I'm guessing you have never sat waiting in a surgeon's examination room. My last visit I had to wait almost 90 minutes with only my thoughts. Mainly, when the hell was he going to come in the door?
And yet my Dodge Ram is US body, US engine, US transmission, US tires and made within the last three years.
I feel your comment is somewhat misleading; I am certainly willing to be wrong, it would seem (based on some research and about a half-hour of reading) that the Ram Truck 1500 series (Ram Truck being owned by Fiat, BTW) is assembled in the US, at the Warren Truck Assembly plant, from parts manufactured at the Saltillo Stamping Plant in Mexico and the Warren Stamping plant in the US (I didn't bother trying to find out the percentages). The only Ram truck assembled at the US plant is the 1500 series. Some of the 1500 series and all the other Ram trucks sold in the US (2500, 3500, 4500, 5500) are manufactured and built in Saltillo, Mexico. There is also a plant in Windsor, OT that builds Ram Trucks for Canada.
While it would be nice to think that we as Americans hadn't given away the store, I am of the belief that we have, and it's not coming back.
America needs to wake up and realize that the education problem one is a cultural one, and it's about the decisions PARENTS make with regards to how they raise their children.
I can't agree that it's a cultural issue; rather, in my opinion, it's an SES issue. Poor families are poor, no matter their race or culture. While there are outliers in any distribution, there is a strong correlation between SES and a child's educational success. I'm not going to try to speculate on reasons for this in this short comment, but you can Google "SES and Education" and find quite a lot of data regarding this subject. Ancedotally, I have witnessed this very phenomenon in my 30 years involved in educational settings.
This correlation is really no news to anyone involved in education (including school boards and elected politicians). It's always been a curiosity to me why no one wants to really do anything about it; it's almost as if it's in someone's best interest to maintain the status quo...
Because the police state apparatus could not function if these people remembered their humanity.
I have known several police officers in my lifetime - almost to a person, they had the attitude that the world was made up of two kinds of folks - them and the "perps" - and we're all the perps. To paraphrase Bryant in "Blade Runner", "You now the score, pal; if you're not cop, you're 'little people'".
An interesting aside from an ex-LEO in the town I live in; according to him, they figure it's about 7 years from rookie to bad cap. Not sure if that is true all over, but it seems reasonable; they're average HS grad/CJ AAs to start out with, and they see the worst of humanity on daily basis - pretty easy to lump everyone together after a while, I bet.
There's a great MST3K ep riffing an Air force propaganda film called the "The Starfighters" featuring the F104s. Well worth the watch if only for the "refueling" riffs (and the "Tech Support" segments between the film).
Agreed. Dropped TWC almost 4 years ago, only have Internet (which might come with some television channels but never cared to look). Still too damn much money, but no other serious option. Netflix and Amazon with a Roku for films are good options (as long as it's a Roku 3 - Amazon and Roku seem to have broken the delivery on the Roku 1 and 2 but of course, that is just my experience and opinion - Netflix is great with a Chromecast, I sure hope Amazon and Acorn get added to Chromecast so I can toss these Rokus to Goodwill) and I pay $5 a month for Acorn.TV - a good selection of British television shows shown without commercials. I won't give Hulu a dime as they charge a subscription fee then *still* toss in commercials - but I guess a lot of folks will put up with that - Hulu apologists always remind me of the "little bit pregnant" line; in any case, not a lot to see in American television shows in any case, IMO.
Agreed, but I was referring to cab monopolies and making certain that cabs are "safe", and there are "background checks" to keep unqualified drivers off the road. Do you really think it's any different in England? Perhaps you do, but I don't. In my opinion, and what I've seen in my lifetime, money always wins and nothing will change that. I've had some pretty sketchy "black cab" rides in London and had more than a few drivers try to "bugger the Yank". Same thing in NYC. It's the same game all over the world, in my opinion.
As per the surreptitious Puppeteer breeding programs, they'll attack too soon and we will be victorious! Kinda makes you wonder what the Puppeteers have been doing to us, besides breeding for luck...
