World Politics

[auscyclefan94]

Are any of our NSW friends talking about the election today of which Labor is likely to lose 34 seats out of 50?

 

[patricknd]

We covered this the other day. He claims dyslexia, or as he puts it dislexia, on the face of the evidence I am inclined to believe him and give him a pass. Maybe you could invite him to Tejas to do your big ride, you could sit on his wheel and probably go real fast until he dropped your a** about 20 mi. in.

didn't know about his learning disability, but it still doesn't cover his lack of fact checking. and i only have approximately 1.3 lungs so i have at least as much excuse for my shortcomings as he does.

 

[usedtobefast]

Your a racist bigot.

actually it should be, you're...a contraction. and no i am not. just overstating the obvious. his policies are not much different from Bush 2. we all hoped for more.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

We covered this the other day. He claims dyslexia, or as he puts it dislexia, on the face of the evidence I am inclined to believe him and give him a pass. Maybe you could invite him to Tejas to do your big ride, you could sit on his wheel and probably go real fast until he dropped your a** about 20 mi. in.

Yeah like he would really do that. I will invite him to come to Texas and do a long training run with me while I am half drunk. I will drop him, You and the Redtreviso all within the first 6 min. Please make the pain train stop.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

The closest you will come to finding a socialist in this country would be some missionaries.. Like the Catholic nuns your hero Ollie North's friends raped and threw out of helicopters..Even those who claim to be socialists are not..they want a ferrari just like you do. Then there are republicans who give some of their excess to the needy as an ode to a socialist ideal, but they value telling others of the lack of gratitude they receive in return.

I am not sure if you noticed but I agree about the socialist subject now. No argument you win. Now please go get a new channel.
Oliver North is a convicted felon he is not a hero of any type. You have been watching way TWO much FoxNews.
Never ever had dreams on a Ferrari. I do like the M3's but it is out of my price range. I will stick with my Nissan Frontier and Honda Civic.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

actually it should be, you're...a contraction. and no i am not. just overstating the obvious. his policies are not much different from Bush 2. we all hoped for more.

I have been corrected on the use of your and YOU'RE before. It does not play well with me.. hehe
I was trying to Joke with you. But your probably correct about President Bush.

 

[Hugh Januss]

Yeah like he would really do that. I will invite him to come to Texas and do a long training run with me while I am half drunk. I will drop him, You and the Redtreviso all within the first 6 min. Please make the pain train stop.

I thought you had gone off to watch some chick flick or something.
I bet you he would destroy you on a bike, take a look at his thread, he was seriously talented. We are not talking about running here that's for ****, but rather bike riding, if you want to challenge folks to a running race you should head over to one of those *** running forums.

 

[usedtobefast]

I have been corrected on the use of your and YOU'RE before. It does not play well with me.. hehe
I was trying to Joke with you. But your probably correct about President Bush.

ah, my mistake on the humor.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I thought you had gone off to watch some chick flick or something.
I bet you he would destroy you on a bike, take a look at his thread, he was seriously talented. We are not talking about running here that's for ****, but rather bike riding, if you want to challenge folks to a running race you should head over to one of those *** running forums.

HA. well yeah. I was a runner. I am a cycling fan and have been known to be in decent cycling shape. Never have I been able to kick it in cycling.

Maybe he is one of those people who likes to make up their physical abilities almost like fraudulent valor of sorts.

If you search really hard and find out my real fist name maybe you would find that I was at the very least half assed talented enough to run collegiate level and even on the USMC Marathon team. Then again I could just be making up this **** for ****S and Giggles...... just to try and impress someone on a message board.

Hey I tried to break away from this thread but I am still unable to find that movie Lost which has a basketball star named Wilson in it. ?????? any help will be appreciated. No YouTUBBS or FoxNews Links from Redtreviso either. I want the real movie.

 

[redtreviso]

HA. well yeah. I was a runner. I am a cycling fan and have been known to be in decent cycling shape. Never have I been able to kick it in cycling.

Maybe he is one of those people who likes to make up their physical abilities almost like fraudulent valor of sorts.

If you search really hard and find out my real fist name maybe you would find that I was at the very least half assed talented enough to run collegiate level and even on the USMC Marathon team. Then again I could just be making up this **** for ****S and Giggles...... just to try and impress someone on a message board.

Hey I tried to break away from this thread but I am still unable to find that movie Lost which has a basketball star named Wilson in it. ?????? any help will be appreciated. No YouTUBBS or FoxNews Links from Redtreviso either. I want the real movie.

