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Republicans don't believe in government. They cut programs and they cut spending. Why would you expect them to do anything remotely like governing?

The thing is that certain replacement parts for gadgets, or 3d replicas of say D&D figurines could be printed. And there are arguments that if you tried to sell such things you'd be breaking the law.

I'm pretty sure you'd be ok making them for personal use though...

I'm glad to see this made it to the final step. I think you guys will get that final $5 dollars. PM me if you don't.

:)

WHO'S GOT 5 DOLLARS? I STARTED THIS THING AND NOW I'VE PUT YOU WITHIN $5. I AM SCREAMING ON THE INTERNET.

SOMEONE GIVE THESE PEOPLE $5.

That is all. :)

Take a leaf out of NPR's book and do a couple guilt tripping animations and front page them. Hell have a competition for it...

If you want this to happen there are far easier ways to gain attention, and its not like you've never done that sort of stuff in the past.

Chances are it'll be the next NG meme and generate you more traffic with what you guys tend to come up with...

Also for what its worth, the Financial Times (a typically conservative outlet), is jumping behind Krugman on this saying that this particular argument isn't partisan at all.

Paywall, but you can register free to bypass & read.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2e74ceba-afd2-11e1-a025-00144 feabdc0.html#axzz1xDtrlCgM

At 6/7/12 09:27 PM, BUTANE wrote: This is what I don't understand about anti-union rhetoric. The people that are "forced" to give money to a union in order to keep their job/get a job are payed far greater wages and get much better benefits because of the union. Yes, maybe 5-10% of their income will go towards union fee (and they have to pay it to keep working), but the without the union their wages and benefits would be far less than the 5-10% that they pay. They are still comming out ahead, it's not just an extra tax for the employees. Unions are not politically charges machines, they do give out money to candidates, but that is only to further the power of the unions and the employees that they represent.

Unions are run by the employees themselves, it's not like the people in them don't have a say about what the union is doing.

To emphasize this point, non-unionized teachers in PA make 30k a year starting. Unionized teachers make 40-45k starting and have great benifits by comparsion. 10% of 40k is 4k, so the unionized teachers still make 6k more than non unionized, after dues, even if they pay that max 10%.

I think when Walker gets indited over the John Doe crap, it won't matter.

Anyhow, the Dems put up a bad candidate. In fact, the put up the one they put up last time. He has no union support. The recall was about unions. This absolutely made no sense. The democrats didn't frame the election at all, and Walker had so much money he could do whatever he wanted.

All that said, John Doe is a real issue for Walker, and if its true, which it appears to be, then Walker is the last person any decent conservative would want to support. Basically, Walker and his staff robbed the government of money for personal use. So rather than being concerned about budgets as he claimed, its more likely he just wants to advance is conservative voodoo policy while thieving from the treasury and further weakening the government.

Its a wolf in sheep's clothing basically. He's not a true conservative, and you guys should have thrown him out. He's really the last person you want to be supporting.

At 6/7/12 08:54 PM, bismuthfeldspar wrote:

At 6/7/12 09:56 AM, gumOnShoe wrote:

At 6/6/12 10:06 PM, bismuthfeldspar wrote:

Do we have excessive credit right now? Is credit the problem with out ecnomy? Are people borrowing so much money right now and spending it willy nilly? I think we both know the answer to that question.

Politicians don't push corruption to the point where it appears "willy nilly", it's their job to reduce public suspicion about their activities after all. Usually they push corruption up until the point an impartial expert says "my calculations show that this might be a bit too much" at which point they say "well, this here is my buddy Kruppman and he's a super top economist primo excellente and he says it's well within the margin of error, ain't that right Kruppman old buddy old pal" then try to find less visible means of pushing it further.

You rant about corruption when I asked the following:

Do we have excessive credit right now?

Are people borrowing so much money right now and spending it willy nilly?

You latched on to the willy nilly and put it on the public sector when I was talking about all sectors. Stay on topic please. When you are ready to answer my original questions, please do so.

Ad Hominem

I just said Paul Krugman was biased, everyone is biased to a certain degree. If I were to say he is wrong because he looks like a garden gnome that would be an ad hominem attack.

