$700,000,000,000.00

[DirtDawg]

Correct.

[odeon]

keeping the population drunk, stomed and entertained and playing the american lottery seems to be working for the ruling class.

There are variations of this everywhere. Works quite well here.

[Johnny]

LBJ was a piece of shit too.  Blaming Nixon for Vietnam when LBJ really escalated it more than anyone was retarded.   Kennedy basically started Vietnam by putting forces there first.   LBJ just furthered the welfare state of FDR.

LBJ was probably worse, at least FDR expected people to work to get something.

[Callaway]

Ten years?

Yes, a president could be a vice-president first (for a president who dies in office), then serve as president.

This person, if s/he serves as president for less than two years of the deceased president's term could then run for two more four year terms as president, which is a total of no more than ten years.

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

The totalitarianism has already happened in the past to some extent.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was such a popular president that he was re-elected three times, so we changed the Constitution so that nobody could ever be president for more than ten years again.

Even so, since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the government has in the name of "safety" and "fighting terrorism" seriously curtailed the freedom of its citizens.

I would state Benjamin Franklin's quote but Tesla already did that, however I should add this gem of a quote I found on the Wikipedia article about apathy here, because it holds a lot of truth:

US educational philosopher Robert Maynard Hutchins summarized the concerns about political indifference when he claimed that the "death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

This quote alone should be sufficient for anyone to understand the implications of apathy towards a system slowly eroding democracy, freedoms and privacy away. In this case all these totalitarian laws are under false pretenses of 'security' and 'anti-terrorism', are actually targeting critics of the government more than anyone else when you analyze them closely; so the government can continue to get away with their increasing restrictions with minimal resistance, easily branding those defying them as 'terrorists' or declare them 'crazy' if they overstep a certain threshold. For instance, they can just brand me a paranoid retard to smear my reputation, and worse of all, most people would be ignorant enough to let natural prejudice of judging the messenger overwhelm their common sense to judge the message being said.

To address another thing, those who ignorantly say during these times, "If you got nothing to hide, why worry?" fail to see the ramifications of what power this grants to the government, this phase is the equivalent of saying, "We submit ourselves to our masters and as long as we do what they say, we're fine", apathetic slave mentality basically. But then the questions begged to be asked is that, "How far will they go with these so-called security measures? To a point where you own nothing privately? To a point where even saying one wrong word or expressing a thought crime is grounds for arrest, or worse execution? How far before people wake up and realize that they've lost too many of their rights?"

You see, apathy towards governments, politics and policies is extremely dangerous, the people should always keep a leash on their representatives and leaders, never the other way around.

[Peter]

To address another thing, those who ignorantly say during these times, "If you got nothing to hide, why worry?" fail to see the ramifications of what power this grants to the government, this phase is the equivalent of saying, "We submit ourselves to our masters and as long as we do what they say, we're fine", apathetic slave mentality basically. But then the questions begged to be asked is that, "How far will they go with these so-called security measures? To a point where you own nothing privately? To a point where even saying one wrong word or expressing a thought crime is grounds for arrest, or worse execution? How far before people wake up and realize that they've lost too many of their rights?"

Here's an article that shows just how bad things had gotten in the UK by 2005, when it was written:

'We are trying to fight 21st-century crime - antisocial behaviour, drug dealing, binge drinking, organised crime - with 19th-century methods, as if we still lived in the time of Dickens." Tony Blair, September 27 2005.

"Down poured the wine like oil on blazing fire. And still the riot went on - the debauchery gained its height - glasses were dashed upon the floor by hands that could not carry them to lips, oaths were shouted out by lips which could scarcely form the words to vent them in; drunken losers cursed and roared; some mounted on the tables, waving bottles above their heads and bidding defiance to the rest; some danced, some sang, some tore the cards and raved. Tumult and frenzy reigned supreme ..." Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens, 1839.

All politicians who seek to justify repressive legislation claim that they are responding to an unprecedented threat to public order. And all politicians who cite such a threat draft measures in response which can just as easily be used against democratic protest. No act has been passed over the past 20 years with the aim of preventing antisocial behaviour, disorderly conduct, trespass, harassment and terrorism that has not also been deployed to criminalise a peaceful public engagement in politics. When Walter Wolfgang was briefly detained by the police after heckling the foreign secretary last week, the public caught a glimpse of something that a few of us have been vainly banging on about for years.