Do they require background/criminal/driving history checks on their drivers? Do they require require vehicle inspections to determine how safe your car is? There a plethora of other requirements that I can't think of that I know have been address on other threads.
I suspect that you have never gotten a hack license, worked as a cabbie or take cabs very often. I drove a cab for a short time while in college, leaving after one of the drivers I worked with was killed for pocket change. In the world of cab monopolies, money seems to go a long way. But that's how it's done in America. Money always talks and smooths the path; to believe otherwise (or even, in my opinion, believe what the money folks tell you) is a bit naive. But that's just my experience, yours might be different.
Wow, thank you for sharing that conspiracy theory! Nazi Flying Saucers, Stanley Kubrick and citing Richard Hoagland - what a hoot! I thought I had heard all the moon hoax theories, but this one is the best. Never underestimate the gullible that have the price of an eee PC and a cablemodem, I guess.
...and why no one watches the PGA Tour despite it being televised CONSTANTLY on network TV.
I don't generally reply to ACs, but a 7.8 share (about 22 million viewers) for the Master's on Sunday isn't bad at all (even though it was one of the lowest Master's Sundays in recent years) and the lower number this year was probably due to both Woods and Mickelson not being present (casual viewers are drawn to names that they recognize and "last day, back nine dramas").
This kind of proves the first poster's point. YOU cannot play at Augusta National as it is exclusively for the top 1% of the top 1%. Pebble Beach is public though, I believe a round is somewhere in the range of $200+ plus the the $16 toll to drive on the road that leads up to it(seriously. The course is public but the community it is located in is private).
I am not trying to be rude, but what is your point? Augusta is a private club. There are lots of private clubs in this country, not just golf. Lots of places you and I will never see the inside of or even know about. Yes, Pebble is expensive, but there are affordable to play courses near Pebble. There are hundreds of inexpensive to play courses across the country. It's like cars; you drive what you can afford. Like it or not, this a capitalistic country, and money pretty much always wins. I don't get why people are bitching about this kind of thing; in America, it's all about accumulating wealth, and there is (and always has been) a class system in America (we just liked to pretend there wasn't until 2008), and money is one of the big stratifiers (the folks that were living way too large for their incomes, pretending to have more money than they did in 2008 learned that in a very hard way; folks that lived conservatively and invested took a hit, but never got upside down and ended up making out pretty well when the market rebounded). With money, you can afford better food, homes, cars, education, medical care, etc. Social stratification naturally follows (I can't think of a single capitalistic/quasi-capitalistic country that this hasn't happened in, but I am writing this pretty much "off the cuff"). I m not attacking or defending capitalism, I am just acknowledging it's the game we play here in the US, and if you don't know the rules, you can't play the game well. Either acknowledge the rules and learn to use them, fight to change them, or be exploited by them; we're all in this overloaded boat together. Just my opinion.
Unfortunately, it ends this season after only 6 eps. Fortunately, that means I'll be able to see the whole last season on Netflix or Amazon a lot sooner.
1. You have every right to disagree with me. 2. I was addressing the OP statements about people not lacking a "moral compass" and "I agree that the person dug themselves a bigger hole, but when jobs are not available what is a person left with as choices?" 3. IMHO, we citizens have a responsibility to our fellow citizens to be the best humans we can be, to do our best every day to be better people. I am not successful at it every day, but I try. Very few people start out being criminals (sociopaths, perhaps?); it's usually a long line of bad decisions that gets one there. All I'm saying is pretty much everyone has a lot of choices before they end up having to "commit a crime out of desperation". This is just my opinion and personal experience; perhaps yours has been different.
