Rex Kickass

Kansas State is in Manhattan, Kansas which is called the Little Apple. Not as nice as KU in Lawrence, nicer than Emporia State in Emporia. I'd do Clemson. You're closer to more things. Manhattan I think is an hour or two from Wichita and Topeka. And that's about it.

NYC Cops suck balls. I was on my cell phone for 20 seconds and got a ticket. I didn't even know it was against the law to talk on the cell phone while driving. With my NJ license and Indiana plates, they still didn't believe me. Well, 90 dollars later - now I know.

I had to put mine on a table so that the floor wouldn't shake. Although I think the carpet sucked up most of the bass.

So the guy's a twat. Tell me something I didn't already know?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 13, 2005 -> 01:42 PM) Which goes to the big philosophical difference between US and many other world governments. We want our government to provide as little as possible to the people. We want to be able to make our own choices for as many things as we can. We don't want to be told what school to attend, what doctor to see, what organizations we will fund etc. Bureaucracy has exploded in the 20th century after the New Deal of the 30's/40's, and now we have an almost entire population who has no idea what it means to exsist without government assistance of one sort or another. Its a direct correlation of why we went from needing no income tax in the 18th and 19th century, to having a huge debt today. Many countries have a history of entitlement so that is how their government and societies are set up. They pay high taxes, and they expect to be handed everything. The US historically wasn't founded like that. One founding father envisioned the US as independant utopian farmers, with an extremely limited government. That is why the government leaves much of charity work up to the private sector. And by and large the private sector responds as US private citizens give more to charities and causes than the rest of the world combined. That would be great, if it wasn't wrong. Yes, its true that government protections weren't as great in the 1800s as they are now. Of course, now, children can't work 14 hour days anymore, those damn unions got us things like minimum wage, and government oversight on businesses helped that stupid middle class to grow out of control. The New Deal created a basic social safety net to help ensure that the economic disaster of the great depression would not cause nearly as much suffering as it originally did. So programs like Social Security were created as an insurance policy against being completely destitute when your bank fails and you're left penniless. Or when the company you worked for stole from the piggy bank and left your pension penniless. It was never made to get you rich, it was made to keep a roof over your head. Then in the 1960s, the heartless bastards in the federal government created Medicare to insure that the weakest among us would have access to basic health care needs, and started Head Start to ensure that every child would have the opportunity to succeed in school and life. I'm not defending a needlessly complicated bureaucracy - but major government programs - like New Deal and Great Society stuff - come out of that same will to do well as a society for our society. As a result, most Americans have a different vision of government now. They see one that has a duty to give us the freedom we deserve along with giving the weakest among us a helping hand to be able to survive in a free society. Sadly, not enough people understand that today.

QUOTE(mreye @ Jan 13, 2005 -> 01:30 PM) Notice I mentioned private dollars in my origianl post. That's just great except there are other countries that give a higher percentage of GDP in private donations as well. Two of them are in Scandinavia, I believe. Switzerland I think is another. But toteboards don't matter, intent and actions do. And I fault no one for doing good works. People oughta do more of them.

QUOTE(mreye @ Jan 13, 2005 -> 11:50 AM) That's badmouthing right there. You're calling me a zombie. Yes, this has lots to do with Indonesia - That's part of foreign policy. Helping out in a time of need anywhere in the world. We give more federal dollars and private dollars than anyone! It's a biproduct of our type of government that you despise so much. Well, if you wanna get technical and go with the toteboard. Japan's government's donation exceeded the US by about 35%, Australia's by about 275%. The US is donating a lot of dollars, but when you take into account the proportionality of those dollars - the US government doesn't even come close to giving more than anyone else. It's like saying that the guy that makes a million dollars and gives away 1000 dollars is far more generous than the guy that makes 25K and gives away 200. And if you want to argue about foreign policy, you can also make the argument that Bush's policy towards Tsunami relief has been counterproductive as a foreign policy because - although the heart was in the right place, and the money was too - the administration looked bad - like they were trying to compete with the UN, for example. Now you'll say that the US will look bad no matter what they do - but appearances do matter in foreign policy, and I would argue that Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, Carter and Nixon all were more successful at being held in higher esteem from the rest of the world. Woah, did I just compliment three Republican presidencies?

How is a quasi-communist state by definition "expansionist?" Exactly what have the Chinese done to make you think they would go after Canada?

