Aileron

Hey, I don't really believe that 'living do!@#$%^&*ent' bull!@#$%^&* regarding the Cons!@#$%^&*ution. The Cons!@#$%^&*ution is the rock upon which the government is built. Rocks aren't alive and they don't evolve. Putting the analogies aside, the Bill of Rights shouldn't change that often, particularly over a historically insignificant recession. An interesting email from some guy in Germany:

You know, I used to describe the War on Terror as a three-sided war between the Coalition forces, Sunnis backed up by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Shi'ites backed up by Iran. And yes, the Sunnis have caused us a lot more problems than the Shi'ites. The Shi'ites have still caused problems, and based on history, the reason for their lesser levels of hostility is not in their position, but rather their nature of hostility. Sunnis and Shi'ites are like fire and ice. As you correctly noticed, Sunnis are much more likely to charge right in. Their attacks are numerous but poorly planned. However, they rarely are deterred by defeats, and have been able to conquer territory by shear willpower alone. Shi'ites historically have been very patient with their conquests. The Shi'ite doctrine is more disciplined and violent than Sunni Islam. It is actually Shi'ite Islam which actually places Jihad as one of their pillars. They are also more scientific, and more likely to create a cultural tolerance to form diplomatic relations with allies, though those allies at the moment are the Non-Aligned Nations. Overall, while Shi'ites are less likely to start a war than Sunnis, they are much more likely to finish one. They are skilled in the Art of War. They usually spend several years gathering strength, then they make demands, and then strike with a single crippling blow. The current action is the classic dance between Shi'ite and Sunni. The Sunni force charged right in and lost. However, the Sunnis will regroup, and attack again over and over and over until they win. You say that they will be deterred by their previous defeat, but they won't. Keep in mind Sunnis use suicide bombers. As for Iran planning to strike: It is clear they have been gathering allies and pursuing better weapons. Already, they have an anti-west nuclear ally in North Korea. Now, Shi'ites aren't big fans of sneak attacks. They most likely would deploy their forces where they want them, and then give an ultimatum. In Iran's case, it would most likely mean getting a few nukes and some oil rich allies, and then deploying the nukes near major western cities, threatening to nuke followed by an oil embargo. While I do doubt as a demand they will try any 'convert to Islam or die' crap their Sunni brethren are so fond of, I would conjecture that their demands would be disagreeable.

Yeah, I wouldn't hold that against Obama either. This is a race for the presidency. The winner gets to be mocked on the Colbert Report every day, and gets to be labeled evil incarnate by a few dozen despotic countries. There's no sense in worrying about the candidate's feelings now. Ducky, what's wrong with his statement is that good Americans are supposed to cling to their rights. Those rights are what separates civilized countries from dictatorships. By the way, its also absurd. The other thing I don't like about Obama is that his support comes from the internet, for instance MoveOn.org. While I'm sure this includes a lot of normal people, the internet includes two other groups: Foreigners and miscellaneous losers. I don't mind foreigners donating to the campaigns for their own countries, but I don't like that group contributing to US elections. I'm sure as we speak some of the Muslim Brotherhood's money is being channeled over the internet into either Obama's or Clinton's campaigns. I'd rather it didn't get there. For another thing, the number of Chinese internet users has surp!@#$%^&*ed the number of US internet users. China could eventually use this to gain means of influencing US elections. The second group is just as bad. The internet is generally filled with paranoid middle-aged perverts living out of their parents' basement. Before the internet was invented, these people had no means to network with other human beings, because they were losers. Now, they can network with other similarly minded losers, and engage in things like pedophilia, coming up with conspiracy theories, and contribution to Obama's campaign. While I'd say such losers should get the legal right to vote, the fact of the matter is their status as losers demonstrates that they don't know how the real world works, and their opinion should not be respected. As for McCain being 'the same as Bush', keep in mind two things: First off, his son is a Marine currently stationed in Iraq. I'd guess he isn't going to risk his son's life carelessly. (Granted, as a Marine, the younger McCain is probably gung-ho and might mail his father letters about how he's getting bored and ask his father to invade Iran just so he can get a bigger body count.) Also, he's a former POW, so he'll probably be afraid for soldiers who get captured. However, the thing I really like about McCain is this: He was never a lawyer - he was a career fighter pilot*. The larger problems in the US are an indirect result of the entire government being over-populated by a single profession. My suspicion is that the abundance of lawyers or career politicians with law degrees is why both parties show a lot of negative similarities. It would be ideal for a third 'no lawyer' party to be established with the single purpose of getting lawyers out of office. That won't happen, but atleast we can vote for candidates who aren't lawyers. *Okay, so he wasn't a good fighter pilot. Plenty of pilots get shot down over enemy territory, but it takes a really special pilot to get shot down while parked on the flight deck. The notion that McCain and Bush are the same is really Democrat propaganda. Is is clearly obvious that 100 million people will not all have the same mindset, but that is exactly what the Democrats are implying when they try to paint every Republican as a Bush clone. Why they want to do this is simple. They think it would be easier to run against Bush that it would be to run against McCain. I don't criticize the Democrats for this. It's a fair opening. It will also be the first argument blown apart when McCain starts really campaigning.