You were attacking the messenger over the message. Rather than discrediting his arguments, you tried to discredit him because he was trying to advance his arguments in the political realm, where they have to take root or they are useless. The fact that he is politically active and trying to advance his economic theories is not a problem. The problem would be if his economic theories were wrong. That is what you should be addressing. Until you start doing that, I'm going to continue to not talk about your tangents.

And what exactly is that reality right now? And what exact policy do you think reflects what when? You used a whole bunch of economic terms and committed to nothing.

All I'm saying is economists who regularly clink stemware with politicians aren't the only economists, if you want a clearer picture of the situation you may need to widen your sources. I am committed to facts and logic, that's all.

Then present some already rather than attacking the individual.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/27/news/economy/Roubini_Davos/i ndex.htm

Alright, Roubini, predicted an eminent double dip in 2010. Everyone was worried about it because they listened to him and he turned out to be wrong. There were no bubbles ready to pop at that time. That said, even though he was misreading what was going on then, I totally agree that glass stegall needs to be re-implemented. I'm pretty sure Krugman agrees on that point too for what its worth. I'm all for better regulation of the financial institutions that continually cause these bad investments and subsequent crashes.

Apparently Krugman also believes politics should not play a role in economics and is particularly critical of conservative politics in economics but in doing so he provides a nice list of alternative viewpoints which are worth looking into purely because Krugman has expressed discontent with them.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/economists-ideol ogy-and-stimulus/

Krugman believes politics are fine to play, as long as you are speaking from factually sound ground. All of those people he lists he debunks fairly well with evidence and data. That's the thing. Most of those conservatives, and I've read them (I started off my political life in the Fox News bubble) appeal to fear or some other emotion. They make it sound like your gut instinct and intuition is right. But what they don't do is pay any attention to the actual observable facts or logical arguments. That is my personal opinion from experience.

Is the debt possibly going to be a problem? Definitive. If we reduce demand its going to be a problem right now though, much sooner, and at a time when we can't actually deal with it since the revenue streams don't exist. And cutting government programs would only make it worse. Unfortunately conservatives, or tea partiers if you prefer, don't want to listen to that argument. They are simply in love with the idea of small government, which I could go on a rant about.

I read other sources. I look at their evidence. And compare their back and forth arguments, and Krugman is generally the most fact based among them. I'll agree that Roubini has points, but that 2010 double dip never happened, so... I think what's going on here is that if you predict the worst at every step of the process, when the worst happens you're going to be right the one time it looks like it mattered. Which is better than thinking everything is going to be perfect when its not, but that kind of thinking can lead you astray, even so.

For what its worth, I want the bank industry to be re-regulated. I want the EPA to have teeth. And I want massive government projects to improve education, transportation, and manufacturing in this country.

At 6/6/12 10:06 PM, bismuthfeldspar wrote: Insufficient credit results in underuse of capital but excessive credit results in inefficient allocation of capital.

Do we have excessive credit right now? Is credit the problem with out ecnomy? Are people borrowing so much money right now and spending it willy nilly? I think we both know the answer to that question.

While it is true that the austerityholes would keep us in recession, at a certain point aggregate demand exceeds sustainability, ideally government financial policy should reflect financial reality.

And what exactly is that reality right now? And what exact policy do you think reflects what when? You used a whole bunch of economic terms and committed to nothing.

I'm just saying, Krugman ....

I'm not going to respond to the disparaging Ad Hominem remarks that follow the above. Address the arguments or present another source, if you have a problem.

At 6/5/12 04:42 PM, Th-e wrote:

We are in the second great depression. And austerity has put us here.

Umm...so Europe is to blame for all of our economic woes?

Some, because their lack of demand ultimately hurts our economy.

Also, if we are in the Second Great Depression, then western society has become too dumb to function anymore, and our society is a lost cause, forever.

I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that our leaders practice voodoo when it comes to economic policy. That is, they believe things that sound wonderful and appropriate, but which hold know real truth value.

Anyway...

1. Europe has been doing the whole Austerity thing. The U.S. hasn't.

The U.S. Federal Government implemented a stimulus. Now that those funds are worn out and states are cutting their budgets we are implementing austerity practices now.

2. Prior to 2009, the United States has never had a budget deficit above $500 BILLION. But since 2009, we have been dealing with incessant TRILLION dollar deficits each year since then!!!

