I gave myself salmonella last year. I watched the history channel so i could be upset about 2 things at once.

Basically, the GOP has a fairly regressive contingent within their political coalition - it has been present for some time. Usually it's been weeded out much earlier because more traditional power brokers within the GOP itself have been too powerful to let those regressive sentiments out in the open. However, because of changes which've been brought about by the 2008 recession, a lot of people feel like their backs are against a wall, and many of the traditional power brokers within the GOP have been forced into the background or out of party leadership positions - out of fear of attack from the right-wing of the party. The other issue is that the way elections are run in the US, *usually* the primary process hasn't begun this early, and in the past the strategy was more or less to save all of your campaign money until the last 3 weeks before an election, with the majority of your time prior to those last 3 weeks before the Iowa caucus mainly just going to setting up support organizations within the various states. Due to the campaign beginning much earlier, more fringe candidates have the ability to outspend their traditionally minded opponents (who are saving most of their money for the sprint to the finish). The same thing happened in the last presidential primary year with the veritable parade of candidates who were "in the lead" prior to Romney's eventual nomination.

Trump isn't going to win. But, precisely because of that, and the fact that we're still quite a way away from any actual votes, he and other fringe candidates (Ted Cruz, Ben Carson) will likely have their moment in the sun first. Before the more traditional candidates (like Marco Rubio and especially Jeb Bush) even begin to try. The only game they're playing right now is "don't fuck it up." Don't say anything egregiously stupid, don't spend your money yet, don't get involved in any big fights, and don't get written off as an amateur or a hack.

It's easier to see in the smaller democratic race - where Bernie Sanders and Mark O'Malley are both challengers to Clinton from the left of the party, and they're more or less smoking what they've got now because they'll never be able to compete with Hillary once it actually matters - while Hillary isn't doing much of anything until most people *actually* begin to pay attention - basically just "don't fuck it up".

Why is Trump currently in the lead and not another fringe GOP candidate (Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, FIorina, etc)? It's mainly because he's a more effective demagogue. What a demagogue wants is not only to say highly inflammatory things - but they want the audience to feel good about *themselves*. For example, if you watch a Trump speech, he'll regularly insult and belittle anybody running against him in exceptionally strong language - but generally immediately after he'll praise the people supporting him for being so smart, so patriotic, or what ever else - that can make some people feel good about themselves. He does it far more effectively than any of the other fringe candidates (who know they'll never last past the first few primaries at best).

One of my best friends growing up committed suicide when she was 16 - it was an interesting time because I had just had massive surgery a month prior and had missed that whole month of school, and was due to be back in classes, and then took an additional 2 weeks for events surrounding that particular circumstance. What was shocking to me was anybody who was close to her knew she'd been struggling with depression and anxiety, and had tried to push her into getting help (counseling etc) she did go, but ultimately it wasn't effective - I was with her 3 days prior to her suicide and she seemed abnormally happy. That's always kind of stuck with me as to whether or not there was something I could have done or said.

My second brush with suicide was when I was teaching in the Indiana prison system for GED courses. I had worked with a particular student three times a week for roughly 2 months, and one day he was particularly despondent, because he was set to get out in a few months, but some new charges had been brought against him and he was likely to do additional time. We didn't do any work, we just talked about life experiences and reminisced - I also gave him the names of some lawyers that I know. He kept coming back to his kids he hadn't seen in two years. Then, after we'd finished, he was my last student of the day, so I packed up and went home, and about 20 minutes into my drive home, I got a call from the prison wanting me to come in and talk to them because "there has been an incident and we need a signed statement" so I turned around, and this fellow had killed himself mere minutes after we'd parted. I quit after that.

Usually people who end up committing suicide have a plan in advance, the surest warning sign is that they'll often discuss these plans in advance, or bring it up - people talk about things they're interested in, it's a human thing. If you run into that it's in everybody's best interest to suggest taking some sort of positive action. Being non-judgemental and calm is helpful too.

First game i ever played https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6M_dRb492U

It's oddly similar to games i play now

But my first true gaming love was SNES' Final Fight

Poor old sac.