Give me a minute to make sense of this. In the first paragraph of your post, you are pointing out how Hezbollah is spreading terror, but in the last paragraph of your post, you claim Iran is our 'ally'. Considering that Iran funds Hezbollah, which of your two paragraphs is correct? My exact point is that we know that Al Sadr is a selfish !@#$%^&* and he is only being humanitarian to build his own power. My point is that a year ago the environment in Iraq was such that the tactics he is using wouldn't have worked. Back then, if anyone tried that, a pack of gunmen from another militia would halt the aid. The current situation is an improvement upon the conditions where whoever could shoot each other the fastest was the winner. Compare it to Hezbollah if you want. Lebanon is not currently at war, so while far from ideal, for Iraq to go to the current state of affairs in Lebanon is an improvement. Maliki was supposed to lose that fight. Obviously he wanted to win, but he was going to lose because the Iraqi National Army had never operated independently before. It wasn't tested, didn't have troops with real combat experience, and wasn't organized right. We can train them, but still they'd have to do it themselves in order to gain those things. However, that being said, losing this battle will actually have a beneficial contribution to the overall war effort. By merely engaging in battle he is correcting those management issues and strengthening his army. The next time it is deployed, the officers will be more seasoned, the effort will be better organized, and the soldiers will have more confidence in their ability to operate on their own. Iran was viewed negatively long before Bush. Holding an emb!@#$%^&*y hostage tends to do that. I don't recall criticizing Iran for calling for a ceasefire. Its a good sign. At this point if it turns out that I'm wrong about Iran planning on taking over the world, I'd consider it a good thing.

That has to be the longest single post in the history of this forum, and keep in mind there's been some pretty long posts. I'm tempted to delete it, because it is technically off-topic (the topic is about Obama, not McCain), and it is a large eyesore. I totally think the US is screwed if Obama wins. Maybe its because I'm a small town Pennsylvanian. First off, for him to mock the people he's trying to get votes out of is incredibly stupid. Worse than that is the nature of the criticism that he made. He criticized Pennsylvanians for clinging to guns and religion. The direct quote and the video is pretty devastating in and of itself. At very best it paints Obama as being elitist and extremely arrogant. However, I could go farther with it too. All Pennsylvanians are US Citizens. Guns are protected by the Second Amendment. Religion is protected by the First Amendment. The First and Second Amendments are part of the Bill of Rights. He criticized a group of Americans for clinging to creator-endowed rights mentioned explicitly in the Bill of Rights. The resulting implication, that he thinks the Bill of Rights is something that needs to be weened off of the American populace, indicates to me that he is just another smooth talking arrogant lawyer who thinks he's so smart that he deserves the right to dictate what the rest of us do with our lives. Furthermore he thinks that if he's president, America would somehow not need the Bill of Rights. Look, I knew he was a flaming liberal nut before, but now I think he is Lenin reincarnated. If Obama is elected president, Iraq will pale in comparison to the suffering he is going to inflict on the American people at home.

I said that "I agree that Siberia is a good place to hang out." I would dare say it is the ideal anti-zombie climate. Also, if you can speak Russian you should have said so. Its still an odyssey. You are literally traveling around the world. It still has a low risk-benefit ratio. I mean, the advantage Siberia has over, say, North Dakota, isn't that stark, while the difficulty of getting there far exceeds the difficulty of grabbing a car and driving west. Military bases are the worst places to go...they are predicted to be the first things to go. You also mentioned Siberia has a lot of coal. Keep in mind you are sitting on the largest known coal deposit in the world.

