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At 12/3/11 01:49 AM, WallofYawn wrote: Is that a serious response? Because that sentence kind of makes my blood boil, if I'm being honest.

It figures that your naivete about race would make you see my remark as anything but sarcasm.
It didn't make my blood boil, but was nonetheless irritating, when I saw you talk about the black unemployment rate being higher, as if we should care more. What you undoubtedly attribute to widespread (but somehow legally unactionable) racism, I attribute to simple demographics.

Black people are, on average, less educated than white people, which leads them to generally lower paying employment. When businesses cut back production, the first people to go are the workers on the bottom level, usually because their contribution to production is the most direct (but no longer needed due to poor demand) and because they are easily replaceable.

As a result, black people will have higher unemployment than white people. If you account for skills instead of race, then you'll find the unemployment rate is pretty much the same among Americanized ethnic groups (first generation immigrants usually have the disadvantage of poorer English fluency).

At 12/2/11 08:41 PM, WallofYawn wrote: This guy's right, I mean, the number of unemployed black people alone is double that of the white population. 17-20% unemployment for blacks.

Yeah, well, who cares about black people anyway?

Warforger, you're right, but businesses aren't exactly cheering over the healthcare law or the proposed environmental regulations. At the very least his policies have fostered uncertainty and doubt...that's bad.

At 11/30/11 11:03 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: 3 things wrong with this on a cursory reading, and really, this should be coming from Ranger2, whom I asked to provide sources, not you. Don't bail out somebody who can't bail himself out. Let's get to what's wrong:

I don't see why that matters. Aren't you more concerned with the substance of what he's saying?

1. This is from the CIA, and it is clearly an ass covering move.

It's not from the CIA, it's from the Senate Intelligence Committee, made up of a bunch of senators.

3. Ranger stated multiple intelligence services came to the same conclusion, so I clearly asked for something to show how all these sources got their shit so completely wrong and went to war on a pretext that turned out to be false. This only address America, no one else.

Well, America is the big one, and it does mention in some places when foreign intelligence agencies contributed information.
I think there was an investigation in Britain called the Butler report or something. I

At 11/28/11 11:21 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

Saddam admitted after his capture that he thought Bush was bluffing, and exaggerated his claims of WMDs as to not appear weak against Iran.

Ok, so again, it begs the question how and why the various intelligence services who continued to pound the idea that WMD was present, dangerous, and a reason for war (George Tenet called the case a "slam dunk") could have gotten their information so completely and catastrophically wrong.

http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqrepor t2-textunder.pdf

Saddam supplied Palestinian suicide bombers.

Source?

http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqrepor t2-textunder.pdf

And while Saddam may not supplied or aided Al Qaeda directly, there were some Al Qaeda operatives in Ba'athist Iraq.

Source? Names?

http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqrepor t2-textunder.pdf

But still, sources, names?

http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqrepor t2-textunder.pdf
It's all there, look for the bolded U sections.

At 11/27/11 12:56 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Finally. 8 years too late if you ask me.

Yeah, fuck those Iraqis. As soon as we determined there weren't any WMDs, we should have just pulled out and let the anarchic slaughter commence. It's not like they're Americans or anything. We would have garnered great respect in the Muslim community then.

Oh, and on the terrorist point, we created the breeding ground by being there.

Yes of course, the famous homegrown Iraqi nationalist terrorists, who hate the US so much that they suicide bomb...Iraqi civilians and target...Shiite Muslims and launch international terrorist attacks in...Spain, England, and Indonesia.

I suppose you'll say next that the Sunni Awakening didn't happen.

At 11/19/11 02:48 AM, WallofYawn wrote:

But my point was that we can't have this macho facade of "being the best" country with the "highest standards of living" and then cut health care, social security, education, and tax the shit out of small businesses.

Most of those are examples of overinvested programs. Past a certain point, the more money that's allocated, the less each dollar accomplishes. A good healthcare system is necessary to keep a healthy, productive labor force, but to ensure that everyone, everywhere, can attain the highest conceivable level of health is insanely expensive. The greatest killers in this country stem from decades-long overindulgence and vice (heart disease, lung, skin, liver cancers). Increasing hospital funding isn't going to change that.