Yes, bloodshed plays a fairly prominent part in human history. There's certainly no denying that. Should it be the first recourse? No. Even the most simple and basic tracts demonstrate this even as early as 1847 (which was when Marx's thought was still in its infancy more or less). (peaceful revolution?) "It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it." - Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847. That commitment never changed.

To refer to the February revolution as a social-democratic one is only sufficient for the most comic book-esq reading of history. The reason the Kadets were unable to hold themselves together is because they failed absolutely to address the land question, were wholly unable to amend the supply situation on the home front, and embroiled Russia further into World War 1. You don't get a revolution that can survive a civil war unless the official government is completely bankrupt politically speaking. As for the rest, I should point out that the revolution of October (November) 1917 was actually fairly bloodless, but then of course Russia was invaded by no fewer than 7 nations (more if you get picky) (Germany of course was already invading, Japan, The USA, UK, France, Austro-Hungaria, Czechoslovakia (if you count the Czech legion since they were intermittently hostile to the Reds) and then the conflict did become quite bloody.

It could just as easily be argued that the cold war was a force for stability in the world, and that the uni-polar geopolitical foundation we have today is less stable. For the rest I don't generally deal in alternative fantasy history because you can manipulate the fantasy in any number of ways to attempt to prove your points.

I agree with you on the Ba'ath government. The Russian take on this is best - leave Assad, get things calmed down then transition to some other formation possibly with or without the involvement of the aforementioned optometrist.

I don't really understand where you're going with your commentary on the Kurds - they are the ones being relied upon. The central concern for the US has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with the fact that if the Kurds are made too powerful they'll declare independence unilaterally and disrupt the borders of several states in a very sudden way (Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq). The Kurds ought to definitely have their own state, but it would be better (less disruptive) for that to be done in a non-unilateral way.

No, bombing Raqqa isn't racism in and of itself. At this point there's virtually no way to justify not assisting those forces on the ground. However, the racist part comes in when you say for example, that this situation is the fault of something within Arab peoples themselves, or Islam generally, because this whole situation stems from US actions in Iraq over the last decade+ (arming different groups willy-nilly, paying different groups to fight will-nilly etc) and it's (and other's) imperialist designs against Assad which predate the Arab Spring uprisings.

Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen is abhorrent. Why isn't it being covered? I would argue because it's disruptive to the narrative that "we" as in the West only support good, nice, pro-democracy types. So it's best just to exclude that story from the press because it's embarrassing.

A hands-off approach (that is doing what is already being done, perhaps with more vigilance and hopefully resources) is the way to go. You can't institute some sort of crack down or build a huge/gigantic wall at the border with Turkey and around the whole Mediterranean coast without it being a tragicomic failure. Terrorism from Western Asia is going to happen until its cause is addressed. Any number of states can defeat ISIS and drive it from its territories, but there will still be any number of individuals absolutely committed to doing violence to civilians until you can convince them that they do have a future - the same is true for our own indigenous terrorists.

There have obviously been mistakes made by people who held ideas similar to mine. Ultimately our ideology is imbued with the espirit du temps and certain cultural traditions. For example, Stalin himself often hearkened back to Russian (despite his being Georgian) leaders to justify his policies, from Ivan Grozny to Peter the Great and Alexander Nevsky - partly why Stalin himself is such a problem for modern Russia (as in how to deal with him in a consistent way). But no such violence is inherent within Marxist thought itself - Marx himself never strictly advocated violence. Ultimately when one resorts to using violence it is because one is too afraid to make small - though meaningful changes. For example, with Stalin, contrary to the Western polemic against him that society was some sort of totalitarian morass where the population lived under their beds in fear of government reprisals, Soviet society was actually quite the opposite - some have even argued that it was the most egoist and individualistic society to have ever exist. Why? Because absolutely nothing worked the way it was supposed to, so if you wanted something done you had to do it on your own, sometimes incurring personal risk. They even made movies to this effect such as The Communist where the star of the film is tasked with overseeing the construction of a granary, only to find that the construction project is completely halted because, for some reason, there are no nails. So, he travels *all* the way to Moscow on foot, fights against rebel white army bands, and eventually makes his way to Moscow, where he ultimately has to beseech Lenin himself for the nails. So ultimately, in many cases (this doesn't just apply to 20th Century Communists) rather than actually fix the problem, it's easier just to kill people and blame them for the problem.

