This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by eric3579. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Snowball-the-parrot-rocks-out-to-Another-One-Bites-the-Dust

Nope, didn't get to me at all. THERE'S JUST DUST IN MY EYES, SHUT UP

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Walking-Dead-Parody-Another-One-Bites-the-Dust

The Walking Dead Parody: Another One Bites The Dust has been added as a related post - related requested by Lilithia.

So I been avoiding layin' into the racists on the site for a bit.
Because it's like fighting with a brick wall with your forehead, stupid and bad for my health.

But this point - 1:36 - about how racists are much more politically correct than openly, unapologetically racist is true.

@lantern53
@bobknight33
@quantumushroom
@Trancecoach
And @shinyblurry if I remember correctly

Most of the comments these numbskulls post are inherently racist as fuck.

But they always use the excuse of some political or religion cop-out, like.

"If black people started voting Republican, instead of supporting Libtard Democrats who only want to keep them poor.."

I'm convinced they all think, on a daily basis:
"Well my white, middle-class life was tough. And I overcame!

I know! Better take to the interwebs and give those silly black folks some advice.

Yeah, some helpful, common sense advice like.. GET A JOB YOU LAZY VIOLENT SAVAGES!

Wow, ahem.. excuse me...

But really, your struggles are just imaginary black people.

Stop complaining about the VIOLENT THUGS erm.. questionably innocent people the police murder because they definitely deserved it.

Besides black people kill black people all the time, I heard on Fox News once.

So it's definitely not okay to make a big fuss when Law Enforcement Office very clearly unlawfully execute one of you coons.. er.. folks.

Just get up off your lazy asses and vote. It's always worked for me and my elder white voting block friends who are in no way disenfranchised by our current voting laws ."

*Crack knuckles, dusts shoulders*

"Yuuup. Good thing I helped those ignorant jiggaboos understand how the world REALLY is.

And that's why White Americans are god's SUPERIOR chosen people.

Oh yeah! and clearly no I said can be construed as racist because I'm not because Obama is the first black president.

..an UNTRUSTWORTHY, FOREIGNER who's really from KENYA or INDONESIA (you know, one of those icky brown countries) and that DOESN'T STAND FOR MURICA VALUES!!

But he's blackish and the president so, see.

Ding Dong! No racism here."

Anywho have fun jerk your collect bigot boners about how i'm wrong.

How blacks are just as equals as whites because you say so.

How your not racists even tho you say shit only racist say.. ugh.

They'll put them all out in the Arizona graveyard, then when the F35 finally fails, they'll pull them out, dust them off, and put them back into service.

Imagine what the Warthog could be if they spent 10% of the F35 budget making improvements...

It's more like mixing diamond dust into a polishing compound.

So these micro beads are basically like mixing saw dust into meat?

I'm pleased for you. My experience has differed. I was charged at 16, and again at 18, for minor personal amounts, well under a gram the first time.
I also have had 18 cops surround my car to drag a single meek 90 lb 16 year old kid off to jail for .2 grams of weed in his back pack (about 1 bong hit of dust) in California... and he was in for 4 months (his parents insisted). They had to search SO hard to find anything to get him for, they were obviously intent on taking him. (Oddly, they let me go on my way with 3 bongs, 5 pipes, and 15 empty schnapps bottles in my car....I was 17.)
I've also been ticketed for drawing a 4" long line of sidewalk chalk on a sidewalk. That cost over $200, for using the product as intended in front of my own home.
My brother, on the other hand, had a 16th birthday party with 300 kids and 12 kegs, and my dad hired the Houston police as 'security' to 1.stop drunks from driving away and 2. stop other cops from busting the party (that's how it was done in the 80's, pay them and they look the other way...probably still applies)
It's nice to hear about reasonable cops existing, I just seem to not run into any.

You know, that trailer makes me think it would make for a better movie than game...

I liked the original Deus Ex a lot. Tried Human Revolution and just didn't really get into it -- maybe I should dust it off and try again. But in general I still think that trailer said "movie" to me more than it said "game"...

so impressive!

I also liked his makeshift fume-hood. That's gotta be way easier for collecting dust and not having to wear a mask.

Is all the white material just foam core? I didn't know it could be bent by simply heating it a bit. Or is it something else?

Wall of text incoming. Again.

Sorry. Again.

tl;dr:

Debt relief right away was proposed, was neccessary, and was skipped to protect the European financial system.



You are 100% correct, we both are as convinced as one can be that a disorderly collapse would have been much worse for Greece. Might have turned it into a failed state, if things went really bad.

But the situation in Greece at the time the Troika got involved suggested a textbook approach would work just fine. Greece was insolvent, no two ways about it. A debt restructuring, including a haircut, was required to stabilise the system. Yet it was decided against it, thereby creating an enormous debt bubble that keeps growing to this day, destabilising everything.

Why?

