Kim Jong Il Dead

Ok, that was a colossal waste of time. Voice mails and crabby gatekeepers were much less entertaining than the BBS. Everybody is in holiday mode now.

I have had time to think about my post.

My post was tinged with disdain for this country, its leaders, and its direction on some important subjects. What it is not tinged with is fact or complete reason. That is a problem here as we are a half way decent, educated lot who will call each other out. I used that original post to spew some of my hate for what this country has become. The post was driven by emotion, not logic, which has now returned. I need to remember when I am posting on one of the sites where hyperbolic snark is king and when I am posting here.

So, after releasing the emotion and had to backtrack for documentation/fact. Not a great position to be in.

I have to face reality. My militant anti-gov, anti-law enforcement emotions will never win over the law/constitution knowledge of others here. Almost every time I go off the rails in P&R, its because of this.

In other words: UNCLE

 

I want to know what studies you are talking about? When Anslinger started his crusade against hemp/marijuana there were no studies done. People just took everything he said as truth and laws were made. There is no way they did any studies to come up with the BS he spewed it was just all made up crap. As people finally began to realize what they were being told was in no way fact, all they did was come up with new lies, some of the totally contradicting the old lies. These day people still spout off stuff there never has been or never will be true, but they have heard it so much they figure it must be true. I want you to show me these studies that were done when hemp/marijuana was first made illegal.

 

Dude, you amaze me. That "bat signal" most really work.

For some reason, you remind me of Scarface!

Keep up the fight!

 

cmra - I can respect that. Quite frankly, I don't disagree that we're going in the wrong direction as a country on a lot of topics. But we're still a hell of a lot better off than most at this point.

MR - there's just no way I'm getting in to the same debate with you about the same old topic AGAIN. The studies were flawed, the people spewing that crap were/are morons. They should've been high when they made the laws and maybe they'd all make more sense. Happy? :up:

 

I haven't been on here much lately and even when I have it has been just to glance over things. Today is the first time in a while I have even had the time to log in and post, and of course between the MJ talk and me being called out in it, I figured that was as good as any to reply to.

I did get to read about/keep up with your travels. Sounds like you had a great time and glad that you made it safely. I'm sure we'll get to actually meet some day Carlos.

 

I understand, I just do not remember any studies being done when they first outlawed the plant is all I was saying. It has been a while since I did any deep research on the subject though and maybe my memory is fading. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours!:up:

 

Ditto

 

Don't say I didn't warn you.


Merry Happy Hanafestikwanzamas.

 

Someone needs to put Kim in a burger king uniform and have him sing "ding, fries are done".

 

Are you REALLY that old? :wow:

May the Peace and Joy of the celebration of our Savior's birth be with you and yours.

 

Happy non-denominational vacation season to you too dude.

 

Then most commonly smoke it. The simple fact is weed is a drug that some people can handle and some cannot. Just like booze. Should weed be illegal? No. It does need to have some restrictions similar to booze though. It will happen at some point in the near future. That being said I think this country has much bigger fish to fry at this point.

What kills me is most of the reason behind gay's being upset is the special treatment married people get. The entire idea of special treatment for married people or people with kids by the government is BS. We need to get rid of the special treatment for people who decide to live their life a certain way.

 

The reasoning behind it is the government by providing benefits around marital status is promoting a particular choice as better for the populace/society as a whole. Similar logic to tax breaks for doing certain things, subsidies, etc.

In the end it's the government picking winners, which means by definition picking losers also. Personally I say the federal (and state) level of government should get out of marriage entirely. Recognize the legal civil tying of finances and power of attorney via civil union and thats it. File paperwork, accept legal consequences for doing so as well as breaking union later. If your dog has power over attorney it can enter a civil union with, if it wants. Don't care. Let churches/cults/whatever perform marriages to whomever they choose, they just have zero legal / civil impact.

Then dump any subsidies/tax breaks/etc. That should trim out a metric crapton of administrative jobs in government...

 

Let me explain a little bit: The state/government does not exist without people. Hetero people procreate more than gay people do. The government providing benefits for the heteros is a way to provoke them into creating family units and creating more people.

Breeders keep the state in business.

Now - with the emergence of welfare, this has weakened a bit. We pay the poor to have babies out of wedlock. This is the "new way" of creating more business for the state. The state no longer needs to promote the "family unit" among the poor- they just need to promote sex. How will this survive? Middle class families... Promotion of the "family unit" is necessary among the middle class because if it isn't, there will be no support for all of the children being born out of wedlock among the poor and that cash cow will become extinct.

This is my personal opinion on why it is so difficult to pry the state out of marriage...It has nothing to do with morals and the "benefit to society", the government does not have morals and only seeks to further its existence and size.


Isn't this thread about Kim Jong Ill? How did we get here? And Why did I play?