Social security should be cut by changing eligibility requirements. The program was originally intended to keep the elderly from desitution, but for many people it's become just another IRA. If a retired person lives by himself, has a decent retirement account, and receives a pension, there's no reason why he "needs" social security if all it's doing is pushing him past the median income. How prevalent this is, I couldn't say; total income of SS recipients isn't easy to find.

SadisticMonkey's already said enough about education.

We should ensure that our people get the best quality of life we can provide them.

I agree; part of that is keeping taxes as low as possible.

America is about freedom and prosperity. Right now, we have less freedom, and a whole lot less prosperity. The government's job is to provide for the security, welfare, prosperity

Stop right there. The government doesn't "do" anything to bring prosperity. People create prosperity, for themselves and society. The government is little more than a mediator to guard against illegal activity and the occasional negative externality. Social security, medicaid, etc, these are nothing more than socialist, though necessary, programs that take from one group and give to another. They are a problem waiting to be solved by the private market, not a foundation for aggressive redistribution of wealth.

At 11/18/11 03:31 PM, Camarohusky wrote: There's a reason we can't cut anything.

The people who want to cut spending can't seem to reconcile that cutting government funding not only cuts programs these people use and rely upon, it cuts jobs. It cuts a LOT of jobs.

Reducing social security and medicare benefits doesn't cut jobs. Tightening unemployment benefit eligibility doesn't cut jobs. Repealing Obamacare doesn't cut jobs unless you equate bureacracy with private sector business.

Besides, a job that exists solely because of a subsidy is usually a pointless job to begin with.

At 11/17/11 04:41 PM, WallofYawn wrote:

About 48% of Americans pay absolutely NO income tax. It can't be all the 1%, there's a fair share of skimming off the top done by all classes.

Fair enough. Still, you can't argue that the top 1% don't exploit the middle class. I mean, why else would the divide between rich and poor be so great, if the rich weren't so greedy?

Maybe because you're too lazy to describe the actual mechanism of exploitation, or maybe because you're too dense to understand why one sole statistic isn't enough to prove you right.
Either quality can discourage wealth.

Then there's this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-rei ch/why-we-must-raise-taxes-o_b_844606.ht ml

The Huffington Post is a website full of propaganda and distortion.

Yea, you're right. Tho I think some go too far, proposing insane cuts, as well as a flat rate tax. Also, why is it that the presidency's with the most cuts had the worst economies?

From the little I've seen of you so far in these posts alone, I wouldn't trust you to be the judge of sanity.
A flat rate tax would be a great way to end tax loopholes and save hundreds of millions or more in accounting fees. The rich would still pay more taxes.
For one thing, 2001-2008 was not one of "the worst economies." It started and ended with a recession, neither having anything to do with tax rates, but that doesn't stop critics with an agenda from averaging two ends of an economic parabola and declaring that nothing happened inbetween. But even if we ignore that, the answer is coincidence. There is no realistic economic basis for tax increases to boost growth, or for cuts to discourage it. Changes in the tax rate of the scale we've seen in the last few decades haven't been enough to outweigh every other economic influence.

I'm no anarchist nor tea-partier. They're a necessary evil, however, how much evil is necessary? There's a fine line between paying your fair share and having the government wring you dry.

Couldn't agree more with that statement.

You're missing the point. It's not about how much you pay in taxes, its about what the taxes are uesd for. The relative value of any set amount of money to a person is irrelevant. Some bum on the street doesn't deserve a thousand dollars for doing nothing, regardless of whether it comes from a single mother struggling to make 30k a year or from a millionaire pulling down 500k from dividends.

At 11/12/11 12:13 AM, Camarohusky wrote: Has our society already lost track of what marriage is actually all about? If we don't value the commitment and domestic parts of a marriage, what left of it do we have as a society?

I don't think so. I'm betting that the people who watched her wedding did so more for the spectacle and less for the sacrament. Viewership isn't the same as an endorsement.