Lets say you unemployed and live in/near Detroit and you have to either pay taxes or go to jail. You can't find a job, so turn to robbery to solve the problem
Please excuse me, but I call bullshit, AC. This certainly is a "Moral Compass" issue. You find out what city you can get day-labor in, and you go there (there are probably even day labor jobs in the city you live in, you just might feel "too good" to work shitty jobs, or not willing to get up at 5:00 AM every day, or stay sober every day, etc.); Greyhound, Megabus, rideshare, hitch, sell your mobile phone, whatever it takes, find a shelter or couch surf, show up every morning at the day labor office at 6:00 am, sober, work the full day no matter how shitty the job is (and I know from personal experience that they can be really shitty at times), be there every fucking morning before they open, and you will become known as someone who wants to work, shows up and does the job, and you will work every day. Eventually, you will make more money, and if you are absolutely reliable, you will get contracted into a full-time position, and if you impress that employer, you will go from contract to regular employee. Then work your way up from there, even if it's just unloading trailers on a warehouse floor, or working as a janitor; you have a job and a place to start from. It's worked for a lot of people that wanted out of a bad situation. Just my own opinion/experience.
I no longer expect outrage, as that seems to be beyond our capacity anymore, but it feels like we treat this kind of news as if it's just trivial bullshit. Has it come to that? Doesn't anyone call their representatives, no matter how deaf they might be? Anyone write letters to their local newspaper about this kind of erosion of personal liberties? Anyone trying to get someone to listen and pay attention, or are we all just willing to head blindly to the kill-floor, tweeting and texting the latest lolcat?
It seems to me that we are giving our lives away for nothing.
In my opinion, you are not being harsh, you are being realistic. I was raised in that environment and I got out. People bitch about the "1%" and yet they choose to wallow in ignorance rather than do what is necessary to compete. The AC thinks we live in one society; nice illusion, but that has not been my experience. The reality is, ignorant people are easier to control, and they like their shiny things (smart phones, big televisions, etc.) and they have to rely on smart folks to provide their shinies. Basically, they enslave themselves by choosing ignorance over education and feel quite self-righteous about it. It's their choice; I chose differently.
You don't understand how tax rates work. Everyone (until AMT kicks in) pays 10% on their first hunk of income (for convenience, let's use the married filing jointly numbers)...
Thank you; you saved me a lot of typing and hopefully, educated some folks and maybe even encouraged some to do a little research. In my opinion, if more people understood how wealth was generated and taxed in this country, we would have a much higher standard of living all around. Compound interest is a pretty amazing thing and so is the market; as little as $25 a week into investments to start out with when beginning a career can get you on the path to retirement in your 40's if that is what you want - even for the "common man", and even if your employer doesn't contribute. Again, just my opinion and personal observation. Sadly, most folks get it figured out too late (like 5 years before they want to retire, then realize it's not gonna happen).
I'm much more concerned that almost every site that I visit lately sends traffic to Facebook and lets them track information about me, even though I have never and will never use facebook.
Try Ghostery. I think you will be amazed at how many trackers it blocks (I've found as many as 34 on a single page). Of course, they aggregate the total trackers blocked daily and sell that info, but it's not your data for targeted adverts.
In my opinion, it's tough to win in the privacy battle, but you can minimize your exposure.
Actually, no. Please do not attribute those words to me, as I never said anything like that. I suspect you are projecting your own feelings/beliefs onto me. I agree that all living things have a right to continue living without someone else stopping that life unless they have violated the laws that the majority of the beings they live with feel are worthy of life termination.
The word "scared" implies a belief in something magical and/or supernatural. I am not superstitious nor do I believe in magic; I believe that we are organic creatures that have certain obligations to all other living creatures, but there is nothing mystical or magical about any form of life, just things we don't fully understand yet. Just because I don't understand something fully does not mean I have to ascribe a supernatural attribute to it; I am comfortable saying that I do not fully understand it yet and let it go at that. Just my opinion.
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I'm guessing you have never sat waiting in a surgeon's examination room. My last visit I had to wait almost 90 minutes with only my thoughts. Mainly, when the hell was he going to come in the door?
And yet my Dodge Ram is US body, US engine, US transmission, US tires and made within the last three years.