The best course of action would be to stop sending arms into the region, and come up with a plan whereby order would be re-established. Ideally, that would only entail the use of local ground forces with perhaps aid from air support. The problem with ground forces is that they tend not to have the desired effect, rather than be seen as liberators, they're seen strictly as invaders and oppressors, so it's ideal if they're local people who are more likely to be seen as liberators properly. Once order is re-established you work out what is going to be done with the Ba'ath government in Syria, and with the divisions in Iraq.

The reason this has gone on so long as that the West has chosen to fight a 4 way war, while relying on brave, but under-equipped, Kurdish forces to do most of the leg-work.

As far as refugees and terror attacks go *within* Western nations themselves - yes. Laissez-faire *is* the only way to go forward unless entry policies were just stupendously lax, which I highly doubt. If anything the Greeks, Turks, Italians, and Russians handling the vast majority of refugees crossing into Europe from abroad should be given more serious support. But to radically alter our societies while doing nothing to actually address the problem of extremism, all the while not providing support to people who desperately need it is an outright betrayal of core Western values.

That's why outright racist attacks on Muslims and Arabs generally are so distressing - because it belies a tendency to throw ones hands up and suggest doing nothing truly effectual as the best alternative to addressing the very real problem of extremism.

The comedy when a person starts to defend apartheid South Africa and Israeli policies that make life unlivable (and contribute directly to radicalization). I mean there's no redeeming that. It's not only racist it's defeatist.

The crisis in Syria is objective - if life weren't so horrible there - people would be coming and going at the normal rate, but instead arms were given to suspect people by Western nations and they turned those arms against the West, as they've done time and time again. Are some quantity of persons with bad intentions going to attempt to pose as refugees to obtain entry into nations which they wish to attack? Of course - they would be attempting to gain such entry regardless of the refugee situation.

I highly doubt that refugees are being accepted without any sort of security check at all, but still, some with bad intentions will slip through - as they would likely have slipped through standard VISA practices absent the refugee crisis.

To suggest that Western nations ought to embrace abhorrent policies in response is nothing but a defeat. It is to say that the ideals at the very core of Western civilization are insufficient for combating a creature that it has created directly.

Ya'll can hold whatever sort of reprobate ideas you'd like, but what is the end result? Take it to the end - I don't see anything in that place of the slightest merit. The only dialogue in that place is "won't these policies only enhance the potency of terrorist ideologies?" and the only response which can be given is "no, it won't everything will be fine!"

If the abhorrent policies being defended by our Belgian-flagged friends actually worked there wouldn't be intractable problems lasting for 40+ years.

I'm really not a fan of sunshine or metalworks. Sunshine because it's like an army training obstacle course for medics - there's no flat ground on the whole map just about, and any time there is, there's some sort of prop to jump over or walk around. That's my only major gripe. Metalworks transition from mid-2 and 2-mid is awful. It's certifiably bad because there's only one viable way to push (always valley) because lobby and under are just non-starters you're going to get crushed 9/10 if you try to go those ways against a team that has 6 competent players on it who are actively able to play video games.

But all told there have been far worse maps in the US rotation than metalworks or sunshine - though I wish GPIT were still in :( RIP my favorite map lol.

For Pugs I'm fine with anything. I prefer not to play sunshine because I can't cruise control on med (it's an active struggle just to move around efficiently) for pugs anyways, and Viaduct is bad because you need a reasonable level of team cohesion to have any sort of fun on viaduct, and you're not likely going to get that on viaduct because little jimmy wants to have "fun"

When I was a kiddo my parents tried to stop my falling grades by restricting my access to the PC I'd bought with logging money (my first job when I was 14 lol). I just went to the store and bought another mouse and keyboard and hid that shit on my closet ceiling. Those were good days.