At 10/21/11 03:44 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 10/21/11 03:06 PM, adrshepard wrote: 100% wrong. No one in the administration ever asserted Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.

But Dick Cheney was running around saying Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda, which is pretty close to saying that.

I couldn't say without reading what he said. There was room for interpretation when it came to the exact relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and that was just in the intelligence reports. Using that information in a speech to average people or in conversation doesn't always preserve the same level of subtlety. Even the official senate intelligence committee report on public remarks about Iraq's links to terrorism couldn't say that specific statements were contradicted by intelligence. It could only point to false "implications," which are inherently subjective.

At 10/21/11 03:44 PM, SouthAsian wrote: Are you saying that the U.S. pre 9/11 was too relaxed and maybe a little oblivious when it came to understanding potential threats against it?well yeah it was.Anyways on an entirely different level the WMD situation could also be labeled a scapegoat anyways.We used scapegoats for war in Iraq.If it wasn't 9/11 it was WMD.You can't deny that.

Yeah, I can, because you seem to be saying that an Iraq armed with WMDs isn't threatening enough to merit action. Iraq was on the administration's radar even before 9/11. The attacks may have brought about a mentality that favored a more active and assertive strategy, but that's not the same as a scapegoat. Scapegoat implies some ulterior motive hidden behind a red herring. I don't think WMDs can qualify as red herrings, and I've never heard a convincing ulterior motive (If Bush wanted to throw money to the "military-industrial complex, etc." wouldn't it just be easier to push through favorable legislation in the Republican-dominated legislature?)

True.What I meant to say that the Bush Administration immediately factored Iraq in to the larger war on terror movement. They included Al Qaeda, and Saddam in the same type of spectrum.That they represented "State sponsored" terrorism

Yeah, they are different, but I don't see how that makes state-sponsored terrorism any less of a problem.

What I find so damning is the way Rumsfeld hours after 9/11 was already thinking about the planning stages for striking Iraq.So why is it that he was thinking about 9/11 and Saddam on the same wave length?

Well, Saddam had a history of supporting terrorism, though it was usually restricted to groups that target Israel. And he was one of the few major foreign "enemies" in US policy at the time. From the accounts that I've read though, they determined relatively quickly that Saddam didn't organize the attack.

At 10/21/11 02:31 PM, SouthAsian wrote: Are you referring to 9/11?Well that event was used as a scape goat to invade Iraq.

No, it only shattered US complacency over potential threats. An Iraq armed with WMDs took on a whole new relevance.

they had no connection to it.Of course Bush and inc found a way to connect the two.

100% wrong. No one in the administration ever asserted Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.

8 years later and people are STILL getting this shit wrong.

I'd have to say the argument that the attempted Iranian assassination of the Saudi Ambassador was a hoax designed to start a war with Iran. As if Americans give a damn about the Saudis.

I don't see the problem...Yeah, it happens, but does having 1 kid more than France per hundred thousand die from child abuse make this a national crisis? I don't think so.

At 10/16/11 11:53 AM, Camarohusky wrote: Seeing as selfish populism (Reaganomics & Tea Party) make up a sizeable chunk of the reason our government is so ass backward,

What, and the people who demand universal health coverage and more public spending on services aren't? All the Tea Party wants is for the government to stay out of people's lives as much as possible. If you ask me, I'd say it's far more selfish to demand that other people spend their money for your benefit than you demand to keep as much as possible of your own money. That's hardly populist; it's libertarian.

The "lower my taxes at all cost!" philosophy is the representatives following the idiocy of the common man (with a few corporate incentives of their own).

The Tea Party as I've understood it was always more concerned with spending and the future tax hikes that would lead to. It was the growing deficitis that prompted tea party protests, not a change in the tax code.

It's not that I don't like the average person, I just think that there are extremely few people in this country who are qualified enough to understand the government and how it works enough to effect it directly.

No argument there. I can't read the comments tab of any news story without losing my faith in humanity.

At 10/13/11 12:18 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote: here is a good, simplistic reading of the situation as a whole.
in short: yes it will stick, yes it SHOULD stick, and most importantly: read it before posting a rebuttal.