Okay, I'll bite. First off, if the system is set up such that Al Sadr gains power by humanitarianism, and Iran gains power by organizing a ceasefire, its a step in the right direction. Neither party is being altruistic, but the fact that they are being rewarded by those things is good. Maliki was testing the water. Obviously he needs to re-tool his military leadership, but he had no way of knowing that until he tested it. We almost needed him to lose that battle in order to win the war. I mean, it is like a Chess match in a lot of ways, and something that politicians cannot say is that sometimes you need to sacrifice in order to win. Oh, and ALL sociologists are left wing.

Admittingly I know nothing of London politics, but to me it seems (based entirely on your post, I have no other info.) that you haven't given Richard Bambrook a fair !@#$%^&*essment. I don't really trust underground videos that much, because while the video shows that there's a skunk somewhere, usually in such cases the skunk is behind the camera. I'd say Boris Johnson.

Scratch that. Don't let a fat guy join your group, he'll eat all your food. Pick up an old guy. Wait, he'll die of old age or a heart attack. I got it, for the slow running meat shield of your group, stop by the orphanage and pick up a sickly orphan in crutches.

Zombies aren't smart enough to operate weapons usually. So, in the future, everyone's going to walk around ready for combat? Most people will still not be decked out for combat and will still need to gather supplies. Also, the first post places Z-day around 2012, so there. There won't be any plasma guns outside of some top secret you-bet-your-!@#$%^&*-it-will-be-infected-by-!@#$%^&*-loads-of-zombies military weapons lab. JDS, the one out of ten people not zombified are the ones with plans. Falco's long term plan is nice, except that his initial escape plan is flawed. Worst of all, you are trying to collect food before weapons. When you reach the supermarket, three things can happen. The area might not have been infected yet, it might be crawling with zombies, or worst off all, it could have been cleared by other survivors. If it is occupied by zombies, you'll need means of dispatching them so you can loot. Keep in mind, you don't have weapons yet, so odds are you'd end up running away. If they are fast zombies, expect to lose a few friends here. If the area is unaffected yet, other survivors will probably be looting the place, so you can just join in. The other looters might snag your favorite breakfast cereal, but you'll live. If there are armed survivors, they could be doing the 'Fortress Walmart' strategy which the professionals recommend. In that case, they won't let you take their food. Even if they aren't planning on staying, they probably won't let you take any food until they are done looting, and if its a large group they just might loot the entire store. So there you have it, you have a 1/3 chance of not starving to death on Z-day + 100. In the case of there being zombies, you can always pick up guns at home and go back, but that increases the chance another group of survivors will stake a claim to the spot while you were picking up your guns. Your plan clearly is to get to the store before other things happen, so I'll grant you that it does have some merit. However, if you don't get there quickly enough, without weapons you are screwed. Also, while I admit that you probably won't have traffic problems in Maine, do you honestly expect people to finish their work day on Z-day? Risk their lives for a couple bucks that will be worthless when the 'you own what you can loot' economy takes over? They are going to drop whatever they are doing and either execute their plans if they were smart, or run around panicking until they get eaten if they are JDS. One minute after the Z-day announcement hits the news, you can count on every car in the world being on the roads at the same time. Also, I must criticize your survival group. A track team? The idea is to choose buddies that are slower runners than you are. That way, if the worst happens and you end up running from a legion of fast zombies, your slowest buddy gets eaten and not you. You might be able to beat your teammates in a fair race, but when your group comes accrossed some zombies, your friends might have a head start on you. It would be best to have someone you can run circles around. Not only that, but with track team buddies, even if you outrun one of your friends and he gets eaten, you'll than have the joy of being chased by a zombie who used to run track. Before you go home, be sure to get some fat people to join your group. While we're on the subject, I'll assume this isn't a co-ed track team. Best pick up some girls on the way home too, lest your group has to resort to homosexuality after a couple of months being stuck in some cabin. Actually, since Zombies have no body heat, you don't really need a bad winter for them to freeze. A few degrees below freezing is all it takes. 20 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty much as good as -10. Ofcourse, areas with colder winters have colder autumns, so the benefit is that they would freeze earlier in the year.

