Armor/AFV: Modern - USA
Modern Armor, AFVs, and Support vehicles.
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Meng M1A2 SEP TUSK Christmas Edition
18Bravo
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Colorado, United States
Joined: January 20, 2005
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 03:42 AM UTC
Everybody lighten up or this thread will be locked.

I guess your words on a similar thread don't apply here...

But since you've allowed this to wander so far off track (hey, as long as people keep clicking the advertisers are happy, right?) Now THAT is capialism! Kudos to you!

At any rate, some folks know the source of my very poorly spoken German is the result of me living in Berlin after my first stint in the Army. After black marketing and doing quite a bit of Schwarzarbeit I finally got a "real" job. (Quotation marks purely to annoy folks who get a wad in their panties at their usage)
I actually did work in a factory. I don't remember being part of any council that wanted my advice on how to run the place. I also remember paying over 33% of my wages for that universal health care. I also paid a TV tax, a radio tax, and would have paid a religion tax had I not claimed to be an atheist. It also cost several thousand marks to get a motorcycle license. And I observed, firsthand, mind you, not heard from a guy who knows a guy. workers get Krankgeschrieben on a regular basis. For those whose German is even worse than mine, that means you sit at home on your fourth point of contact while your company pays for you to be sick. And they actually pay you more than if you were at work. Yeah, LOTS of incentive to work every day. The Socialist utopia comes at a cost - to those who work for it.

Now I've got a few motorcycle projects in the garage that need tending, since there's not much modelling going on...
Herchealer
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Indiana, United States
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 03:43 AM UTC
Could it simply be that Meng related this as a Sign, that no matter what Trump and the Government decides to sanction China with, that Meng will be OK and it will not affect them at all? Maybe it was as simple as everything will be OK..... Look at it with a little light hearted humor, or perhaps a non political humorous approach. Not everything in this world must be tied to political views to be comical or relevant.

:)
bill_c
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MODEL SHIPWRIGHTS
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 04:48 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Everybody lighten up or this thread will be locked.


Jim has allowed the discussion to proceed, so I have taken my cue from that.

There are matters of fact (children being separated from their parents) and matters of interpretation (it's in the interests of the children to protect them from predators vs. it's a cynical ploy to discourage more immigrants).

My interest is calling out the latter when it intrudes into the former. For example, anyone is free to say they do not like socialism, but let's keep to the facts about what it is. Americans historically have been easily-spooked by socialism and socialist ideas, often based almost entirely on emotion and fear.

And the term is just as abused by those on the extreme Left. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro both called their regimes "socialist," but Cuba was a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and Venezuela was/in a despotic one.

The Right's trying to frighten voters into thinking that all Socialists are Communists who would take away their homes and businesses is fear mongering. There's enough to be afraid of in the world today without fake fear.
Robbd01
#323
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 05:03 AM UTC
OM-F'ing-G its spreading

https://archive.kitmaker.net/forums/271708

No Cheers
SaxonTheShiba
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 05:21 AM UTC
And to think all this started over a tank. George Orwell and Walter M. Miller are getting a good laugh out of this, however.😂

Cheers,

The Shiba
brekinapez
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Georgia, United States
Joined: July 26, 2013
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 05:44 AM UTC

Quoted Text

OM-F'ing-G its spreading

https://archive.kitmaker.net/forums/271708

No Cheers



No, that started the same day and both have actually been running side-by-side this whole time.

It's neat because you get to see a different set of reactions that aren't influenced by this one. It's great if you're into social behavioral science. Which I am.
Kevlar06
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 07:31 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text

OM-F'ing-G its spreading

https://archive.kitmaker.net/forums/271708

No Cheers



No, that started the same day and both have actually been running side-by-side this whole time.

It's neat because you get to see a different set of reactions that aren't influenced by this one. It's great if you're into social behavioral science. Which I am.



Actually, I think the other string started first, which is why I responded to it-- since I was attracted to the title "Meng Christmas Edition Releases". Frankly, I'm rather dismayed at the number of highly critical comments over the whole thing. But by now I guess I should realize modelers can be highly opinionated, some more than others. But, as others have said, I wish we'd just get back to modeling. We've definitely strayed from that topic-- and into another realm here, one that will never be solved or will convince anyone else as to the "right" or "wrong" of their position. In that sense, this post has become meaningless to the original poster or the model craftsman.
VR, Russ
brekinapez
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 08:02 AM UTC
Okay, it started two hours earlier but still same day as I indicated. Actually.


BunkerBuster
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Washington, United States
Joined: March 29, 2017
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 08:14 AM UTC
Clearly this is Trump colluding with the Chinese to influence the mid term elections. Quick someone call Mueller!

On a serious note, google "Kshama Sawant" and you'll see the kind of "socialist" I'm referring too. She went after Boeing and suggested that the Everett factory should be seized by the state.

