secede

There ya go ;) I can't help but point that out - you have no idea how many papers on the civil war I've graded :(

It mostly depends on where you go and what you're doing at any particular moment.

The far Right and various nationalist/racist parties have been on the rise recently in Europe (and the US too), but for the most part that growth has been counteracted or curtailed by the equivalent growth of far left parties.

This sorta' thing always happens any time there's a great deal of economic uncertainty or collective anxiety about the future. In the case of Western Europe - there's a large proportion of the population that still clearly remembers what happened the last time somebody up and started blaming minorities for everybody's problems.

Most of the race hatred in the EU also, from what I've read, is primarily limited to African and Muslim immigrants who tend to be less well educated and generally working class - and almost every society in history has had growing pains and reactionary feelings towards working class immigrants (think the Irish in US history).

1. I'm perfectly aware of how obamacare works in at least most of it's basic tenants. The I am likewise aware that the 95$ penalty is applied to individuals who DO NOT have insurance.

2. I stand by my statement that companies are not cutting jobs because of obamacare - if anything it's nothing more than a convenient excuse, furthermore the shifting of Full time employees to "contractors" has been going on for a LONG time as a method for A. breaking unions, B. renege on promised benefits of full time employment (which tech companies, such as IBM are known for having p-good benefits - it doesn't surprise me that they'd shift people around to renege on those promised benefits when times got tough).

If you look at employment trends you will see that the job market has more or less been looking this way since 2008 (which predates obamacare) and will continue to look this way for some time because of a whole slew of factors.

Saying - we're gonna have to put you on contact because of a law you don't understand is MUCH better than saying "hey remember those benefits we promised you when you hired on? Yeah sorry we want you to give those up" The same thing has been going on with the growth of "temp" jobs.

Now, let's talk about healthcare in the US - a few basic assumptions, I could provide citations if you REALLY want me to, but I'm hoping you'll just trust me on this:

A. care in the US is not significantly better than in other industrialized nations
B. important health indicators (infant mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy at birth) are not significantly above other industrialized nations (and may actually be below them in many cases)
C. Healthcare in the US costs significantly more than in other industrialized nations.
D. The US government spends more on healthcare than all other industrialized nations - this includes countries where the state 100% covers all care.

Again, I can provide academically qualified citations of the above if you don't believe me but the above facts show clearly that the US healthcare system is inefficient and garbage tier in regards to all other industrialized nations and we pay MORE for it.

Why is this?

Well in every other advanced nation the government directly negotiates on behalf of consumers thus creating a monopsony (If you don't know what that is, it's a monopoly, but instead of 1 guy selling one thing, it's 1 consumer buying one thing). Thus since ONLY the state can buy healthcare, they have a tremendous amount of negotiating power. That is how medicare and medicaid function - because the US government is a much more effective negotiator than any particular individual or even insurance company (in general).

The only reason doctors would lose money on medicare/aid patients is because the WHOLE field and range of healthcare services is tremendously inflated.

Unfortunately, since most people fear state intervention in the economy, we'll likely always have a broken system unless people learn to read a book here and there or remember this simple Maxim:

"The government is really good at building rockets, educating its citizens, and equipping armies - it happens to be really bad at manufacturing type writers and alarm clocks"

I should also note that the ACA is ALREADY funded for the most part through this year - so this whole budget malarkey is just political brinksmanship - the government would never be shut down long enough to actually defund the ACA or we'd witness the complete ruination of modern society lol.

The free market is generally pretty bad at assigning values to treatment - because yes, there's the cost of producing those benefits, but there's also the mitigating factor of somebody saying to you "yeah so, you have to do this thing, or you'll die" - how do you put a price on that or reasonably assess the value of that particular thing - since you'll generally be willing to pay ANYTHING to get it. Unless you prefer death, or cooking meth.

Not to steal BSC's thunder, but because of my relatively open schedule I will be willing to take on a medic mentee regularly. I'm already mentoring one medic directly, but I doubt having me looking over their shoulder all the time will be any fun for any of us.

So, here are my conditions:

(If you're a UGC player I would strongly suggest you to simply check out my plethora of videos on the subject of TF2 - those contain literally everything I would normally tell you).

- Be in Open or IM and play Medic
- Scrim regularly (at least 3 nights a week)
- I will be perfectly willing to mentor the rest of the team at the same time (it's kind of necessary).
- Be willing to have some of our sessions be recorded and put to youtube
- Be willing to meet with me AT LEAST once a week - if you miss several weeks I will pick somebody else
- I will assign "homework" I will not meet with you again until you have completed this task.
- Be prepared to meet after 11 PM/12 AM Eastern.

Apply here or msg me on steam (I should have space).

Also if you're one of the folks who occasionally msg me for advice this doesn't mean I'll stop helping out ;)

Rather than doing drugs you should just repeat this simple mantra:

You are not special, you deserve nothing, and you aren't particularly good.

