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Doom Marine

Election '08


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Enjay said:

I still hold that turning up and effectively voting for "none of the above" is a valid option. I really don't see how voting for "the lesser of two evils" gives the respective candidates more information than what I did.

Well, what you did was made your vote irrelevant and ignored. Voter apathy (caused by how unappealing all candidates are) only results in a greater percentage of vote for the psychopaths (because their core supporters are rather fanatical usually), giving them in turn a disproportionate influence.

As for the current election, I don't think John "Keating 5th" McCain would be a good choice for a time of severe financial crisis like what's happening right now.

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Enjay said:

More stuff than me.


Well voting for the not quite so bad at least leans in the right direction. I doubt we will have a godly candidate that ultimately agrees with everything you agree with and knows and is capable of producing miraculous results.

Straight up telling the candidates that they are not doing enough to deserve your vote is, contrary to what I said, a little better than not voting, but I still doubt it can be more valuable than not voting for a candidate at all.

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Gez said:

Well, what you did was made your vote irrelevant and ignored. Voter apathy (caused by how unappealing all candidates are) only results in a greater percentage of vote for the psychopaths (because their core supporters are rather fanatical usually), giving them in turn a disproportionate influence.


Nonsense, the blank/ruined ballots are counted and publicised. At least in the UK and Sweden. Saying that you're not happy with the options are what gives other people a reason try their ideas. People who don't vote at all, will just be counted as people who are to dumb or uninteresed to care either way.

If you want change, you'll have to bite into the sour apple on occation. Voting for someone you don't have faith in just because you got marginally more faith in him than the other guy you don't have faith in doesn't make a lick of difference in the long run.

A blank/ruined vote is a statement. And politicians want those votes for their side. So they will investigate what ideas and opinions are behind them.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is counter productive.

In the long run, I think a depression in the USA is a good thing. It'll suck royally right now. But people need to get motivated (read angry) to get some serious changes into the agenda. They could really benefit from getting a parliment over there. But from what I heard of Bill Maher, apparently it's against the constitution.

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kristus said:
In the long run, I think a depression in the USA is a good thing. It'll suck royally right now.

I see it as a disease taking its course. It was averted in a way and for a while with the Iraq war, but as we know (and we can see) some medicine has pretty bad side effects.

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Gez said:

Well, what you did was made your vote irrelevant and ignored.

My point is, as Kristus said, in the UK it isn't ignored. The number of people who turned up to say "they are all crap" is part of the process and seen as a contribution to it. Kristus explained it well, so I have nothing to add to his comment.

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kristus said:

In the long run, I think a depression in the USA is a good thing. It'll suck royally right now.


This is easy for you to say when you don't live here. As much as it could possibly be good in the long run, right now its already causing problems in peoples lives. Unemployment is on the rise, good students cant get the money to go back to school, people are losing their homes (admittedly this is mostly their fault, although I've known some renters who've done nothing wrong that have been fucked up the ass badly by this). Years of this would ruin the lives of millions, and all for the possibility of things maybe coming out better in the long run? As one of those people in the category of life changing suckage if this becomes anything close to a repeat of the 30s, I can safely say I'll pass, thanks. This is not just biting into a sour apple and having to live tighter for a while, or give up a few niceties for a couple of years, this is serious shit.

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Yeah, what exactly is this economic crisis everybody's yapping about? Far as I can tell, homesellers that were inflating their prices 4-8 times the true value are finally being forced to sell their properties for something relatively close to what they're actually worth. Of course they've got a way to go before they get there, but they're at least on their way. People who I've heard complain seem to be getting worried over estimated values going down rather than realizing that the home they bought is still the exact same home they bought and will serve the exact same purpose no matter how much it would sell for later, and that even if their property sale price dimished, the other for-sale properties would be diminishing in equal proportion, so it shouldn't even be a loss for people looking to move since they'll gain a similar discount on the new purchase. For the first time in decades, housing is coming close to being affordable out in my area - that's an opportunity to me, not a crisis.