Well, I could criticize other plans as well actually. Suicide Run's plan has a major flaw in that it is dependent upon at most four people to dig a moat and manage a farm. It takes months to farm food. Considering that the survivors would be spending energy every day running a farm/fortress, they would need a larger stockpile of food just to hold them off until the farm pays off. Farms provide food for years, though to be honest you only need to last several months until winter, though starting a farm couldn't hurt as it would be needed to rebuild civilization. .22 revolvers do exist. My father happens to own one. I'd agree that a .44 Magnum wouldn't be my first choice because ammo would be hard to find. However, while a .22 can be lethal, it isn't reliably lethal, particularly if you are at long range and need to take body shots. I'd go for 30.06, because it is a good compromise between firepower and practicality. Shotguns are overrated. First off, in real life if you find a shotgun in someone's home, odds are the sASSS for it are birdshot, though buckshot and slugs aren't exactly 'rare'. Also, while powerful, they are only effective at relatively short range. Yes, shotguns are ideal for fighting off zombies in a high school or mall, but you shouldn't be in those places. Any good planner will choose a location with a large line of sight so as to get as big a warning and many shots off at the zombies as possible, thus favoring rifles. Still, all that said, you don't get to choose...you have to take whatever weapons you can find. You also didn't mention a melee weapon. Finland's plan has the obvious flaw of being a large treacherous odyssey which questionable risk/benefit ratio. I agree that Siberia is a good place to hang out, though as the scenario said, there would be zombies in Russia too, and the risks of running out of supplies, getting lost in the middle of Asia and running into a legion of zombies, faring poorly trying to navigate accrossed the oceans with ameatur seamanship skills, undoubtedly in a ship large enough to require a whole crew to maintain, etc. far outweigh the geographical benefit Siberia has over upstate New York. Generally, you should stick to the area you know best. Your primary advantage over the zombies is you mind, and your mind is only as good as your memory. If you stick to the area you know best, you won't have to explore the area, will know where to find supplies, and what areas to avoid. Transplanting yourself to some strange continent will only add a whole new set of problems to deal with. For example: I'm !@#$%^&*uming you don't speak Russian. During one of your supply stops you need food and ammo. You come accrossed the market street of some town with boarded up storefront windows. If the signs were in English, you only have to go into two buildings: the gun store and the grocer's. However, since they would be in Russian, you wind up randomly walking into a music store, a computer store, two auto parts stores, a barber shop, and a bridal shop before walking into the places you need to be. Any one of those stores will contain who knows how many zombies, further complicating your ammo problem, requiring you to do this process all over again in the next town. It would be far better to just go to upstate New York. Their winters are friggin terrible enough, and the area is remote, though wandering legions from Buffalo and Rochester might be a problem. That reminds me, keep in mind that the 'hide in the country' strategy will only work until the inner city/suburban zombies run out of food. After that, they'll leave the cities and roam the countryside. Basically, you'll be fine picking off the odd straggler, until a group of 1,000 or so zombies randomly stumble accrossed your cabin, but then you'd be screwed. Granted, the scenario said that the cities will get nuked, but what if the nuke misses? Sure there are professional zombie survivalists: There are even books on the subject. The Zombie Survival Guide

Well, the serious opinion that Iran will get nukes from North Korea and drop them on Israel, leading to nuclear war. Ahmenijad's mentor did have this weird goal of reviving the Mahdi by causing sufficient turmoil. The plan could be to nuke a lot of people, cause the revival of this 'Mahdi', and then follow some 12th century dictator in a quest for world conquest. I'd guess Ahmenijad is only half as crazy as his mentor, but he's still nuts enough to use a nuke.