That's all I ever do for myself and I'm p-happy with life in generally. It's when I start believing that I deserve better than what actually happens that I get angry.

I do what I can :(

I know it's kinda late on in the discussion.

But a few things (I have a degree in History AND ANOTHER equally useless degree in economics if you need trust factor).

1. Bloodsire, almost no company ever is having to reduce employment or stop hiring because of obamacare - it's simply not that large of a concern. However, companies haven't been hiring as much, and have been generally cutting back on hours, since 2008 - a continued trend that we see exhibited here. Having to pay an extra 30$ a month so some dude you hire can have health insurance is a drop in the bucket for most businesses - unless they already have other problems (thus not hiring and reducing hours - again, a general trend since 2008). It's an absurdity to suggest that the extra fees now associated with full time employees would dissuade somebody from hiring, unless they were already not going to hire anybody. While I do agree with you that part-time union employees kinda got unnecessarily fucked. Right now the fine is only 95$, which, if you don't need insurance isn't such a big deal, furthermore if you're only a part time employee you'll likely be able to enroll (being over 26 like myself) in the open enrollment period if you're afraid of that 95$ fine.

The only way insurance in this country isn't totally broken is if they get young people like you and myself enrolled in it early so that we can diffuse the cost of old people needing a lot more care. I personally don't like the system and would much rather have a modern healthcare system like ANY OTHER industrialized nation or even Cuba, but such things are forbidden to us because health insurance companies, and big pharma, are far too strong in this country and generally enjoy the fact that Americans over pay for care dramatically (I'm talking whereas somebody pays 7$ for a drug in the UK we pay 147$ for it).

A government shutdown basically shuts down everything that hasn't already been paid for.

So, for example, the military (day to day actual military personnel) are already paid for because the defense spending bill has already been passed for this year. But civilian contractors whose contracts haven't yet been funded - well, will be laid off. Depending on the length of the shut down the economy will not be greatly effected (although any shut down WILL hurt). Because the government is a pretty important factor in the economy and anybody who had a job yesterday, yet has had to clean their office out today, will no longer be spending money on things, thus shrinking the economy for everybody. The longer it goes on the more harmful it is. We were still doing just dandy when this happened in the 90's under Clinton, the economy didn't even tank it's just a little blip on an otherwise upward trend - since the economy is already crap right now it may be a bit worse now - since government spending accounts for a slightly larger proportion of our GDP now that it did in the 90's when private industry was growing as opposed to contracting.

On the Republicans and Democrats: generally, congressionally speaking, the old GOP/Republican coalition is breaking apart and has been breaking apart since President GW Bush kinda went down in flames near the end of his presidency.

Prior to 2007-8 the GOP was primarily made up of 3 large umbrella groups: Traditional Conservatives (Nixon types, war-Hawks, power players, and pragmatic foreign policy types), Religious Conservatives, and Fiscal Conservatives who were strongly influenced by Milton Friedman. None of these three groups really have anything in common, but the latter two coalitions tacked themselves onto the GOP after the religious revival of the late 80's, and Reagan successfully courted fiscal conservatives.

I'm reasonably sure that this coalition is busted now - the GOP can't even get its whips to get a singular vote on any particular project or legislation. So we may actually see the birth of the tea-party as an independent entity, since tensions between the traditional conservatives who actually run the GOP and the younger, louder Tea-Party-esc types have reached the point of being a full breach. Not to mention that religious issues played a MUCH smaller factor in the previous two presidential election cycles because people tend not to care as much about abortion when they're having trouble finding work and the gay marriage boogeyman tends to be MUCH less effective than it used to be.

BSC can drop knowledge on teams and also spread tf2 depression if the vessel is unwilling.

Also plays on a team with a guy who has a green name (me).

How about just get continually fucked on until you get good? Or admit you don't really care enough/are bad and quit.

I like that system.

Also preds: Mix^ is looking mighty strong. I don't know how iT is going to pan out - changing 3 people, many who haven't played together before, is always a little rocky, and I admit, I'm p-interested in 1-2-3.

Although I'll be cheering for the 6 cuties to turn heads despite them being new to invite.

Thanks Plinko, glad I could help - I know when I was just starting out 2 years ago there wasn't a whole hell of a lot - besides when MGE went free and then to youtube :D When I was very, very first starting out there were like 1-3 youtube videos of middle range invite teams scrimming and we watched those (ricco was in them) at least 10 times like they were pornography or something. If you ever have anything in particular you want made I'll see what I can do.

I know somebody has been bringing my average view duration up. Which videos have you been watching jodd? I could always make more of the same type :p

Won IM.... lft?

No justice in this world.

just ask death anchor

main, and also it's not summer, always more teams in the summer because "no school" at least that's what I've seen over the last 2 years.

just yoink that label wrapper thing as hard as you can, you have to be brutal. It'll tear the foil and everything and then you can be happy.

Well, in Slin's defense, people generally don't sneak into your room and stab you to death for no reason.

Especially stabbing, it's a very personal way to kill somebody.