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On April 02 2010 01:55 Louder wrote:
Our poor and middle class are even convinced by the wealthy that they, too, can some day have a piece of that pie, and so they should protect the interests of the wealthy first, since some day they might join the club.
That really feels like a distinctly American trait. I'd guess it's one of the reasons why America has flourished so much as a country, but it does lead to a very unequal society made up of those who made it and those who didn't.
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On April 02 2010 02:12 zergpower123 wrote:
I would rather live in the US than lets say North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc!!!!!!
Despite its faults, the US is still the greatest nation there is. Don't like it, check out North Korea and you'll be back within 1 day lol.
LOL.. if you can make it back at all.........
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On April 02 2010 02:12 zergpower123 wrote:
Despite its faults, the US is still the greatest nation there is.
... *Sigh*
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Eh at least you have i7-860 @ 200 $
260 € here
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On April 02 2010 02:21 {88}iNcontroL wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2010 02:13 RaGe wrote:
You just preemptively killed the mood for any future EG TAKES ON THE WORLD AMERICA FUCK YEAH moments. nono.. don't say that. Team amerika is/has been lz/mach/myself/inka. We will throw a louder pic in there but it is more to balance the rad. David is and has always been a citizen of france. Where people don't care about money, nobody is homeless and everyone thinks along liberal lines and the rich give all their money to everyone. They also have a non existent defense budget and are never involved in wars. I agree though.. america does suck. I wish I lived in SUPER FUCKING AWESOME AMERICA. Where poor people are made to live in the same state (utah). War is ALWAYS fucking happening and we get to listen to metallica montages as tank cams display the M1 abraham rolling over 1000 years of historical architecture. I want christmas trees in fucking july and the only thing we ate was apple pie, hamburgers and double hamburgers and sometimes for lunch octaplamilionburgers.
My dick is hard 
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The thing I dislike about American govt is all the hidden stuff that goes on and things that get tagged on to bills. If we're making a bill about A, don't add shit about B on it. Get A done, then move on to B. I hate senators who just tag on stuff to keep their rich donations coming in. It annoys me to no end.
As for army stuff, I think America just needs to realize we are not any form of world police, it is not our business going half way across the world to fix other people's things. We have so many problems domestically that need to be fixed. I'd really like USA to tone down the "Let's help everyone because we believe in freedom and democracy" and really just learn to help ourselves once in a while and fix our own problems.
Just random thoughts about whatever.
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The more I learn about the world, the more I realize America has it good. From that chart we're only spending 4% of our GDP on defense which is quite low. If we cranked it up to 10 or 15% we could really kill some motherfucking nazis. Oh right, they're called terrorists now.....
Issues like this are way more complicated and ambiguous than they appear on the surface. Shit like this is part of the reason I'm fucking fed up with American politics; the polarization between the right and left is too fucking big, with most liberals talking like Louder here and most conservatives talking like Glen Beck. America needs to get its shit together and find middle ground between the two Americas in order to make real change. Shit Obama said he could do before harsh reality took over.
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Wow, did anyone even bother to read the article?
You should be ashamed of yourself Louder for misrepresenting what was said in that piece so you could rag on the US a bit.
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On April 02 2010 02:06 AngryLlama wrote:not disagreeing with you, but you actually posted a link that sort of makes it seem like the US isn't *as bad* as we thought.
His point is the total amount. Imagine spending 1% of that money elsewhere in some sector that would improve the quality of life of citizens. That's 6 billion dollars. Military is still left with over 600 billion dollars if you take just that 1% away.
In other words, the opportunity cost is great. There are a lot of things that the US could do to improve its citizens lives.
My grandmother had to sell her house and everything she owned after watching my grandfather suffer for 5 years from leukemia. My dad suffered from very advanced CTS and had to consider whether his hands were worth 6000 USD each. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but not everyone makes >40k a year.
If you don't wanna be stuck with some horrible debt because of an accident, you have to deal with buying health insurance. This stuff is barely regulated in the US, and the insurers have become experts at riding the boundary between legality and illegality when it comes to denying payment (pretty much everything these days is a pre-existing condition; a lot of insurance contracts refer to several other documents, some of which are over 70 pages long, filled with legalese).
The state of public education is very poor. The university-level education is very good, but a lot of people are cheated before they're even given the chance at a university education.
Many places in the US suffer from long-term economic downfall. Regions like Mississippi suffer from widespread poverty and unemployment. A company building a single factory in the state is a huge deal. And when I say poverty, it's not just some statistic. People are starving, stealing, and killing others for food and money.
These things don't happen everywhere in the states, but why should they have to happen anywhere?