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the economic crisis is not just about the home selling. it's about the mountain of unpayable debt incurred by home buyers. banks couldn't afford to hold the debt and had to sell it off so they could stay afloat. unfortunately the loss they took from selling the debt was too great and caused banks to fail. the entire savings and loans industry took a hit. now all the morons in the stock market are panicking and dumping stocks left and right so they can save money, all the while increasing the financial woes we are going thru. a nurse at the hospital I work at lost $25,000 out of her 401k. prices of homes may be dropping, but people can't afford to buy them because other expenses have gone up.

stock markets in different countries are starting to feel the pinch. it's all connected. we feared the domino effect of communism, now we are feeling the domino effect of capitalism. a cascade of financial failure reaching out like an octopus and squeezing the life out of regular people while CEOs get rewarded for fuckin up their job with golden parachutes. compensation for failure. it's just sickening. now taxpayer dollars are being used to bailout financial institutions. so we have to pay for their greed and incompetence. again, sickening.

sure there is opportunity out there. but thats only if you can afford it. too many people are in deep debt, some of their own doing, to take advantage of the fire sales in the home and stock markets. if you can afford to take advantage of it, more power to you. and mind you it's not everywhere that homes are becoming affordable again. in NYC we still have some of the highest property values. affordable housing is starting to become non-existant here. even the foreclosed stuff. people of means who can't find space or afford rents in manhattan are moving to the outer boroughs and driving up rents and property values. the middle class is shrinking and people of modest to low means are leaving NYC, if they can afford to, while people with money are taking over.

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Listen to VileSlay. Also, it seems that informal or underground credit (of criminal or uncontrolled nature) has grown out of hand, and many people have spiraled into progressively increasing debt as they get caught in a disadvantaged position after trying to obtain easy credit or get rid of previous debt.

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Debt, ew. I'll never understand. Even though it meant living in a car and a library for two years during school, I've never taken a loan and I've never had a credit card, even when the card companies basically hounded us on every corner on campus offering T-shirts and cell phones and all sorts of other insulting nonsense to woo us. If I can't afford it--be it a place to live or frivolous overpriced gadgets--I do without it. Same goes for irresponsibly starting a family.

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Thus the reason I don't have my own car or a cell phone. Sure, I COULD get one.. but what's the point in having them if it means every drop of money to your name goes to some loan company?

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Richo Rosai said:

Debt, ew. I'll never understand. Even though it meant living in a car and a library for two years during school, I've never taken a loan and I've never had a credit card, even when the card companies basically hounded us on every corner on campus offering T-shirts and cell phones and all sorts of other insulting nonsense to woo us. If I can't afford it--be it a place to live or frivolous overpriced gadgets--I do without it. Same goes for irresponsibly starting a family.


You will never own a house, and if I had to guess you'll never own a new car either. Not with that philosophy.

I take out student loans because the career I would like to be in does not lend itself to an inexpensive education, and I want to graduate before I'm 40. Nothing wrong with that, I know that I'll have a much better chance of being able to successfully pay for the education after I have it than before. I have a (one, singular) credit card, because if I have an emergency in which I must spend money (ex. I'm stranded somewhere and I need a plane ticket home) I'd rather be able to quickly get out of that emergency than be fucked. And I own a (relatively, at this point) new car, because from my research its a better investment. And I'd like to think I am pretty damn good at being responsible with my money.

Alternatively if I took the extreme way that you are, I'd probably still not have started my college education, I'd probably be driving something I'd have to have fixed every three months, and I would probably be dead now because for a time I used my credit card to pay for a pretty damn important prescription while I didn't have health insurance.

Also loans and debt make the economy go around, it's like lubricant in an engine. Apparently economics was not something you took in school :P

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Way to not read my short post. If you had you would have seen that I've already owned a car. FYI it was old and it ran fine because I did my research. And I made it through school fine without any loans--I worked my ass off 40 hours a week while living in said car and I came out not owing anything to anybody. And someday I'll own a house, and I'll pay for it all at once.

And just because I manage to do things my own way doesn't mean I don't understand how the economy works. You and all the other race rats can donate yourselves as lube all you want. One frugal person like me practicing simple living and hoarding (investing) money isn't going to break the world. I'll stay on the receiving end of the interest, thank you very much.