I'm not impressed. It's a bunch of statistics without analysis. Ok, we get it. Corporation profits are high. Does it say why? No. CEOs get paid a lot more than they used to. Why is that? The people at Business Insider don't know, or at least don't care to tell us. Average hourly earnings are stagnant. Why would they be anything else? Hourly waged workers are almost always less skilled (i.e. more replaceable) than salaried employees. Advances in technology increase the relative productive capacity of capital compared to labor, so the natural trend in business is to employ as much capital as possible and maintain it with fewer, but more capable, workers.

So the bailouts didn't bring about a new age of prosperity. You don't say? The bailouts were never meant to promote lending anyway, only to keep the banks from collapsing entirely. It was inevitable that banks would restrict credit after such a close call. It's motivated by almost the exact opposite of greed, really. It's a very conservative approach that trades profits for security. Why else are they investing in US Treasury bonds? If it were greed, they'd be purchasing junk bonds like crazy, unconcerned with solvency because the Fed would just bail them out again.

Regarding the one graph, the Fed is paying them interest on excess reserves in order to encourage solvency. Even with the bailouts to major institutions, hundreds of banks still failed. The bailouts were directed at specific banks with enough toxic liabilities to scerw up the whole system. The bailouts let these banks meet their obligations to all the smaller banks, preventing a cascade of failures. Notice how the graph doesn't tell you the excess reserves of bailed out institutions like Bank of America.

It did get one thing right; the protesters share the same lazy, half-assed understanding of the actual issues. If the protesters were well informed and intelligent, you can bet they'd come up with a better policy proposal than "give us these people's money."

At 10/11/11 04:53 PM, MercatorMapV2 wrote:

You shot yourself in the foot and destroyed your own analysis when you stated that you would assume that they are all non business filings for simplification.

That's because business filings were only 3.6% of all bankruptcy filings in 2010. My assumption actually overstates the number of individual filings, which works against my conclusion by raising each of the values down the line of the analysis.

Care to try again?

At 10/10/11 09:54 PM, MercatorMapV2 wrote:

I know. I've worked with poor people for years. 95% of the time it's their own fault that they are working-poor. It's all due to poor decisions they made at various points in life.

There are a lot more people who are poor as shit than 5% because of medical bills. But what can we expect? You pulled that statistic right out of your ass.

Of course I did. It was a figure of speech. But let's try to look at the real numbers.
In 2010, there were 1,146,511 Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings (we'll assume they are all non-business filings for simplicity), Chapter 7 meaning a complete wipeout of assets and an income below the median level for the state. Let's also the say the popularized, but not definitive, number of 60% of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills. That makes 687,907 bankrupcties attributable to health bills.
In 2010, the total number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by about 3.4 million. Plugging in the numbers, assuming that every one of the bankruptcies leads to poverty, the rate is about 20%, a 15% difference from the number I threw out. Not too bad.
But wait! None of those statistics take count of "middle-classness" that you went on about or employment status, which is what I discussed. If you look at the most recent 2009 information, only about 16% of the working-poor have college degrees. When you take into account the terrible job market for new graduates, who haven't had the chance to become "middle class", then the rate of middle-class people who have been reduced to shit manual labor jobs due to medical bills probably goes much lower.

So, an off-hand personal experience estimate of 5% turns to a researched probable figure of 12-13%. That's pretty damn good, if you ask me. I doubt you could have handled it, or if you've even kept up with what I've just laid out for you, but hell, if you can make a better analysis, go right ahead.

Just be warned, it's a lot more difficult than spewing snide one-liners.

At 10/10/11 12:45 AM, Cootie wrote: Wealth inequality is a big deal.

No, it isn't, unless you can identify the mechanism behind it. A lot of the "inequality" and decline of the "middle class" has to do with outsourcing manufacturing jobs. Decades ago, someone could earn a middle class income with only a high school education, thanks to union wages and a lack of foreign competition. Now, you either need a secondary education or have to be really, really good at a trade to be middle class.

I ain't gonna go all Marx in here... but goddamn I couldn't live with myself if I had all that money that I could wipe my ass with and I knew people that were trying hard, REALLY hard, couldn't even afford the things they needed.

