Cheech

wait, it's street legal?? ZOMG IT'S STREET LEGAL!?!?!!!!?!?!?! good luck with the sale. I'm sure it'll find a good home.

Ok Goose, it's time to buzz the Stillman's. For bonus lulz I'd consistently time it when you were having your morning coffee. I would have a fucking BALL in that.

To be fair, have any of you actually tried to get into a club in South Beach? I'd be looking for boosters too.

Liberec.

You really have to step back and ask what change can really be enacted within a system like this? I have to agree with him. The American government is a parody of itself. With the "two"-party system the way it is, and the consistent type of elected officials that we have, I don't see anything but the status quo. Short of armed insurrection, I'm really having a hard time figuring out a way to measurably change it, and even with insurrection I'd be willing to bet you won't be able to come up with a force large enough and willing to go far enough to provoke a diplomatic vs. military response.

lollerskates

did you try to boost it with the special NOS from the blue bottle?

Iraq was a unilateral action. The Brits only got involved because Blair lied to Parliament just as hard as Bush lied to Congress. Where in the Constitution does it say that a President has to stop a military action in 90 days without Congressional approval? I know of the War Powers act, but I'm still looking for it in the constitution. Care to point it out for me?

Calling Obama "the anointed one" weakens both your argument and you as the one argumenting. Bush had congressional approval because HE LIED. To Congress, to the public at large, he told a boldfaced lie. I can list them, if you like: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati. "We believe [saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press." "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." -- CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush. "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." -- President Bush, Oct. 7. "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." -- President Bush, Oct. 7. "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address. "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council. My personal favorite: "We know where [iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press. "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." -- President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003. The actions in Libya are NATO actions of which the US is a part. We're not even doing most of the grunt work over there, it's the British and the French (who were pretty gung-ho from the start). Now that things are entering a stalemate (of sorts), I think you'll start seeing a drawdown of NATO air forces just because no one wants to make this the next Iraq.

I usually watch the Playboy channel about 5-10 minutes at a time.

Yep, let's elect the guy who wants to dumb down all the legislation to less than 3 pages. He's enriched-crazy, he's too pathetic to be weapons-grade. Look for him to punch out around the actual Iowa caucus, SC at the latest.

the MANDATE gets chopped. Calm down there, spicypants.

No idea what the hell they were thinking putting the individual mandate in there. I hope that gets chopped.

getting government funds, no less...

indiscriminate murder is fun! there's totally no difference between a human being and, say, a deer.

Present yourself to me at once for your punishment.

speaking of weapons-grade crazy...

Also, thanks Casper for getting Little Pigs stuck in my head.

Present yourself to me for thrashing at once.

This is actually one example of macroeconomics that actually can apply on a personal level. First off, before you read all this and start attacking strawmen, I'm simply talking about cash flow and dollars and cents, not where or to whom that cash is flowing. So, say you as a person played a little too hard and heavy on the credit cards, and racked up a sizable debt. Since your earned income is already allocated, a portion of which to pay down said debt, in your budget analysis you decide that you need an additional line of credit to keep you afloat as you try to work through this. You go to the bank, and the bank tells you that you can borrow more cash, however because your debt is above a certain level we consider you more of a credit risk. Which of these options would you, personally, choose? Continue to borrow money at the downgraded credit risk, while trying to get the debt load down, or Reject the loan and immediately cease having enough money to pay creditors, putting most if not all of your sizable debts in default and triggering a massive credit downgrade and run on your assets?

and yet we still can't stop them from doing it in the first place. What good is intelligence if it's almost completely reactive?

Very true. The wiring was never meant to sent that high of an amp load to fire up the ballasts, the wire gauge is too small. Not worth the risk.

Some good points in here, but I'm still gonna need the blockquoter... What would the tax rate be, and would that be with or without a sales/use tax? You can't legislate not having children. I see what you're doing here, and it's well-intentioned, but you'll start seeing a ton of kids pop up with no support structure at all, living off the street. You have to face the realization that not everyone is as bootstrappy as you. Is that what you want your version of America to be? That's a pretty goddamn big "etc". I'm going to have to ask you to elaborate on that. How long would you want the terms to be? I'd go one step further and say that there is a definitive window for campaigning and being on the campaign trail. You can have a group (who's financials are completely transparent) fundraise and do other support things for you in a larger window, but none of this shit of missing votes screwing your constituents while you're running around the US for a year and a half campaigning. Also, by law you have to be present for every vote and roll-call in the House and Senate, and I would hope in the state legislatures as well. Throwing a little socialism in there as well to throw me off, eh? How would you react when the country that imports our products hits us with a tariff in response? I assume you meant for the subsidies to soften the blow from China labor prices to to US labor prices, how much money would you throw at that problem, and for how long? Do you really think it's the government's place to provide goods subsidies "just because?" These are really one, so... Are you aware that the current legal process for citizenship takes almost 10 YEARS? Pare that down by, say, 9 years, and you have a case. What are your thoughts about the war on drugs? Civil forfeiture laws? Also, why are you drawing a distinction between harder drugs and prescription drugs? It's just as easy to die from them as it is from crack. Not sure how I feel about this, so I'm going to let it lie.

Same here.

I'm in favor of both. Return to the pre-Bush tax tier, eliminate the loopholes, and create a new bracket for those 375,000 to, say, 2M that's 3-4% higher than the last, with 2M+ being 4-5% higher than that. Cut defense spending by completely pulling out of Iraq and significantly drawing down forces in Afghanistan. Cease production of all new carriers, and mothball the carrier fleet (along with it's associated battle group ships) down to 8-9 carrier battle groups from 12. That should reduce the defense budget by about 25-30%, if it doesn't, keep chopping until it does. End all military aid to Israel. Eliminate any and all faith-based programs. Eliminate Medicare Part D and move to a bulk-purchasing (I'm saying this wrong, hopefully you get the idea) prescription drug purchasing scheme that leverages our scale. Take the massive savings this would generate and start rebuilding the fucking infrastructure and other public works projects, like a country-wide Intenet network that's not 15 years behind the rest of the world. Single-payer healthcare would be nice too, but I know I ask too much in this crowd. We'd have a surplus possibly within 5 years, definitely within 10.