Maybe Red Dawn(1) is on somewhere.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Maybe Red Dawn(1) is on somewhere.

Maybe it is. I heard that Hollywood is going to remake that movie. It will not be the same without Patrick Swayze...???spelling.

 

[patricknd]

We covered this the other day. He claims dyslexia, or as he puts it dislexia, on the face of the evidence I am inclined to believe him and give him a pass. Maybe you could invite him to Tejas to do your big ride, you could sit on his wheel and probably go real fast until he dropped your a** about 20 mi. in.

the ride is over, it's called texas hell week, or hel wek for mr. webster.

if you ever have a week to kill come ride it, it's a blast. 25 mph winds for the last 5 days, but i still managed to gain 5 pounds, go figure. i may give one of the brevets a try next year if i can get back to 170 lbs. or less.

 

[redtreviso]

Maybe it is. I heard that Hollywood is going to remake that movie. It will not be the same without Patrick Swayze...???spelling.

and it is undergoing a huge edit to not have the chinese be the invaders..

btw,,,Houston really isn't that capital of Texas..and Ollie North really didn't warn Al Gore about Osama bin Laden.

 

[popolo]

I thought you had gone off to watch some chick flick or something.
I bet you he would destroy you on a bike, take a look at his thread, he was seriously talented. We are not talking about running here that's for ****, but rather bike riding, if you want to challenge folks to a running race you should head over to one of those *** running forums.

I bet he would drop a clean Armstrong.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I hate to admit it, but I love that comment by usedtobefast about Obama being like Bush (2). Made me laugh, maybe because it's so accurate. Almost the exact same policies when you analyze it. Taxes, war, oil, energy, etc. Even his proposals to health care, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security aren't much different from what Bush talked about. Same.

I do love the way that people think Obama is a socialist. It's almost amusing. Really what he is is a plutocratic pawn, or a kleptocrat, just like about 97% of all politicians in the US. They move money for the highest bidders, who facilitate their stay in power. The entire concept of capitalism/socialism has almost nothing to do with it; very little to do with true political legislation and actions that take place, and is merely a tool of distraction for the masses (and a very effective one at that).

Maybe it is. I heard that Hollywood is going to remake Red Dawn. It will not be the same without Patrick Swayze...

Or the Soviet Union. What a stupid idea of a remake. What's next, a remake of Invasion U.S.A.?

 

[rhubroma]

Or we could link to a dictionary. Point 1 is the common US usage, point 3 the global usage of the term 'republic'.

ETA: and since we're getting into definitions of things, why not look at the word socialism. Socialism is a period of revolutionary transitions in which the means of production are no longer private property, i.e., they are socialized.

Obama is no socialist, neither is Eisenhower. The idea of socializing production means is so far from those guys as actual tea******* is from the 'tea******'.

ETA II: by the way, rhubroma, it's senatus populusque romanus, if my seven years of latin have taught me anything.

And speaking of socialism (and the origins of things)....

From E. H. Gombrich: A Little History of the World:

Chapter 36, Men and Machines:...At about the same time attempts were being made in England to propel vehicles using steam. But it took until 1803 for a usable engine, one which ran cast-iron railway lines. In 1814 George Stephenson built the first effective steam locomotive and named it Blucher after the great Prussian general, and in 1825 the first railway line was opened between Stockton and Darlington...It was much the same with the invention of the electric telegraph...

However, other machines changed the world even more profoundly. These were the machines which made use of the forces of nature instead of manpower. Take spinning and weaving, for example - work that had always been done by artisans....Since the time of Louis XIV factories already existed, but the work was done by hand. But around the same time as the train and the telegraph, the mechanical loom was introduced. And again, it was in England that these machines were first made and used. Machines and factories needed coal and iron, so countries with their own coal and iron were at a great advantage.

All of these developments produced a tremendous upheaval in people's lives. Everything was turned upside-down and hardly anything had stayed where it had been. Think for a moment how secure and orderly everything had been in the guilds of the medieval cities! Those guilds had lasted right up to the time of the French Revolution and longer. True, it was no longer easy for the journeyman to become a master as it had been in the Middle Ages, but it was still possible and the hope was there. Now, all of a sudden, everything changed. Some people owned machines. It didn't take much training to learn how to operate them - just a couple of and then they ran themselves...Machines don't sleep nor do they need holidays. Thanks to the new machines, the money that had allowed a hundred workers to live safely and comfortably could now be saved by the factory owner, or spent on himself. Of course, he still needed workers to manage the machines. But only unskilled workers and not many of them.