Sure, they're trying hard now. But they weren't trying hard when they had kids out of wedlock with no reliable income to support them, or when they went to prison for a few years on a drug charge and are on probation, or when they didn't study in school.
I know. I've worked with poor people for years. 95% of the time it's their own fault that they are working-poor. It's all due to poor decisions they made at various points in life.

Those who generate the wealth should get their fair share.

They do. The labor market takes care of that. Any other definition of "fair wages" is divorced from reality. People with little to no job skills are replaceable, and shouldn't be paid very much.

At 10/10/11 02:42 AM, MercatorMapV2 wrote: You can support and not fuck over the people who do menial jobs that are required to keep society running and in order.

The American poor and working class are living better lives than most of the world's population today, and are exponentially better off than probably 98% of everyone who has ever lived in human history.

So forgive me if I balk at appeals to the "plight" of lower-class Americans.

At 10/8/11 12:45 AM, Camarohusky wrote: This isn't even close to anyt of your examples. This is like saying that men who like women who are 2 inches above average are freaks. It's hair splitting at its finest.

I agree. I only wanted to preempt the whole " 'cult' is a subjective term and therefore can never be meaningfully applied to anything" line of argument.
To devoted Christians, perhaps Mormonism is bizarre enough to be a cult, but I'd bet the average person doesn't really have a problem with it. Its foundation may be strange, but in terms of what Mormons do it's not very shocking.

At 10/7/11 11:29 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Righto, then dj. Define cult.

Must you play the logical definition game? Do you not have a strong enough handle on normal society to recognize freaks when you see them? Do you need a dictionary or a philosophical discussion to say, for instance, that people who get sexually aroused upon seeing women in high-heeled shoes crushing puppies are deviants and weirdos? Or what about the people from Packlands (if you've ever read somethingawful.com), who pretend that they are wolves in human form? They're most definitely freaks, and I didn't need a dictionary to convince me of it.

Of course, there's no reason to hate them if they can still function in society on a normal level, saving their craziness for their own personal time when it doesn't affect anybody but themselves. But they are still freaks, just the same.

At 10/5/11 08:04 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Now, these protestors have two options. They can either come up with some clear and worthy problems and solutions to them, or they do the better solution, get some credibility by getting some regular people whose opinions other regular people actually value.

This isn't about encouraging dialogue or sensible solutions. They're angry, they're unwilling to consider any viewpoints other than their own, and they aren't concerned with the implications or long-term consquences of what their demands would lead to.

Mass protests are never founded on rationality. They couldn't be. Reasonable solutions to major problems are very complex and usually take a lot of experience or background knowledge to understand. To rally people, you need passion and conviction, not logic and an objective mind. It's one reason to be thankful we elect representatives to vote for us rather than cast a ballot for each and every legislative action.

At 10/1/11 12:00 AM, aviewaskewed wrote: According to the Constitution? No sir, it isn't.

So you'd prefer to ignore reality completely and put all your faith in a 200 year-old piece of paper to guide your actions regardless of what may change in the meantime?
Don't get me wrong; the Founders and the Constitution are great and everything, but what they put down is not the end-all doctrine of human interaction for all eternity.

The army, CIA, any armed agency can't snatch him, bring him back, and we put him on trial for charges of treason? That's really impossible?

You saw how long it took to get bin Laden. You saw the political consequences of what happened when we finally did get him. The Yemenis don't even like that we use drones there; wikileaks showed that the president had to lie to congress about the extent of our involvement. A direct US presence could very well jeopardize what cooperation we have already. And we can't just instantly deploy special forces on a whim to get someone in unknown territory. The chances of failure rise exponentially when there's less time to plan or coordinate such a difficult operation.

Also, show me a law where it shows he actually by a legal mechanism forfeited citizenship by joining Al Qaeda. Especially since we admit he didn't kill anyone or actually commit a terrorist act.

You'd have to ask the other guy, I didn't make that point.

You're saying just joining Al Qaeda should be treated the same way as killing someone as part of Al Qaeda.

