"I've got a copy of the Bushido,
But it's just for show."

Line from the Fat Blue Man song "Back to Winnipeg": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ushsCQ2OIqw

Personally, I have found that video games, especially the adventure/puzzle type, have improved my ability to solve real world historical problems. The scary thing is, some of the solutions begin to look an awful lot like video game solutions, raising questions about the ultimate nature of historical reality.

True. But then who controls the educational system? The reactions are so strident, though, that I have to think that there's at least some major cheerleading going on from government circles. And there is a quite hard-headed need to get in the last word among the posters that I have rarely seen in YouTube comments, with the exception of the comments to a video denying that the Csango of Rumania are descended from Hungarians. Again, an ethnic debate with political overtones.

Interesting thing is, Tibet controlled an empire that ran down the Ganges to the Indian Ocean, possibly explaining the parallels between the Andes and Tibet.

Look at the comments under any YouTube video on Chinese suppression of Tibet and you'll see the Chinese government in action: especially lies about Tibet always having been part of China. The funny thing is, the Chinese aren't physically adapted to living under diminished oxygen conditions, so they can only stay there for a few years and then have to be replaced by other Chinese. In the long run they can't win.

Actually, you forgot the event of 1908 in Siberia, which, if it had landed 4 hours later would have taken out St. Petersburg, and the fall of 3000 meteorites in Normandy in 1803, both of which were only a small part of a sequence of cometary near misses that goes back at least to the dendrochronological minimum of 4375 BC. It's really quite amazing we're still here at all:
http://neros.lordbalto.com/ChapterEight.htm

That would be the Washington Post Exclusion Law that only allows you to be ethical if a story in the newspaper says you should be? I'm surprised Bernie M hasn't taken advantage of that law.

"But Your Honor, the Washington Post never told me I shouldn't be engaged in a Ponzi scheme!"

As long as you don't tromp on my strawberries.

Assuming you are not making this all up, I have to applaud your vast knowledge of the trivial.

Hey, Carlos Norris wants to be the president of Texas. I say, let him have it. And then watch the Mexican drug lords eat his lunch for him without federal troops from Washington.

Some of us don't look at the party affiliation before determining whether the position is stupid or not. Unlike the Neonuts who will complain about something when a Democrat does it and then laud it as just beneath the second coming of Christ when a Republican does it.

[Nice mod of Marvin Kitman's old motto]

There have always been bubbles. Check out "tulipomania" on the web if you doubt this. The difference here is that the extent of the damage is much wider and that wider extent is a direct result of who knows how many hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial derivatives being traded off of any regulated exchange. Though you may be right in general about more unenforced regulations, in this particular case this global financial meltdown is a direct result of lack of regulation. Whether those regulations would have been properly enforced is anyone's guess. Looking at the Madoff case, I have to suspect they wouldn't have. Unfortunately, we will never know, because no one even tried, except for a few voices in the wilderness.

Actually, I'm 98% in cash (including gold) and have been since your hero Idiot II lowered the tax rate on capital gains. No, I am not an idiot (except for the time I bet on the Bank of England against George Soros).

No, I don't want the "markets to be fair with the rest of the world." I want the criminal types who cost the American people billions of dollars to be locked up in prison along with the guys who stole $200 from a bleeping liquor store. Life may not be fair, but the G-D D-NED legal system that regulates wall street needs to be, or you will be spouting your tripe from the side of the barrel you are selling apples from on the street corner. Why do you not get this? Did someone drop you on your head when you were a little kid?

And really, like Mike Malloy says, after you syntax-challenged characters have managed to destroy the financial system of the world, you might just want to sit in the corner and BE QUIET.

You forgot Mittens Helmet-hair.

As for trading--I'd rather see all those itsy bitsy western states with one or two representatives and two d--ned senators merged into one big state of El Diablo with two senators and as many representatives as they can actually justify by their real population. They could even paint it permanently blue if they wanted. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

No, I think it's something specifically about the state of Utah. I mean, this is the only state in the Union that has a virtual state religion. A religion with such power over civil society that you can literally be arrested for smoking on the sidewalk outside of the Mormon Temple. That they would try to protect their own homegrown businesses from competition from the outside world is not surprising.