People in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin knew in May of 2010 that Greece cannot service its current debt, nevermind pay it back. I remember rather vividly how it was presented to us, as it stirred up a lot of dust in Germany. They pretended as if the problem was a shortage of liquidity, even though they knew it was in fact an insolvency. And to provide an insolvent nation with the largest credit in history (€110-130b) is... well, we can all pick our favorite in accordance to our own bias: madness, idiocy, incompetence, a mistake, intent. They threw Greece into permanent indebtedness(?), and also played one people against another. People in Germany were pissed, still are. Not at the decision makers, but the Greek people.

Again, why?

Every European government, pre-crisis, drank the Cool Aid of deregulation, particularly with regards to the financial sector. When the crisis hit, they had to bail out the banks, a very unpopular decision in Germany, given the scandalous way it was done (different story). Like I pointed out before, when Greece was done for, German banks were on the hook for €17b+, and the French for €20b+. So no haircut for Greek debt.

It gets even better. The entity most experienced in these matters is, of course, the IMF. But IMF couldn't get involved. Its own regulations demand debt to be sustainable for it to become involved in any debt restructuring. Strauss-Kahn had the rules changed in a very hush-hush manner (hidden in a 146 page document) to allow the IMF to lend vast sums to Greece, even though they knew it would not be payed back. Former EC members are on record saying the Strauss-Kahn decided to protect French banks this way as a part of his race for President in France. So they changed IMF rules and ignored European law to bail out German and French banks, using the insolvent Greek government as a proxy.

Several members of the IMF's board were in open opposition. The representatives of India, Russia, Brazil and Switzerland are on record, saying this would merely replace private with public financing, that it would be a rescue package for the private creditors rather than the Greek state. They spoke out in favor of negotiations of a debt relief.

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's an IMF email, dated March 25th, 2010, that was published by Roumeliotis, formerly IMF. They put it very bluntly:

"Greece is a relatively closed economy, and the fiscal contraction implied by this adjustment path, will cause a sharp contraction in domestic demand and an attendant deep recession, severely stretching the social fabric."

Even the IMF, who chose parameters according to their own ideology, thought the European program to be too severe. That's saying something.

All that is just about the initial decision. The implementation is another story entirely, with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats telling a democratically elected government what to do. There are former Greek ministers on record, telling how Troika officials basically wrote legislation for them. Blackmail was common, bailout money held as leverage. The Memorandum of Understanding was to be followed to the letter, and the Troika program was as detailed as a government program, so they really had their hand in just about everything.

The specifics of the program are a discussion of their own, with all the corruption going on. The Lagarde list (2000+ Greek tax dodgers) was held in secret by order of an IMF official – that alone should trigger major investigations. The nationalisation and sell-off of the four largest Greek banks, or the no-bid sale of the Hellenikon area to a Greek oligarch – all enforced by Troika officials.

The haircut of 2012, ~€110b wiped out, came two years late. As a result, it didn't hit any German or French institutions in a serious way. Most of the debt was in the hands of these four largest Greek banks -- NBG, Piraeus, Euro, Alpha – who subsequently had to be recapitalised by Greece to the tune of €50b. Cut by 110, up by 50 right away. Banks were nationalised and shares later sold again, at 2/3 the price. Lost another €15b, because the Troika demanded the sale to appease the markets.

The legal aspects of all this are nightmare-inducing as well. They violated numerous European laws, side-tracked parliaments, used governmental decrees, etc.

Let me just say this: when they forced Cyprus to give away two banks' branches in Greece for a fraction of their worth, Cyprus lost €3.5b, at a GDP of €17b, and those two banks went belly-up. It was pure blackmail, do it or you're out. Piraeus Bank received those €3.5b, and its head honcho had €150m of personal bad credit wiped clean right then and there, all at the command of the Troika. Those €3.5b had to be taken from ordinary folks by "suspending" the deposit insurance, perhaps the most stupid decision they had made so far.

Why did they do it? Because Greece was more important than Cyprus, and Cypriot banks were involved in shady deals with Russian oligarchs. Still illegal, and massively so.

Edit: I cut my post in half and it's still too long.

This....
"THE pixie dust does exist - you could snort if you wanted to and it would show you" ....

The pixie dust @ulysses1904 first referenced and you replied to is (from my reading) the pixie dust that makes you religious.

You assume I have not 'taken the plunge' just because I don't take it the same way you do? Quite an assumption for you to make, an erroneous one. I've taken many a 'trip' in my day, on many a substance. I feel that I have enough grasp on reality to understand that anything they made me see or feel was a chemical reaction in my brain to a drug, not a mystical, religious, spiritual, or other experience.

Drug experience are as false as religion, IMO. Your mind creates images and thoughts that are not based in reality. If you can gain some measure of peace or knowledge from that, good for you, most can't, and suggesting they take unregulated, often permanently damaging drugs in a random setting is not responsible.