Most of the Faded Glory stuff you get at Walmart is pure shit that won't last 6 months but their jeans are good. I have several pairs of FG jeans which cost me $8-10 that are still wearable (though a bit faded) 3-4 years after I bought them even after being washed several times a week during the winter months. More expensive jeans had holes in them after a year or less. My $20 Walmart shoes have lasted 7 months, about as long as shoes that cost >= $60.
I guess I like SGU because it was different than SG1 and ATL. True, they did the whole "cut off from home" trope before in Atlantis S1. After they found a ZPM they could just dial home whenever they wanted so the show didn't have the same feel after that. I just wish they had explored the Destiny some more instead of mostly reusing the same areas for each episode. The ship itself (with all its various quirks and the personality it seemed to have) was my favorite "character".
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean they had to cancel Stargate Universe right when it was starting to show some real promise (SG Atlantis could also have lasted for a few more seasons) and run more WWE/ghost hunting shit instead. Ending SGU was bad enough, but they had to do it on a goddamn cliffhanger so I will never know if the people managed to get home or not. (Yeah, I'm still pissed) When they got rid of SGU, I had no other reason to watch their network anymore.
Please. The election was close - very close. Part of the reason for the loss was the meltdown of Orca, which was covered on Slashdot. Part of the reason was simply that, yes, people didn't like what Romney was selling: responsibility. Obama offered people "free" things taken "from the rich," Romney offered them the responsibility to care for themselves and the opportunity to get ahead in life. 49% went for opportunity, but unfortunately for them and America, 47+4% went for free things.
Obama won the popular vote by a significant margin ( 3,476,775 votes) and the electoral vote was a total blowout. (332:206) Romney barely broke the 200s and >270 was needed to win so Romney never even had a chance. (he didn't even get his home state) That happened even with all the last-minute voter disenfranchisement tactics guys like Rick Scott and John Husted were pulling in swing states like Florida and Ohio. The GOP tried to steal the election and they still lost badly. We would have had a Dem-controlled house as well if not for the gerrymandering from 2010 favoring the GOP.
I take it you are against social programs? It's amazing how many libertarians tend to go socialist at the drop of a hat when times get tough. The rich should pay more because they can afford it and they owe the society which allowed them to be successful.
For the chance to get ahead in life. For the opportunity to live the American dream. For getting government out of your lives. There are plenty of things the Republican party offers everyone.
Ah yes, the American dream. Just what is that? You talk about "opportunity" but I sure don't see much of that these days because the GOP went out of their way to block anything that might have helped the country these past 4 years. You really think that people who voted for Obama aren't responsible for their own lives? It takes a lot of responsibility to make it in today's world where it seems to get harder and harder to make it every single year. Also, how in the hell are people supposed to get ahead in life when people like Romney were busy gutting companies and outsourcing jobs for their own profit?
Bullshit. The economy WAS the most important focus this last election. At least it was what everyone who wasn't the media was focused on. Yes, you're right, Republicans want people to take responsibility for their own lives. They don't feel the need to give people "free" birth control (stolen from "the rich"). They believe that everyone should be given an opportunity in life, including the unborn. They believe that the government should not be allowed to redefine a religious concept like marriage. The "legitimate rape" comment was ONE PERSON. It wasn't the entire party.
Ok, what were the GOP's plans for the economy? What little I managed to glean from Romney during the debates sounded a lot like what Bush did a few years ago and we all know how that went. The GOP is against abortion but at the same time they are also against contraception...which prevents abortion. Maybe they're just doing it out of spite, I can't be sure. You say the GOP wants to get the government out of your life... except it doesn't. It wants to use the full power of government to force its particular brand of fundamentalist morality on everyone in direct violation of the first amendment. Are you saying we should let a bunch of religious bigots define what marriage is? No thanks. Also, there were lots of guys who made embarrassing sound bytes this past cycle... Murdock and Akin are simply the most recent.