I'd have to apologize for criticizing incomplete's plan. He atleast has one. As for the rest of you, if you don't have a plan, you are planning to be food. Are you people planning to quote "I am Legend" as the zombies are halfway through your right hemisphere? All the experts agree that a mall is one of the worst places you can go. It is a large building with a lot of entrances, and generally lacking in survival supplies. They aren't as bad as a school or a graveyard, but generally malls are a place to avoid. I'll admit I didn't elaborate between fast zombies or slow zombies. Plans should be similar though. X`terr, your plan sucks. There's no way those houses will have enough food to last for more than a couple weeks of food, and how are you going to get water after public works fails? Also, if they are fast zombies, your 'no gun' strategy is going to get you screwed. You'll survive the first encounter, I'll grant you that, but you'll be dessert after the zombies eat your sister. Let me re-write my 'at work' plan for when I can't simply drive home: I'd grab a fire-extinguisher, then hop on the forklift and save my coworkers from the zombies. Then, we'd get some of the 18-wheelers outside, and drive to !@#$%^&*'s. !@#$%^&*s has a large supply of guns and ammo, as well as some other stuff, such as radios, portable ovens, and most crucially equipment for making ammunition, but lacks food and water. Probably by the time we get there, they will have already blasted all the zombies. We'll join forces, where we gather up their guns (and bows) into our trucks, and then drive over to Walmart. There will be survivors there, though they will be relatively short on ammunition. We'll then join forces with the Walmart survivors. Rather than fortify the building, we'll need to fortify the parking lot so that we can get out. Fortunately, our city planners designed the city to aid in zombie survival. In the vicinity of the Walmart, there are several supermarkets, home improvement stores, and gas stations. A police and fire department is somewhat farther away, but reachable. The various survivors would join forces, with Walmart as the base of operations, conducting raids into the surrounding stores. Raiding parties would be divided by political party, where Republicans would be responsible for shooting the legions of the undead, while Democrats would specialize in looting. Over time, we would use building supplies to transform Walmart's parking lot into anti-zombie fortress. If Z-day was in the spring, we would plant seeds in potting soil from Home Depot to farm in the fall, but we would start by eating the frozen food until the electricity went out, and then canned food later. We should have enough to last until winter, unless Z-day was spring, where we would have farm food. We'd have to use buckets or something to collect rain water. We'd also have electricity from gas-powered generators, though we'd have to ration that. When winter hits, the zombies will freeze, and we'll smash their frozen heads off.

Well, my home has plenty of high-powered guns, ammo, melee weapons, and is in a rural area with about 5 structures within a half mile radius, one of which is a greenhouse, plenty of farm fields, and two nearby fresh water streams, one of which entirely reachable by walking in the woods. Suffice to say if I'm at home on Z-day, I'll have few problems in the short term. Basically, I could sit out the zombie war from there. If I'm at work, a workable plan might be to hop on a forklift, run over and/or impale the legions of the undead out to my car, and drive home on the back roads. However, a more fun plan would be to drive to the nearby Walmart. While a Walmart would likely contain a large concentration of zombies, it also would happen to have everything needed for short term survival, and would be a gathering place for everyone who's in the know about zombie survival. (K-Mart however is a deathtrap - Thanks to Rosie O'Donnell they don't sell guns.) I guess the plan would be to peek in, see if the other survivors have cleared the zombies, which would be likely as it would take a while for me to get there and only walk in if they have. Then, the Walmart survivors would fortify the building until the government figures out that survivors are held up in every Walmart throughout the country and would start systematically evacuating those buildings. I guess I'd stick with driving home, but you can't make a good zombie plan if it doesn't involve Walmart. Incomplete, the problem with your plan is that the clerk at International Firearms will already be there on Z-day and he'll have to let you in. Generally, he'll have the guns and you're going to have to join his group if you want them. You'll have to convince him that either you're A: a good shot, or B: a slow runner. Also note that you won't be the only survivor there...probably every non-zombie in your neighborhood will show up there at some point, so you'll have compe!@#$%^&*ion. Considering that you don't own a gun, I doubt the clerk will believe story A. Story B doesn't work out for you either, because your role in the group would be as the first person eaten, meaning that the clerk will give you a weak gun and will spare as little ammo as possible on you. Ultimately the rest of your plan is moot, because you'll end up following this clerk around.

I'm not sure the world is going to end, but I am sure that everyone should make a Zombie Survival plan in case it does. Unfortunately Cancer, while I certainly think machines are evil enough to cause the apocalypse, I don't think they are competent enough. I have yet to see a video game AI that wasn't stupid enough to do something suicidal. And all computer games are in the category mathematicians call matrix-games anyway, which means there are a finite number of options both sides can take. The universe has an infinite number of options, thus no computer can function to cover all possibilities. My guess is a hoard of the living dead ends the world: Zombie plan topic I think Lynx is one the money with global warming. I do have a more serious prediction of the end of the world which would occur around 2012ish, but I won't sully this forum with BS unless you people really want to read it.