That is indeed the case as of this moment esther.

The roster is a lock we are playing - and need 2 scouts - one scout may end up being moved to back up once/if dumbbrain becomes available (we should know in the next week or two).

Add me: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197982872121
Or Smooth: http://steamcommunity.com/id/smooth_3/

For deets.

Roster is:

Smooth_3: Roamer
Hypnotoad: pocket
Me: Medic
Chriz Tah Fah: Demo

Also would like an IM roster - anybody looking to give up one of those will be negotiated with.

So here are the things you need to know.

1. What CPU socket type do you have? Only certain CPUs will fit in certain sockets (square peg circle hole kinda deal - also it allows companies to plan for obsolescence to force you into buying a new MOBO every 4-5 years to get the latest CPUs).

2. What sort of PCI(e) slot do you have - you can put a 3.0 in a 2.0 slot, you just won't get all the newest "features" (shouldn't matter for TF2 since it won't use any of that new tech' anyways).

3. Are you on a lap top? Some lap top types are INCREDIBLY hard to get apart without breaking the thing irreparably unless you know what you're doing and have the proper tools. You may be better off to just get a whole new machine at that point (which is of course why they make laptops so hard to get apart in the first place - I've seen some models that simply couldn't be taken apart at all).

4. What RAM socket type you have - again square peg circle hole problem - although ram is cheap. Again if you're on a lap top you'll have to make sure you can actually access your ram ports without destroying the lap top - *most* companies put an easy access port for ram upgrades though, so that shouldn't be a problem (though you'll have to buy the lap-top or low profile type as desktop ram won't fit in the case). Again the upside here is that it's cheap, and should you end up in the market for a new machine, you'll already have the ram lol. BUT you need to look at your MOBO and see how much ram it can actually support - I would *assume* if you bought your machine within the last 5-7 years it should support *at least* 8 gigs, but you never know.

5. If your computer is a pre-built you may want to invest in a pair of tin-snips because companies have gone to riveting certain bits of hardware in place so that you can't remove them easily on your own so you'll have to cut the old stuff out - if you buy a new card you may also need to cut a slot for it in the back of your case if you're not on a lap-top. Tin snips are p-cheap though and they're handy to have for cutting metal stuff lol. Now that graphics cards have screw-mounts for the sides of the case I've even seen rivets being put in those - so the only way to remove the card is to have a tool for removing the rivets or to cut the bracket off of the card lol.

TF2 is *very* heavily based on the CPU - GPU helps, but the game mostly relies on the CPU for getting stuff done (as do all the other old source games). GPU is typically much easier to upgrade - and if you end up in the market for a new machine, you'll at least have the GPU taken care of if you buy a newish one. If you're *really* hard-up for cash, you can also buy used GPUs on ebay which may or may not have problems when you get them, but they should only run you 50$ usd or so.

I've been having windows defender tell me interesting things about the client for a while - I just ignore it and life seems to be ok. Seems like I can DL it ok to boot lol. I'm on win7 though so maybe it's just newer windows defender that's flagging it.

Sad side story, a good friend of mine was in his last year of med-school. An attractive 26 year old girl came in to the free clinic he was at for med school stuff, and she reported having stomach upset that just wouldn't go away. A simple x-ray found cancer on both sides of her liver, which put her in the this very same boat. Nothing that you can do. So after he talked it over with her and recommended her to an oncologist, he called me up, we went out for drinks, and he dropped the medical profession as a career choice the very next day.

It honestly depends on how much bandwidth you've got. If you're on a dump-dump internet connection like me, and you only have 3 mbps download on a good day, there will never be a netflix setting that will fix your instability - even if somebody is watching a 240p youtube video on my connection I simply can't play any on-line games lol. If you have more than 3 mbps download, then yes, setting the offending netflix to 480p-720p would hopefully fix your problem (I can't watch any 720 video even if I'm exclusively on my own internet connection without it buffering constantly :( ).