After weighing the issues this past election, I voted based on the stance that while the guys we have now aren't perfect, they were still better than the alternative. Everyone else I've talked to about it since then reached a similar conclusion.
The real telling fact is that more than 2 weeks after the election the GOP apparently still doesn't know why it lost. The reason is the American people weren't interested in buying what the GOP was selling. We still don't know the details of what Romney's tax plan would have been... the whole "vote for me and I'll tell you after the election" stance just didn't fly. Why should it? The GOP seems to be at war with itself. As parent said, you have the more traditional "yay for the rich" power base competing with the insane religious right mentality. There's also the built-in racism of how poor people (ESPECIALLY minorities) "want free stuff" even though our tax money paid for it yet for some reason it's ok when the rich get welfare in the form of subsidies and tax breaks because they're the "job creators". It's like a broken record with these guys.
They have yet to offer one compelling reason why anyone (who isn't an old rich white man) should side with them. For their sakes they should hope that sort of thing will die out with the current generation. The GOP has always used bigotry and religion to get regular people to vote against their own best interests, but this year they went too far with it and people began to see it for what it was. Forget the economy, the worst income inequality in nearly a century, and crushing deficit... the real important issues to the GOP are contraception, abortion, keeping gay people from marrying, and the definition of legitimate rape. I kid you not.
You're assuming quite a bit. What if the parts of your brain that process visual/audio data are damaged and don't work anymore? Just how useful would TV be in that situation? Think about it... you would be trapped in a dark abyss entirely inside your head, unable to see or hear any stimulus. Even if people come to visit you, you would never know because you couldn't see or hear them. Yes, death would be preferable.
Being kept alive in that condition (where you are conscious but are essentially trapped in your own body) is unimaginably cruel. I for one would rather die.
If there had been no Christianity, there would have been no dark age. People thought the world was going to end real soon now, so what was the point in doing anything or maintaining vital infrastructure? Plus they had the gangster church keeping everyone down. Public health was ruined. The disdain of learning got to the point where most of the clergy couldn't even read their own books. Think of where we would be today if a whole millennium of progress hadn't been wasted on abject ignorance and superstition.
The Romans were actually very advanced. They had flush toilets (of a sort), advanced medical knowledge relative to the time (they could remove cataracts and surgical tools from the 2nd century CE are remarkably similar to what we have today), and they could build damn near anything and have it still be around ~2000 years later. They even had something like a primitive steam engine.... it is possible that if the empire had lasted a bit longer (things REALLY started going downhill post-Constantine... read Gibbon for details) we could have had the industrial revolution in the 5th or 6th century CE instead of the 18-19th.
I just wish we could go metric, like the rest of the fucking world. But no, the USA just has to be different with an antiquated system of measurement that no one else uses.
If they actually do all that, then the people running the place need to go to jail. Running a sweatshop-style operation may fly in China where officials may be easily bribed/never gave a shit in the first place. Here in the USA this type of thing would be absolutely forbidden if only the politicians weren't on the take from corporate interests and actually did their fucking jobs in regulating these bastards. Globalization is going to be the death of this country and our way of life. Sure, free trade allows you to buy a shitty TV for less than $200 now, but how are you going to pay for that when your job barely pays enough to keep you off the street? FSM help you if you need medical care in that situation. Americans were sold on globalism by being tolkd that our money would go further but it turns out the only real winners are the rich assholes who made it all happen at our expense. I'm seeing more and more of this type of shit... for example, rather than pay a wage people can survive on Walmart actually coaches their workers on how to apply for food stamps and welfare. Seriously. The government (i.e. the taxpayer) is subsidizing Walmart's unwillingness to pay a living wage while the people on top (Walton's heirs... who did NOT build that, by the way) make out like bandits. Even when the poorly-engineered shit is made in China people still have to pay first-world prices while living on third-world wages.
if Foxconn is willing to pay the average manufacturing wage D.O.E. (and would not go out of their way to crush unionization efforts if it came to that) then it would be a whole different story.
But he's fucking BLACK! Why would you want a BLACK muslim president???