I feel your comment is somewhat misleading; I am certainly willing to be wrong, it would seem (based on some research and about a half-hour of reading) that the Ram Truck 1500 series (Ram Truck being owned by Fiat, BTW) is assembled in the US, at the Warren Truck Assembly plant, from parts manufactured at the Saltillo Stamping Plant in Mexico and the Warren Stamping plant in the US (I didn't bother trying to find out the percentages). The only Ram truck assembled at the US plant is the 1500 series. Some of the 1500 series and all the other Ram trucks sold in the US (2500, 3500, 4500, 5500) are manufactured and built in Saltillo, Mexico. There is also a plant in Windsor, OT that builds Ram Trucks for Canada.
While it would be nice to think that we as Americans hadn't given away the store, I am of the belief that we have, and it's not coming back.
America needs to wake up and realize that the education problem one is a cultural one, and it's about the decisions PARENTS make with regards to how they raise their children.
I can't agree that it's a cultural issue; rather, in my opinion, it's an SES issue. Poor families are poor, no matter their race or culture. While there are outliers in any distribution, there is a strong correlation between SES and a child's educational success. I'm not going to try to speculate on reasons for this in this short comment, but you can Google "SES and Education" and find quite a lot of data regarding this subject. Ancedotally, I have witnessed this very phenomenon in my 30 years involved in educational settings.
This correlation is really no news to anyone involved in education (including school boards and elected politicians). It's always been a curiosity to me why no one wants to really do anything about it; it's almost as if it's in someone's best interest to maintain the status quo...
Because the police state apparatus could not function if these people remembered their humanity.
I have known several police officers in my lifetime - almost to a person, they had the attitude that the world was made up of two kinds of folks - them and the "perps" - and we're all the perps. To paraphrase Bryant in "Blade Runner", "You now the score, pal; if you're not cop, you're 'little people'".
An interesting aside from an ex-LEO in the town I live in; according to him, they figure it's about 7 years from rookie to bad cap. Not sure if that is true all over, but it seems reasonable; they're average HS grad/CJ AAs to start out with, and they see the worst of humanity on daily basis - pretty easy to lump everyone together after a while, I bet.
There's a great MST3K ep riffing an Air force propaganda film called the "The Starfighters" featuring the F104s. Well worth the watch if only for the "refueling" riffs (and the "Tech Support" segments between the film).
Agreed. Dropped TWC almost 4 years ago, only have Internet (which might come with some television channels but never cared to look). Still too damn much money, but no other serious option. Netflix and Amazon with a Roku for films are good options (as long as it's a Roku 3 - Amazon and Roku seem to have broken the delivery on the Roku 1 and 2 but of course, that is just my experience and opinion - Netflix is great with a Chromecast, I sure hope Amazon and Acorn get added to Chromecast so I can toss these Rokus to Goodwill) and I pay $5 a month for Acorn.TV - a good selection of British television shows shown without commercials. I won't give Hulu a dime as they charge a subscription fee then *still* toss in commercials - but I guess a lot of folks will put up with that - Hulu apologists always remind me of the "little bit pregnant" line; in any case, not a lot to see in American television shows in any case, IMO.
Agreed, but I was referring to cab monopolies and making certain that cabs are "safe", and there are "background checks" to keep unqualified drivers off the road. Do you really think it's any different in England? Perhaps you do, but I don't. In my opinion, and what I've seen in my lifetime, money always wins and nothing will change that. I've had some pretty sketchy "black cab" rides in London and had more than a few drivers try to "bugger the Yank". Same thing in NYC. It's the same game all over the world, in my opinion.
If the aliens trurn out to be like Kzinti?
As per the surreptitious Puppeteer breeding programs, they'll attack too soon and we will be victorious! Kinda makes you wonder what the Puppeteers have been doing to us, besides breeding for luck...
Do they require background/criminal/driving history checks on their drivers? Do they require require vehicle inspections to determine how safe your car is? There a plethora of other requirements that I can't think of that I know have been address on other threads.
