CitizenVectron

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/trump-military-parade-expected-to-cost-80-million-more-than-estimated.html

Good times.

BF1 sucked balls compared to BF4, which sucked balls compared to BF3, which sucked balls compared to BF2. 

BF5 does look a lot better than BF1, but I'm not surprised that people are hesitant. I am going to buy it, but I'm not pre-ordering unless I get some really sweet incentives.

Didn't corporations used to have seek charters from the government? I seem to recall that fact.

Also how do they determine revenue? If this came into place (which it won't), I assume that magically somehow Apple would have annual revenue of $999 million. I completely agree with the spirit of this proposal, but I think the more realistic solution is to let them make whatever they want and then aggressively claw it back through higher taxes on dividends and other payouts.

Who is covering the bill? Campaign money?

I would agree...if Italy was first world.

Although to be fair sometimes these things can happen in freak incidents.

So it sounds like some definitely were abusing their power to the point where actual charges are being filed. Were they all abusing to this extent? Or were the rest impeached in order to stack the court, simply taking advantage of the timing of removing the ones that deserved it?

Eventually all local reporting will be done by NYT's journalists who look out their 747 windows down at the ground while flying over the country on their way to LA.

On a scale of Canada/Saudi Arabia to USA/China, where does this lie in importance?

While I do think that Musk flies by the seat of his pants, we need to keep in mind that Banks is known for creating these types of feuds for publicity because she's a horrible drama queen. She may be embellishing a lot of this.

Either jail all of the priests or shut the whole Church down.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

 

It really annoyed me when he said, "He may have been a jerk, he may have been a thorn in people's side, but we're following the letter of the law."

 

Even if I were to grant them that, he's threatened people with a gun before the murder and then straight-up shot a guy. It's quite the euphemism to call that a thorn in people's side.

He's a rascal to be sure, but darn it we just can't stand to see his sad face if we go to arrest him!

I would not compare him to Trump at all, but I also would say he is unqualified for office (at that level).

Even if there are no victims of an event, that doesn't mean that the event is okay. Taking advantage of a position of power or knowledge to enrich your friends and family when no one else can do the same thing is wrong and causes harm.

Is Avenatti more qualified than Trump? Absolutely. Would he be a better President than Trump? Absolutely?

But that doesn't matter, because the bar is too low.

Reposed with plain text formatting:

A summary of its major points:

-Trade deficits and surpluses typically force monetary and other economic changes in the affected countries that tend to eliminate the imbalances. The fact that many large economies have run substantial trade surpluses or deficits year after year, sometimes for decades, violates trade and economic logic; this pattern is evidence that mercantilist policy distortions, either in the surplus countries or in the deficit countries, are preventing trade from adjusting.
 
-The idea that all countries lose in a trade war is unintelligible. This cannot possibly be true, not just because there is overwhelming historical evidence that countries have benefitted from trade intervention but also because the claim is logically impossible. Whether countries benefit or lose from trade intervention depends on the underlying institutions that mediate trade and capital flows, the extent of existing trade and capital flow imbalances, and the types of intervention employed.
 
-While tariffs and other forms of trade intervention may indeed raise prices for consumers, this is only one way, and often a minor way, in which these policy tools affect households. Depending on underlying conditions, they may also reduce unemployment, cause wages to rise, and reduce the growth of debt.
 
-Tariffs and currency devaluation are not the only forms of trade intervention and are not the only ways distortions are introduced into global trade and capital flows. Any policy that alters the relationship between a country's savings and its investment affects that country's trade balance. Tariffs and currency devaluation affect trade balances not by changing the relative prices of tradable goods but rather by shifting income from households to businesses, thus forcing up the savings rate. Because of this, any policy aimed at making an economy more competitive internationally by suppressing wages is effectively a beggar-thy-neighbor policy. Any such policy works in exactly the same way as tariffs and currency devaluation.
 
-Because the relationship between U.S. investment and U.S. savings is determined externally, by the country's role in absorbing excess global savings, tariffs and other beggar-thy-neighbor policies will not reduce U.S. trade deficits.
 
-In a globalized economy, it may be extremely difficult for any country to implement policies that protect the bargaining power of workers, that reverse income inequality, that raise minimum wages, that improve the social safety net, or that otherwise make households better off relative to businesses and governments. Implementing any of these policies causes a country's international competitiveness to deteriorate. Consequently, rather than achieving the desired result, these policies cause the trade balance to go into deficit, and either unemployment will rise or debt must rise.
 
-To put it a little more starkly, a globalized economy must choose to protect its strength in the manufacturing and tradable sectors by lowering relative wages (directly or else indirectly in the form of tariffs, subsidies, or currency devaluation), or it must choose to boost the services and nontradable goods sectors through rapid debt growth.

If only they hadn't dumped all of their water into the ocean...

My city is currently blanketed by smoke from California. These are huge fires covering the state.

I mean...good. Turkey in its modern state shares almost nothing in common with NATO. It's a piece of trash country with a piece of trash religious culture. Their military held it together for a while to keep it modernized, but that stopped and it's likely going to slide back.

Note - To clarify, it has a trash religious culture in that religion making rules for society is trash, I don't care which religion is doing it.

Honestly replacing men with women in politics would be a good thing.

4 hours ago, 2user1cup said:

He's American

Jimmy Bound.

In all seriousness, I think Elba would be great. Sign him for two films and then move on, and keep doing the same thing. Get back to ridiculous stories without continuity. I don't need invisible cars, but make the villains crazy! I want guys with laser eyes and rocket ships.

17 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

I’m honestly kind of surprised there isn’t a porn streaming service already. I guess cause there’s still too much free stuff out there?

I mean porn sites are already streaming services!

He has a Dell HP Elite 7100 Microtower PC. His CPU is a i7 860 2.8ghz with a ATI Radeon HD 4850 GPU. I was thinking of pushing him up to a 1000-series or 1100-series nVidia. 

Any thoughts? He primarily wants it to play Overwatch (since he can't run it now). Looking online even his old-ass CPU should be okay for it.

Realistically he is only doing this for PR and money. Mind you, the last guy with those goals won...

38 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Get out. 

I agree that Get Out was a good movie.

Black Panther had some good scenes, but suffered from many of the same problems as other "good" tier Marvel movies, namely really bad CGI battles and a villain with the same powers as the hero. Don't get me wrong I did like the movie, but I just didn't think it was amazing. I do completely get the overall "event" vibe from it though, especially among the black community. And it did have a well-acted villain (though they killed him off...another Marvel problem).

In my opinion Black Panther wasn't even a great movie, anyway. It deserves recognition for its impact on American black culture and the ground it is breaking, but it's not even A-tier MCU.