Tiptup

The idea that the social security system will be fine until 2042 sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. The government has been purchasing bonds with social security money and it will need to borrow more money to pay that back when baby-boomers start tapping the system. My guess is that such an event will be well before 2042. After that additional borrowing/taxation ends, then the social security system will be really screwed.

What I don't get is why democrats are so afraid of freedom and choice. Nobody would have been given a private investment account of their own unless they asked for it. Everybody else could have stayed in the old system (which I doubt they would have). Unfortunately statements like this perfectly illustrate how Democrats can't think about anything seriously:

Janskeet said:

but it is just an excuse to put it stock market or something, give it a way to filter back to the rich.

Who, in this day and age, honestly thinks Democrats are out to protect them from the rich? What a bunch of bullshit. The Democrat leadership just passed a 700 billion dollar plan of crap to bail out all of their stupid, rich friends who got rich via government spending and regulations (as apposed to honest work). Not only that, they were bailing out themselves: most of our legislators are rich and have a lot of money invested in the firms which stand to lose money (after Democrats encouraged bad investments). What a fucking joke and the American people are the butt.

rcb said:

yea, it seems weird that after he finished his duel with dooku that he needed his cane back.

Yep, and George's key reason for why the OT depiction of Jedi combat is supposedly compatible goes right out the window. :)

In general i agree with DarkFather. Sexual attractiveness is not something evil to recognize in teenage girls simply because they haven't reached the age of "18" yet. It's also something which can be commented on without requiring lust for that person (as in a Father telling his daughter that she's very pretty).

That said, however, I haven't seen the show and can't comment on whether it is creepy or not.

Puppet Yoda is less realistic in many superficial ways (in some ways it's more realistic, however), but it is far more emotionally gripping than what Lucasart's artists gave us in the prequels (both Episode I Yoda and CG Yoda). The character's physical model had so much more feeling and reality poured into his OT creation (for whatever reason).

Otherwise, I don't like the Yoda duels for two reasons: First, he's an "old man" and thus shouldn't be able to fight like that. Second, Yoda was so skilled with the good side of the force that he should have actually been able to reflect his opponent's attacks back against them and thus never need to use the force to perform any attack of his own.

Janskeet said:

A little bit of socialism goes a long way in this counrty. You people frown on socialism like we shouldn't have any, but I think it helps the econemy because it keeps the poor and middle class afloat. Without the help of wellfare, social security, these people would be either living on the streets or even more conservative and not play a role in our econemy. By giving them a piece of the pie so to speak we make our econemy stronger. It's not like people get a comfrable life on wellfare. Doesn't it pay people like $400 a month for an individual?

Keeping anything "afloat" does not help the economy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

Basic economics and basic common sense should tell you that not all investments are equal and that not all investments lead to a positive gain. It's not that difficult to understand.

In terms of comfort, yes, people are not meant to get comfortable on welfare and yet a lot of people are too self destructive to actually care about their discomfort enough to change (it's a bad investment to bail people out when they're destroying themselves). Even then, people have ways to get lots of money on Welfare; depending upon the State you live in, what programs a person is eligible for, and whether or not fraud is going on, a person can get a lot of money from welfare (and in the case of people with shitty life goals, that's a big problem).

As far as efficiency is concerned, most of the time people will take better care of themselves if they do what they need to do on their own (and take the tough consequences of life on directly). In the few rare cases when people do need help, the government does a terrible job of truly helping people's needs (it more often creates more problems than it helps). Before the modern welfare state, poverty was handled much better by private altruism. And, let's not forget that needless government employees suck up the vast majority of every dollar spent on the poor (unlike a private charities which are insanely efficient by comparison). Lastly, wherever the government has supposedly taken on the job of helping the poor, people tend to be much less involved with directly helping others and donating resources to the poor because they either believe that taxes are all they need be concerned with (studies clearly show that Democrat-run states are less giving) or are on welfare themselves (and don't give a shit about other people). Rich people and poor people should be concerned with helping everyone in need regardless of arbitrary designations of status and socialists generally don't seem to understand that.

The main reason for apposing socialism, however, is because it's NOT the governments job to take money from one person and give it to another without any common benefit. That is an act of theft by definition. It's just legalized theft committed by tyrannical majority rule. Populists who think they're doing some great act of compassion by advocating the stealing of people's money should be ashamed of themselves. They have no right to legislate morality like that. The ethical powers of government are very clear and related to the fact that it has the monopoly on force in society. That power should never be abused because we're envious of someone else's wealth or success. If you believe you know how someone else's money can be spent better for the sake of mankind, then you should first gain some self respect and honor by creating some wealth of your own to give away (and thus not waste other people's money on your worthless ideas).