2012 is fast approaching, which if you don't know is the end of the Mayan calendar, and who can't deny the intelligence of a culture that never figured out how to make metal? In these times, it is important to come up with a solid plan of surviving a zombie apocalypse. There are three basic varieties of zombies: radioactive, unholy, and biological. Radioactive zombies are people who have been mutated horribly by either nuclear weapons or a power plant accident. Unholy zombies are dead people brought to undeath by demons or some sort of satanic cult. Biological zombies are infected by some sort of microorganism or parasite. Parameters of this excercise: -We will assume Biological zombies, as they are the most likely to need planning to survive. -Biological zombie populations grow exponentially, starting with a handful of infected, but growing rapidly as those already infected infect other people. Before a certain threshold, such outbreaks are easy to control, but afterwards they are infecting people so fast that they are impossible to control. assume that zombie populations are well passed this threshold. -The zombie virus has spread around the world via airports before it was noticed. assume every continent except Antarctica is infected. -!@#$%^&*ume that you realize the zombie outbreak at a 'normal' time of day either at home, work, or school. We will assume you are lucky and you aren't caught sleeping or in the shower. -!@#$%^&*ume a certain amount of government attempts to control the outbreak and rescue people. However, also assume that as always the government screws up whatever they try to do. This is an exercise in survival, not hoping the police save your !@#$%^&*. However, one thing that you CAN be certain about is that the government will sterilize major infected population centers with nuclear weapons, so hiding out on the top of the Empire State Building for two weeks won't work. -The biological zombies will carry a virus which infects anyone they bite. You can assume that a cure for the virus exists and will be found in possession of local police forces who fell before the zombie hoards. -!@#$%^&*ume you have the skills, talents, environment, and resources which you have in your current lifestyle. Overall, while it certainly would be easier to survive if you are a marathon runner living in Alaska who happens to own a fishing ship, and happens to be in a gun store buying a birthday present for your cousin, you wouldn't be doing yourself any favors by planning on those things. There will be three phases to your plan: Phase 1: Getting to safety. At this stage, you need to survive from when you initially know of the outbreak and until you reach phase 2. Primarily this means gathering weapons, transportation, and fortification. Phase 2: Short Term survival. This involves getting food, water, and sleep. Basically, how you would actually survive the legions of the undead rather than merely fighting them. Phase 3: Long term survival. (Optional) This involves a plan for the surviving members of humanity to destroy the zombie hoard once and for all. Since any sort of plan for this would require a large group of people, it is entirely unnecessary for you to have the plan which saves the day, because if you don't someone else in your group probably will. However, you would prefer to be the big hero who saves the day rather than some lackey, wouldn't you?

Back to the topic, the primary problem with the NAU isn't so much the idea but that our leaders both Democrat and Republican have gone off and started pursuing it without public approval, and we can't vote the idea out of Congress because we have a two party system and this thing is secretly being supported by both parties. We can only replace one NAU supporter with another. My guess is that with globalization, the workforce of each individual country is slowly turning into the global workforce. That is, first world countries like the US are inheriting the unsolved problems of third world rat-holes like China. This is leading to a bigger gap between rich and poor in the US because in China the gap between rich and poor has been huge, and when goods can be shipped accrossed the oceans with minimal costs, it pays to hire Chinese grunts. The solution is to start putting tariffs up until the third world problems are solved. I guess the NAU idea is to do both by exposing the US economy to only one third world compe!@#$%^&*or. Again, I'm not against the NAU, I'd just like a vote on it. Generally, my opinion of the lower class is that the primary element they lack is a feeling of hope. Without it, they lack motivation, and without motivation they lack capacity to control their destiny. Overall, I'd say that in the US the only thing that needs to change is liberal politicians need to shut up with the "You can't help yourself, but vote for me and I'll give you a kickback." to "You can help yourself." The hopelessness of the third world is significantly less feeling and more reality, but can still be solved. Usually its the fault of some greedy dictator sorely in need of a trip to !@#$%^&*. As I said before, I happen to be working an !@#$%^&*embly line at the moment. (That's not what I went to college for - if my alma mater sends me any more letters asking for donations, I swear I'm going to drive up there and shove the letter up the department head's arse) I work with the working poor, and fair to say at the moment I'm one of them. Generally, there are still options for the working poor. Just by simply working hard and showing up every day on time usually qualifies a worker for something - either a slight raise or a slight promotion. That's not much, but its usually enough to open up some options. Usually those options aren't easy, especially if the person is supporting a family. Still, they are options. However, most of the working poor aren't even basically diligent in their responsibilities. They are reliably unreliable, and generally a pain in the !@#$%^&* to work with. That being said, currently the vast majority if not the entirety of my salary currently goes to pay stuff that I have no control over - student loans, gas, insurance, etc., and I live with no luxuries at all. Basically, I can neither spend nor save any of the money I am making, because it all immediately gets consumed towards something needed for me to work the next day. If we figured that rent is about as expensive as student loans, I will admit that we are fast approaching the point where lower incomes can't save money.