As far as living in a society where you're left to die because you can't afford medicine, well that's a whole other topic and I don't have experience with it.

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Latest news:

Panel: Palin abused power in trooper case
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/10/palin.investigation/index.html

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor and violated state ethics law by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report concluded Friday.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is under investigation for the firing of her public safety commissioner.

"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states...

This bitch better not become president, otherwise we can kiss what's left of our civil liberties goodbye.

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alexz721 said:

You know they spent 100 grand to investigate that shit? Your tax dollars at work.

Many people are willing to spend much more than that to destroy the GOP ticket.

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Haloless0320 said:

So far he wants to become friends with the terrorists

Ohk.






I really don't want Palin to have any sort of power. Trying to sit through a debate of hers was torture, not to mention hilarious. She truly is a dumbass. It's not even that I disagree with her views, it's just that if brains were dynamite, she'd be retarded. Mmmyep.

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I'm not sure if this financial crisis is going to affect me. I'm very poor as it is, never bothered investing in the stock market, never got into debt (I pay my credit card in full every month, and the only reason I got it was to accrue credit), and I don't own a house. There are really only two things that bother me as possible future worries:

1 - The fact that the government is going to pay the banks $700 billion (taxpayer money!) because they fucked up. If I end up having to actually PAY taxes this year (instead of getting a tax return), someone is getting stabbed.

2 - I'm going into school next year and I'm going to need a student loan to do so. If I'm denied that because all the loan companies are fucking up right now, that's going to suck ass. Of course, if they're denying people with perfect credit (like me), then everyone's fucked.

Richo Rosai said:

Way to not read my short post. If you had you would have seen that I've already owned a car. FYI it was old and it ran fine because I did my research. And I made it through school fine without any loans--I worked my ass off 40 hours a week while living in said car and I came out not owing anything to anybody. And someday I'll own a house, and I'll pay for it all at once.

Yeah...the only way that's going to happen is if you walk into the real estate office with the full payment in cash. That's what they told me when I needed to get a new car with no credit. Thankfully I had a friend who just happened to have a car she didn't need anymore. After that I finally got a credit card.

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Mike.Reiner said:

Thus the reason I don't have my own car or a cell phone. Sure, I COULD get one.. but what's the point in having them if it means every drop of money to your name goes to some loan company?


I have a pay as you go phone for this reason, once all the money you put in the account is used up, you can't make or receive calls. It can be annoying as shit in serious situations. (like when you need a ride home and someone sends you a text message right before you make a call when you only have a couple cents left)

Aside from that, the account system does a great job at limiting how much money i pour into my phone. I spend about $25 a month on it because I don't even use it all that much, but it's still really handy to have.

I don't have a car yet, however I have saved over $10,000 the past few years from lots of work and little spending. I'm hoping i can make enough money to afford to put a HUGE down payment on a house so that I only have pay it off for less than a year. I'll probably start it off as a halfway house at first, get some local bands to play at my house, tell a bunch of punk kids about it, charge admission, junk like that.

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JohnnyRancid said:

I have a pay as you go phone for this reason, once all the money you put in the account is used up, you can't make or receive calls. It can be annoying as shit in serious situations. (like when you need a ride home and someone sends you a text message right before you make a call when you only have a couple cents left)

Yeah my sister has one of those, I've thought about that.

Well, I DO have a cell phone, but my parents gave me it, they pay for it. I rarely use it.

Mostly just to tell my parents where I am if I went to a friend's house.. that's it.

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holy fuckin shit incest.

Dude I want these people's heads cut off. Her judgment is based entirely on his name!? That's it. Pack the bags. I quit.

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[idiocy] Heaven forbid, Obama has a Middle Easter name! He must work for the DeviL. They SneakeD him into AmericA to take over the country and hand it over to the TerroristS! But we wont lettim! We'll vote for a warlord instead so we can win wars fo' eva! <3 [/idiocy]

I hope those people represent a minority in the US. It's no wonder the world is the way it is today if that isn't the case. >:/

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