(The deal with the native Americans is just a big old mess)
That's a funny way to put committing genocide, engaging in forced relocations, and stealing their land.
It was more or less we kicked Spain out then helped them to develop, and with the expectation of some violence in the Philippines it mostly turned out rather well for the countries in question
The Phillippines were brutally occupied for decades and their people hated us for it for half a century. We only redeemed ourselves by liberating them from the Japanese and making them an independent country.
After WWII Russia clearly was expansionist - Stalin used the oppportunity to seize lots of countries.
Before, during, and after. Before, Stalin took Finland and the Baltic states. During, Stalin took half of Poland. After, Stalin took all of Poland, half of Germany, and almost every other eastern European country.
USA has never really been expanisionist in the same sense
Other than seizing 37 out of 50 states in westward expansion, you're totally correct.
So is everything else you do to keep your dog from dying. Sometimes it's worthwhile to delay the inevitable if it buys you time for somebody to go to your house or something.
If Hong Kong is socialist, the entire world is socialist. Hong Kong is famous for its market freedoms, and has almost none of the regulations that the entire world has on trade and commerce.
I'm sure no one here would endorse a government full of lawyers.
Yeah, nobody wants that! Wait...shit.
Seriously though, a government's business is law, and if your business is law, it makes sense for lawyers to help do your business. The problem is, our lawyers usually start off as paid shills for some client or political movement, which is wonderful experience for elected office, yet shouldn't be.
People have biases based on occupation become different occupations require different skills, and few of these skills relate to effective governance. It sounds nice to elect managers to government, because part of governance is management. It sounds nice to elect military officers to government, because part of governance is giving and taking orders and defending the country. It sounds nice to elect lawyers to government because part of governance is law. Acting is (correctly) perceived as having little to do with these things, and as we all know, once you start a career the world assumes that's the only thing you're capable of unless you work damn hard to prove otherwise.
Since the Department of the Interior is in charge of repressing the Indians, Custer would be a great choice. And we should have more comedians as diplomats, although we do have to deal with too many countries without a sense of humor. (Cue the John Cleese bit from "The Funniest Joke In The World": "ZAT'S NOT FUNNY!"...(starts laughing)..."Der Flipperwald gersput!"...(collapses and dies laughing)).
People's money gets more valuable if they hold onto it, so nobody spends any more money than they can avoid. Nothing gets sold, so nothing gets produced. Also, debt becomes very expensive. That might be great for the individual person, but cheap credit is good for business because it lets them expand faster, and (for instance) lets businesses and companies build things like bridges and stadiums and data networks that won't pay off until AFTER they're built. Also, people like me can go to college despite having absolutely no money. There are problems with inflation too, which is why the ideal situation, according to some, is monetarism (you try to have 0 inflation), but in practice, low inflation is better to target because inflation is that much better than deflation.
Oh, and commodity-based standards become really fucking stupid if you end up having a bunch of bonus commodity. If there's a gold rush (there was!), your gold standard has become hyperinflation. If there's a silver rush that devalues silver all to hell (there was!), your silver standard becomes hyperinflation. And, unlike fiat currency, there's no means of preventing this. At least with paper money, you can stop printing money (or even start burning money) or print less, or print more, depending on economic growth.
Oh yeah, one other thing. A gold standard is just as fiat as fiat currency. After all, if you mandate that everyone uses gold as currency, there's more demand for gold, pushing the price of gold up. And this gets even worse with a fixed pile of gold and an ever-increasing economy. If you're going to, by fiat, increase the value of a certain commodity, the commodity just as well can be little pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents and strict laws against counterfeiting. You can control that better than you can control gold.
I think the Shi'ite Persians in Iran care a lot about what we're doing to another Shi'ite, Persian country. And Sunni Arabs care that we deposed a Sunni Arab dictator! Clearly, invading Iraq was the best thing we could do to become popular with these folks.
Nevermind the fact that Thompson has spent more time in elected office than Clinton or Obama... You pick on the fact that he's been an actor.
Being a professional political candidate (which is all elected officials are these days) is not unlike being an actor. It's even more superficial and flashy than acting, except you never admit it's fake. Come to think of it, no wonder Jesse Ventura was so qualified.
How exactly is it faster? You have to drop your pants (and, if applicable, underwear) either way, but when you walk into the bathroom it's usually quicker to remain on your feet than sit down, right? Of course, another advantage to sitting is that there's less chance of getting the last couple drops stuck somewhere in the urethra so that they drip out into your pants after you finish. (That's a problem for a lot of guys.)
Preventing the dog from drinking out of the toilet sounds good, but if you think about it, it's a bit dubious. What if you get hit by a truck while you're out? Does the dog have any other way to not die of dehydration?
That doesn't mean you should use lowercase rho for density (looks like p) or lowercase omega for angular velocity (looks like w) when something completely unambiguous like a little pictogram kittycat would work just as well.
I always wondered why scientists and mathematicians used the error-prone and easy-to-confuse-with-the-Latin-alphabet Greek alphabet, while less ambiguous (and perhaps easier) alternatives, such as the Cyrillic or Egyptian alphabets, remain unused. Also, I think "cat" and "roach" would be awesome variables.
Actually, most people in industrialized countries have been doing just that for decades. But politicians are old and they grew up during the baby boom, when we were flooded with children and the older generations were conveniently thinned by warfare and infectious disease. Now that we've cured infectious diseases and stopped having kids, we have lots of old people and a fair amount of adults but not many children.
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I'm sure all of you would have been perfectly content to rebuild your continent without American aid too, eh?
That's a funny way to put committing genocide, engaging in forced relocations, and stealing their land.