 

You married yet?

 

Without reading all five prior pages, this was probably already posted. It also seems like (just based on page five) that the topic has deviated slightly.

But here is a good time waster of the day:

http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

Kim Jong Il looking at things.

 

I was surprised to learn that we had lost a superb athlete when "dear leader" passed away. His prowess on the field of play astounds me.


http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/daily-take/201112/memory-kim-jong-il-dear-leader-and-goat

 

Something else you might not know about Dear Leader. He did not defecate.

I read this article about what is next for North Korea, and there are no good scenarios.

By Megan McArdle Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Shortly after North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il took over from his father, the country was wracked by a famine that killed somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of the population. He became best known for a near-monomaniacal obsession with obtaining nuclear weapons to aim at nearby Seoul. He was also notorious for kidnapping South Korea’s most famous movie director in order to force him to make movies for North Korea’s captive audience. (The director eventually escaped.) Most of the rest of Kim Jong Il’s victims remain trapped within their borders, dependent on continuing food aid from abroad to keep from starving.

Naturally, when word came yesterday that this man had died, the South Korean stock market ... plunged nearly 5 percent.

This is not nearly as odd as it initially sounds. As one expert told Bloomberg News, “If you asked experts what would be the most likely scenario for North Korea to collapse, the answer everyone would give you is, ‘If Kim Jong Il died today.’ We’re in that scenario.”

Very little is known about Kim Jong Un, the likely successor. What is known is mostly that he’s young and inexperienced. Moreover, his succession is far from assured — it reportedly took Kim Jong Il three years to consolidate his lock on the job. No one likes the idea of some unknown persons, possibly even crazier than Kim Jong Il was, getting their hands on North Korea’s substantial arsenal.

But war may not be the scenario that’s scaring South Korea’s stock markets. Even a “peaceful” collapse — something like the slow-motion implosion of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 — would be economically devastating for South Korea.

Consider another, not wholly dissimilar case. In the late 1980s, just before reunification, it is estimated that per-capita gross domestic product in East Germany was approximately 30 percent lower than it was in West Germany. Joining the two countries together temporarily multiplied their disparities. Many of East Germany’s inefficient and pollution-heavy factories were shut down, creating high levels of structural unemployment that were eased only by massive transfers and substantial migration from east to west. The problem was greatly helped by the fact that East Germany’s five states contained only 20 percent of the population of the unified Germany. Nonetheless, by one estimate, the reunification of Germany cost about 1.6 trillion euros — about $2.08 trillion.

But that project looks comparatively simple when you consider the problems that will face South Korea if its North Korean brethren start hankering for a family reunion. North Korea’s per-capita income is among the lowest in the world. South Korea’s is at least 15 times higher. Economically speaking, this is like the United States trying to adopt Haiti — if Haiti were the size of Mexico. North Korea is a country in which the vast majority of people have no access to cars, cell phones, computers, antibiotics or an adequate food supply. How do you integrate 20 million new citizens who basically missed out on the 20th century?

The brutal efficiency of North Korea’s totalitarian regime will make it even harder. Though one hesitates to praise the late-era Soviet Union, it had at least grown beyond the worst excesses of Stalinist control. By all accounts, North Korea has perfected one of the creepiest propaganda states in history. The faith in the superiority of the system — and especially the “Dear Leader” — is so high that a government website actually thought it could get away with claiming that Kim Jong Il did not defecate. It’s tempting to dismiss this as so much propaganda, but many defectors say they genuinely believed what they were told ... and were shocked and heartbroken when they started foraging for food in China, and realized that even on the remote farms of Jilin province, dogs were given food like white rice and meat that ordinary Koreans hadn’t seen for years.

If reunification happens, all the people who have been left behind will have to go through the same shock. It will be terrifying, and humiliating. North Korea doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a modern economy — and its workers don’t have the skills. A 21st-century economy doesn’t just require workers who can use technology; it requires workers with initiative, autonomy and flexibility. In other words, all the things that totalitarian regimes spend decades stamping out.

By some estimates, it would cost South Korea $1 trillion to reunite with its long-lost brother. Which is to say about a whole year’s GDP. Though this would stretch over a period of years, it’s still something akin to asking every single person in South Korea to give up 10 percent of their income for a decade or so. And it would be years more before North Korea actually caught up. Before World War II, eastern Germany’s per-capita income was actually slightly higher than that of the west. Even today, more than 20 years after reunification, the region remains economically weak, with substantially higher unemployment than the rest of the country.

One can understand why South Koreans would be leery of taking on the job. On the other hand, the longer the North Korean regime survives, the wider the gap will be between North and South. Integrating North Korea may be scary for the South — but probably not as scary as another 50 years of watching mass starvation and military exercises across the DMZ.