american libertarianism and those who follow it:

1) They don't believe in the government, but still support it through taxes.
2) They don't actually believe in the principles outlined in their own philosophy, and that's why they support what they affirm is a corrupt, freedom crushing, system, and that explains their support of it.
3) They believe in their ideas, but want to change things through the current system of government, which seems like a bit of a weird Catch 22.
or
4) They just want to have a theoretical discussion.

I've asked and asked, but he maintains that he's a freedom fighter who supports the government that he hates (through the payment of taxes, etc.)

There are other options I've probably considered along the way that aren't mentioned here, but I really put more thought into this than trying to tear blankfist down. It's genuinely confusing to me for someone to seemingly believe something so strongly and not act on those feelings.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. My first teaching job was in a very rural part of the US. Word got out quickly to the principal that I didn't say the pledge of allegiance in the morning (I have a variety of reasons for this, but the main one is that I am an atheist and don't agree with the phrase "under god"). I was brought into the principal's office after his stooge assistant "stopped by" my room several days in a row before and after the announcements. He wanted to know why I wasn't saying it and the conversation was respectful but went something like:

"Well, I choose not to, and I make sure everyone, including myself, is respectful during that time of the day, but I make it clear to the students that they don't have to as well."
"But don't you think you're setting a bad example for the students?"
"Well, no...? (at this point I knew they basically wanted me to just fall in)"

Long story short, at the end of the year, my job no longer existed. They moved the journalism teacher to another building and my position went from Eng teacher to Eng/Journalism teacher (I don't have a journalism license). Since I didn't have a license for that, I couldn't stay. :-/

It was hard to deal with, impossible to prove, but I'm better off 7 years into my career not being surrounded by those people anyway. They REALLY wanted me to just say the pledge, but it wasn't in my job description that I had to say the pledge every morning, and today, I'm happy to be in an inner city school with a more diverse and understanding population where I don't have to.

That's one BIG example from my life, and I'm no Thoreau, but neither is Blankfist. Now if he would just admit it.

Bobknight's post is a great example of missing the point.

In that entire historical diatribe about how the Democratic Party is bad because of it's history he manages to completely ignore the ideas that formed the basis of the parties.

Hey Bob, if you read this let me ask you something. Do you really think the label "Democratic Party" has any meaning in the historical context you're so painfully trying to cite?

Do you think that the old south was full of liberals, or do you think the old south was conservative as ever and just the LABELS of what the party means changed?

Here's a history lesson for you, pal. The Democratic Party was started in the south as a conservative anti-federal, anti-government party. Sounds just like the south today. Sounds a lot like the republican party doesn't it?

Everything you criticize and ascribe to the "Democratic Party" you're laying the blame on the conservatives.

The democrats were the conservatives. Understand what that means?

The south didn't change, only the label of the party did. The republicans of the 19th century? They were the legacy of Hamilton's federalists, the industrialists, the northern bankers, supporters of strong central government, just the type of people you hate.

So when you condemn the democratic party history, you sound like an idiot coming from a conservative anti-federal government point of view. You're condemning the ancestors to your own movement.

You could call it the green party, or the birthday party for all it matters, it's the IDEAS that count.

The democrats were wrong in 1860 not because they were democrats, but because they were backward thinking, rural, anti-union, state rights supporters who plunged the whole country into a bloody war because they couldn't wake up and smell the 20th century coming.

Sounds like you'd get along with them famously! Doesn't it?

The problem with the Tea Party isn't who buys their bus rides, it's that, like you, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

This reminds me of my father and his brothers pastime down on the farm in rural Oklahoma. When the river would flood, they would go out into the river on intertubes, hang onto the top of a TREE sticking up out of the water, and garner a bumpy ride from the current.

Sliding where these kids are???? CHOOSING to go out into a flooded river???????

Their mothers would kill them if they knew....

Well, Yellow Pages aren't made from trees. Rather they're made from sawdust and lumber scrap and post-consumable recycled paper, and either soy or veggie ink.

But that doesn't take into account the fossil fuels used to manufacture and deliver them.

They'll stop eventually, but there's still lots of rural communities in the US that don't have high speed internet access, and people rely on the YP.

It should be opt-in to receive them.

She said it's a funeral procession. Across many states, especially in rural areas, it is the convention for drivers, out of respect for the deceased, to pull-over and stop while a funeral passes by. It's not the law however.

Ha, is anybody in this thread self-aware enough to observe that liberals are unable to debate intellectually, rather than using constant insults?

Let's list them:
1. Somebody who dares to express different opinions must have a small penis.
2. He/she is also a troll.
3. He/she is also an asshole.

That's a lot of ire just for diversity of opinion.


This is what you're not realizing:

1. If you completely remove rural gun-owners from the society, the average crime rates don't go down.

2. So if you want to reduce crime rates, instead of making false accusations of rural gun-owners (untruths are bad), focus on the communities that cause the crime rates (urban youth and gang culture).

@Deano and @Stormsinger:
"Liberal street gangs and urban youth" refers to the portion of gangs and urban youth who have liberal values (nearly all gangs and urban youth). Those gangs and urban youth are the source of most violent crime, so your thesis that violent crime is due to rural gun-owners is inconsistent with the data.

@EMPIRE and @Fletch:
Your response is that because I have different opinions than you and I'm willing speak against the mainstream, I'm a "troll." That definitely proves me wrong that liberals tend to be closed-minded conformists who punish intellectual diversity

Er, he's not making fun of "rural people".
He's using the broad stereotypes of this show to make a few larger jabs at people who are a little too obsessed with guns and are unwilling to engage in any kind of reform or safeguarding.

[edit]
WTF? "Liberal street gangs"? You're going to have to explain that one!
Bit obsessed with the word Liberal aren't we?

It's good to see Jim Carrey speaking out in ways other than his normal advocating against vaccines and getting kids killed.

Unfortunately, the rural people he's making fun of have little to do with the US's high rate of violent crime, which is mostly due to liberal street gangs and liberal urban youth.

@chingalera Way to miss the point there, my friend.

How do you change perceptions? Play on the stereotype to show the falsehood.

Besides, any problems I have with basic Southern stererotypical attitudes are based on actual experience. My dad grew up in rural Oklahoma. I grew up hearing only the n-word. As a teenager, we had to be in the San Francisco area and we were only allowed to drive through. Couldn't stop and spend money because he didn't want any gays getting it. This was 1971.

Is he alone in his prejudices? Absolutely not. And what this dumb show points up is just how the State of Texas is leaving these attitudes behind.

Racism is being driven underground. Homophobia is being driven underground. They'll never go away.

And yes, @jonny got it, too. That Southern politeness is a stereotype, too -- and it too is based on reality.

So it's Christmas eve, I'm having dinner with my parents in rural Colorado, they also have some of their friends and neighbors over, including a nearby neighbor who's a local sheriff, nice guy, I know him ok. Everybody's having a good time, laughing and telling stories.
He tells us this hilarious story about when he got pissed off and choked and beat a sixteen year old for skateboarding on the sidewalk. Killed the mood.

Cops are fucked up. Even good cops are fucked up.