But the worst thing was this: the city's hundred weavers were now out of work and would starve, because one machine was doing their work for them. And naturally, rather than see his family starve a person will do anything. Even work of a pittance as long as he has a job to keep body and soul together. So the factory owner, with his machines, could summon the hundred starving weavers and say: 'I need five people to run my factory and look after my machines. What will you charge for that?' One of them might say: 'I want so much, if I am to live as comfortably as before.' The next would say. 'I just need enough for a loaf of bread and a kilo of potatoes a day.' And the third, seeing his last chance for survival about to disappear, would say: 'I'll see if I can manage for half a loaf.' Four others then said, 'So will we!' 'Right!' said the factory owner. 'I'll take you five. How many hours can you work in a day?' 'Ten hours.' said the first. 'Twelve,' said the second, seeing the job slipping from his grasp. 'I can do sixteen,'cried the third, for his life depended on it. 'Fine' said the factory owner, 'I'll take you, but who will take a look after my machine while you're asleep? My machine doesn't sleep!' 'I'll get my little brother to do it - he's eight years old,' replied the luckless weaver. 'And what shall I give him?' 'A few pennies will do, to buy him a bit of bread and butter.' And even then the factory owner might reply: 'He can have the bread, but we'll see about the butter.' And this is how business was done. The remaining ninety-five weavers were left to starve, or find another factory owner prepared to take them on...

People began to despair...Many of them raged against the machines that had robbed them of their happiness. They broke into the factories and wrecked the looms, but it made no difference. In England in 1812 the death penalty was introduced for anyone guilty of destroying a machine...and the general misery increased (to all but the factory owners).

Some people felt that things could not go on like this. It was simply not right that a person (in what's now called the bourgeois), simply because he happened to own, or had perhaps inherited, a machine, should be able to treat everyone else more harshly than many noblemen used to treat their peasants. It seemed to them that factories and machines and suchlike, which gave their owners such monstrous power over peoples lives, shouldn't belong to individuals, but to the community as a whole. This idea is called socialism. People had many ideas about how to organize work in a socialist way, so as to put an end to the misery of starving workers, and came to the conclusion that, instead of receiving a wage set by the individual factory owner, they should have a share in the profits.

Among the many socialists in France and Britain in the 1830s there was one who became particularly famous. He was a scholar from Trier in Germany, and his name was Karl Marx. The ideas he had were rather different. In his view it was pointless wondering how things might be if only the machines belonged to the workers. If they wanted the machines, the workers would have to fight for them, for the factory owners would never give up their factories voluntarily. And it was equally pointless for groups to go around destroying mechanical looms now that they had been invented. What they should do was stick together...Even if this might not have been enough to get what they wanted in terms of acceptable wages, for Marx this was precisely why unity was so vital. For in the end the factory owners would not be able to find any workers who would be willing to work for less...

In fact for Marx, there were no more real occupations. There were just two sorts - or classes - of people: those who owned and those who didn't. Or as he chose to call them, capitalists and proletarians, for he liked using words from other languages. These classes were in a constant state of war with one another, for owners want to produce as much as possible for the smallest amount of money, and therefore pay the workers - the proletarians - as little as they can get away with, whereas workers seek to force the capitalists - the owners of the machines - to part with as much profit as they can be made to. This battle between the two classes of people, so Marx thought, could only end in one way. The many dispossessed would one day seize the property of the owning minority, not in order to own it themselves, but to get rid of ownership all together. Then classes would cease to exist. This was the goal of Karl Marx, one that he thought was near and quite simple to achieve...

We all know how things turned out. The forces of globalization have meant this XIX century conflict between profit and the means of production, has simply largely been moved off-shore, to societies more congenial to workers exploitation than our own. What Marx didn't account for, however, was that capitalists and capitalist society, could not exclusively bring such pressures to bear on workers by an ownership elite class, but the State as well as in socialist China. This is why I have always felt that the socialism we have today is just a sham. A spurious form of socialism, which has either tried to be effected within capitalist society (as in most European states), or else within communism itself (China and the former Soviet Union).

Certainly what Obama is trying to do is take the state, as much as possible, out of his social health care agenda, and rather placing it under the control of the private insurance companies under stricter federal regulations. This too, however, only alters the dynamic of the problem, without actually correcting it. At least not in a way that is satisfactory to me, as he's not going after the real problem itself: the insurance companies. Indeed what kind of a socialism is it, if it is still in the hands of private ownership? Right, but the right-wing nutters are still denouncing the man as a socialist!

