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At 8/4/10 11:39 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 8/4/10 11:32 AM, JMHX wrote: Because heroin and marijuana are interchangeable?

His link dealt with stronger stuff such as LSD. I don't think marijuana will kill anybody. All it does is make people lazy.

That's why you need to take Speed with it, for SUPER FOCUS.

At 8/4/10 11:09 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 8/4/10 03:37 AM, pr0ded wrote: haha, they had the potential to make things they couldn't otherwise, like post jazz-music.. or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis #Use_of_LSD

Ask those who knew Janis Joplin the best about how they felt onb whether the drugs helped or hurt her.

Because heroin and marijuana are interchangeable?

The New York Times reported this morning that rapper Wyclef Jean will run for President of Haiti as part of an electoral coalition. Full story is available here.

I'm not entirely sure what I think about this. Given the history of ostentatious dictators in the Caribbean, bling-flinging would fit right in. And, it's not as if Haiti is going to get much worse than its current, utterly-destroyed state. At the same time, though, is Wyclef Jean really an entire country's best pick for the presidency coming off of an unparalleled humanitarian disaster and the complete destruction of government services?

Well, if he's serious, I vote his Vice President should be The Rock.

At 8/2/10 03:52 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: There are certain jobs that require a level of sobriety and clarity of thought. If you feel the need to not be sobre, feel free to not take those jobs. Yes, marijuana legislation will have to be changed so that it is treated equaly to other legal substance- but that's just a bridge that will be crossed after a state makes the commitment to legalization.

No, passing laws and only then trying to figure out ways to integrate them into the existing structure is sloppy policymaking, and it leads to the kind of implementation problems listed in the first post. It's beneficial to the entire argument to try and consider (at least to some extent) the impact that state laws will have on federal service eligibility.

At 8/2/10 12:57 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 8/2/10 12:02 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Statism is a great idea if you like if you like a system of economic privilege, war, pollution and misuse of scarce resources, constant economic crashes, and the debt slavery for oneself and one's posterity.

That's why we have a nice middle ground. The people counter the state and the state counters the people, hopefully leading the the nice propserous equilibrium in the middle.

Except that our current system didn't anticipate the rise of the Federal Government as the massive, Executive-driven force it is today. Even back in 1900, when Theodore Roosevelt ascended to the Presidency, it was largely a backstage administrative affair. The changes of the next 50 years from that point served to fundamentally alter the balance in ways nobody considered at the time of drafting.

At 8/1/10 03:05 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: I'd rather not having pilots stumbling around drunk 8 hours before they fly a plane containing several hundred people, I'd rather the Judge didn't spend all last night getting stoned before he decides wether to send an 18 year old kid to jail for twenty years or not.

What's more, no one is advocating allowing smoking on the job, just as no one is advocating letting me drink while I'm behind my desk here. The problem comes in disqualifying someone for using a substance that is not illegal in their state of use, when they are not on the company clock. Right now we have no qualms about a judge spending the night before a tough case drinking.

I like you, Royale.

At 8/2/10 10:18 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

At 8/2/10 09:49 AM, JMHX wrote:

Your Paradoxical Founding Fathers quote of the day:

Paradoxical, but not out of context.

Out of context in that there's three more pages to the letter from which I took that which frame the discussion as not really applying to the Constitution. It's about something else entirely.

At 7/19/10 07:33 PM, Al6200 wrote:

At 7/19/10 02:14 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:

Anywho, here is the map with states colored by what side of the country they are on. I coded it manually, so it might contain a few errors.

This is a fascinating little charting experiment, and it confirms to some extent what we've known about the West for the past hundred-odd years: It tends to trend populist, especially when economic indicators start flagging. Another interesting idea would be to compare how much each state donated to Ron Paul in relation to the state's unemployment numbers at the time, and in relation to the percentage of heavy industry in that state. I'm willing to bet declining Midwestern and Western states were more likely to push for Paul than fairly balanced places like the Northern Virginia area.

At 8/1/10 02:14 AM, ChainsawNinjaZX wrote:

At 7/30/10 02:32 PM, Palimpsest wrote:

True, in theory the owners can set the rules however they want. But why would they create an oppressive TOS that unfairly restricts debate and argument? It would be bad for their bottom line. People would leave, traffic would go down, advertising would fall, and money would be lost. For Newgrounds, the market ultimately keeps them from clamping down.

Not necessarily. So long as there is content, corruption in policy doesn't matter too much. For example, Areia Games is a website hosting popular free to play MMOs for a massive amount of people, yet the way they treat volunteers and staff members is abhorrent, not to mention the players. Yet there still seems to be traffic to the site, and why? Because they have something to offer. On Newgrounds it would be the flash portal, and people would still pay for stuff like stickers in support of the site or like of the design.

