phart010

Not saying that Chinas one party system is the model we’d want to follow in the US, but in terms of long term planning China has something we don’t. Since we have a 4 year election cycle, our Presidency has kind of devolved into a joke. You have people going around making special promises to special interest groups so that they can get the campaign financing needed to win. Then they spend 2 years fulfilling promises to special interests. Then they spend the next two years making short term policy decision they think will boost their popularity so they can hopefully get re-elected. When do they think about the long term of our country? Never. They are only thinking in the 4 year short term. Then the next president comes in and un-does all of the policy decisions of the previous president Meanwhile in a country like China, they are making long term plans on a 20-30 year timeline. They may not look it right now, because their progress has only had a short run, but I can see China making big strides over the next few decades. I think our government sees it too, which is why they are doing things like tariffs and so on to try and slow China’s progress. One thing China does not have that we do is variety of thought. This can keep us in check from going to extreme left or right, but can also bring progress to a halt when there’s no compromise.

Andrew Yang proposed “democracy dollars” to wash out the Financial influence of lobbyists. It’s actually a pretty good idea

My understanding was that the left Bros is the first print. And given the tremendous launch for Mario 3 (they even made a movie to promote it), there were a lot of copies made in the first print

I wonder if there’s a way to dump it with your save, fix the glitch and reapply the save file? If it really has sentimental value to you..

I’m pretty sure Middle East didn’t have any regional marked distribution for games back then. Saudi Arabia was the booming economy back then, and their electrical grid was 60Hz so importing US versions would have be more convenient than PAL 50Hz versions. Other gulf countries are 50Hz, but back in NES days they were probably just little desert villages, so probably sourced their import games and systems from Saudi Arabia. I’m not saying this is the absolute answer, but it’s plausible.

I wrote a VERY in depth reply to this, spent about an hour on it and the website did not properly transition when I submitted. Sorry I dont have the appetite to rewrite it. Have a good night

Ok. Since we’ve established that all governments are willing to violate the rights defined on that piece of paper without shame (including the USA) and will go as far as to publicly defend their own actions in courts, we have to admit the declaration of human rights is just a piece of paper. That said, other countries are not as bad as you’d assume. And the Western countries are not actually as “just” or “free” as they’d have you believe. Every country has its own benefits and issues. I’d argue that many less democratic countries that fail in freedom of speech kick our butt when it comes to offering cost efficient or even free higher education, free or affordable, medical care, peaceful police, low tax burden, etc. Not everything defined in the document is 100% compatible with the customs of every culture in the world. In that way, it’s a kind of a Western slanted document. But lack of some things defined in there doesn’t necessarily leave people in those countries feeling deprived, things sometimes just work differently in a way that some “rights” aren’t really be necessary to exercise. We have gotten to a point where we have kind of asserted to the rest of the world that Western style democracy is the ideal model of government. Western style democracy has only existed for maybe 250 years in America and in other countries for even less time. That is a long time, but not long enough to prove that it has stood the test of time. We are actually starting to see some changes in our democratic system in our generation, and who knows if the system will survive it. In reality, every form of government just an experiment. Everyone tries a little bit of this and a little bit of that to see what works and what doesn’t. If there truly was a “perfect form of government” everyone would scrap their current system and do that instead.

Well since all these other countries have signed onto the international declaration of human rights, then rest assured, you can go visit them all, exercise you freedoms to the extent declared and you’ll be safe

It’s just a piece of paper. Everyone signs it cause they want to be part of the club. At the end of the day, each country is gonna do what they want to do without much regard for this document (including our US government).

Might is right

Who gets to decide what is a universal human right and what is not? What if some countries don’t agree with what other countries have concluded? Who is right

That’s a perfectly valid way of going about things. I also value freedom of speech in the USA. But that’s a freedom extended by the US government for protection from the US government. When your in other countries you have to play by their rules. I find more value in my freedom to safely visit a large variety of places and the ability to enjoy beautiful landscapes and historical monuments than the ability to criticize governments for issues that don’t affect me.

Sure will when I have some time. Hopefully can do this later this evening

As a person who frequently travels internationally I’d be hesitant to directly criticize other governments policies online. Things you post are basically archived forever and you never know who’s going to hold it against you. We westerners definitely take our freedom of speech for granted.

Were these really the only 5 available at launch?

I wonder whether they will actually pursue any charges on him. Even assuming they have damning evidence on him from a-z, I think the US government considers that would be a bad decision for US domestically and in foreign policy. It would send a bad message to the international community. What becomes the status of international agreements that were made during the Trump administration? If we say Trump was a criminal and throw him in jail, do those agreements he made lose legitimacy?? What about legislation he signed. If he’s a criminal we have archived legislation that signed off and approved by a criminal. Assuming no twists with the electoral college and he peacefully leaves the White House, I think they let him walk and at worst try to stop him from being eligible for a second term. Joe Biden already said he’s not going to pursue any charges.

I can’t speak on the birther conspiracy theory because I’m totally ignorant to the details. But I can’t imagine they would actually let you run for President without first verifying your birth certificate. But just to play devil’s advocate here, I was watching a Patrick Bet-David interview with John Perkins who is the author of Confessions of an economic hit man. His story sounds pretty strange but eerily believable. Highly recommended podcast if you have an hour even if it’s fiction it’s entertaining. Although, if his story is true it’s strange that he would be able to openly speak about such things if he actually participated in them. One thing he said that rang loudly to me and I’ll never forget is “a plane crash is the easiest way to assassinate someone.”

Crazy it may sound, but the guy is the president of the United States, which happens to be one of the most important offices in the world. So like him or not, you have to consider what his administration says

At this point in the game it doesn’t matter what the conventional rules are. You can argue that we shouldn’t waste time/money to look into allegations that don’t have credible evidence because this a waste of tax dollars. Unfortunately just under half of the US population believes those allegations, so if you brush them aside as a waste time, that’s not gonna sit well with them. This is much bigger than Biden or Trump winning the election. I feel the way these hearings are handled are putting the country at risk of civil war. So they need to be dealt with officially, not just debunked or affirmed by biased opinion pieces.

Ill admit that our court system has it’s share of failings in the criminal justice. But for a high profile case like this, and with many eyes scrutinizing the evidence from both sides, I just can’t see bogus claims making it through and being corroborated by the top judges. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know. To be fair and objective, I think that every claim that’s made should be looked into. I am a dad and I have a full time job, so I don’t have the time to spend looking into all of these allegations myself. Courts are supposed to be objective. I’ll leave it up to the courts to determine and whatever they find (whether fraud or just baseless allegations), we’ll just have to trust in their findings.

You know what this is going to turn into. Right: SEE! They even took down the video Left: it was just a technical difficulty. You guys are crazy

Depends on how much fiber you include in your diet

Oops double post

Basically they were alleging that the voting software was developed by an offshore company in some other country and the votes get sent to some offshore servers to get tallied. They said there’s count altering algorithms that can be activated, multiple backdoors (physical and software) built into the systems that can allow altering the count locally and remotely. They said that the origin of these systems was actually an order from none other than Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They said he ordered these systems to be created in order to guarantee election wins in Venezuela and also to change the outcome of an election in Argentina. They basically said that the company that developed this system has been soliciting its system to other countries around the world and that many of the worlds elections have been altered by this means. If it is true, then how does the world deal with that? Aren’t all the election winners kind of grandfathered in, especially if they’ve been doing their job for years now. 2020 is a hell of a year.

Ok and now the video has been removed