Drudge Retort: Red Meat for Yellow Dogs
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pingnak

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This particular guy isn't really 'newsworthy'. He is just going to try his hand at being a 'freegan'. Look it up.

It appears to be a viable way of life, give or take. Not for me, but I'm not averse to shopping at the thrift store.

Who's more 'impoverished'? Me who owns a humble home and all of my goodies outright, or someone in a brand new middle-class castle, full of all the latest gizmos, but upside-down on their mortgage, and in debt up to their eyeballs?

At least I'm not a slave to the banks. I don't need a bail-out. I could reasonably be called 'semi-retired' at 41. I work to pay my small bills. I don't need to do more.

As for treating myself to 'new things', consider that any 'new thing' you buy will be an 'old thing' shortly after you get it. Some other fool will buy the 'new thing' and have it for sale second-hand in reasonably good condition when he maxes out his credit (or breaks up with his GF, who maxed out his credit for him). I don't mind buying something new of decent quality with expectations that it will last, but there's no reason to do that until the 'old thing' no longer fulfills its function. And I'm fairly ruthless about getting rid of things that I don't need. It means I can live in a small home and always have space, while many people I know live in enormous homes and have no space at all.

Whatever happened to the National Guard? Wasn't ALL of this the role of the 'weekend warriors' before they all got shipped to Iraq?

I suppose what this really means is Dubya has crippled the National Guard.

I can't imagine they attracted too many recruits over the last five years or so, since joining up to serve your community has basically become a direct ticket to some sh!thole in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Respond to advertising about how you'll help in disasters, discover that Iraq & Afghanistan on the other side of the planet are the big disaster.

Do a little research....

Apparently, 40% of the troops serving in Iraq at one point were reservists or guardsmen.

Some guard units that returned immediately lost 70% of their members. Their terms expired, and nobody wanted to re-enlist.

The reality of the situation is the National Guard is probably no longer a functional entity, thanks to the Bush administration's decision to deploy them overseas. Add that to the long, long list of things Dubya has f@cked up.

Somebody will have to fill those roles while the National Guard gets rebuilt (if it ever is). That apparently means using 'active duty' troops. So we're shipping out guardsmen and reservists with homes, careers and families to do active duty jobs overseas, and taking active duty kids and sticking them in barracks in the U.S. to sit on their hands 'just in case'.

Brilliant!

On the bright side, it looks like new recruiting tactics are paying off, and NG units are making their recruitment goals after a few years of NOT.

Anyway, SOME full-time alert bodies will need to be ready to roll in the event of an unexpected emergency. Earthquakes, fires, industrial accidents, etc. happen without warning, and far more frequently than terrorist attacks happen. Security and manpower is still needed. I'd just rather see our traditional weekend warriors be trained up to fill this role.

Actually, you COULD go further. You could go with people-powered laundry equipment, for instance.
homelessdave.com

I hang things out to dry, but am not as green as I'd like to be. While everyone around me in the desert had $200 electric bills, I had a $68 bill. Just get acclimated and set the A/C to 90F. 'Amazing' savings. No need to heat the water all summer, as the cold water came out of the tap warm enough to bathe in.

I'm 'financially independent' for having no debt. I own my modest house, my car, everything. No debt. Unfortunately, installing infrastructure to go off the grid is a bit pricey, and my 'independence' doesn't go much further than not having debt. Income to pay taxes and such is always a pesky problem.

I'll eventually get around to solar+wind, but that depends on getting the money to pay for it up-front. I don't have to install 100% of my electrical needs. Just enough battery-backed solar power to run the (CF) lights and computer without taxing the deep cycle batteries would be a good start. Let the neighbors sit in the dark during a blackout while I relax & read. The plan is to do it in a modular fashion, replace one circuit at a time with solar until only the very heavy loads are left on the grid.

Yeah, really. Bush got bored with all his failures looking for OBL in Afghanistan and invaded Iraq, instead.

Got that 'Mission Accomplished' banner put up on an aircraft carrier and posed for the cameras... even though the ACTUAL MISSION was to go collect some Taliban and Al Qaeda heads, NOT to trash Iraq and turn Iraq into an Al Qaeda stronghold, and then he seemed to do everything possible to pull Al Qaeda back together as a threat to world peace over the next several years.

This is my favorite press conference quote leading up to the Iraq invasion.

www.whitehouse.gov

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

REVOKE their 'Tax Free' status!

Then they can play politics all they like.

It's only fair.

projectfairplay.org

As for arguing scripture, that's easy! Just remember that no matter what the actual text says, in whatever context, it REALLY says just what the bible-thumper claims it does, and whatever you say, no matter how well read or contextually correct for another passage (or even the same passage) means absolutely nothing versus the divine message he (or whoever) just made up from randomly chosen text.

So really, you shouldn't argue biblical B.S. with the religiously afflicted. You may as well yell at a newspaper machine that ate your quarter.

I mean, sure, the bible's important literature to be familiar with, but so are Mark Twain's works. You should be able to recognize a bible quote, if for no other reason than to recognize an argument as vacuous bullsh!t.

Nah. Your credit card is safe on-line. If someone takes money without permission, you're still only liable for $50, no matter what the folks who sell you credit insurance tell you.