I suspect that you have never gotten a hack license, worked as a cabbie or take cabs very often. I drove a cab for a short time while in college, leaving after one of the drivers I worked with was killed for pocket change. In the world of cab monopolies, money seems to go a long way. But that's how it's done in America. Money always talks and smooths the path; to believe otherwise (or even, in my opinion, believe what the money folks tell you) is a bit naive. But that's just my experience, yours might be different.
Wow, thank you for sharing that conspiracy theory! Nazi Flying Saucers, Stanley Kubrick and citing Richard Hoagland - what a hoot! I thought I had heard all the moon hoax theories, but this one is the best. Never underestimate the gullible that have the price of an eee PC and a cablemodem, I guess.
He had an orbital habitat called Freehold (according to R A Heinlein)
Or "Wheelchair", if being disparaging. Great read - "Waldo & Magic, Inc." has been a constant re-read of mine every 3-4 years since I was a kid.
Why not just watch the trailer?
Handicap.
Well said!
...and why no one watches the PGA Tour despite it being televised CONSTANTLY on network TV.
I don't generally reply to ACs, but a 7.8 share (about 22 million viewers) for the Master's on Sunday isn't bad at all (even though it was one of the lowest Master's Sundays in recent years) and the lower number this year was probably due to both Woods and Mickelson not being present (casual viewers are drawn to names that they recognize and "last day, back nine dramas").
This kind of proves the first poster's point. YOU cannot play at Augusta National as it is exclusively for the top 1% of the top 1%. Pebble Beach is public though, I believe a round is somewhere in the range of $200+ plus the the $16 toll to drive on the road that leads up to it(seriously. The course is public but the community it is located in is private).
I am not trying to be rude, but what is your point? Augusta is a private club. There are lots of private clubs in this country, not just golf. Lots of places you and I will never see the inside of or even know about. Yes, Pebble is expensive, but there are affordable to play courses near Pebble. There are hundreds of inexpensive to play courses across the country. It's like cars; you drive what you can afford. Like it or not, this a capitalistic country, and money pretty much always wins. I don't get why people are bitching about this kind of thing; in America, it's all about accumulating wealth, and there is (and always has been) a class system in America (we just liked to pretend there wasn't until 2008), and money is one of the big stratifiers (the folks that were living way too large for their incomes, pretending to have more money than they did in 2008 learned that in a very hard way; folks that lived conservatively and invested took a hit, but never got upside down and ended up making out pretty well when the market rebounded). With money, you can afford better food, homes, cars, education, medical care, etc. Social stratification naturally follows (I can't think of a single capitalistic/quasi-capitalistic country that this hasn't happened in, but I am writing this pretty much "off the cuff"). I m not attacking or defending capitalism, I am just acknowledging it's the game we play here in the US, and if you don't know the rules, you can't play the game well. Either acknowledge the rules and learn to use them, fight to change them, or be exploited by them; we're all in this overloaded boat together. Just my opinion.
...Warehouse 13 come to mind....
Unfortunately, it ends this season after only 6 eps. Fortunately, that means I'll be able to see the whole last season on Netflix or Amazon a lot sooner.
1. You have every right to disagree with me.
2. I was addressing the OP statements about people not lacking a "moral compass" and "I agree that the person dug themselves a bigger hole, but when jobs are not available what is a person left with as choices?"
3. IMHO, we citizens have a responsibility to our fellow citizens to be the best humans we can be, to do our best every day to be better people. I am not successful at it every day, but I try. Very few people start out being criminals (sociopaths, perhaps?); it's usually a long line of bad decisions that gets one there. All I'm saying is pretty much everyone has a lot of choices before they end up having to "commit a crime out of desperation". This is just my opinion and personal experience; perhaps yours has been different.