Unfortunately, that's still the predominant teabagger mentality. They simply can't see past their own prejudice well enough to realize that we are better off than 4 years ago, and no one (least of all McCain) could have fixed things in one term even if the republicans weren't constantly obstructing everything just to ensure the president's failure out of pure spite. If your post was meant as satire, then well done.
He should be relatively easy to throw out of office.
Except the other guy is going to be much worse if he gets in. (think "third term of Bush") The fact that Obama isn't the ideal candidate isn't going to stop me from voting straight blue tomorrow.
Statue of limitations apply to laws broken. Not private contracts such as debt. This is a civil issue.
Not true. A statute of limitations definitely applies to debt and civil matters. It varies by state/issue but for debt it is 3-5 years most of the time. If the time since the debt went bad > the time allowed under statute, then they can't touch it ever again. Period. They can try but you can smack them down HARD in court. If they put old debt on your credit report, you can sue them for libel and get 3X damages. There's lot of ways to fight if you know your rights. Unsecured debt collectors act like assholes and try to intimidate people because that's all they can do for the most part... if you're a debtor the law is on your side and collectors don't want you to know that. They're counting on people to act like ignorant marks who just grab their ankles and take it.
With secured debt (car loan, mortgage, etc.) they can repo your stuff unless you initiate bankruptcy, which just buys you time to work it out. In the case of unsecured credit card debt, there's not much they can do if the debt is old enough and you know your rights + choose to fight.
Yes the collection agency does have the original copy.
...Says you. I've fallen on hard times and had debt problems in the past. During discovery all they sent me were receipts/statements going back 2 years on a credit card account 10 years old. No contract. Bills and statements don't mean shit because it doesn't prove that I ever opened the account and am therefore responsible for it. You better believe they would have had sent a copy of the contract (they save the original for court) if they had it. I beat that case. The original creditor is never the one who sues... it's always one of those slimy collection attorney groups. Even if the contract for an old account still exists, they still have to find it in order to claim it. If they don't have it at the hearing, it doesn't matter if it exists or not...they still lose.
Grandfathered or not, it's still past the statute of limitations so legally they can't do shit to collect it.
As far as paying back debt goes, people may start with the best of intentions but life doesn't always make it easy. If a debt goes bad, lenders have insurance for that so they get paid either way. Creditors destroy debt contracts every few years...doing that effictively absolves the debt since once the contract is gone there is no longer any way to prove the borrower is responsible. Third party collectors buy these bad debts for pennies on the dollar so they sue... They are lawsuit mills and it's an investment for them. Fuck those guys, the borrower never had any prior dealings with them so there is no obligation AT ALL. If it's an unsecured debt, then tough shit... the burden is on the plaintiff to prove guilt and without a contract there is no real way to do that.
Technically, you can sue them for any violation of the FDCPA. You file suit in your local jurisdiction. When they don't show up for the hearing (they almost never do, especially if the collector is out-of-state) you get a default judgement. Even if the debt is valid, an out of state collector can't do shit to you unless they are actually licensed to do business in your state. (they must display proof of license and license number when asked... if they don't have it they will back off and sell your debt to someone else) If they threaten you just send a C&D that thoroughly denies the debt and tells them that if they ever contact you without displaying proof of license you will report them to your state attorney general's office.
If a debt collector actually sues you for a debt that is not past the statute of limitations, don't sweat it. Just file a sworn denial on account at the jurisdiction that is handling your case. The sworn denial forces the collector to prove a debt is yours... they are counting on people getting scared and doing nothing so they can get an easy default judgement. Fortunately for you, their whole case depends on them having the original signed contract, if they don't have it then they are FUCKED and you can easily win the case by requesting dismissal.
I am so fed up of these calls as well as the collection companies trying to collect on debts from 20 years ago.
If your debt is past the statute of limitations (after 20 years I can guarantee it is) then you can file suit against the collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. (you can get a $1000 judgement per debt for the cost of the filing fee... pretty good ROI)
Debt collectors are pure scum and most of them are borderline criminal organizations. I give them as much respect as I give pedophiles.