The Phillippines were brutally occupied for decades and their people hated us for it for half a century. We only redeemed ourselves by liberating them from the Japanese and making them an independent country.
Because the United States doesn't have many 3G networks yet, and they wanted to sell to a broader market. A 3G iPhone is in the works, however.
Before, during, and after. Before, Stalin took Finland and the Baltic states. During, Stalin took half of Poland. After, Stalin took all of Poland, half of Germany, and almost every other eastern European country.
Other than seizing 37 out of 50 states in westward expansion, you're totally correct.
So is everything else you do to keep your dog from dying. Sometimes it's worthwhile to delay the inevitable if it buys you time for somebody to go to your house or something.
If Hong Kong is socialist, the entire world is socialist. Hong Kong is famous for its market freedoms, and has almost none of the regulations that the entire world has on trade and commerce.
Are you a professional or just really good at spinning things?
Yeah, nobody wants that! Wait...shit.
Seriously though, a government's business is law, and if your business is law, it makes sense for lawyers to help do your business. The problem is, our lawyers usually start off as paid shills for some client or political movement, which is wonderful experience for elected office, yet shouldn't be.
People have biases based on occupation become different occupations require different skills, and few of these skills relate to effective governance. It sounds nice to elect managers to government, because part of governance is management. It sounds nice to elect military officers to government, because part of governance is giving and taking orders and defending the country. It sounds nice to elect lawyers to government because part of governance is law. Acting is (correctly) perceived as having little to do with these things, and as we all know, once you start a career the world assumes that's the only thing you're capable of unless you work damn hard to prove otherwise.
As with real reputation, there should be a way for a bad person to be good (even excellent) and rebuild lost reputation.
Since the Department of the Interior is in charge of repressing the Indians, Custer would be a great choice. And we should have more comedians as diplomats, although we do have to deal with too many countries without a sense of humor. (Cue the John Cleese bit from "The Funniest Joke In The World": "ZAT'S NOT FUNNY!"...(starts laughing)..."Der Flipperwald gersput!"...(collapses and dies laughing)).
That's the worst idea I've heard since I've been elected to office.
People's money gets more valuable if they hold onto it, so nobody spends any more money than they can avoid. Nothing gets sold, so nothing gets produced. Also, debt becomes very expensive. That might be great for the individual person, but cheap credit is good for business because it lets them expand faster, and (for instance) lets businesses and companies build things like bridges and stadiums and data networks that won't pay off until AFTER they're built. Also, people like me can go to college despite having absolutely no money. There are problems with inflation too, which is why the ideal situation, according to some, is monetarism (you try to have 0 inflation), but in practice, low inflation is better to target because inflation is that much better than deflation.
Oh, and commodity-based standards become really fucking stupid if you end up having a bunch of bonus commodity. If there's a gold rush (there was!), your gold standard has become hyperinflation. If there's a silver rush that devalues silver all to hell (there was!), your silver standard becomes hyperinflation. And, unlike fiat currency, there's no means of preventing this. At least with paper money, you can stop printing money (or even start burning money) or print less, or print more, depending on economic growth.
Oh yeah, one other thing. A gold standard is just as fiat as fiat currency. After all, if you mandate that everyone uses gold as currency, there's more demand for gold, pushing the price of gold up. And this gets even worse with a fixed pile of gold and an ever-increasing economy. If you're going to, by fiat, increase the value of a certain commodity, the commodity just as well can be little pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents and strict laws against counterfeiting. You can control that better than you can control gold.
I think the Shi'ite Persians in Iran care a lot about what we're doing to another Shi'ite, Persian country. And Sunni Arabs care that we deposed a Sunni Arab dictator! Clearly, invading Iraq was the best thing we could do to become popular with these folks.
Hong Kong. South Africa. Philippines. Canada, technically.
I thought Taiwan was a full-blown prosperous democracy.
Being a professional political candidate (which is all elected officials are these days) is not unlike being an actor. It's even more superficial and flashy than acting, except you never admit it's fake. Come to think of it, no wonder Jesse Ventura was so qualified.
How exactly is it faster? You have to drop your pants (and, if applicable, underwear) either way, but when you walk into the bathroom it's usually quicker to remain on your feet than sit down, right? Of course, another advantage to sitting is that there's less chance of getting the last couple drops stuck somewhere in the urethra so that they drip out into your pants after you finish. (That's a problem for a lot of guys.)
Preventing the dog from drinking out of the toilet sounds good, but if you think about it, it's a bit dubious. What if you get hit by a truck while you're out? Does the dog have any other way to not die of dehydration?
I've never understood the purpose of underwear.
It's just a pity that we moved all the troops into Iraq in the process, making a few more terrorists angry at us all over again.
I'm just saying we steal some of their symbols, like the backwards R and stuff, along with stealing from other alphabets.
That doesn't mean you should use lowercase rho for density (looks like p) or lowercase omega for angular velocity (looks like w) when something completely unambiguous like a little pictogram kittycat would work just as well.
I always wondered why scientists and mathematicians used the error-prone and easy-to-confuse-with-the-Latin-alphabet Greek alphabet, while less ambiguous (and perhaps easier) alternatives, such as the Cyrillic or Egyptian alphabets, remain unused. Also, I think "cat" and "roach" would be awesome variables.
Wall outlets are nice, but require that seating is next to a wall. Floor outlets would work better for an open floor plan.
Actually, most people in industrialized countries have been doing just that for decades. But politicians are old and they grew up during the baby boom, when we were flooded with children and the older generations were conveniently thinned by warfare and infectious disease. Now that we've cured infectious diseases and stopped having kids, we have lots of old people and a fair amount of adults but not many children.