This is partly true, but the forum side of the website would atrophy as people abandoned what came to be known as a terribly-censored place where moderators run free. This entire section of the website, and any goodwill and lateral revenue it generates through people sharing flash videos or organizing support for the site, would be gone. Since these forums draw a lot of eyes (and have some of the better tutorials on making decent videos), it would be a huge loss to Newgrounds. Not every market incentive can be measured strictly in dollars.

Keep in mind that renting your labor to an employer (at-will employment) provides more opportunity for you to take the value-added experience from the current employer and move on to a better-paid lessee, while an employer owning your labor for a fixed term substitutes job security and steady pay for the riskier proposition of gaining skills and hopping between employers in a more or less upward slope of pay and responsibility.

Is that what you're referencing on renting versus owning labor, or are you referring more to a Spanish system where employees can be hired fairly easily but only removed from the position with great difficulty? Because technically under that system, the employer owns the labor but has no right of termination over the labor - not much in the sense of ownership, eh?

We see something violent in a video game or movie, we're trained to think this will have an impact on kids who are too young to decide between fantasy and reality. But even a few unscientific examples - take Penn and Teller's Bullshit episode on violence in video games - are enough to show that kids clearly understand the line between simulated and real violence. Pushing buttons and watching pixelated people explode is a far cry (GET IT?) from actually holding an assault rifle and taking out hordes of zombies.

One of the previous posters is right - the mentally ill are most susceptible, because their faculties for understanding real-world consequence and understanding the fantasy-reality gap are hindered due to PRE-EXISTING mental conditions. Now sure, the great majority of the mentally ill harbor no violent thoughts or compulsions, but it'd be far more interesting to invest more research and attention to the impact of fictionalized violence on those who don't process the divide so well. Hooray tards.

At 8/1/10 11:22 PM, LordZeebmork wrote: Damnit this site needs an edit button.

Anyway, for comparison, Obama has hovered around 50% since August or September (it might be interesting to see how the news coverage of him might have influenced his approval - I remember seeing a lot of "omg black president!!!!!11" articles around the beginning of his term, but they all disappeared after a few months), and he's not going anywhere but down. Whereas according to Gallup, Bush had 71% approval at this point in his first term and 40%, only four points lower than Obama's approval now, at this point in his second term. So Obama is barely doing better than Bush.

Yeah, but keep in mind that Obama benefits from the same thing Bush did when running for re-election -- at the moment there is no credible Republican challenger. Polls this far out are prone to hypotheticals, since voters by and large don't make up their minds on their candidate until a month or two before their state primary, and undecideds not until about 60 days before a general election.

I can't think of a candidate that would have the mainstream appeal to topple Obama, especially not on the Republican side, barring perhaps moderates like Mitch Daniels who will almost certainly encounter opposition from the hard-right wing for his association with Bush and his handling of the economic downturn in Indiana.

At 8/1/10 02:45 PM, MrOctopi wrote: Also, how many marijuana users are going to want government jobs anyhow? Probably slim to none. Most of them hate the government anyways because it's the thing keeping them from their precious weed. And if it is legalized I doubt their feelings about the government will change, so that pretty much eliminates your problem right there.

This unfairly bunches marijuana users into a class of lazy, anti-government left-wingers who have no aspirations. That's not true. Boiling things down to one monolithic cultural view is never the right answer when you're dealing with something like marijuana that easily spans different socioeconomic and cultural groupings.

At 8/2/10 09:16 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: I do not see what the appeal to sacred texts or the intentions of men long past has anything to do with how things 'ought' to be in a consequential sense.

Your out-of-context Founding Fathers quote of the day:

"Can one generation bind another and all others in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter unendowed with will." --Thomas Jefferson

For as slow as this board has become given what it was in 2003-2004, I'm shocked to still see this as among the most active threads.

At 7/30/10 08:15 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: If america was turning Libertarian we would have that KOOK Ron Paul in office than Obama.

You're a tool, now sit down over there.

Wrote an article about this for my somewhat hibernating blog, Pixels and Policy, and ended up doing a port of it to the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus. Twitter and virtual platforms are a veritable playground of free-speech and anti-totalitarian fundraising and organization. We'll see a lot of fun here as broadband reaches East Africa this year, and 'net technology continues to creep into North Korea.

One need only listen to Glenn Beck to hear rampant calls of Socialism and Communism and Secret Muslim Racism. I've been considering these one-sided, idiotic rants, and find them lacking. Sure, health care reform isn't the most free market thing in the world. I'll give you that. And financial reform may be a bit on the statist side. Conceded.

But America is turning Libertarian in a number of surprising ways, and the federal government is spurring those changes along. Without even knowing it, the financial crisis is turning the country more Libertarian than it has been in a long time.