Can they do something about the one where some guy calls you, blasts a loud boat horn in your ear, and then tells you that this is your captain and you have won a free cruise or something like that? After getting a few of those I want to make "captain" walk the plank.
Why are you so upset about teachers making 80K (and paying tax on that) while saying nothing about executives and the rich making tens of millions per year while paying little to no tax? It's like complaining about losing a few cents while hundred dollar bills are flying out the window.
I hear what you're saying but the problem is that self improvement isn't always enough. More often than not you need X years work experience with skill Y before employers will take it seriously. Meanwhile, your competition already has the skills/experieence so they beat you out of the job.
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Most of the Faded Glory stuff you get at Walmart is pure shit that won't last 6 months but their jeans are good. I have several pairs of FG jeans which cost me $8-10 that are still wearable (though a bit faded) 3-4 years after I bought them even after being washed several times a week during the winter months. More expensive jeans had holes in them after a year or less. My $20 Walmart shoes have lasted 7 months, about as long as shoes that cost >= $60.
Awesome idea, but whoever owns the MechWarrior franchise these days would probably sue.
I guess I like SGU because it was different than SG1 and ATL. True, they did the whole "cut off from home" trope before in Atlantis S1. After they found a ZPM they could just dial home whenever they wanted so the show didn't have the same feel after that. I just wish they had explored the Destiny some more instead of mostly reusing the same areas for each episode. The ship itself (with all its various quirks and the personality it seemed to have) was my favorite "character".
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean they had to cancel Stargate Universe right when it was starting to show some real promise (SG Atlantis could also have lasted for a few more seasons) and run more WWE/ghost hunting shit instead. Ending SGU was bad enough, but they had to do it on a goddamn cliffhanger so I will never know if the people managed to get home or not. (Yeah, I'm still pissed) When they got rid of SGU, I had no other reason to watch their network anymore.
Obama won the popular vote by a significant margin ( 3,476,775 votes) and the electoral vote was a total blowout. (332:206) Romney barely broke the 200s and >270 was needed to win so Romney never even had a chance. (he didn't even get his home state) That happened even with all the last-minute voter disenfranchisement tactics guys like Rick Scott and John Husted were pulling in swing states like Florida and Ohio. The GOP tried to steal the election and they still lost badly. We would have had a Dem-controlled house as well if not for the gerrymandering from 2010 favoring the GOP.
I take it you are against social programs? It's amazing how many libertarians tend to go socialist at the drop of a hat when times get tough. The rich should pay more because they can afford it and they owe the society which allowed them to be successful.
Ah yes, the American dream. Just what is that? You talk about "opportunity" but I sure don't see much of that these days because the GOP went out of their way to block anything that might have helped the country these past 4 years. You really think that people who voted for Obama aren't responsible for their own lives? It takes a lot of responsibility to make it in today's world where it seems to get harder and harder to make it every single year. Also, how in the hell are people supposed to get ahead in life when people like Romney were busy gutting companies and outsourcing jobs for their own profit?
Ok, what were the GOP's plans for the economy? What little I managed to glean from Romney during the debates sounded a lot like what Bush did a few years ago and we all know how that went. The GOP is against abortion but at the same time they are also against contraception...which prevents abortion. Maybe they're just doing it out of spite, I can't be sure. You say the GOP wants to get the government out of your life... except it doesn't. It wants to use the full power of government to force its particular brand of fundamentalist morality on everyone in direct violation of the first amendment. Are you saying we should let a bunch of religious bigots define what marriage is? No thanks. Also, there were lots of guys who made embarrassing sound bytes this past cycle... Murdock and Akin are simply the most recent.
After weighing the issues this past election, I voted based on the stance that while the guys we have now aren't perfect, they were still better than the alternative. Everyone else I've talked to about it since then reached a similar conclusion.