Of course, setting up some kind of automatic debit to run an account grants that permission, and that permission is difficult to revoke even if you cancel the card....

As for on-line tournaments, who says ONE person has to play your seat? Why not play with half a dozen good poker players, who take turns? Play two or three accounts each while the others nap. Occasionally, they'll even end up on the same tables and can cooperate there. A lot to be said for being fresher than everyone else because you played the tournament in two hour shifts, took walks, had fresh meals and bathroom breaks, etc. Even having more than one set of eyes glance at each others' hands helps. Not least having people to talk to INSTEAD OF those in the game will keep you from giving away tells, or even better, help to spot them.

As the tournament progresses, the likelihood that you'll have multiple accounts in one game gets higher, which can lock that top spot in for your group. Who knows? You might even have the final game be nobody but people in your group and then play ONE friendly, honest game.

After all, 1/6th or even 1/10th of [BIG PRIZE] is far better than the [NOTHING] you are likely to get playing alone. Even if you cheat like hell and lose anyway, you still learned lessons for the next try.

Did I mention online gambling was crooked?

Hell, don't even get me started about 'legitimate' gaming machines, and the kinds of brain damage you need to expect to 'win' at those, and then compare those with the on-line versions of the same. How could you possibly make a gaming machine any more crooked? Move it to an off-shore server, and you'll find a way.

The simplest cheat is still the best.

Log on with a dozen different accounts. Three or four of you versus one victim. Two or three versus two victims. Try to think of ANY card game that you could win when it's EVERYONE COOPERATING AGAINST YOU, and freely communicating in a way that you can't hear.

Channel all the bets to the strongest hand(s), and you'll almost ALWAYS win against your victim.

I don't cheat at games like these, I program them. This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg, but this is an example of the kind of cheating that there's no cure for.

The only way THESE people fouled up was keeping the accounts around too long. Just keep starting up new accounts. Even 'monthly' accounts can last one month. With 'Spades' there's no profit motivation for cheats. With Poker, a few sacrificial accounts is a business expense. Write it off on your taxes. 'Professional Poker Cheat' would look great on your 1040. The folks at H&R Block would flip. As long as you don't live in Nevada, there aren't likely to be any laws against it.

Now factor in using software to make the problem 'easier'. After all, decent poker AI is relatively straight-forward, especially if it's brute-force. Consider how much better it can be when it has access to most of the hands in the game. You could just peck in the contents of your hands, and rule out and calculate the odds of various hands in your opponent's hand. Practice all you like in consequence-free 'free' games, then move on to the money games when you're unbeatable. Modified or custom-written client software can make this dirt simple, but is in no way required to cheat at cards.

From very early in online gaming, people would sit and relay moves to 'chessmaster' type programs. It didn't make them 'proud'. It just made them feel good to make you lose. You thought you sat down to play a noob, but instead you're facing 'deep blue' with some little snot echoing your moves to it, and its moves back at you.

With card games, people would simply chat with you on the keyboard, and talk with your other opponent(s) on the cellular phone. They did this back in 1990, before most of you ever heard of the 'internet'. They're very good at it by now. Would two or three people cooperate to fleece you in a high stakes game? YES.

You don't need to make online gambling illegal. Just expose and advertise how irredeemably crooked it is, and MOST people will stop playing. The rest? Well, just STUPID, and if they weren't losing at poker online, they'd be wasting it some other way.

Think IP filtering can tell the difference? Think again. How many cellular network accounts could I plug into how many computers at one desk? Yeah, $300 a month would make for an expensive internet bill, so even cheaper, most people still don't know how to secure their wireless routers. In most middle-class neighborhoods, you can access several open routers at the same time. Use a handfull of $10 USB wireless adapters and virtual machine software, and you could literally be 'eight people' logged into eight networks on one machine with a couple of monitors. PEOPLE DO IT.

There was a double-homicide at a Toys R Us near where I live for Black Friday. Two men shot each other.
www.google.com

It really underlines what the holidays are all about, I think.

Advertise at the kids, breed a culture where those who have less ARE LESS, and put it on the parents to 'protect' their kids from being considered 'less' or considering themselves to be 'less'. Rack up the debt to make it so.

The holidays are about nothing but rampant, rabid consumerism.

Crowd control should have been on the menu that morning, and obviously it wasn't. Having even ONE uniformed cop on the scene probably would have prevented the stampede.

WalMart its self ENCOURAGES stampede behavior. Look at the checkout lines. You can't just wait in line there like civilized people do. The checkout lines are double-wide, for two or even four check stands so whoever is most aggressive cuts in line every time. 'You snooze, you lose'. It seems only natural that in such an environment, whoever stampedes through the doorway first gets 'dibs' on the limited 'big deals', because whoever barges in line gets checked out first, too.

It would be a GODSEND to Bush if he's only remembered for one particular f@ck-up, like tanking the economy.

Rather, let him be remembered for starting a worthless second war when he got bored with having just ONE unsuccessful war, gutting human rights, TORTURE, sinking the economy AND being a worthless sh!t-head.

And let's also take a moment to remember the RETARDS who voted for him, and wanted MORE.

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