JCviggen

Carlin ftw, but about the video title, voting for Paul would change exactly diddly.

+ a billion.

Only ever watched 30 mins of the show but the stupidity of it makes my hair fall out. I watch Gold rush Alaska though, equally idiotic but somehow entertaining. Penn&Teller making an idiot out of Watson on one of their bullshit shows was gold though.

I'd certainly think so, but the difference here is that one is assumed innocent until proven guilty. If you're proven guilty of plotting to blow up some of your fellow countrymen then certainly something like a military court doesn't seem particularly out of order. If suspicion of terrorism is enough to get you there then that's a different ball game.

I'm not sure about Russia but i'll check since I'm here now Israel I think is plausible. You can scratch Spain off that shortlist though.

I'm not trolling I was just trying to think where on earth a civilian can get tried by a military tribunal in his "own" country. And I figured "rest of the world" kind of excluded the US given the topic. You made it sound like a regular thing which I don't think it is. Not like I care one way or another about it really.

Rest of the world like where exactly? Iran? Syria perhaps?

Bit of a cliche, but here's an Eiffel tower pic I took at sunset. I'm in Paris several times a year but never bothered to make a pic of it until now lol. Just put the cam on a ledge near the Seine.

That's what I'm trying to tell you, you're so far off to the right that pretty much everything that isn't seems very left to you. I haven't voted left even once in my life. Then again, even the right in europe might be too left for you. Euro wise I don't care what it does, I don't get paid in Euros but if it does implode then everybody gets screwed whether you're in Europe or not. The same thing could happen to the dollar and we'd all be screwed as well. The world is one big place now and nobody's safe. About Malkin...seriously lol.

Hmm. It probably does. Definitely. The biggest problem the developed world has, is that its political leaders care more about their own job than do what needs to be done. And that most people are too stupid to see through the whole "vote for me and I'll give you X" thing. That's what has gotten us all trillions and trillions in the hole. This has nothing to do with left or right, it's universal. But in which direction is it being redistributed? Take the US for example. For the record I'm not one of those "occupy wall street" morons, but if there is anything the government over there has not been doing the last couple of decades, it's take from the "rich" and give to the" poor". Not really relevant, and the last thing we need is a shitload of unnecessary spending on military nonsense. Not a very efficient sector really. I could point out some historical inaccuracies there, but I guess for you if it sounds right enough it must be true. It is anything but intact, Russia (the biggest part) doesn't get along with most of the ex soviet states currently. I should know, I live in Moscow now You'd like it here.....hardly any taxes, cheap petrol, filthy rich people all over the place and a guy in charge who doesn't take shit from anyone, but will happily protect his billionnaire semi/totally criminal business buddies in exchange for political support. Anyway, the potential to make money here is huge, which is what matters right? Both painful cuts and more taxes are necessary, but that doesn't mean most people would actually have to pay more taxes. I read an interesting article on tax codes recently, and the main problem with the US one is how inefficient it is. Simple, no loopholes or other nonsense would go a long way to restoring balance without increasing any rates. In fact some rates need to come down and some should go up. There's the right way of taxing and the wrong way. I'm not sure if quoting Michelle Malkin is helping your credibility, even if she were making some valid and factual points for a change I'd rather avoid crackpots like that. It's one of those preaching to the choir kind of things. Just because someone's saying something that sounds good to you, doesn't make it exactly true. The truth tends to be in the middle, so reading extreme left or extreme right biased assholes is a monumental waste of time and intellect. Although, if you soak yourself in biased rubbish for long enough, even things that are not biased for a change will automatically appear to be of opposite bias. Fascinating really. I'm afraid you might be at that stage now. And really I'm not saying that I don't agree with some things you or even Malkin are saying, it's just that I can't stand facts being coated with this disgusting sticky bias intended to suspend rational thought and kill braincells.

Only saying Pops, that your "European leftist" politicians still have a long way to go before they can match the leftness of the actual European left You wouldn't BELIEVE how left it can get Also, I think your tendency to blame everything wrong with the country on the person currently "in charge" is a bit of a stretch. Sure if Obama had it his way and his way alone he could probably piss you off even more, but you have to accept the reality that any "electable" politician could become president tomorrow and not much is going to change. Except your perception of it perhaps.

