Lol. Yeah, in your own mind. You can’t write a single sentence without proving that wrong by sounding like a first year English student or worse. You not smart guy…you unsmart guy. Unsmart guy who like lies and liars and hate factses.
Sweet zombie Jebus, you moron.

Bob, they went on TV and said it. You don’t even have to read, just not hide your head in the sand…sadly that’s still too much to ask of you. God forbid you actually know what the party you blindly support is planning.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mcconnell-no-republican-legislative-agenda-before-2022-midterm-elections-2021-12

Historic Unemployment levels are way down. Historically negative GDP now up. My portfolio went up >25% in 6 months, under Trump it went down over 10% in 4 years. I have a diverse portfolio. Biden got serious funding for real infrastructure repair, not some vague promise of infrastructure week used as a distraction from innumerable scandals but never actually happening, not even for a week. Our international standing is on the rise after falling like a stone under Trump. Biden is doing fine…much better than Trump on his best day. Expectations are low with Republican obstruction a given and some “Democrats” being Republicans in practice.

Biden didn’t attempt a democracy ending coup. Trump did. That alone means Biden wins the “good job” medal 100-0.

Biden’s votes are all valid, Trump has dozens of voters caught voting more than once, and who knows how many not caught. There was voter fraud, 100% Republican voter fraud. How many senators won by cheating. If I used your (lack of any) metric, I would say every Republican representative is invalid and should be removed and jailed. D’oh!

Trump was a mess….an unmitigated failure at everything he tried. He inherited a healthy economy and nation, he left a recession, pandemic, and deep, DEEP division that already tried to destroy American democracy based on his lies.
Trump’s legacy is 3/4 million dead, economy in shambles, allies turning away, and the union crumbling…what you call an unmitigated success.

Edit: some light reading, since inflation is so important to you now…keep in mind the fed “created” over $4.5 trillion in 2020 alone to pay for Trump’s failures. (A dollar devaluation equating to 25% inflation long term)
https://money.cnn.com/2016/05/11/news/economy/donald-trump-print-money/

Utter bullshit and lies. Just what I expect from Newt, the left and never Trumpers.


*lies.

Trump did not ignore Covid. Way ahead of others.

Governors are responsible to open their stated. They are keeping states closed to crash the economy and then to blame it on Trump.
Trump signed off of shit load of cast for working people and businesses.

Images of shambled buildings... Really? Those were shambles way before Trump showed up.


This is Newt wet dream.



The best POTUS in last 60 years.

MEGA 2020

Way better than Alzheimers sleepy finger banging Joe.

Sure, a comedian with a message has to work to be both a comic and convey a message. I think he failed in both cases here; it wasn't funny enough, and his message is a shambles.

I'm not saying he made a good point poorly; I'm saying that he made a really poor point poorly. He's wrong and his examples contradict him. Since part of the comedy of this skit is supposed to be 'It's funny because it's true,' it fails completely for me, since none of it rings true.

Further, I don't know what you think is strawman-ish about my argument - he literally says that 'learning disadvantage' is a PC euphemism for 'stupidity' even though we know that it's not. It's a different word with a different purpose and there was a reason for the development of additional terminology. I would say one or two of his examples are actually changes that were made to conceal unpleasant truths, but many were just made to be more accurate, useful and neutral. Calling it all a PC softening of the truth is just plain wrong.

If you want a strawman argument, on the other hand, I can point out that he sounds alarmingly like the people who fight for their right to call Caitlyn Jenner 'he,' or 'Bruce.' "These people think that just by changing the words they're called, they change their underlying condition. <fart> Doesn't happen!" That would be a strawman argument, since he doesn't actually get into those areas.

Yeah, it's a bitch. I didn't know I was an alcoholic until I was running away from hard times. Then even after I had gained a marginal amount of success, the alcohol remained. Fucking alcohol. It really does make you a different person. Sometimes a very very excellent, if not womanizing person. But sometimes a monster. Best I avoid the stuff beyond what I think I need or can handle, one drink at parties. Parties can be bad if I violate this. Or good -- it's a gamble lol.

You know what though, it's addiction period. I stopped drinking, my life improved; but, I replace it with something else. I am addicted to video games. I do 80+ hour, no sleep binges playing a game I'm seeking to master. Addiction.

Pretty soon I will have to go cold turkey even on things like marijuana, which make me mellow, happy, heightened senses, and artistic/creative focus/drive, and which my peers claim is not addicting. Nah, everything in my life is an addiction. Even creative endeavors or day to day work -- it commands my utter and impenetrable existence, allowing my world to fall to shambles, meanwhile I create art or engineer new false existence. A system of dice I throw forever for no real reason other than I am addicted forever to throwing dice. Boom. Boom. Cards. Mmm, yeah, gambling is fun and bad too, and consume entire weekends. Sex. Typing things. It's ALL addiction to me.

