The Gaming Den

Funny how different the exit polls are from the results reported by the voing machines. Especially when the CEO of Diebold says he is committed to giving Bush the electoral vote of Ohio.

Ouch. Makes you wonder why we even have elections any more. Well, perhaps in four more years we won't have to.

-Username17

It makes one wonder if the majority voted for religious reasons does the US have a Democracy or a Theocracy?

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1099510141[/unixtime]] Makes you wonder why we even have elections any more.

We have elections to perpetuate at least the illusion of participation, without which armed revolt would erupt. Oh wait, armed revolt has erupted, but those people are "terrorists" and no longer "patriots".

And, of course you are being paranoid. It's entirely possible that the state of Ohio LIKES unemployment so much (Link) that they voted for more of it. That sounds like sarcasm, but it's not. Even the morons on this side of the state line know how to keep their rivers from catching fire and their football teams in town.

Sadly, I don't think the votes were rigged. OR if they were, it wasn't needed.

But I do have this to add:

Thank you, voters in the flyover states. While you voted for the party that wishes to keep you in grinding poverty, you also voted for the party that likes to give me money. The last round of Bush tax cuts gave me more money than you'll make in a whole year working for minimam wage at Walmart. I expect more of the same a-coming. I'll be thinking of you when I spend it.

This dovetails nicely with your votes to continue the destruction of our environment. While admittedly I don't like that, I can afford to go to all sorts of nice, unspoiled places while you try to fish in those toxic polluted rivers. And have fun hunting for the next few years before all the birds fall dead from the skies - I'll just be flying to Canada for a few weekends a year.

Which of course brings me to health care and retirement savings. I've got lots of both, and probably have even more once those tax cuts really start kicking in. You may have healthcare insurance, but your kids sure as hell won't. And don't come crying to me when your "private social security account" goes belly up in the coming crash caused by years of deficit spending.

THM's quote wrote: And don't come crying to me when your "private social security account" goes belly up in the coming crash caused by years of deficit spending.

Ess just got his Social Security account statement. It as much as says that at the bottom of page 2.

Eh, I'll weather this out like I always have.

Good to see what Dubya is rewarding with his appointments.

Am I the only one in the country who realizes that Paul Revere was a terrorist?

Reading the Arafat obituaries, it's interesting that he always referred to himself as a "freedom fighter." Just like the founding fathers. The sooner we start to realize "terrorism" isn't an enemy, but a tactic, the sooner we will make some progress in our "war" against it.

But we did so well in the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs that we needed another

“The war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on poverty.
We fought all those for years, with only minimal results.
Now, the war on terrorism is already bogging down.”
“Maybe we should stop declaring war on nouns.”
“Stupid nouns! They always win.”

-Username17

George Carlin?

Tom Tomorrow, although it very easily could have been said by someone else before that.

-Username17

We could've won the whole war on poverty thing.

You know. Without the whole formation of the corporate PAC system and the top 1% of income makers making 22% of the nation's wealth in 1975 to over 45% today.

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1100316779[/unixtime]]We could've won the whole war on poverty thing.

I disagree, poverty is an insoluable problem. However, we could have done a damn sight better than we did. But that would have meant caring about the poor, and as a country we don't beleive in doing that.

Josh wrote:I disagree, poverty is an insoluable problem.

That depends upon your defintion of "poverty".

Dictionary.com wrote:pov·er·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pvr-t)
n.
The state of being poor; lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts.

If you define it as "having less wealth than other people available to contrast with." then yes, it's completely insoluable. In fact, by such a broad definition poverty isn't even inherently a problem. No matter how egalitarian society is, someone will always have a nicer apartment, a friendlier cat, or larger circle of friends. Someone will always be rich in something, and by extension someone else will always be in the state of being poor.

If, on the other hand, you consider "poverty" as being the state where you lack the means of providing for material needs - where you are actually starving or going without medical care... well, we could have that whipped tomorrow.

---

The United States alone makes enough food every year to feed every man woman and child on earth in a like amount of time. We don't feed everyone, not because we can't, but because we are slaves to prices. That is, if you give food away to people who have no money, this creates a reduced demand and acts as a depressionary force on the price of further food. Simply: feeding the poor makes bread cost less in stores. At least, it does as long as the invisible hand has anything to say about it.

Prices are supposedly fixed by an aggragate of supply and demand - but that only works as long as scarcity applies. We produce more food in the US than everyone could eat if we tried (and if you have ever been to a US fast food joint - you know that we do try). In short, supply is infinite. Selling or not selling a particular sandwhich has no impact at all on the total supply - and every single sandwhich that is eaten (whether purchased or gifted) reduces demand.

So if more people eat, the price of food goes down. But the price of growing food stays the same. If enough people eat, therefore, the growers don't make nay money. And then they fall into poverty and can't afford healthcare. Quite a quandry, eh?

---

Needless to say, we could just have everyone pay exactly as much as they are currently paying for food into a big pot and then let everyone eat for free. Since we wouldn't be having to find ways to store and dump our excess eggs and butter, this would in many ways be cheaper in aggragate than our current system of not feeding everyone.

You could make such a system as simple or as complicated as you wanted, perhaps only allowing certain foods to be eaten in certain amounts by people who pay into the food system to various degrees. But so far the US has shown that people would rather know that noone was getting a free ride on their dollar than personally enjoy a higher standard of living while being surrounded by people who also enjoyed a higher standard of living.

So no, it's not insoluable. It's that we aren't going to solve it. There's a difference.

-Username17

Josh_Kablack at [unixtime wrote:1100375404[/unixtime]]

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1100316779[/unixtime]]We could've won the whole war on poverty thing.

I disagree, poverty is an insoluable problem. However, we could have done a damn sight better than we did. But that would have meant caring about the poor, and as a country we don't beleive in doing that.

I am going to agree w/ Josh's disagreement.

The problem w/ winning the war on poverty is that at some point it becomes a war on stupidity, and you just can't stop people from being stupid. If people want to live in a 3-sided shack in Montana and eat pinenuts and squirrels, at some point you just have to let them. If people want to live in the doorway of the 7-11 and panhandle for crack and blow-job money, at some point you just have to let them.

We can get rid of involuntary poverty, and we could do much better on that front. Sadly, so many people in states that get huge federal subsidies, employed in businesses that get huge government handouts, believe that giving a loaf of bread to starving children is somehow against the limited-government American Way.

The Hanged Man wrote:The problem w/ winning the war on poverty is that at some point it becomes a war on stupidity, and you just can't stop people from being stupid.

This is, in my opinion, the biggest epidemic afflicting the human race. Unfortunately, the only cure I can envision is utter annihilation, which is entirely inhumane and thus not feasible.

Talk about moral quandary.

Yes, but truly utter annihilation is inherently egalitarian.

I'm up for some utter annihilation.

Will Total Annihilation do?

Phantagram said that they were going to do Total Annihilation 2, but then they never did. Is it just running late, or are they a bunch of fvckers who have no intention of making a sequel to that great game?

-Username17

It's like Duke Nukem forever, which should have been out...well...forever.

TA was the greatest RTS ever. Not until Dawn of War was something its equal released.

Draco_Argentum at [unixtime wrote:1105079663[/unixtime]]TA was the greatest RTS ever. Not until Dawn of War was something its equal released.

In the arena of RTS games, Starcraft blows everything away. No game even remotely comes close to it.

Starcraft was sorta fun, but it made me hate people who say "kekekekekekeke" or "^____________________^" a lot.