I'm not psychic. Ask me a question.

The votes have already been counted!

For decades I've observed how the Republicans and Democrats work together in unison towards certain projects (war, removing of rights within the US etc). Each pulls as far as they can go without upsetting public opinion TOO much, and then control is handed over to the other one who completes the job (even though the platform they ran on is invariably a claim that when elected they will stop the job, not complete it). The public allows this because they get caught up in the "he's your president you voted for so of course he's pushing forward death" or "He's my president I voted for so I'll excuse this one thing, because there must have been some reason I voted for him.."

This slow sawing back and forth has been going on for years and years with seamless teamwork between the parties. It reminds me of the lumberjacks of old times, each holding one side of a two handled saw and they slowly work together to saw down a tree. If one gets the blade caught, the other pulls it through. But it's not a tree they're sawing at this time, it's something more vital than just one tree.

This last push...named Obama... this isn't them continuing to saw for eternity. It's the nudge that knocks down the tree. It's already ready to fall, there's so little left supporting it, only the bark and a few threads of wood remain intact at the base.

How do I know?
It's simple. He can get away with anything. The position he is in as the first non-white president..it doesn't make him the same tool as all the others. They were a saw, he's the axe. There is nothing he cannot do. There is no "Oh you can't push that through until a Republican gets into office". It's smooth sailing for the party behind the curtain, they don't need to saw any more.

Timber....

Lol. Probably that too.

Interesting observations and analogy . . . I don't disagree . . . Think this has been going on for centuries . . . Why do you think the grapes are now ripe anymore than let's say during the Great Depression and WWII????

My bet would be on how long it takes to raise a generation that will accept it all. Also, there really was slow and steady work done to give people time to become adjusted to the tightening collar. It took a while to get as far as we have. It's like the boiled toad (frog?) analogy..if the pot had heated up too quickly, people would have fought back. At this point the water is boiling, yet the response rate is fairly consistent and steady from being worn out over so many years. It's highly unlikely you will see real revolution; just some bickering, yelling, and infighting.

Also, after WWII we got an influx of ass holes (cough* project paper clip) which helped to speed along the ripening of the masses in the states. I don't know what was available before that or how it was being used, I wasn't alive :)

How do you know that you are not psychic.

Think abou it...

Because I don't even know if you're a man or a woman :)

i knew you were going to ask that

Oooo, a psychic. Tell me my fortune ;)

Do you know if you are a man or a woman?

How the heck did I miss this one?
Hmm...the next doom....
There's so much long term doom (diabetes, government over-reach, etc) that it's hard to see the mini shock and awe dooms.

Here's a math question...

Find the current number of empty houses in the US.
Find the number of houses empty from 2007 or so.
Find the current number of homeless.
Find the number of homeless in 2007 or so (all US figures)

What you will discover if you do it right (I'll hunt down the stats and post them here later if you don't), is that while the number of homeless has increased, the number of empty houses has increased a whole lot more.
Even if you account for families doubling up, moving into rental housing (which is still occupying a house), or becoming homeless, you will not be able to account for the number of empty houses (it is like 30-40 empty houses for each homeless person, so you figure roughly 100 empty houses for each homeless family of 3.3).

With so many empty houses, where did the people go?

Well, I've hung out in a place that claimed to only let men in the door, but they were lying twats, so I'm still pretty sure I'm female.

skittle,

Me thinks the source for the data may be unreliable unless the exact definitions, exceptions, and methods of compilation is known . . . I think my head hurts too!!!

Mm, it's more art than science I think.
Stats are skewed all the time.

I've got pop growth (if one wants to guess 2005 is somewhere between those 2):
[link to en.wikipedia.org]
population growth
281,421,906 2000
308,745,538 2010

and doubling up growth (not the exact years, but within the range):

doubling up 2007-2011
"n spring 2007, there were 19.7 million doubled-up households, amounting to 17.0 percent of all households. Four years later, in spring 2011, the number of such households had climbed to 21.8 million, or 18.3 percent."
[link to blogs.census.gov]

Now I need new construction, which they insist on doing in tiny increments instead of half decades.

Hehe. I may not be psychic, but I do know the number of people willing to sit down and do math on here is a whole lot lower than the number of ones who will just come by to whine about it.

Seems you have found a statistical anomaly; however, how does one remove that many people without shock and bewilderment .. . ? I saw a documentary indicating that about 60,000 people had disappeared from Alaska in one decade without explanation . . . That would be 25% of the city of Anchorage or about 12% of the entire state population . . . !!!!

When people disappear in a bad economy I think we just assume they couldn't afford it and moved elsewhere (imagine heat prices in Alaska..I would flee those), or we don't care because we never really knew them that well anyway, etc.

If people are getting sucked in by the prison industrial complex at an alarming rate, their families might not be spreading the word around or no one might care. Criminals are something to be ashamed of/ remove yourself from. It makes them insanely easy targets for removal and abuse.

Or maybe diabetes has become more deadly as of late.
I noticed an epidemic of pneumonia last time I was in the states.

So many choices...

Oh, the US prison industrial complex is another math problem.

It used to be that they had a slow growth of population, but since about 1979 it has taken off and is on a steep incline. At the current incline, how many years will it take until every US adult (statistically speaking) is in prison? I did the math about a year ago and came up with the year 2022 by using available data.

Since Alaska began tracking the numbers in 1988, police have received at least 60,700 reports of missing people.


Richard Hills was one of 3,323 people reported missing in the state last year, not a record but far more, in ratio to population, than anywhere else in the United States. On average, about five of every 1,000 people go missing every year, roughly double the national rate. Since Alaska began tracking the numbers in 1988, police have received at least 60,700 reports of missing people.
[link to seattletimes.nwsource.com]

US prisoner population:
There's a nice graph for the math:
[link to en.wikipedia.org]


Prison labour (only allowed slavery according to 13th amendment).
You can find tons of this stuff by the way:

"Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems.
[link to www.workers.org]

If that were true don't you think there would be a disproportionate number of missing men over women . . . As more men would be in prison . . . So what is the sex distribution of the missing population???

Ha. I have no clue what the sex distribution of the missing are, because I don't know who they are.

However:
"While women comprise just a small segment of all the people serving prison terms in the U.S., their number is rising at a far faster rate than that of men. "
Equality is coming :P
[link to www.wpaonline.org]

Kids end up in the foster system or with grandparents.

More women are going to university than men, maybe it's because the men are in prison, who knows.

And there are a lot of missing men...look at all the single mothers and the statistics on black men in prison..it's insane. A black man has something like a 300% chance of spending time in jail in America within their life time. That means if one stays out, some other one is doing 6 sentences in order for him to be able to do so.

So much math.....

I lived in a remote area once. I can see how people could go missing in Alaska. I was so incredibly open to bad things happening out there if they had chosen to come to me. No police needed for that one.

Hrm..I may have had my black man stats wrong..or wiki is now lying to me, take your pick.

"A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life.2
Nearly one in three African American males aged 20–29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision whether imprisoned, jailed, on parole or probation.
One out of nine African American men will be incarcerated between the ages of 20 and 34."
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

I'm now sure how they get 30% chance for a lifetime when "Nearly one in three African American males aged 20–29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision". People DO live past 29....

So Candy Corn . . . Why not Cotton Candy?....

Otto Day and The Nites!!!!!

[link to www.youtube.com]

You may have just scared me off of pub bands for life.

I agree!!!!!

Is it me or is the weather annoyingly consistent?

No one wants their fortune read by a non-psychic?
:(

Do you still wank on the front porch ?