The only thing I get from typing my mind is the rush and addiction to the finality of saying the truth, regardless of the consequences. It just comes out and the fists raise my adrenaline and I'm fighting now. Haahhahahahahaha!!! Addiction! Adrenaline. Energy. I'll run for 4 hours straight to achieve a moment of elation and existence outside of the day to day shuffle. Addicted to life? I sit at my desk addicted to death? No, life. I am addicted to EVERYTHING.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

Oh good cod that's totally fake! He totally left the fish on porpoise, just for the halibut otherwise he would have let out a killer wail. That fish has watched this video like 100 times, she's hooked. I wonder if instead of awkwardly shambling around the plaice he could have tried to skate or ride a pike. Its a good job he filmed it - his friends probably aren't gillable enough to fall for a tall dory like this. Without fish eel have to grin and bare a gouda or other dairy comestible - either whey it'll be a scale down from the dinner he wanted. Sorry, couldn't kelp myself - have to learn reel myself in from time to time salmon ought to stop me before I make anemone. Fin.

And that's the issue right there. I think you and I are arguing about completely different things. In terms of the person who stole the photos and posted them, yes there is no middle ground--that person 100% committed a crime and needs to be punished.

However, in terms of responsibility of people for putting themselves in the position to be victimized, there is a huge range of possibilities--but often this range of possibilities isn't examined for fear of someone shouting "Blaming the victim!" The link I posted above goes to great lengths to point out that the criminal who commits the crime is 100% responsible for the criminal act (by virtue of having made the choice to commit it) but that the victim can in fact also have contributed to the crime in a continuum of ways starting with not at all (100% innocent, as in a child who is abused) to fully responsible (as in the case of a rapist who is killed by a potential victim in self-defense during the rape attempt--in this case the rapist becomes the "victim" of a shooting that he brought completely upon himself). There is lots of middle ground between these extremes.

Let's examine a simple case:

I am walking down the street in LA during the early evening in a neighborhood that normally has very little crime. A homeless man shambling past me suddenly pulls a knife, rams it into my chest, and steals my wallet which happened to contain several hundred dollars. I think we can agree in this situation I've no responsibility for this incident occurring. I could not have predicted it would happen and there is little I could have done to anticipate or prevent it. I am 100% an innocent victim in this scenario.

Now let's change the situation. I go down to Skid Row in the early evening and start showing all the homeless people there wads of $100 bills and telling them how worthless they are and how if they only got off their asses and worked hard like me they could have money too. Again, I get shanked in the chest and my money is stolen. Am I 100% an innocent victim in this case? It seems a bit absurd to say yes, doesn't it? My actions (choosing to go to an area that is not often policed, at night, alone, and flash money while belligerently accosting random people who don't have a lot left to lose) are directly linked to the stabbing.

Note that in both cases the person committing the crime is still 100% responsible for their own actions--they chose to stab me and steal my money. But in one case I clearly could not have foreseen or prevented the attack coming whereas in the other it was reasonably foreseeable that my actions were going to lead to problems (not necessarily a stabbing but at the very least some sort of altercation, unless the most patient and forgiving homeless people on Earth happened to be gathered on Skid Row that day). Does that mean the stabber in the second case should get a lighter sentence? No. But it does mean I have some responsibility for what went down and can be justly criticized for my actions. I can't hide behind the "don't blame the victim" catchphrase. I still deserve justice, though, despite being an offensive idiot.

Back to the case at hand.

You are correct, the woman did nothing "wrong" in the moral or legal sense, and the person who violated her privacy is 100% responsible for making the photos public. But I dislike the idea that because she's a victim of a crime, her actions can't be criticized. She might not have done anything "wrong" but she did indeed make a huge error of judgement when she decided to snap naked pics of herself and post them to a social network which is known for dodgy privacy practices. Given the state of technology today, one should be able to infer that there is a pretty high risk that racy photos are going to get leaked at some point, particularly if posted online. If you are okay with that risk, go ahead and post them. And if they are leaked, by all means prosecute the offenders. But don't expect people not to criticize you for gambling that nothing is going to happen, especially when there is plenty of evidence to believe the contrary.

I hate that fucking TV show so much.

Ozzy was always a messed up shambles, but it didn't matter, because he was Ozzy Fucking Osbourne, godfather of metal and writer of War Pigs, Paranoid, Iron Man and about a million other amazing songs. He was our* messed up shambles.

Now? He's been appropriated into wider culture, most of whom know nothing about the immense cultural contribution he's made to music.

Don't get me wrong; I'm glad he got clean and I hope he's happy with where he is, but it genuinely saddens me that he'll be remembered as that shambolic old guy who yells "Sharon!" while trying to work an over complicated TV remote.

