Veterans Kick Ass

wow…i had a huge rant about the actual realities of ‘those of us who work for a living’ over the past 8 years, but i think it’s suffice to say that on the interwebs and in the street no matter how bad things are ‘democrats are worse!!!!’

@jujutsu – what, it’s pretty much the party line and takling points you’ll find on just about any ‘conservative’ or ‘right wing’ blog right now.
pretty much verbatem.
It’s a wonderful study in groupthink and self-managed expectations and anyone interested in managing or developing a community should almost certanly be studying it.

from a PR perspective you want to generate this kind of blind unquestioning loyalty as it allows you to produce almost nothing after an initial investment and keep raking in the cash.

See: Palladium Books for an example of this.

@darury
what? you mean all the websites with posting about how hillary is the victim of chauvanistic sexism, and how everything anyone says is an idictment of the socio-political structure and evident of the rampent sexism which is what’s keeping a woman down?
Or maybe you’re just regurgitating those talking points that i was talking about, instead of actualy, y’know, going to various ‘progressive’ blogs.

@bughunter

no. no you won’t. no matter what the person with (D) after the name will immediatly be identified as ‘the enemy’ in the same way that there are people out there that will instantly assume that anything put out by koster or smedly is instantly and irredimably crap.
Unlike MMO fanbois though, they get PAID either by being so vitrolic or to be that vitrolic against ‘the other side’. It’s a pretty sweet gig if you can get it.

To keep this focused on MMORPGs the blog-o-net and the reactions to certian names and memes is arguably excellent viewing for how to handle name association and channel then from negative to positive.

@Brask mumei

too late for all that.
the US is pretty boned.
a war that drained our treasure, tax cuts that further drained it, and rising costs and falling dollar combined with capitol investment that was almost exclusivly in housing instead of productive capitol means that we are well and truely fucked.

the rest of the world built roads, light rail, nuclear power stations, industry and other things that continue to produce.

we spent 5 years building mcmansions.
4 banks have folded this year, the FDIC thinks the number is going to be between 150-300 over the next few years, and at least one municipality has gone chapter 7.
the only question is how many more?

There is no easy ( and thus politically viable) way out of this mess.
to fix it would require more than 70% capitol gains (as the wage stagnation of the past 8 years means that the middle class cannot support any more taxs without stopping being middle class) and other WWII and depression era tyranical taxes.

IMHO given the unprecidented growth of the actual wealth of the people we are talking about, I fail to see how they could rightly complain about paying enough to keep the republic from falling in to chaos, but they will. and they will spend every dime to enusre it, along with the corporations who also do not wish to pay any penny.
of course, the job of corporations is to not pay any penny they can, so i don’t really get angry, that’s like getting angry at a mob for aggroing on you when you get close to it.

@wowpanda – whenver we drop regulations, historically, has been a boom for small buisness for a short while, followed by consolidation and then near monopoly.
all how low are you goign to lower taxes? how are lower taxes going to increase revenues when please are unable to meet the basic neccesities of life?

as for banks paying ‘whatever they want’: regulation comes about after people have proven they cannot handle a freedom. If people didn’t steal there’d be no laws against theft. If people didn’t kill each other there’d be no laws against murder, because it wouldn’t be a problem.
The laws about banks, specifically, and others purchasing on margin over a certian amount or unsecured credit (which is why you have to play the lotto with real money, and why you are in violation of your card memeber agreement if you buy stock with it) is to stop the very problem which greatly exaserbated the economic downturn which was the Great Depression. The prior 50 years of american history were full of similar boom and busts, but only the seriousness and strain on the nation caused there to be enough backlash that it was determined that this could not stand to happen again.
The reason banks get bailed out is because they ARE to big to fail.
Imaginge over 50% of the people of the united state’s bank accounts ceasing to exist as the largest banks collapse and the fdic goes broke.
I guarentee you that is a re-occuring nightmare for just about every regulatory agency right now. If it’s not then they are not paying attention, or are trying to figure out how to cash out and fly before the roof caves in.