On Friday, six students and graduates of Lancaster University were convicted of aggravated trespass. Their crime was to have entered a lecture theatre and handed out leaflets to the audience. Staff at the university were meeting people from BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Shell, the Carlyle Group, GlaxoSmithKline, DuPont, Unilever and Diageo, to learn how to "commercialise university research". The students were hoping to persuade the researchers not to sell their work. They were in the theatre for three minutes. As the judge conceded, they tried neither to intimidate anyone nor to stop the conference from proceeding.

They were prosecuted under the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, passed when Michael Howard was the Conservative home secretary. But the university was able to use it only because Labour amended the act in 2003 to ensure that it could be applied anywhere, rather than just "in the open air".

Had Mr Wolfgang said "nonsense" twice during the foreign secretary's speech, the police could have charged him under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Harassment, the act says, "must involve conduct on at least two occasions ... conduct includes speech". Parliament was told that its purpose was to protect women from stalkers, but the first people to be arrested were three peaceful protesters. Since then it has been used by the arms manufacturer EDO to keep demonstrators away from its factory gates, and by Kent police to arrest a woman who sent an executive at a drugs company two polite emails, begging him not to test his products on animals. In 2001 the peace campaigners Lindis Percy and Anni Rainbow were prosecuted for causing "harassment, alarm or distress" to American servicemen at the Menwith Hill military intelligence base in Yorkshire, by standing at the gate holding the Stars and Stripes and a placard reading "George W Bush? Oh dear!" In Hull a protester was arrested under the act for "staring at a building".

Had Mr Wolfgang said "nonsense" to one of the goons who dragged him out of the conference, he could have been charged under section 125 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which came into force in August. Section 125 added a new definition of harassment to the 1997 act, "a course of conduct ... which involves harassment of two or more persons". What this means is that you need only address someone once to be considered to be harassing them, as long as you have also addressed someone else in the same manner. This provision, in other words, can be used to criminalise any protest anywhere. But when the bill passed through the Commons and the Lords, no member contested or even noticed it.

Section 125 hasn't yet been exercised, but section 132 of the act is already becoming an effective weapon against democracy. This bans people from demonstrating in an area "designated" by the government. One of these areas is the square kilometre around parliament. Since the act came into force, democracy campaigners have been holding a picnic in Parliament Square every Sunday afternoon (see www1.atwiki.com/picnic/). Seventeen people have been arrested so far.

But the law that has proved most useful to the police is the one under which Mr Wolfgang was held: section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This allows them to stop and search people without the need to show that they have "reasonable suspicion" that a criminal offence is being committed. They have used it to put peaceful protesters through hell. At the beginning of 2003, demonstrators against the impending war with Iraq set up a peace camp outside the military base at Fairford in Gloucestershire, from which US B52s would launch their bombing raids. Every day - sometimes several times a day - the protesters were stopped and searched under section 44. The police, according to a parliamentary answer, used the act 995 times, though they knew that no one at the camp was a terrorist. The constant harassment and detention pretty well broke the protesters' resolve. Since then the police have used the same section to pin down demonstrators outside the bomb depot at Welford in Berkshire, at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, at Menwith Hill and at the annual arms fair in London's Docklands.

The police are also rediscovering the benefits of some of our more venerable instruments. On September 10, Keith Richardson, one of the six students convicted of aggravated trespass on Friday, had his stall in Lancaster city centre confiscated under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. "Every Person wandering abroad and endeavouring by the Exposure of Wounds and Deformities to obtain or gather Alms ... shall be deemed a Rogue and Vagabond... " The act was intended to prevent the veterans of the Napoleonic wars from begging, but the police decided that pictures of the wounds on this man's anti-vivisection leaflets put him on the wrong side of the law. In two recent cases, protesters have been arrested under the 1361 Justices of the Peace Act. So much for Mr Blair's 21st century methods.

What is most remarkable is that until Mr Wolfgang was held, neither parliamentarians nor the press were interested. The pressure group Liberty, the Green party, a couple of alternative comedians, the Indymedia network and the alternative magazine Schnews have been left to defend our civil liberties almost unassisted. Even after "Wolfie" was thrown out of the conference, public criticism concentrated on the suppression of dissent within the Labour party, rather than the suppression of dissent throughout the country. As the parliamentary opposition falls apart, the extra-parliamentary one is being closed down with hardly a rumble of protest from the huffers and puffers who insist that civil liberties are Britain's gift to the world. Perhaps they're afraid they'll be arrested.