Of course. Did we make a distinction between Al-Zawahiri and his bodyguards, who may have personally not killed anyone? Do you wait to strike a military target because the people in it may not have personally attacked your forces yet? Awlaki was another target.

We don't? So criminals don't have rights now? Shit...I'm sorry, I must have missed the "except..." part in "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...".

Please. The Preamble has never been anything but political rhetoric. At most, it identifies the spirit of the Declaration and Constitution. But it sure as hell didn't apply British spies or pirates, people that were simply executed after a drumhead court, if that. Besides, aren't you concerned solely with the strictly legal aspects?

Again, show me where he isn't a citizen anymore by a legal mechanism.

Irrelevant. There's more going on here than a simple legal interpretation. But if you want the official justification, read this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nati onal-security/aulaqi-killing-reignites-d ebate-on-limits-of-executive-power/2011/
09/30/gIQAx1bUAL_story_1.html

rights he sought to deprive of innocent Americans.

See above, appeal to emotion is fun, but not terribly helpful to answering my questions

I'd normally agree, but I can't understand how what Awlaki has done doesn't sicken you enough to be glad he's dead. That's good enough for me, and I don't need a complicated legal analysis to convince me that I won't be next if I say, "I don't like Obama."

So in other words...laws are good till they get in the way of what I think is important, and when that happens, fuck the law.

Personally speaking, I totally agree. It's not unheard of. Protesters did and still do it a lot. Most of the time its a small law they break, like disturbing the peace, blocking access, etc. The "law is sacred" aspect only goes so far.

Knows what's better for us? Absolutely we do.

Except that's not entirely what we do. It's also not what we previously agreed to.

We didn't make an agreement with terrorists, and everyone knows we'd follow international laws to the letter in a conventional conflict, if only to ensure our enemies do as well.

Talk is cheap. The only demands we make of sovereign nations are: Don't build WMDs, don't support international terrorism. That isn't asking much.

Except it's not really that. Unless you flunked history, you know damn well we have in the past, and continue to not list all of our demands of other nations,

Oh, sorry, forgot "Communism." But that's over now. As of the present day, my list of demands we will actually do something about is still accurate.

Christ, it was Yemeni intelligence that told us where he was! Yemen sanctioned it!

I'm having a hard time finding an article on that. All I can find is that Yemen confirmed the kill. Not saying you're wrong, just saying I can't find anything on that. Could you link me to something I'm maybe missing here?

It's on the second page.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a p-source-us-believes-al-awlaki-was-kille d-in-strike-by-us-jets-drones-on-his-con voy/2011/09/30/gIQARxZa9K_story.html
I think it asks you to register if you load the page too many times.

At 9/30/11 09:57 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: We call it war...but I don't remember Congress issuing a declaration of war....I actually don't know how you would even go about declaring war on a mobile terrorist group that operates withing and across multiple sovereign nations.

Well, a start would be to drive them out of their safe haven countries and devote billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of people to destroy them in an effort that's lasted over a decade. But that's not a war. No sir.

Ok, try them for treason then. You still get due process if you're accused of treason.

He ceased being one of us the moment he joined al-Qaida, and he was hiding in a foreign country, actively coordinating and inspiring attacks against us, surrounded by bodyguards and constantly moving around. You don't just send a police officer up to him with a warrant.
You sure as hell don't risk the lives of special forces in a complicated snatch operation for the sake of this terrorist scumbags rights, rights he chose to abandon and desecrate, rights he sought to deprive of innocent Americans. Laws and principles are great until you start believing they are supernaturally bestowed commandments and not rules drafted through compromise by the hands of men who can't predict every conceivable event.

Enemy Combatant. You are correct sir. However, I see where the problem comes in because basically what happened is the Bush administration decided to put the US above international law and said "well, the US just plain knows better".

Knows what's better for us? Absolutely we do.

What's always funny to me is how so many supporters of this seem to think it's ok for us to say "we are a sovereign nation, we'll handle our own business and deal with people we consider criminal our own way thank you very much"...but then we go out and tell other sovereign nations how to handle their's?