The laffer curve is a joke, and lowering taxes in this scenario is certianly not going to allivate the failing infrastructure or massive debts owed. The maintinence costs have skyrocketed and there’s not anything you can do about it.
Government or private industry, you’re going to pay either way.

Combined with wealthiest americans have experinced record growth in relative worth, now it’s time to pay the piper.
The only thing we agree on is to stop the bailouts.

@bughunter: the recent boom was based upon easy credit and speculation. Those who profitted upon it paid far less in taxes than they normally would, which further did fuel the boom. however, the bottom has now come out, there is war debt to pay down, and general debt overall. Or should the government not repay it’s debts?

@wowpanda
riiight…more than likely what you will get is a repeat of the late 1800′s and rockefeller buisness practices, where you ruine your rivals fianancially and drive them into the poor house, then pickupt he pieces for a paltry sum. IT’s the stated buisness plan of several patent troll corporations.
The FDIC only has so much money. after x # of banks fail insured individuals only get a sliding percentage of their savings. once enough banks fail the entire system crashes. It’s why it is referred to as ‘systemic failure’.

As to schools ‘fialing’ how are they failing, precisly? every credible study shows that american children are only slightly behind japan and europe in math and science and ahead of japan increative endevours, and even then, what is the other option? private schools? great, so i can deal with children who were raised thinking that the earth is but 6000 years old and that intellegent design is ‘sound science’? Or who’s idea of ‘discipline’ and thus thier approch to problem solving can be summed up as ‘beat it ’till it no longer cries or struggles”? That sounds like it will lead to a sound public body.
Y’know what sticks in my craw in mcuht he same way that the idea of taxes sticks in yours? people that have the audacity to avail themselves of the modern miricles of our age, and yet, at every oppertunity seek to undermine the foundations that got us here.
Science, progressive policies, community investment. WIthout them there’d be no internet, there’d be no united states.

Bughunter and WOwpanda, you both remind me of throwbacks to a prior age, where FYIGM-ism and Calvinism was king, and thus you knew a rightous man because they were the lucky 1 in a million who ‘availed themselves of the oppertunity to become upstanding citizens’. It used to be called ‘social darwinism’. THe world tried it before. It led to horrible conditions.
suck it.

it’s like dealing with vanguard fanbois pre-release.
“we need it to be more hardcore, that’s the solution to all problems!”

@wowpanda: maitnence costs have not skyrocketed thanks to government regulations.
maintence costs have skyrocketed since we’ve GOT THE SAME DAMEND ELECTRIAL NETWORK SINCE 1930.

there’s no reason for private industry to do anything other than ‘maintain’ the existing grid, at the cheapest cost.

that gets you blackout of ’03

as for why vallipraso went bankrupt: they coudl no longer afford the pension obligations due to falilng income.
oh, and all the quick and easy debt that they have to service.

@Brask – My understanding of the USSR fammines is that they were a combination of malice and a perfect storm of incompetance.
removing farm land for factoreis, instituting giant ‘communial’ farms that were run by newbs after displacing (and gulaging) the previous tenant farmers combined with an unstated goal of starving ethnic ukranians and other ‘minorities’ who stalin did not approve of or who resisted the USSR.

@Mandalla – you are correct, there are plenty of good private schools. I am also aquanted with the montessori method, growing up in a montessori home (my mother was a teacher for 35 years and was montessori trained, and the last in her district to practice the technique for lower El).

You are correct, there are plenty of excellent private institutions in our country, especially in places you’d never suspect. However, most of the 90′s my state spent a ridiculous amount of money to ‘prove’ how bad the public school system was, with the intent of allowing private unregulated corporations and individuals to run their own ‘charter’ school.

To my mind subcontracting education to private industry to my mind is like subcontracting the army. it’s a bad plan.