I'm not a person of wealth by any means. In fact, in the situation I've been in for the last few years, I'm virtually certain I would have qualified and still would qualify for welfare. I have no health or dental insurrance and haven't used any such services in years and could probably use the ample amounts of government assistance available here in Minnesota. Welfare is a disgusting notion, however. All of the people in this country who work hard and do the right thing should not have government punish their productivity for the sake of our nation's control freaks; just because they desire to feel better about themselves by looking down on the "greedy" people they're supposedly punishing is no valid justification. I have too much respect for myself to take such an illegitimate form of "help" and believe that other people should too.

C3PX said:

[GL voice]This is a kid's movie, it always has been a kids movie, it is made for kids, adults just don't want to accept that, that is why they don't like Jar Jar, it reminds them that this movie is made for kids... this is a more mature film with much more serious romantic scenes so that young teenage boys will be able to get their girl friend to go see it in the theater with them. Oh yeah, and then there is this scene where a kid watches his mom die, then murders a whole community of humanoid lifeforms. And finally, there is a scene where a little child sees his father decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson. I always kind of wanted to explor the theme of kids watching their parents die, and I thought, hey, it really works for this movie, so I went with it... this is an even more mature film, intended for kids, featuring our hero murdering many children who think he is there to help them, but it is okay because he murdered them in order to save his wife, whom he loves very dearly. Oh yeah, then later he decided to kill her and their unborn child as well, just for the hell of it. Oh yeah, then his best friend cuts off all of his appendages and watches as he bursts into flames and slowly and painfully sinks into a pit of lava. Oh, and finally, to top it all off, his wife lived long enough to give birth to her baby, who just so happened to be two babies, and while there was nothing physically wrong with her, she decided the two little bastards were not worth living for and simply died just for the hell of it, leaving the two new borns orphaned.[/GL voice]

Aside from being funny, this really does make me wonder. What happened to the George Lucas that wanted to make a movie with clear morals where you can root for the "good guys"?

lordjedi said:

Change for the sake of change is stupid.  That's why I think "Progressives" are just lame.  Unless there's a good reason to change something, why do it?  When people say "Everyone hates change" I always say "That's not true.  People hate change for the sake of change because that's a lame reason to change things".

Most of the changes to the OT have been change for the sake of change, not change because they were broken.  Greedo, Jabba meeting Han, Hayden at the end of Jedi, etc, etc.

Conservation for the sake of conservation is also stupid though. By nature the universe is filled with good things, so always erring on the side of conservation is wise to make sure we're not destroying anything by acting too hastily, but there's nothing inherent in conservation which makes that so. In fact, too often people will fight to conserve evil things in my mind. If it weren't for the fact that evil generally doesn't work (according to trial by error and paths of least resistance), humanity would be a lot more fucked up than it is now. When all is said and done, it's my philosophy that people are designed to constantly and always seek new and better things, but that it's just a very difficult thing to do correctly.

C3PX said:

Tiptup said:

in the real world, when socialists are faced with facts and ethical logic, they tend to run away and be silent. However, the internet allows them to have weird little worlds where they can hang out and be safe with their crazy socialist ideas and never face challenges. On an even-handed site like this, the general fact that "conservatives" take issues more seriously and are willing to argue them more will influence socialists to hide their beliefs by comparison. That's why it seems overrepresented to Janskeet or Asteroid Man.

 

Too true my friend, too true.

Another aspect is the way people will be offended and insulted by merely having their personal beliefs challenged. They'll throw around real insults in response and accuse whole groups of people of horrible actions and motivations on the basis of simple disagreement. Now again I'm really generalizing here, but I find that socialists tend to do this more often as well. As such, I think it's another sad reason why they tend to avoid discussing reality.

A historical drama by George Lucas? Does he have any skill left in him to actually do that?

I don't know what I did, actually. I made BOLD text in that last post. Perhaps that's what messed up the page on the politics thread too (I didn't use BOLD text in the politics thread but I did copy/paste from notepad which strangely made the text bold in Jay's new software).

There's nothing wrong with "carbs" if you exercise.

vote_for_palpatine said:

Mielr said:

I think that "Georged" is a bit too general. George who? George Washington? George Clooney? LOL!

Not too many people have the name Lucas.

 That's true, but I like that "george" has an inside connotation to us in the OUT community whereas most using it wouldn't even be aware. Lucas is less subtle.

Hmm, that's nicely elitist, but perhaps not elitist enough. Does he have a middle name? :)

lordjedi said:

As far as Clinton goes, he had a real Republican congress to contend with during 6 of his 8 years.  Remember the "Contract with America"?  Clinton didn't get to spend nearly the amount he wanted.  And his "surplus" was a projected surplus.  See this link http://www.letxa.com/articles/16

Wow, I didn't really ever believe all of the "surplus" nonsense we were fed back then, but that definitely just explained to me why it was bullshit. How the news media can be so complicit with such a lie by our politicians makes me angry. Treating social security income—which has its own obligations—as a fully legitimate income is criminal as far as I'm concerned.

