Offering constructive criticism to the social cripples in our midst since early 2005.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
This really pissed me off. She said she has no regrets about what she did, and that she still loves the pets, etc.

Yeah and that bit about "when it's your time to go, it's your time to go, and it was my son's time to go that day and there is nothing we could have done about it." WTF. And she knows the male animal was in a craze b/c the female was in heat (ick when she says she "told" the female pit to "just let him [male dog] do it to her") as evidenced by the fact that she puts the kid in the basement. Except she knows "he never listens" and that he'd probably get out. Yet she has no regrets.

She AND the dogs should both be shot. Who cares if it is not the "dog's fault". Who needs to risk it happening ever again. They shot that horse in Gone With the Wind and all he did was miss a jump post. It's only fittin I say.

[BloatedSlave]

Originally posted by Nut Penske
Not Nuts -- Nutless.

Penske has no Nut socks.

blueballs?

nut_casesensitive?

go back to your drawing board, hack.

[Nut Case, Sensitive]

Originally posted by BloatedSlave
blueballs?

nut_casesensitive?

go back to your drawing board, hack.

Nuts!

[Gattigap]

Slave, Hank and perhaps others will be cheered by Samuelson's op-ed in WaPo today.

The good news: Europe is hereby fucked harder than an Amsterdam red-light vendor offering discounts, and it's not due to France's Gaullist policies, it's the killer combination of demographics, xenophobia, and the financial burdens of the social state.

• This pivotal Europe is now vanishing -- and not merely because it's overshadowed by Asia and the United States.
  
  
  It's hard to be a great power if your population is shriveling. Europe's birthrates have dropped well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children for each woman of childbearing age. For Western Europe as a whole, the rate is 1.5. It's 1.4 in Germany and 1.3 in Italy. In a century -- if these rates continue -- there won't be many Germans in Germany or Italians in Italy. Even assuming some increase in birthrates and continued immigration, Western Europe's population grows dramatically grayer, projects the U.S. Census Bureau. Now about one-sixth of the population is 65 and older. By 2030 that would be one-fourth, and by 2050 almost one-third.
  
  No one knows how well modern economies will perform with so many elderly people, heavily dependent on government benefits (read: higher taxes). But Europe's economy is already faltering. In the 1970s annual growth for the 12 countries now using the euro averaged almost 3 percent; from 2001 to 2004 the annual average was 1.2 percent. In 1974 those countries had unemployment of 2.4 percent; in 2004 the rate was 8.9 percent.
  
  Wherever they look, Western Europeans feel their way of life threatened. One solution to low birthrates is higher immigration. But many Europeans don't like the immigrants they have -- often Muslim from North Africa -- and don't want more. One way to revive economic growth would be to reduce social benefits, taxes and regulations. But that would imperil Europe's "social model," which supposedly blends capitalism's efficiency and socialism's compassion.

Not quite so good news: This isn't really good for the US.

• All this is bad for Europe -- and the United States. A weak European economy is one reason that the world economy is shaky and so dependent on American growth. Preoccupied with divisions at home, Europe is history's has-been. It isn't a strong American ally, not simply because it disagrees with some U.S. policies but also because it doesn't want to make the commitments required of a strong ally. Unwilling to address their genuine problems, Europeans become more reflexively critical of America. This gives the impression that they're active on the world stage, even as they're quietly acquiescing in their own decline.

I'm inclined to accept this analysis, at least in the larger sense. Demographic problems are hard to reverse, though it could probably be overcome if they face up to their problems and start allowing more immigration and trim back entitlements. It's a tough proposition, and clearly Samuelson isn't convinced.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Europe is getting old.

Doesn't Japan have the same demographic issue? Doesn't China? And neither of those countries is more open to immigration that Europe.

[BloatedSlave]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Slave, Hank and perhaps others will be cheered by Samuelson's op-ed in WaPo today.

Demographic problems are hard to reverse, though it could probably be overcome if they face up to their problems and start allowing more immigration....

Maybe the rank and file of the democratic party should follow their leaders, like Babs Streisand, Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, and emigrate to France.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Doesn't Japan have the same demographic issue? Doesn't China? And neither of those countries is more open to immigration that Europe.

Japan indeed has this issue.

FWIWI, Russia has a similar issue, though I think their more immediate problems are AIDS, the brain drain out of the country, and generally getting pickled with vodka.

China, I haven't heard this about. I thought all the people in those manufacturing facilities were children, not the elderly.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Japan indeed has this issue.

FWIWI, Russia has a similar issue, though I think their more immediate problems are AIDS, the brain drain out of the country, and generally getting pickled with vodka.

China, I haven't heard this about. I thought all the people in those manufacturing facilities were children, not the elderly.

Any modern industrial economy with a sizable amount of social support will have this problem. People are healthy, have fewer kids, and grow old, needing greater retirement support. The U.S. would have a problem, net of immigration (even with immigration for that matter).

China's time will come--according to this moving graphic, some time in the middle of the 21st century, when the 1 is enough policy starts biting them in the ass.

[Shape Shifter]

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-break...2755-6408r.htm

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Gattigap

The good news: Europe is hereby fucked harder than an Amsterdam red-light vendor offering discounts

Translation: Europe wants it's cake an to eat it too (what is it with Europeans and cake anyway), but reality is not complying.

[captain marvelous]

have we caught Bin Laden yet? are we still trying?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by BloatedSlave
Maybe the rank and file of the democratic party should follow their leaders, like Babs Streisand, Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, and emigrate to France.

Wow! That's funny!

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by captain marvelous
have we caught Bin Laden yet? are we still trying?

This isn't a sock, its a BT clone, a real one. I'd forgotten how they are.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Wow! That's funny!

For him, yes. He killed with that one at the Heritage Foundation intern mixer last week.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Gattigap
The good news: Europe is hereby fucked harder than an Amsterdam red-light vendor offering discounts, and it's not due to France's Gaullist policies, it's the killer combination of demographics, xenophobia, and the financial burdens of the social state.

This is bad news: One of the effects of economic development and education is that you reduce the population growth. Japan has a really bad case of this. If China and India keep growing economically then they will hit the same problem. This is a problem because most of the muslim world's population is growing by leaps and bounds. North Africa and Persia especially. In these countries you have slow to no growth, and tons of new young people with no job prospects. If we stop buying their oil the problem will become seriously acute. That is what I call fertile ground for more terrorists. The only solution to this problem is get governments in the Middle East that encourage economic growth. The Baathists, that used to be in power in Iraq and still are in power in Syria are Arab nationalist socialist parties. In other words socialist governments that prevent economic growth and consequently encourage population growth. Anti-western sentiment in the region led to anti-capitalsim. Our only hope is to have governments in the Middle east that embrace policies of economic growth.

Oh but wait - I forgot - we are not suppose to encourage governments in the middle east to let evil multi-nationals exploit them and we shouldn't be knocking out bad regimes. I guess we should just cross our fingers and hope for the best.