Lets say you unemployed and live in/near Detroit and you have to either pay taxes or go to jail. You can't find a job, so turn to robbery to solve the problem
Please excuse me, but I call bullshit, AC. This certainly is a "Moral Compass" issue. You find out what city you can get day-labor in, and you go there (there are probably even day labor jobs in the city you live in, you just might feel "too good" to work shitty jobs, or not willing to get up at 5:00 AM every day, or stay sober every day, etc.); Greyhound, Megabus, rideshare, hitch, sell your mobile phone, whatever it takes, find a shelter or couch surf, show up every morning at the day labor office at 6:00 am, sober, work the full day no matter how shitty the job is (and I know from personal experience that they can be really shitty at times), be there every fucking morning before they open, and you will become known as someone who wants to work, shows up and does the job, and you will work every day. Eventually, you will make more money, and if you are absolutely reliable, you will get contracted into a full-time position, and if you impress that employer, you will go from contract to regular employee. Then work your way up from there, even if it's just unloading trailers on a warehouse floor, or working as a janitor; you have a job and a place to start from. It's worked for a lot of people that wanted out of a bad situation. Just my own opinion/experience.
I no longer expect outrage, as that seems to be beyond our capacity anymore, but it feels like we treat this kind of news as if it's just trivial bullshit. Has it come to that? Doesn't anyone call their representatives, no matter how deaf they might be? Anyone write letters to their local newspaper about this kind of erosion of personal liberties? Anyone trying to get someone to listen and pay attention, or are we all just willing to head blindly to the kill-floor, tweeting and texting the latest lolcat?
It seems to me that we are giving our lives away for nothing.
In my opinion, you are not being harsh, you are being realistic. I was raised in that environment and I got out. People bitch about the "1%" and yet they choose to wallow in ignorance rather than do what is necessary to compete. The AC thinks we live in one society; nice illusion, but that has not been my experience. The reality is, ignorant people are easier to control, and they like their shiny things (smart phones, big televisions, etc.) and they have to rely on smart folks to provide their shinies. Basically, they enslave themselves by choosing ignorance over education and feel quite self-righteous about it. It's their choice; I chose differently.
You don't understand how tax rates work. Everyone (until AMT kicks in) pays 10% on their first hunk of income (for convenience, let's use the married filing jointly numbers)...
Thank you; you saved me a lot of typing and hopefully, educated some folks and maybe even encouraged some to do a little research. In my opinion, if more people understood how wealth was generated and taxed in this country, we would have a much higher standard of living all around. Compound interest is a pretty amazing thing and so is the market; as little as $25 a week into investments to start out with when beginning a career can get you on the path to retirement in your 40's if that is what you want - even for the "common man", and even if your employer doesn't contribute. Again, just my opinion and personal observation. Sadly, most folks get it figured out too late (like 5 years before they want to retire, then realize it's not gonna happen).
Anyway, end of that rant.
Safety deposit boxes were designed with amnesia in mind? I learn something new every day.
Nah, you knew it, you just didn't remember it.
I'm much more concerned that almost every site that I visit lately sends traffic to Facebook and lets them track information about me, even though I have never and will never use facebook.
Try Ghostery. I think you will be amazed at how many trackers it blocks (I've found as many as 34 on a single page). Of course, they aggregate the total trackers blocked daily and sell that info, but it's not your data for targeted adverts.
In my opinion, it's tough to win in the privacy battle, but you can minimize your exposure.
But all life is sacred, right ???
Actually, no. Please do not attribute those words to me, as I never said anything like that. I suspect you are projecting your own feelings/beliefs onto me. I agree that all living things have a right to continue living without someone else stopping that life unless they have violated the laws that the majority of the beings they live with feel are worthy of life termination.
The word "scared" implies a belief in something magical and/or supernatural. I am not superstitious nor do I believe in magic; I believe that we are organic creatures that have certain obligations to all other living creatures, but there is nothing mystical or magical about any form of life, just things we don't fully understand yet. Just because I don't understand something fully does not mean I have to ascribe a supernatural attribute to it; I am comfortable saying that I do not fully understand it yet and let it go at that. Just my opinion.
...such as being able to forcibly disembark a passenger immediately upon violating a voice-call prohibition.
Preferably while in mid-air.