Otherwise, yes, the Republicans did help appose a lot of bad spending under Clinton, but not too much. They began many of their own bad spending habits during those years (we just had the dot com bubble hiding it). Also, you have to admit that Clinton was concerned with cutting spending more than most of his fellow Democrats (and the first-term version of Bush).

lordjedi said:

Yep.  The Republicans tried to win the hearts of Democrats by turning into Democrats.  Unfortunately, it didn't matter.  People hate Republicans because they're Republicans, not because of what they do (historically, they've done far more good than Democrats).

They didn't try to just win the hearts of Democrats with incredibly wasteful spending, they spent even more trying to maintain internal Republican loyalty. The Democrats were completely in control of the United States legislature for almost half a century before them and yet, at the same time, they were a very fragmented and diverse coalition of interests. Each member's loyalty to the Democrat party (and the votes the party wanted) was not maintained via ideaology, but wasteful, you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours spending. A lot of spending was also given to Republicans over those forty years, but not nearly as much (Republicans were treated like dogs deserving only the occasional bone). Republicans finally upset the Democrat majority in 1994 by running on a very idealogically driven campaign. However, once they got into power they immediately stopped being strong on idealogy and instead opted to ensure internal loyalty through spending in an exact mimic of the Democrat party that came before. Not only that, but they didn't even do it very well. They allowed Republicans to have all sorts of goodies in comparison to the loyalty they got back and they even let Democrats go fairly wild. They even sucked when it came to bullying Democrats around in the same fashion that they had been previously bullied. In terms of imitating Democrat leadership, Republicans were still acting like they were in the minority. All in all, they were weak, pathetic, and had no guiding vision or principles they cared about; everything was all about growing a "big tent party" where it didn't matter what Republicans believed or stood for so long as they wanted the R in front of their name.

The main reason I highly dislike McCain is because he's from both the part of the Republican party that resists "conservative" ideology and principles while also being from the part of the party that wants to wimp out and be nice all of the time. It's a bad combination.

Either you should stand on fucking principle or be a corrupt hard ass! Choose one! At least then we know how to regard you. This Mister-Rogers, I'm-such-an-experienced-nice-guy nonsense is obnoxious and ultimately accomplishes practically nothing . . . ah well. :)

I think Asteroid Man is correct when he says that people who like to hold onto the good things that came before will tend to be "conservative" because I think that's the definition of conservatism. Conservatives, in the most basic sense of the word, fight for everything good that they have now and had in the past. Believing in low taxes and small government is an ethical standpoint, however, and has nothign to do with the term "conservative" all by itself.

That's why a lot of terms that people use bug me. Everyone's a conservative on one thing or another. For instance, even those who value being "free" or "open" must value that in a way where they want to conserve it or else "valuing" those principles means nothing. Liberal is a much more ethically meaningful term for people to assume by comparison (linguistically and historically); it means they value liberty.

Thus, that's why it's stupid to say that most people here are in line with what would be pop-culture's definition of political conservatism. Everyone's a conservative about something and in this case, most people who first came to this site care about preserving good movies. That doesn't mean we all match or identify ourselves as conservatives in the popular sense of modern American politics. In fact, as I said earlier in this thread, this site seems to attract 50/50 and that any prominence of "conservative" viewpoints in political discussions is due to "conservatives" wanting to discuss the details of issues more.

If there's one thing about the internet I don't like, it's the extreme niche nature of it all. On the one hand, I like this site because it gives me a place to vent my frustrations about the original trilogy's fate (while still affording great aesthetic debates about the subject). However, at the same time, I realize that in the real world that's not an interest that people would really tolerate. They'd look at me and be like, "Uhh, you need to take a seat and calm down. It's just a movie." Likewise, in the real world, when socialists are faced with facts and ethical logic, they tend to run away and be silent. However, the internet allows them to have weird little worlds where they can hang out and be safe with their crazy socialist ideas and never face challenges. On an even-handed site like this, the general fact that "conservatives" take issues more seriously and are willing to argue them more will influence socialists to hide their beliefs by comparison. That's why it seems overrepresented to Janskeet or Asteroid Man.

Anyways, another area I'd agree with Asteroid man is on the topic of being open to ideas. Let truth go where it can. (Just be skeptical and and make tough arguments all along the way.)

negative1 said:

i take it you don't care for the 35mm restorations of star wars, and the empire

strikes back, or the CED trilogy, or any of the other ones in the works?