Talk is cheap. The only demands we make of sovereign nations are: Don't build WMDs, don't support international terrorism. That isn't asking much.

Our soldiers operating in a sovereign nation, who we may in fact be allied with, whose laws we may in fact have agreed we would respect in our operational capacity...and then we don't.

Christ, it was Yemeni intelligence that told us where he was! Yemen sanctioned it!

At 9/30/11 09:45 PM, Mark-er wrote: He didn't join a foreign military, Al-Qaeda is not the military of any foreign country. So, he's still an American citizen by law and my point's still stand.

No, it really doesn't because you've crossed the threshold of common sense and resorted to unpersuasive technicalities.

Me thinks you didn't care when Bush detained Americans in Guantanimo... Now that Obama does it, it suddenly becomes a slippery slope? Puh-lease.

I thought the absurdity of comparing al-awlaki and GOP candidates was enough to show I was being sarcastic. Anyway, I'm all for Obama's aggressiveness in using drones and targeted attacks across the Middle East, regardless of whether the targets are American born or not. It's pretty obvious that this guy was not an American in any meaningful sense.

It's all about precedent. If Obama can kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without consequences, than what's to stop him from killing Mitt Romney or Rick Perry?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

At 9/29/11 09:03 AM, sharpnova wrote: As long as the uneducated are allowed to vote, we'll have the clowns in office that we currently do. A selfish uninformed opinion (the opinions of most voters) is hardly enough to make an intelligent vote.

You're not the first person to bring that up. I think Jefferson used to say that the multitude of selfish opinions would cancel each other out to an extent, with whatever's left over representing the best course for the most people.

But realize that intelligence as you're framing it has nothing to do with education. Education is useful for getting a good job, but it doesn't make you wise. If it's an "informed" vote you want, then you aren't going to get it with universal suffrage. No issue of national importance is simple or straightforward enough for the average person (or even above average person) to be able to just sit down at a library or computer and figure out for himself. Even congress has to summon expert testimony for everything, and still there's not always agreement.

Do people ever stop to wonder.. how it's possible that out of dozens of issues, most of America has managed to split itself into two exclusive groups that disagree on every single one of these issues? (with a few exceptions of course) Do you even know what the odds against this are?

Not very high, considering how broad each party's platform is. That takes care of most of the people with a basic preference on any issue. It's always a compromise voting for any party. Think how many groups there would have to be to represent every combination of opinions on every issue the government faces.

The bottom line is that climate change is a pointless issue for lay people. People who believe in climate change aren't any more intelligent than those that don't, because neither of them would remotely understand it if scientists didn't recognize and study it first.

It's always entertaining to see average people debating climate change on a scientific level because nothing is ever refuted. No one understands it enough to say "no, you have to modify that variable by 37% percent to account for the Coreolis Effect and El Nino."

You're right to be skeptical about it. It's a very subtle effect over time, yet the supposed solutions will have very real and immediate detrimental effects to the global economy. The only way to actively support these solutions is to have faith that such and such scientists are correct.

Personally, in recognition of game theory, I'd say fuck the rest of the world, lets amass as much wealth as we can in preparation, then if the sea levels rise build a giant sea wall or a pit hundreds of miles wide and deep in Africa.

At 9/11/11 02:19 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote:

...You're saying that no resistance movement can ever be defeated, and for all those times when resistance failed, it's only because people didn't want to resist any more, or because lots of resisters got killed... When people as a whole stop resisting by definition the resistance is defeated.

yep, you can't fight them forever, unless you want to exterminate them like a bunch of rats. simple as that. of course it would never go to the last baby, but if the people have the will to...

This has nothing to do with what I posted. You said that guerillas have never been defeated. I explained to you that the absence of resistance, which has happened innumberable times throughout history, is the defeat of guerillas. Now you're just stating your argument again as if we never even talked.

like I said, you kill one, his best friend, father, son, cousin, and brother will want a piece of you too.

By that logic, the atomic bombings of Japan should have created hundreds of thousands of armed guerillas dedicated to killing US forces. Yet the postwar occupation was remarkably non-violent.
How you can present these statements as universal truths when common sense and history are against you is beyond me.