The real telling fact is that more than 2 weeks after the election the GOP apparently still doesn't know why it lost. The reason is the American people weren't interested in buying what the GOP was selling. We still don't know the details of what Romney's tax plan would have been... the whole "vote for me and I'll tell you after the election" stance just didn't fly. Why should it? The GOP seems to be at war with itself. As parent said, you have the more traditional "yay for the rich" power base competing with the insane religious right mentality. There's also the built-in racism of how poor people (ESPECIALLY minorities) "want free stuff" even though our tax money paid for it yet for some reason it's ok when the rich get welfare in the form of subsidies and tax breaks because they're the "job creators". It's like a broken record with these guys.
They have yet to offer one compelling reason why anyone (who isn't an old rich white man) should side with them. For their sakes they should hope that sort of thing will die out with the current generation. The GOP has always used bigotry and religion to get regular people to vote against their own best interests, but this year they went too far with it and people began to see it for what it was. Forget the economy, the worst income inequality in nearly a century, and crushing deficit... the real important issues to the GOP are contraception, abortion, keeping gay people from marrying, and the definition of legitimate rape. I kid you not.
A lot of the California wines are nothing to laugh at. You can get cheap swill to world-class and everything in-between.
It used to, before the Free the Hops people got involved.
You're assuming quite a bit. What if the parts of your brain that process visual/audio data are damaged and don't work anymore? Just how useful would TV be in that situation? Think about it... you would be trapped in a dark abyss entirely inside your head, unable to see or hear any stimulus. Even if people come to visit you, you would never know because you couldn't see or hear them. Yes, death would be preferable.
Being kept alive in that condition (where you are conscious but are essentially trapped in your own body) is unimaginably cruel. I for one would rather die.
If there had been no Christianity, there would have been no dark age. People thought the world was going to end real soon now, so what was the point in doing anything or maintaining vital infrastructure? Plus they had the gangster church keeping everyone down. Public health was ruined. The disdain of learning got to the point where most of the clergy couldn't even read their own books. Think of where we would be today if a whole millennium of progress hadn't been wasted on abject ignorance and superstition.
The Romans were actually very advanced. They had flush toilets (of a sort), advanced medical knowledge relative to the time (they could remove cataracts and surgical tools from the 2nd century CE are remarkably similar to what we have today), and they could build damn near anything and have it still be around ~2000 years later. They even had something like a primitive steam engine.... it is possible that if the empire had lasted a bit longer (things REALLY started going downhill post-Constantine... read Gibbon for details) we could have had the industrial revolution in the 5th or 6th century CE instead of the 18-19th.
I just wish we could go metric, like the rest of the fucking world. But no, the USA just has to be different with an antiquated system of measurement that no one else uses.
If they actually do all that, then the people running the place need to go to jail. Running a sweatshop-style operation may fly in China where officials may be easily bribed/never gave a shit in the first place. Here in the USA this type of thing would be absolutely forbidden if only the politicians weren't on the take from corporate interests and actually did their fucking jobs in regulating these bastards. Globalization is going to be the death of this country and our way of life. Sure, free trade allows you to buy a shitty TV for less than $200 now, but how are you going to pay for that when your job barely pays enough to keep you off the street? FSM help you if you need medical care in that situation. Americans were sold on globalism by being tolkd that our money would go further but it turns out the only real winners are the rich assholes who made it all happen at our expense. I'm seeing more and more of this type of shit... for example, rather than pay a wage people can survive on Walmart actually coaches their workers on how to apply for food stamps and welfare. Seriously. The government (i.e. the taxpayer) is subsidizing Walmart's unwillingness to pay a living wage while the people on top (Walton's heirs... who did NOT build that, by the way) make out like bandits. Even when the poorly-engineered shit is made in China people still have to pay first-world prices while living on third-world wages.
if Foxconn is willing to pay the average manufacturing wage D.O.E. (and would not go out of their way to crush unionization efforts if it came to that) then it would be a whole different story.