From Wikipedia:

"Economic policies

Sawant has advocated the nationalization of large Washington State corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com[53] and expressed a desire to see privately owned housing in "Millionaire's Row" in the Capitol Hill neighborhood turned into publicly owned shared housing saying, "When things are exquisitely beautiful and rare, they shouldn't be privately owned."[54] During an election victory rally for her City Council campaign, Sawant criticized Boeing for saying it would move jobs out of state if it could not get wage concessions and tax breaks. She called this "economic terrorism" and said in several speeches that if Boeing moved jobs out of state, the workers should take over Boeing facilities and bring them into public ownership. She has said they could be converted into multiple uses, such as production for mass transit.[55][56] Sawant maintains that a socialist economy cannot exist in a single country and must be a global system just as capitalism today is a global system.[57]"

She's crazy...period. She's so bad, they are running her out of office after the failed attempt to hit employers in Seattle with a large head tax. Amazon stopped all construction projects on new offices and threatened to leave Seattle. The unions jumped in and protested it/her as well. While the head tax initially passed, the city council had to roll it back due to all the backlash.
RobinNilsson
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Stockholm, Sweden
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 08:22 AM UTC
We have got that type over here as well, but we call them communists.
No system, large or small, can ever be made to work properly if it goes against the grain in the human psychology.
Communism has been tried and failed, it can be made to work for a while as long as the secret police manages to keep the masses in order. A system based on fear will fail.
On the other hand, there must be some rules and regulations to stop the worst excesses of capitalism.
/ Robin
OldWarloke
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 08:55 AM UTC
For me I would like to get the Trump & Poopton figures with posable parts so I could put them in compromising positions.

Byrden
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Wien, Austria
Joined: July 12, 2005
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 09:11 AM UTC

Quoted Text


google "Kshama Sawant" and you'll see the kind of "socialist" I'm referring too.



Insane. I've been reading about that kind of "socialism" since the 1970s but I don't know where it comes from.

What's wrong with it, in a nutshell; equality of opportunity is not the same as equality of outcome.

i.e. even if you give everybody the same start in life, they won't all go equally far, and you can't fix that in any fair even handed way.
RobinNilsson
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 09:13 AM UTC

Quoted Text

For me I would like to get the Trump & Poopton figures with posable parts so I could put them in compromising positions.




Figures can be re-posed. Cut, glue, putty, sand&file to shape
Merlin
Staff MemberSenior Editor
AEROSCALE
#017
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United Kingdom
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 09:14 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text

Everybody lighten up or this thread will be locked.


Jim has allowed the discussion to proceed, so I have taken my cue from that.

There are matters of fact (children being separated from their parents) and matters of interpretation (it's in the interests of the children to protect them from predators vs. it's a cynical ploy to discourage more immigrants).

My interest is calling out the latter when it intrudes into the former. For example, anyone is free to say they do not like socialism, but let's keep to the facts about what it is. Americans historically have been easily-spooked by socialism and socialist ideas, often based almost entirely on emotion and fear.

And the term is just as abused by those on the extreme Left. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro both called their regimes "socialist," but Cuba was a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and Venezuela was/in a despotic one.

The Right's trying to frighten voters into thinking that all Socialists are Communists who would take away their homes and businesses is fear mongering. There's enough to be afraid of in the world today without fake fear.




Thanks Bill.

Well put. Your last sentence sums it up.

All the best

Rowan
Robbd01
#323
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Arizona, United States
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 11:27 AM UTC

Quoted Text


The Right's trying to frighten voters into thinking that all Socialists are Communists who would take away their homes and businesses is fear mongering. There's enough to be afraid of in the world today without fake fear.


Thanks Bill.

Well put. Your last sentence sums it up.

All the best

Rowan



Nope, Nope will resist comment
Buy more kits, that's it. I will be ok really I will..

cheers

Deanwormer
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Virginia, United States
Joined: October 18, 2005
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 01:53 PM UTC
Perhaps a little clarification is in order.

Capitalism - an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state

Socialism - a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
synonyms: leftism, welfarism

policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
synonyms: leftism, welfarism

(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

Basically socialism has no place in capitalism and vice versa.

I’m impressed that bill c has racked up lots of frequent flyer miles around the globe. But I’m just not convinced those trips provide economic enlightenment.

To compare Germany or France to the U.S. system is a little dodgy.

Not sure why you mention France in the same breath as Germany. French unemployment consistently runs within a couple of percentage points of 10 percent. Not good. Their economy lags behind the UK. French economic growth barely reaches 2%. Not impressive. France has left the concept of dirigisme behind for years - indicative of more corporate ownership aka capitalism.

France also carries an enormous debt load. Their credit ratings have suffered as a result.

Neither European country has a tradition of capitalism. Both descend from monarchies or regional ogliarchies. Both were ardent imperialists. Their current political and economic systems are constructs in the immediate post world war era.
Germany was in fact the first welfare state.

Germany is considered a social market economy - not socialist. Wikipedia can clear up that confusion. Social market economies do not stigmatize private property ownership or engage in social economic planning.

Look up social capitalism.

But it’s still capitalism. Same beautiful pig, different lipstick.