QUOTE(mreye @ Jan 13, 2005 -> 11:20 AM) The "holdup" was the UN and the people around Bush 41. The UN only wanted to get Saddam out of Kuwait. The Bushies thought it would be political suicide to stand up to the UN and "go it alone." He decided to stick with the UN. The future told it was the incorrect decision, and IMO, helped him lose the election in '92. Have you read anything that Cheney or George HW Bush said about the war in 91 or 92? Even Dick Cheney himself said in a speech in 1992 that going to take over the Iraqi regime would make us occupiers and put us in a position that was not in the national interest. He described a scenario that is very similar to what we're in now. If you wanna wear your tin foil hats, you could make the argument that the US allowed an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to send Japan into economic crisis. The bulk of the oil produced in Kuwait goes to Asia. At the time, the US was receiving nearly no oil from Kuwait. Since Japan is a state so dependent on importing natural resources, the US would be able to wage a war - basically on Japan's dime which would drain the Japanese economy and allow the United States economy to soar - because they would reap nearly all the benefits of a small scale war with almost none of the costs.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 13, 2005 -> 11:06 AM) Oh come on. Hell if wasn't for the location of the state of Alaska, you'd be speaking Russian now. Yes, because that's exactly how Finland fell in 1962... oh wait.

QUOTE(mreye @ Jan 12, 2005 -> 12:21 PM) There's a lot of questions that need to be answered. The validity of our intelligence. Why Saddam would go to the brink of war, and ultimately war for a weapons system the he "never" had. It's a big mess that I don't think we'll ever get all the answers to. It's pretty simple actually. Saddam insisted on playing this brinkmanship game, like North Korea does. Unfortunately, North Korea is a lot better at playing the game. He viewed the possibility of WMD in Iraq as a buffer against an Iranian state that he viewed as aggressive towards him (and if you look at the genesis of the Iran-Iraq war you can understand why) and felt threatened (rather needlessly when looked at rationally) by Israel. He also, most likely, thought that the idea of having WMDs would be an effective bargaining chip with the US in exchange to lessen the grip of the US embargo around Iraq or to avoid invasion. He also needed the spectre of WMDs to quell a possible uprising from the Shia or the Kurds. Having used gas once against his own people, he never needed to do it again, he just needed the illusion of being able to do so. It was never important for Saddam Hussein to have WMD, it was only ever important for him to seem like he did.

I just got the six speaker surround system from Altec Lansing, and I love the clean crisp sound it gives me. They're cheap too, only about 100 bucks at the City of Circuits. The Creative THX system is the suck btw, and overpriced at 300.

Read his colums in 1999 and 2000, although a Democrat - I wouldn't have called him partisan then. He's more against those who control things. If the DEMS were in power, he'd rail against them.

That's funny about Krugman. Did you know before Bush was in office, he was not considered a liberal columnist? He tends to go after those in power. More contrarian than partisan, in my opinion.

And you expose my secret??? A blizzard for you my friend. A blizzard indeed! *evil laugh*QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2005 -> 02:49 PM) Why do you think I am trying to be friends with Wino? I just want the lake effect snows to stop

High speed rail can take care of medium distance trips quite easily. Chicago to Detroit in 90 minutes for example, 2 hours with stops. Trains would be a lot safer if we would actually invest in the infrastructure that we've spent the last forty years neglecting.

I've run out of rage.

From everything Tex has said in this post, it couldn't be anything but a scout camp. Hair lengths shouldn't matter here, this isn't international commerce, this is about teaching kids how not to drown in the lake and how to make towers out of logs.

Here's the problem though. Tex isn't talking about a company that makes widgets. He's talking about a boy scout camp that is - for the most part - led by boys. Now the directors want a degree of uniformity from staff members, which is a good thing. They usually have to wear a uniform, properly at all times - if this is like any other scout camp I went to as a kid. However, that oughta be where it stops. Scouting is an organization that is there to let kids grow - hair included - into responsible adults. People that penalize kids who fit the roles that the camp is trying to promote because of a piercing or long hair don't get the fundamental basis of this organization. Mostly because they fail to remember its about the kids and not them.

You are my hero.

I'll keep wine in my house - but I drink beer when I go out.

Sounds like a boy scout camp to me. If this is the situation that I think it is, sounds like a guy who believes in the "Character Counts" as long as actions don't matter school of life. It doesn't matter what you do, but how you look. I've seen it in action when I was in Scouts.

Don't forget the ketchup chips, eh?

So that's why I'm so poor.... I've been paying extra all this time!

I was being facetious actually. There should be a limit to what lawyers can charge for and can't charge for. But I think part of this problem is having people go to court sometimes five or six times for the same thing... and Terry Nichols is a prime example. If you're convicted of a federal crime, why should you be subject to the same trial for the same crime on a state level? Especially in a situation where the sentence is death or life without parole.