1. Gambling. As some of you might know, under President Bush - better known as Jesus Christ to the conservative group - the United States made online gambling a federal crime. No good for those of us who enjoy personal freedom to do what we want with our money. But now, due to the awful financial straits the federal government finds itself in, and conscious of the fact that online gambling doesn't kill anyone, they are now moving to re-legalize online poker. Hooray capitalism!

2. Drugs. Oh, wonderful drugs, who doesn't enjoy them on a slow evening? The biggest news isn't that California seems poised to legalize marijuana - though that's a major victory for personal freedom. The bigger news is that prison sentences for crack and cocaine are going down. Couple this with legalization of medical marijuana in D.C., and the move to stop life sentences for nonviolent drug crime in California, and we see a boost in personal freedom coupled with cost savings for the states that have to fill prisons with nonviolent drug offenders.

3. Public services. They just got a bit more private, as city governments lose their money left and right and can no longer afford to provide a wide array of inefficient public services. One American town, so fraught with budgetary concerns, chose to outsource ALL public services! The end result? Not much changed. The city still gets police and water and trash pickup, but it's a little cheaper and it's creating more jobs.

4. Guns. My fair city now allows me to own a handgun. Other states are removing their gun restrictions thanks to the Supreme Court, and the profits from gun sales are going up. The end result? More fun at the shooting range or out hunting, more money for local businesses that sell weapons and range services, and no major orgasm of crime within the city limits.

I'm enjoying the slow trend into fiscally-mandated Libertarianism. You should, too. Though politicians of all stripes may whine about the loss of control caused by these devolutions of power to citizens, they needn't worry. Unless, that is, they're expecting us to forget the years of being treated like children when we step up to the ballot box.

Hmmmmm.....

Okay guys, you take care. It's been fun.

At 11/17/08 11:23 PM, Grammer wrote: JMHX, prove you're not a girl

>:O

Ask around.

I remember when I could drink 10 shots of tequila, two rum and cokes, and a glass of absinthe without feeling too bad. Now I'm death.

At 11/17/08 10:41 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 11/17/08 10:28 PM, Ravariel wrote: Gang signs or the shocker... I'm not sure which is better...

I did a double take when I first saw the pic, but it's the shocker all right.

Is that really President Bush, jmhx, or an impersonator? I've got to know, and I'm really curious to know wether he knew what he was doing.

From Whitehouse.gov, apparently it's the Arizona State University "Pitchfork," and that's the track team or something.

blankpost

At 11/17/08 02:38 AM, fli wrote:

At 11/16/08 07:48 PM, Ravariel wrote:

Everyone is working on something...
EVERYONE...

And taking classes and stuff like that.

Of course I don't expect any kind of apology for your purposeful misreading of what I said, even though you made it a point to draw the exact opposite conclusion from what I said and used it as a reason to make some character shot at me. Even though I blamed no one for anything, save myself, and even showed support for the actions, feel no need to portray me honestly.

At 11/17/08 02:29 AM, fli wrote:

At 11/17/08 12:46 AM, JMHX wrote:

And pinning any aspect of your misery on Skunky?

If you read the thing, I was supporting what she began by finishing it.

God, it's amazing you don't draw in a plague of flies when you utter such pipping hot bullshit...

Thanks.

At 11/17/08 12:54 AM, Masterzakk wrote:

At 11/17/08 12:34 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:
LSD is dangerous, weed is dangerous, alcohol is dangerous, so your tobacco ban is stupid. Also how do we define if someone is "responsible".

A responsible person is someone that has an IQ of 110 or higher smartass

HOLY ARBITRARY DECISIONS, BAMTAN.

These are MY ideas on how to make america better if you disagree then I say Agree to disagree and point out flaws in my logic if you want. This will be short and sweet.

1. Free chicken pot pies.

/end

So I'm working for this hardcore Republican lobbyist now, and one of the jobs I've taken home is a piece railing against the government for promoting green technology subsidies. I'm amazed how easily I can write what year ago would have been anathema to me. I suppose I'd already moderated so much that there wasn't that much keeping me identified to a party. I'm an Independent now. It is what it is. Though I find the money doesn't make me happy, even though it's pretty solid. I find I haven't been really "content" in quite some time. I don't know why I stumbled back here, but I did, and I don't know, it's kind of nice to see people who remember me from way-back-when, before a fraternity fucked my life up and I graduated with a head full of regrets and spite towards the university.

Though I finished off what Skunky started with Phi Kappa Sigma. The whole thing is aflame now, people running for cover, people trying to avoid the hand of authority coming down on them. It's almost like the blinding fluid drained from my eyes and I saw all the ruin that I had wrought, and the logic of destroying the support system.

At least I have my principles back.