But the Germans had the luxury of building their economy without some burdens the U.S. did. Beyond being rebuilt into a modern manufacturing economy from scratch, Germany didn’t have the luxury of trying to protect the free world. Japan also benefited in similar fashion.

But enough of this claptrap, we are still waiting on a list of successful socialist economies. Good luck.
Sleepwalker71
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 03:04 PM UTC
I remember the slightly alternate definition of socialism:
Socialism is a system in which the difficulties unknown in any other system are heroically overcome.

It is about the difficulties that socialism creates for itself.
RobinNilsson
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Stockholm, Sweden
Joined: November 29, 2006
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 09:13 PM UTC

Quoted Text

...., we are still waiting on a list of successful socialist economies. Good luck.



The wait will be looong, very very long.
A different species of mankind will have to evolve first, maybe with some genes taken from ants or bees .....


My country: We introduced privately owned schools back in 1992. The government at that time was to the right as Swedish politics goes. In the period since then we have had left wing and right wing governments and none of them has tried to abolish the system. It seems that too many voters liked it
Political suicide to try to get rid of it.
The property tax has been abolished, too many retired social democrat voters who had built their own houses in the forties-fifties were now living in homes in very attractive areas and the values of their houses were skyrocketing. The got hit with properties taxes, both on the house itself and on the value that the house represented. Suddenly the social democrat party found themselves treating their own core voters as rich capitalists. Widows on low pensions were on the brink of being forced to move out, and a rented apartment would cost even more. Tough fecal matter. The social democrats had to abolish two of their favourite taxes.
The big problem for the Swedish social democrats is that the society they have built (welfare, education, medical care et.c) has turned their core lower working class voters into middle class who now find themselves being treated as high income capitalist parasites.
Backlash anyone??
The right wing can not cut down on the welfare state, at least not by much, since that would be political suicide.
The current political fight is about liberties and the options to choose (schools is one example, healthcare is another).

We have fairly powerful trade unions and they know that killing the hen who lays the golden eggs means that there will not be any more golden eggs. The capitalist companies know that loyal employees and no labour conflicts is a lot better than picking a fight with the trade unions.
There are voices on the far right and left who try to argue that the system must be changed but we mostly consider them to be idiots and ignore them since we know that the system they want will not work.

The current unemployment rate is around 6% we consider this to be high but many companies are having difficulties finding employees. The unemployed do not have the needed skills.
The unemployment rate in the US is 3.9%
The employment rate of the total population in Sweden is 51.6%, for the US it is around 48%. This means that a larger percentage of the population in Sweden are actively working or seeking employment. The unemployment rate in Sweden has increased due to the large inflow of immigrants.

/ Robin

Vicious
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 09:59 PM UTC
"we are still waiting on a list of successful socialist economies"

I think we are still waiting for a list of countries with successful economies rule by any single-party regime that is socialist or fascist does not change anything,the recipe for success is to have all the parties or ideologies in the same political system, each side brings something good, if there is no balancing the system automatically loses one side and as a boat slowly sinks....so even if you do not like a healthy democracy need both socialists and fascists and all those in between....ideas do not kill are the men's who do it

bots1141
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Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 11:34 PM UTC
Some earlier comments talked about the tariff increases. Are plastic model kits part of that tariff???
exgrunt
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Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2018 - 01:14 AM UTC

Quoted Text

For me I would like to get the Trump & Poopton figures with posable parts so I could put them in compromising positions.




You'll need the aftermarket Mario Kart and Yeti add-ons for the Donny Trump figure.
panamadan
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Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2018 - 01:52 AM UTC
https://www.google.com/search?q=good+good+let+your+nerd+rage+flow&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS770US770&hl=en-US&prmd=ivsn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj81-zNotHdAhW1HjQIHQfEAQMQ_AUIESgB&biw=375&bih=591#imgrc=mKuus2cXXdcN2M:

Dan
RobinNilsson
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Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2018 - 02:04 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Some earlier comments talked about the tariff increases. Are plastic model kits part of that tariff???



https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2018/september/ustr-finalizes-tariffs-200

At the bottom there is a line of text with a link
"Click here to view the final tariff list."
to a pdf-document listing all the goods:
https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/301Investigations/Tariff%20List-09.17.18.pdf

/ Robin
barkingdigger
Staff MemberAssociate Editor
ARMORAMA
#013
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Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2018 - 02:45 AM UTC
Wow - three whole pages of "free" political interpretations worth every penny I paid for 'em, and I'm still no nearer to knowing if the Abrams kit has all the same sprues and options as their regular boxing...

Any chance we can get back to discussing the models?
SaxonTheShiba
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Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2018 - 03:31 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Wow - three whole pages of "free" political interpretations worth every penny I paid for 'em, and I'm still no nearer to knowing if the Abrams kit has all the same sprues and options as their regular boxing...

Any chance we can get back to discussing the models?




That is certainly an option but that would probably degenerate into an eighty four page thread on hatch placement on the Black Label M-103 or whether or not Dragon and DS tracks are in fact responsible for the decline of Western Civilization as we know it.

Cheers,

The Shiba