If even the socialist state has become an exploitor of manufacturing labor, this is because the whole world has been irrevocably caught up in one colossal business enterprise and unscrupulous commercial concern. It's sad to repeat it once again, sad and boring, but its still needs to be said.

 

[rhubroma]

This seems to me to be the rebus for which finding an answer, if we can find and answer, is still a long way off. It should be enough that Wall Street nearly totally collapsed in 08, or that millions are without any form of heal care in the US, or that the Chinese worker (and not only) exists in a slave like status, while US and Western manufacturing has all but disappeared in many sectors, that there are sectarian wars in many places throughout the globe to overthrow oppressive regimes our governments have supported, because it was simply in our better business interests to do so, that most of the plannet is in debt to the banks up to its teeth; for people and the elected officials to begin to change a business system that is entirely unbalanced and a realpolitik that stinks to high heaven. Instead it's not enough.

 

[Darryl Webster]

the movie was cast away, not lost; and wilson was a volleyball, not a basketball.

hint: before you talk about others being bright you might want to check your spelling. a typo now and then is one thing but that post about lambchop is pitiful.

Dislexia: •This is a learning difficulty that makes it extremely difficult to read, write, and spell. Dyslexia is not linked to intelligence or lack of intelligence.
http://www.mumsnet.com/special-needs/conditions-and-disorders

Of course you`d know this but........
So I got the film name wrong but you knew the film I meant...so in actual fact youve mis understood nothing I`ve wrote but like your superiority in the spelling dept and like to point it out.
Clever you!

 

[patricknd]

Dislexia: •This is a learning difficulty that makes it extremely difficult to read, write, and spell. Dyslexia is not linked to intelligence or lack of intelligence.
http://www.mumsnet.com/special-needs/conditions-and-disorders

Of course you`d know this but........
So I got the film name wrong but you knew the film I meant...so in actual fact youve mis understood nothing I`ve wrote but like your superiority in the spelling dept and like to point it out.
Clever you!

i wasn't aware that you had a learning disability until someone else pointed it out. that excuses your poor spelling but not your snide attitude and comments about others. (ref. your badly mangled film post) you should do a little fact checking in the future, and take the extra step of using spell check. there's nothing wrong with having dyslexia, but not taking the extra steps available to improve makes me suspect that perhaps you're just a tad lazy.

 

[palmerq]

ok, now the reason for the spelling mistakes has been established can everyone please be nice and keep to general politics.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

and it is undergoing a huge edit to not have the chinese be the invaders..

btw,,,Houston really isn't that capital of Texas..and Ollie North really didn't warn Al Gore about Osama bin Laden.

LMAO that email is fake and has been going around for a long time. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned it. At the very least it is recycled around twice a year.

I do not care about Houston being the capital of anything,,,it is a place to work for me nothing more. I am not a Texan like you I guess are. I am a foreigner from another state who decided to move here to for work.

 

[Hugh Januss]

i wasn't aware that you had a learning disability until someone else pointed it out. that excuses your poor spelling but not your snide attitude and comments about others. (ref. your badly mangled film post) you should do a little fact checking in the future, and take the extra step of using spell check. there's nothing wrong with having dyslexia, but not taking the extra steps available to improve makes me suspect that perhaps you're just a tad lazy.

Boy look who's all sensitive now. That basketball thing would have been an excellent put down if he would have got it right, it was funny even as it was. You're just mad you didn't think of it first.

 

[patricknd]

Boy look who's all sensitive now. That basketball thing would have been an excellent put down if he would have got it right, it was funny even as it was. You're just mad you didn't think of it first.

maybe so, but what's worse than a ****ed up joke? not much, and i hate to see laziness ruin it. damn it people, humor takes work !!!!

 

[patricknd]

LMAO that email is fake and has been going around for a long time. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned it. At the very least it is recycled around twice a year.

I do not care about Houston being the capital of anything,,,it is a place to work for me nothing more. I am not a Texan like you I guess are. I am a foreigner from another state who decided to move here to for work.

he's not a texan anyway, hell he's from south oklahoma.

 

[redtreviso]

I do not care about Houston being the capital of anything,,,it is a place to work for me nothing more. I am not a Texan like you I guess are. I am a foreigner from another state who decided to move here to for work.

Capital of smog,,,I was hinting at the scene in Red Dawn when the girl asks the "Eagle Driver" what the capital of texas was.

I'm not a texan either..I don't drink beer but I know where Abita Springs is, ya know?