* our = metal fans.

Well he's wrong then. The south was also exploited by the north, just like we today exploit places that are poor. We get rich off of poor places just like the North getting rich on the South and it's slavery. France is rich mostly because it exploited Haiti, and left it in shambles, till we came along and destroyed it even more. Chomsky has reported a lot on this, I suggest you read him since he's an honest intellectual who has his sources all correct.

It's just a fact that the US made a ton of it's wealth from slavery, doesn't matter what booms or busts happened. Make any argument you want, but the US became wealthy by first conquering land and killing all in their path in a designed genocide. Then taking Africans and bringing them here to work the land they stole as beasts of burden. You can also make a compelling argument that the Nazis were under a threat from terrorists, doesn't make it ok that they attacked Poland.

Im a monarchist yet I'm an American as well. I love the British system how it is now. The queen is a figurehead that can unite the people, but they do have a democratic parliament of the people by the people. Course no government is perfect, hell Communism and Socialism on paper look like utopia's, look at star trek, it was a pure socialist society utopia no need for money, all needs met freely. But in practice those forms of government that look good on paper fall apart and tear just as easy as the paper it's written on.

But I do adore the monarchy, I've visited London a few times, visited Buckingham palace, did all the tourist trap tours, even the late night Beefeater off duty jack the ripper tours.

There's just something about the Monarchy that can unite the people when parliament can be seen as in shambles. I think of her as a backup system. If Parliament fails, people can still have faith in their Monarch. If the Monarch is failing people can have faith in their Parliament.

It's a nice backup system sorta, which we don't have in America, but our culture and way of life wouldn't work with that system. But their system is hundreds of times older than our country, we are pretty much the child in the world as far as age. They have buildings in London that are several hundred years older than the United States. And documents that are older than anything in the U.S.

I respect our brothers across the pond, nothing's perfect, but I do like the type Monarchy they have now a constitutional monarchy. It can act as a backup system in case of "shit hits the fan".

but in politics nobody will ever agree, which is what means the most, cause individualism and opinion, prejudice is what makes us human. I've traced my family tree back to Wales and Ireland on the ma/pa sides. Even though I'm southern "redneck" to the bone

Saddam wasn't weak in the beginning, he was strong enough to think that he can invade Kuwait and take over their oil. But after years of sanctions, its government turned into shambles and it was easy meal for Bush.

So the US strategy is for Democrats to sanction n weaken, then for the Republicans to go in for the kill. Iraq was sanctioned heavily by Clinton, and when Bush came in, it was turn to invade. That is why it they fixed the intelligence to fit the policy of invasion. It was a plan years in development.

Now Obama has put heavy sanctions on Iran, which is already taking a heavy toll on Iran people. This will continue for another four years. Then the next administration, which undoubtedly will be a Republican will do the invasion. By that time, Iran's government will be in shambles and its people so demoralized that its going to be as easy as Iraq invasion.

The Green movement was Iran's only chance to change the invasion plan and now that has been lost, by regime's own arrogance. Also the military industrial complex needs another war to feed on, and unfortunately it seems like that it is going to get it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'romney, obama, subhumans, zombie, apocalypse, Spam' to 'romney, obama, subhumans, zombie, apocalypse, Spam, old school shambling' - edited by calvados

In reply to this comment by shagen454:
Oh man, I totally saw this on the front page again my heart started pumping and I was about to FLIP THE FUCK OUT. But, I see that I already did, so.

These judges, DA, police officers are SCUM FUCKING FUCKS. I wish hell were real because they would burn for fucking eternity!! OK, so I had to flip out again because even after forgetting I saw it once, and then feeling exactly the same constitutes another. I wish I could teach that judge a lesson, her whole mentally is a bunch of shambled bullshit - putting people's lives away for NOTHING and making you and I pay for it! SCUM! She doesn't even deserve blood running through her veins, nor anyone else that took part in this.



ROFLMAO

Oh man, I totally saw this on the front page again my heart started pumping and I was about to FLIP THE FUCK OUT. But, I see that I already did, so.

These judges, DA, police officers are SCUM FUCKING FUCKS. I wish hell were real because they would burn for fucking eternity!! OK, so I had to flip out again because even after forgetting I saw it once, and then feeling exactly the same constitutes another. I wish I could teach that judge a lesson, her whole mentally is a bunch of shambled bullshit - putting people's lives away for NOTHING and making you and I pay for it! SCUM! She doesn't even deserve blood running through her veins, nor anyone else that took part in this.

He said as has if the global economy wasn't in shambles.

With 16 to 25% unemployment in most demographics, would you risk being unemployed?

Some monopoly money is better than none, right?

>> ^Sagemind:

On that same note, why are these workers staying with these employers.
After the first check is missed, they should be "Out the door"