Whoops, actually my source said Mexico is 2nd. Mine is a book, so it probably is a little out of date. Second vs third (1307 > 1290) is a reasonable drop. LC seems to be trying to defend against an imaginary accusation that the 'North American Union' is a crazy conspiracy theory, which is odd as half the people here agree with him on it, and the rest must atleast admit its not crazy. I mean, aliens in Area 51 is crazy. The belief in the Loch Ness Monster is crazy. The notion that leaders are actively seeking to create some kind of economic program uniting North America, when there is something similar in Europe, precursor treaties in place such as NAFTA, and various organizations devoted to its development, certainly isn't crazy. I mean, it could still be incorrect, but my point is that the theory is certainly plausible. JDS - ofcourse not. The only reason I'm suggesting to annex Mexico is because their government is dysfunctional.

I'd be careful about handing them out inside stores. The owners might have a problem with you doing that.

Congratulations, your dead body is worth $4825! Actually, what this poll judges is how much your body is worth for scientific purposes. If we were talking about harvesting healthy organs and selling them on the black market, these figures would be in the five figure range.

31 I got jipped

I'm 45% Hmmm, no zombie apocalypse topic. I have a 78% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.

The best example of what I am talking about is the fiasco regarding Hurricane Katrina. The Federal government was indeed efficient at providing overwhelming, late term aid. However, what they couldn't do was be an effective first response agency. No agency based in Washington D.C. is going to be experts on local geography in New Orleans. For first response a smaller quicker local government was needed. I'll admit its hard to come up with a lot of good examples, because for all our complaining, our governments mostly work. However, the need for regional and local governments is obvious. Many large scale programs will work in some areas but not others. If a federal government attempted to build a national program for snow plowing for instance, it would be destined to be a disaster no matter how it was written, because each local area has a local climate and would need different plans for each one. Thus, you always need small government, though that in itself doesn't discount large government. The inherent problem of a large government is that all governments must be based at a fixed location, and since agencies need to communicate with each other in meetings and inter-agency projects (basically things that can't be accomplished over the phone), a fixed common location is the most efficient. This is why capitals are made. The problem is that when a capital is created, the government in it develops a localized culture based on that capital. If the government's territory is too large, stark differences between the culture of the capital and the culture of some of the other places the government controls will be created, thus creating an inherent inefficiency in large government. The suggestion to annex Mexico was more sarcasm than anything. Still, to bak, your counterexample is flawed in that we can afford to have pride. Generally when one has a full belly and respectable employment, pride is important. When one lacks those things, pride becomes less of a concern. If the Mexican national pride was greater than their physical and economic needs, they wouldn't be flocking to the US in droves.

Generally, the larger a government is, the less efficient it becomes in certain ways, particularly in terms of solving problems quickly, and handling localized concerns. In other ways, larger governments may be more efficient. The point is you need a balance, and global super-governments are too big. S!@#$%^&*, the majority of US oil already comes from Mexico. I don't know if its refined south or north of the border, but since the system of them drilling it and us burning it is already built and working, there are sufficient refineries somewhere. Vets and seniors wouldn't care if it was done right. Bak, the only thing they would have to lose is pride. Generally the only people who put pride over practicality are !@#$%^&* bags. JDS, Mexico isn't Canada.

Um, Mexico has Oil. We annex Mexico and our international oil dependency goes away.