Unfortunately, that's still the predominant teabagger mentality. They simply can't see past their own prejudice well enough to realize that we are better off than 4 years ago, and no one (least of all McCain) could have fixed things in one term even if the republicans weren't constantly obstructing everything just to ensure the president's failure out of pure spite. If your post was meant as satire, then well done.
Except the other guy is going to be much worse if he gets in. (think "third term of Bush") The fact that Obama isn't the ideal candidate isn't going to stop me from voting straight blue tomorrow.
Not true. A statute of limitations definitely applies to debt and civil matters. It varies by state/issue but for debt it is 3-5 years most of the time. If the time since the debt went bad > the time allowed under statute, then they can't touch it ever again. Period. They can try but you can smack them down HARD in court. If they put old debt on your credit report, you can sue them for libel and get 3X damages. There's lot of ways to fight if you know your rights. Unsecured debt collectors act like assholes and try to intimidate people because that's all they can do for the most part... if you're a debtor the law is on your side and collectors don't want you to know that. They're counting on people to act like ignorant marks who just grab their ankles and take it.
With secured debt (car loan, mortgage, etc.) they can repo your stuff unless you initiate bankruptcy, which just buys you time to work it out. In the case of unsecured credit card debt, there's not much they can do if the debt is old enough and you know your rights + choose to fight.
Grandfathered or not, it's still past the statute of limitations so legally they can't do shit to collect it.
.doing that effictively absolves the debt since once the contract is gone there is no longer any way to prove the borrower is responsible. Third party collectors buy these bad debts for pennies on the dollar so they sue... They are lawsuit mills and it's an investment for them. Fuck those guys, the borrower never had any prior dealings with them so there is no obligation AT ALL. If it's an unsecured debt, then tough shit... the burden is on the plaintiff to prove guilt and without a contract there is no real way to do that.
As far as paying back debt goes, people may start with the best of intentions but life doesn't always make it easy. If a debt goes bad, lenders have insurance for that so they get paid either way. Creditors destroy debt contracts every few years..
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre18.shtm
IANAL, but here is what I know:
Technically, you can sue them for any violation of the FDCPA. You file suit in your local jurisdiction. When they don't show up for the hearing (they almost never do, especially if the collector is out-of-state) you get a default judgement. Even if the debt is valid, an out of state collector can't do shit to you unless they are actually licensed to do business in your state. (they must display proof of license and license number when asked... if they don't have it they will back off and sell your debt to someone else) If they threaten you just send a C&D that thoroughly denies the debt and tells them that if they ever contact you without displaying proof of license you will report them to your state attorney general's office.
If a debt collector actually sues you for a debt that is not past the statute of limitations, don't sweat it. Just file a sworn denial on account at the jurisdiction that is handling your case. The sworn denial forces the collector to prove a debt is yours... they are counting on people getting scared and doing nothing so they can get an easy default judgement. Fortunately for you, their whole case depends on them having the original signed contract, if they don't have it then they are FUCKED and you can easily win the case by requesting dismissal.
If your debt is past the statute of limitations (after 20 years I can guarantee it is) then you can file suit against the collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. (you can get a $1000 judgement per debt for the cost of the filing fee... pretty good ROI) Debt collectors are pure scum and most of them are borderline criminal organizations. I give them as much respect as I give pedophiles.
Oh god, I just posted about that one! Use those guys for shark food.
Can they do something about the one where some guy calls you, blasts a loud boat horn in your ear, and then tells you that this is your captain and you have won a free cruise or something like that? After getting a few of those I want to make "captain" walk the plank.
Star Wars VII: We Need More Money
Why are you so upset about teachers making 80K (and paying tax on that) while saying nothing about executives and the rich making tens of millions per year while paying little to no tax? It's like complaining about losing a few cents while hundred dollar bills are flying out the window.
I hear what you're saying but the problem is that self improvement isn't always enough. More often than not you need X years work experience with skill Y before employers will take it seriously. Meanwhile, your competition already has the skills/experieence so they beat you out of the job.