Where on earth did skyjedi say anything like that? Heh, the more and more you post the more and more you cement yourself as a self-righteous jerk. I'm quite frankly surprised that so many people seriously respond to your posts. Anyone who'd invent the silly accusations you throw at people isn't worth anything measured.

Janskeet said:

I like this:

Although, Bush put us in a much deeper hole than $482 billion.

Reagan was fighting the cold war and the legislature (you know, the part of our government that controls the purse) was in the firm hand of democrats. The same is somewhat true with Bush the elder as well (he claims that he had to go along with democrat spending because he wanted to fight a war). Clinton, then, finally helped control spending by quite a bit, yes, but he campaigned and won as a middle-of-the-road-guy (unlike Kerry or Obama) and, unfortunately, too many of his spending cuts came from destroying our military capabilities.

With Bush the younger, yes, he was way out of control when it came to spending, but that's because he supported and tried to seriosuly fund Democrat programs. It also didn't help that the Republican legislature perfectly immitated the Democrat legislature that came before them by trying to ensure loyalty with wasteful spending. Republicans were out of control and deserved to lose control as they did. However, you can argue that John McCain was trying to fight against the trends of Bush and his fellow legislators at the time; there's no reason to assume he'll be irresponsible on the spending issue and we have plenty of reasons to assume the opposite.

lordjedi said:

Tiptup said:

Both candidates sucked when they tried to talk about the economy. McCain kept using incomplete sentences and Obama seemed to ramble about nothing. Once they got to foreign policy they seemed to deliver their lines better. All in all, McCain did better in terms of appealing to people who want fiscal responsibility and knowledge of the world and Obama did better in terms of being a calm smooth-talker who's good with worthless word games.

Why does this surprise anyone?  How long was this debate scheduled for?  And what was the topic?  Foreign Policy.  They shined when they started talking about that because that's what they've been studying for the last few weeks.  They've both been coming up with talking points and what not on foreign policy, not economics.

Yep. I was expecting it to be this way. However, it pisses me off. A politician should know how to confidently speak about an issue on the basis of the principles he or she believes in. If McCain had a heartfelt opinion on the bail-out and his economic strategies then he should have been able to talk about them. As it was, he gave us virtually no difference from Obama.

That part of the petition wasn't ideal (since I already owned the 04 set), but if the OT release had been standard DVD quality I would have put up with it.

Both candidates sucked when they tried to talk about the economy. McCain kept using incomplete sentences and Obama seemed to ramble about nothing. Once they got to foreign policy they seemed to deliver their lines better. All in all, McCain did better in terms of appealing to people who want fiscal responsibility and knowledge of the world and Obama did better in terms of being a calm smooth-talker who's good with worthless word games.

The head doesn't look right . . . too big?

The spirit of the petition wanted all of those things. George Lucas also knows the spirit of what Star Wars deserves and yet he refuses to do what's right. In other words, I think our current problem is more one of attitude and not specifics. How do we affect George Lucas' attitude? I don't know. :(

lordjedi said:

Sorry, but I just don't think that's going to cut it with John Q Public.

I don't care to debate what the public likes or dislikes when it comes to such fuzzy areas and so your apology is unneeded. However, if the profile can't be upgraded to have "picture in picture" and "web content," I don't really see that being as big a deal for John Q Dipshit as you want to argue. The player still works fine (albeit slower) and you get what you pay for. But, anyways, I was just showing you that a player was on sale for $200 somewhere (since were trying to look for one).

lordjedi said:

That would be a silly player to buy at this point.  Profile 1.1 is final and on all new players.  Unless this player is upgradeable, that would be a waste of $200.  I payed about that for my Apex 600a, but it was upgradeable.

Yes, it looks like that model's fimrware is upgradable. You just have to log it in to the internet.

lordjedi said:

DVD player prices were as low as $200 in 1999 and as high as $1200.  http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpidvd.htm Even on sale, I can't find a Blu-ray player for that price.

Unfortunately I can't really find any sales statistics on Blu-ray players or discs, but the article I originally linked to doesn't seem to impressed with sales figures to date.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDP-S300-1080p-Blu-ray-Player/dp/B000PALZE0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1222170931&sr=1-1

Also, from what I have seen, Blu-ray's installed base is ahead of what DVD's was at this same time in the format's life cycle (three years old). That's actually pretty good considering a format war with HDDVD and the lack of HD televisions installed in people's homes.

I own a demo that has the Hoth level and a few others (the Hoth level is the only level in the game that was worth playing). From what I remember, it was exactly the same except for smoother graphics. I didn't play the N64 version much though (didn't own it).

CS said:

Anyone share the same opinion? 

I'm guessing yes (to one degree or another). Star Wars is much more important to me than the Indiana Jones series, but other than that I wholeheartedly share your sentiments.