[Johnny]

The totalitarianism has already happened in the past to some extent.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was such a popular president that he was re-elected three times, so we changed the Constitution so that nobody could ever be president for more than ten years again.

Even so, since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the government has in the name of "safety" and "fighting terrorism" seriously curtailed the freedom of its citizens.

I would state Benjamin Franklin's quote but Tesla already did that, however I should add this gem of a quote I found on the Wikipedia article about apathy here, because it holds a lot of truth:

US educational philosopher Robert Maynard Hutchins summarized the concerns about political indifference when he claimed that the "death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

This quote alone should be sufficient for anyone to understand the implications of apathy towards a system slowly eroding democracy, freedoms and privacy away. In this case all these totalitarian laws are under false pretenses of 'security' and 'anti-terrorism', are actually targeting critics of the government more than anyone else when you analyze them closely; so the government can continue to get away with their increasing restrictions with minimal resistance, easily branding those defying them as 'terrorists' or declare them 'crazy' if they overstep a certain threshold. For instance, they can just brand me a paranoid retard to smear my reputation, and worse of all, most people would be ignorant enough to let natural prejudice of judging the messenger overwhelm their common sense to judge the message being said.

To address another thing, those who ignorantly say during these times, "If you got nothing to hide, why worry?" fail to see the ramifications of what power this grants to the government, this phase is the equivalent of saying, "We submit ourselves to our masters and as long as we do what they say, we're fine", apathetic slave mentality basically. But then the questions begged to be asked is that, "How far will they go with these so-called security measures? To a point where you own nothing privately? To a point where even saying one wrong word or expressing a thought crime is grounds for arrest, or worse execution? How far before people wake up and realize that they've lost too many of their rights?"

You see, apathy towards governments, politics and policies is extremely dangerous, the people should always keep a leash on their representatives and leaders, never the other way around.

The bigger threat is at the town halls & state capitols where people are falling for the free federal money empowering the clowns in DC.

The founding fathers tried to limit the powers of the federal government and the fools in the states empowered the federal government by cheering on the federal programs, ooh free money which started the feeding frenzy of bring home the bacon and waste it anyway possible to bring money into the state.

try and convince somebody in this country free money from DC is bad for them and they will call you a wack job nut case exspecially if it's money for education.

[Trigger 11]

All of you non-Americans, can we borrow some money please? Thanks in advance.

[DirtDawg]

All of you non-Americans, can we borrow some money please? Thanks in advance.

"Certainly, just give us Alaska in interest"



(I'm being a sarcastic American, BTW)

[odeon]

All of you non-Americans, can we borrow some money please? Thanks in advance.

 :lol:

[Leto729]

And Stocks still keep falling.

Even around the World too.

[Parts]

And Stocks still keep falling.

Even around the World too.

I won't even open the letters from my IRA anymore

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

And Stocks still keep falling.

Even around the World too.

They're still falling Asia, and here in Australia today too. I foresaw that the bailout would have little if not no immediate confidence effect. I still have a feeling the global economy collapsing is inevitable as the momentum seems to favor it. The market could still rally a bit when the bailout has impact, but once the full extent of failures and insecurity is realized, it will collapse, and the super rich will sell off shares first, profiteering once more from a failing system with everyone else in debt, not just privately (because if everything collapses, not even the FDIC will save you) but publicly with taxes too. What happened with markets today is likely a early warning system for things to come that I predicted here in this thread. I guess it's wait and see time, but if I was an American right now, I'd be running to the bank and withdrawing savings out of it (at least enough to survive on), buying a safe and keep the money safe inside, because I wouldn't trust the FDIC insuring your savings. However if you're a investor yourself, I suggest investing in or even buying gold right now, don't wait or you'll loose potential profits to be made once it peaks.

[Johnny]

The super rich are having a feeding frenzy on wall street as chickens give away their stocks.

around the end of every decade they do it like clockwork

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

The super rich are having a feeding frenzy on wall street as chickens give away their stocks.

around the end of every decade they do it like clockwork

Well that's going to happen on during the immediate panic, but once it rallies again and signs point to a complete collapse, they will sell all their shares and probably wait until the absolute bottom emerges to buy again (basically making a killing on both money and shareholdings once it rallies again).

Anyway the Dow Jones fell another 508 points today, that's over 800 points in the last two days. Asia markets and even Australian (despite a 1% cut in interest rates) markets are also still falling today too.