On April 02 2010 02:12 zergpower123 wrote:
I would rather live in the US than lets say North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc!!!!!!
Despite its faults, the US is still the greatest nation there is. Don't like it, check out North Korea and you'll be back within 1 day lol.
EL OH EL OH EL OH EL
Yeh dude we r bettur than the wurst peeps in the wurld. Represent.
-___-
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I'd like to see a similar thing for education spending.
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to top it off, you guys are religious too!
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American politics and such sucks, but there is certainly a wealth of culture and diversity here. At least in the cities.
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Yeah I am a bit confused by the disconnect with the OP and the article that concludes as
"So is the US an "aggressive, war-mongering military machine" obsessed with spending on defence and plumping up its armed forces? Perhaps, the numbers say, not."
EDIT...so umm yeah April fools or just look at the first 2 tables?
And as a rule, whatever country you are from is the greatest country in the world, no real point arguing, it's just human nature, so cut that out....(though arguing about it is natural too I guess )
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What do 9 out of 10 people enjoy? A gang rape. Imagine if we just took all of the money from the richest 10% of the country and gave it to everyone else, then 90% of our country would be better off and we would probably score better on polls that rate "happiness" which seems to be the litmus test for how great a country is. It's a shame that the bottom 90% allows the top 10% to keep their money.
Also, everybody knows the oldest and most well known rule of the world is that as long as you are neutral and stay out of everyone's business, then nobody will want to go to war with you. Why do you think nobody ever bothers Canada? Especially in a time with modern democracies, and the United Nations, and great communication, nobody really goes to war anymore. I'm no history buff but I would wager that the last 100 years have been some of the most peaceful years of all of mankind's existence. When is the last time a modern democratic nation has outright invaded another nation without any provacation whatsoever? Over 6 years ago now, right?
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Churchhill had a lovely saying, "America's the worst system of government I've ever seen, yet its better then all the rest." Sure we could use some(like...a lot) of reforms to education/systems that were established in the 1950s/1960s(The welfare system, education, etc.) but comparatively to the rest of the world we're well enough off we don't really have as much to worry about. I make a little over minimum wage at a local sub shop, but I make more then ~90% of the world in 2 weeks.
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On April 02 2010 02:21 {88}iNcontroL wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2010 02:13 RaGe wrote:
You just preemptively killed the mood for any future EG TAKES ON THE WORLD AMERICA FUCK YEAH moments. nono.. don't say that. Team amerika is/has been lz/mach/myself/inka. We will throw a louder pic in there but it is more to balance the rad. David is and has always been a citizen of france. Where people don't care about money, nobody is homeless and everyone thinks along liberal lines and the rich give all their money to everyone. They also have a non existent defense budget and are never involved in wars. I agree though.. america does suck. I wish I lived in SUPER FUCKING AWESOME AMERICA. Where poor people are made to live in the same state (utah). War is ALWAYS fucking happening and we get to listen to metallica montages as tank cams display the M1 abraham rolling over 1000 years of historical architecture. I want christmas trees in fucking july and the only thing we ate was apple pie, hamburgers and double hamburgers and sometimes for lunch octaplamilionburgers.
^^
Let's hear someone make an argument that ethically supports an individual holding billions of dollars in wealth and doing nothing to improve the condition of his countrymen, but instead, simply growing needlessly wealthier off of them. It's awesome when people who love Jesus defend the rich.
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On April 02 2010 02:40 Alou wrote:
The thing I dislike about American govt is all the hidden stuff that goes on and things that get tagged on to bills. If we're making a bill about A, don't add shit about B on it. Get A done, then move on to B. I hate senators who just tag on stuff to keep their rich donations coming in. It annoys me to no end.
As for army stuff, I think America just needs to realize we are not any form of world police, it is not our business going half way across the world to fix other people's things. We have so many problems domestically that need to be fixed. I'd really like USA to tone down the "Let's help everyone because we believe in freedom and democracy" and really just learn to help ourselves once in a while and fix our own problems.
Just random thoughts about whatever.
They don't actually read the bills in Congress or the Senate. It's on the honor system. No joke.
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On April 02 2010 01:55 Louder wrote:
To top it all off, Americans have a superiority orders of magnitude beyond what Napoleon was said to have. Anything European is bad, ignorant, socialist, and we just flat out always know better.
Right back at ya(though I really don't know anything about Napoleons sense of superiority).
To top it all off, contemporary Europeans have a superiority orders of magnitude beyond what Napoleon was said to have. Anything American is greedy, ignorant, capitalist, and we just flat out always know better.
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EPT