So when the unemployment rate drops by double digits every year, people are just, what? Working for free?

for the unskilled, that doesn't matter, they won't find work because they lack the skills to do so, that's why they fight.

You said that the incomes of Iraqis haven't changed.
I just freaking showed you that the "lower and middle classes" have been employed in greater numbers each year for the past 8 years, resulting in higher incomes, and now you're talking about pirates. Did a pirate slice off your balls and make you too much of a coward to admit you were wrong?

I have explained this part 4 different times by now. revenge for their fallen friends+ loved ones. Some also for past incidents of American interventionism that didn't happen to make the news. (on the same day as Columbine shooting, the Clinton administration ordered the bombing of a hospital, to name just one of many.)

Are you insane? You haven't explained anything. You're just repeating the same line without any argument, apparently thinking that it's a truism even though you can't refute the most basic counter-argument against it. Then you try to distract me by making some absurd claim about how Iraqis and Afghanis risk their lives fighting US troops because of what happened in other countries decades ago.

you sit there deciding that the ends always justify the means

What the hell are you talking about? This thread is about whether the invasion of Iraq was a justified decision and you're railing on with maudlin sentimentality about death. What the hell do you think war is? War is the ultimate incarnation of the ends justifying the means; strangers slaughtering each other horribly for the sake of ideas and lifestyles. Everyone else here who is contributing something meaningful to the discussion already grasps that simple truth.

Soviet Russia. I have nothing more to say.

You have nothing more to say because you're lazy and an idiot who doesn't know how to make an argument. The Soviet Union's weapons brought about an expensive arms race and decades of suspicion and mistrust that spiraled into various minor conflicts, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people whose lives you cherish so much.

At 9/10/11 08:30 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote:

all of your examples either ended prematurely, or were the result of genocide, biological warfare in north america was not the same as conventional warfare andyes, long lasting conquests only DO occur when the civilians decide not to fight back

Do realize how absurd your logic is? You're saying that no resistance movement can ever be defeated, and for all those times when resistance failed, it's only because people didn't want to resist any more, or because lots of resisters got killed. No people, race, or nation has EVER fought to the death of every single individual. When people as a whole stop resisting by definition the resistance is defeated.

Bullshit. The economy of Iraq is booming, and the Iraqi security forces are always hiring.

there are a million things in Iraq that are going boom but none of which involve the incomes of their lower and middle classes.

So when the unemployment rate drops by double digits every year, people are just, what? Working for free?

Insurgents have been responsible for the majority of civilian deaths arent joining to protect civilians from the states

no they join so they can feed their families or get revenge on the united states.

Please. People aren't starving in Iraq. Food insecurity is not the same as a food shortage.

Revenge on the United States? Let me get this straight. Iraqis are so mad at the suffering the United States has inflicted upon average people that they join the groups responsible for killing the majority of civilians each year, then participate in attacks that end up killing far more innocent Iraqis than US forces. Then, other Iraqis blame the resulting deaths on an invasion that happened 8 years ago, and decide to join the insurgency so they can kill more civilians to take revenge.

So? They don't give a shit about our security or national interests. They should be ignored.

the security of your national intrests was under no threat in the first place, even if he could some how create a nuclear weapon, he wouldn't have the means to launch it at us or our allies.

Yeah, proliferation of WMDs ain't no thang. Instead of wasting time and money on sanctions and UN inspections, let's just give every crackpot dictator nuclear and chemical weapons. They're going to make them eventually, right? And they'd never use them against countries equipped with other WMDs, so what's the big deal?

At 9/10/11 07:01 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote:

Which we only determined from post-war findings, and is totally irrelevant if you're trying to figure out whether a past event was justified.

lets just invade every country in the world then for the purpose of finding out later, just to be safe.

I try to make a logical distinction and you miss it completely. You can't even write words like "guerilla" without using a spell checker. Yet here you are making sweeping criticisms of efforts involving the coordination of hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds of billions of dollars, and dozens of government agencies and bureaucracies. Isn't it about time you asked yourself, "Who the fuck do I think I am?"