Do you know what "left" is Pops? By any European definition of left the current democrat administration in the US is pretty far to the right. Hell there's "right" politicians in Europe that are more left than Obama. You have to be pretty far off-the-cliff to the right to have that kind of perspective. It's centrist at the most (not saying that's a good thing or that they are doing a good job mind you)

My point being, it's been a while. And it doesn't look like it's getting any better. TBH this US election stuff seems more like a weird reality show than something actually political.

When's the last time you've seen a political debate like that?

I follow these things out of boredom on the Economist's site http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/11/republican-nomination Pretty funny really, and makes me realize things down here aren't as bad as I thought after all.

Not really funny because it has a clear motive, it's only funny if you're a republican wanting to make fun of democrats. For people who don't care about the politics it's not funny. Mossback's list was funny because everyone can kind of relate to it.

2 and 4 are nice, can't really see anything interesting in #3 maybe that's just me lol

+1 great pictures

You have to remember that this is the old stock Bosch motronic that has had some hardware added to allow realtime map changes and flashing. It doesn't provide much of a platform to get anywhere near the functionality of a standalone EMS but it's also a fraction of the hassle to install. It's a halfway solution and you need to accept it as such. 4.4 might be fussier but I never really missed datalogging on my 4.3 version. The most important part was accomplished using maptrace to see which loads were being hit with the bigger MAF housing. After that I didn't really use it anymore and 2 hours on a dyno was all it took to perfect the mapping we had done on the street with nothing but a wideband. With the correct supporting hardware I have no doubt it could be used for cars well over 500 horsepower.

Yes that's what it does. You should always make your rpm points match more or less what you're going to rev to. You can do 200 or 300rpm more than the last timing rpm point but after that power is going to nosedive pretty quickly.

Good article.

Friend sent me a pic of me "hard at work" in Thailand a few months back... No really we did do a bit of work in between rain showers

In his example he wasn't exactly working his balls off, I'm sure in this hypothetical scenario we started from he worked them off before to get to where he is now, but still we were only talking about a very specific tax on capital gains (= an increase of value without having to create any service or product, in fact you don't necessarily need any staff to do it) I'd like to know from which percentage it becomes "punishment" and then compare that to exactly what percentage "the rich" or "businesses" by whatever definition are currently paying. I'm not totally familiar with the US system, but I keep hearing about huge multinationals that pay no taxes and billionaires that pay a lower percentage than their secretaries so i'm genuinely curious what a realistic figure is in this case. No shit there's less taxes and much more growth in "emerging economies" that's pretty normal. Once you get to the kind of developed prosperous nation like the US, europe, parts of asia etc it simply has to level off. We better hope China and India don't get to the same level or you're going to find out what lack of natural resources feels like. You don't need to tell me how fucked up everything is, you're preaching to the choir, just I think you might be complaining about the wrong thing here. A bit like focusing on symptoms rather than underlying problems. What about a place with no taxes? :ph34r:

I don't agree with most european (politicians) and don't actually live in Europe anymore (and happy to not pay european taxes anymore) My argument was about the silly example in the first post. Taxes are a part of life OK? You can't expect no taxes. Sure government is hilariously inefficient but show me where it isn't. That doesn't mean you can just get rid of most of it, that's just not realistic. So the taxes that do need to be raised might as well come from capital gains for example rather than tax manufacturing businesses that are genuinly struggling. I don't see any relevance to mention greece (or other problematic euro nations) either, it has nothing to do with taxation. It has everything to do with stupid politicians (a universal phenomenon) but that's another topic. Europe is made out of many different countries, not states. That some of the southern ones went on a spending spree when they got artificially low interest rates on their bonds has nothing to do with most other countries in the euro area. You can't just throw many different issues into 1 pot and expect your argument to make sense. Not at all, the stock market in itself is useful even if some speculation is counter productive. But this is about taxation. I don't see why any profits should be completely tax exempt. That won't stop any investors from trading.

I'd agree with you but my point was more about your bad example. You're not actually doing any work for the 4% in your example. You're holding property waiting for it to magically increase in price. Sitting back in your chair and watch your capital increase isn't really a business in the traditional sense of the word is it? I see nothing wrong with this kind of dressed up gambling being taxed. Businesses that actually employ a bunch of people let's give those a break. Those who expect to gain money by simply parking their capital somewhere, tough luck, that game makes no economic sense in the long run.