So what? Prior to 2009 the money that went to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was kept off the books. Prior to 2009 we weren't addressing our economic problems here at home. A trillion isn't necessarily scarier than a billion. If we are willing to actually implement sound economic policy, taking out more loans now to get our country back on track is fine. When the economy rebounds, we can worry about paying down the debt. We can't pay down the debt while everyone else tries to or demand falls sharply and the economy dies.

3. Austerity has mutilated Greece and Spain. Austerity in a bad economy takes away growth, leading to more debt when trying to stop debt.

Yes.

4. For all of that American spending, the economy has seen little growth. If anything, we're performing the Japanese mistake. America spends, but it doesn't grow from it!!!

Mostly because we were filling a vacuum that the private industry stopped filling. So, what you saw was that we fell, but not as hard as we would have. This may be hard to understand, but had the car industry gone under we would have been watching a chain reaction of the destruction of american businesses outside of the financial districts.

Also, half of the stimulus was more tax cuts. Which is fine, but it doesn't promote new business and growth, it just gives people who are doing what we're already doing a little more to spend at walmart or mcdonalds.

If America continues this extreme spending, it will have to face austerity eventually, regardless of the amount of growth. Otherwise, we will someday be unable to borrow.

Not really.

Where has all this money gone???

As it was said to the top and out.

Some facts about our situation.

1) Businesses are not prospering because there isn't any demand.
2) Corporate profits & the wealth of the rich are at an all time high, but wages are falling or stagnant.
3) The recovery is stalling.
4) Food, gas, and other necessities due to regular inflation remain as high as they did at the beginning of the economic slump in 2008.
(3 & 4 are observable)
5) The U.S. government is the main source of layoffs. (See the latest jobs report)
6) The private market continues to hire at a rate slower than new workers graduate from school.

-----

Some logical extrapolations

A) In order for there to be demand, there must be individuals capable and ready to buy goods.
B) In order for there to be people ready and capable to buy goods, there have to be people with money.
C) In order for businesses to profit they must not spend money they could have.
D) If a business does not pay its workers more, it will profit more in the short term.
E) If every business does not pay its workers sufficiently, workers will be poor.
F) If all workers are poor, demand will fall.
G) If demand falls, businesses can't make more money.

-----

Starting a Business

I) If you want to start a business, you find investors.
II) If you can't find investors, you take on debt to get off the ground.
III) You expect to not make profit for the first year of your business.
IV) If you are successful in your business, you can pay off the debt once your company is doing well.

-----

Debt

1) You take on debt when you need more money than you have.
2) In order pay debt off, you must be taking in more money than you are spending.
3) If you are paying down debt, you increase your net value, but not your capacity to do anything other than take out more loans.

-----

Government

1) The government is an employer.
2) The government has debt.
3) The government is not profiting.
4) Taxes are the main source of revenue for the government.
5) Debt is a means of paying the bills that aren't debt related.

A) If the government wants to pay off the debt, it needs to profit.
B) In order to profit the government needs to generate revenue.
C) If the government can't generate revenue, debt must either remain the same or grow.

I) If the government wants to pay its employees, the government needs to generate revenue or take on debt.
II) If the government does gets rid of its employees, there are more poor people unless other people take those people on.
III) If the government does not get rid of its employees or pay them less, it must take on more debt, increase taxes, or find a way to stimulate the economy so that its people generate more tax revenue using the current rates.

Given all of the above, what conclusions do we know?

1) The government is cutting jobs and freezing pay.
2) The private sector is hoarding money, freezing pay, and hiring very, very slowly because there is no demand.
3) Both 1 & 2 lead to low demand.
4) Attempts to pay off the debt leads to lower demand.
5) Lower demand means lower tax revenue.

This largely means our economy is in a depressed state. The united states is in a very weak recovery/stagnation. But the global economy is rocky as a whole and is not growing. There is no demand from anywhere.

Economists have a name for this. Its called a depression. We are in the second great depression. And austerity has put us here. I'd like to ask you how you think we're supposed to get out of this given the above. I'll give you a hint, the section on starting a business is a clue. And there is a history lesson you might learn from as well. The world was depressed once in the last century. We got out of it. The answer is very clear. Its known. Nobel Prize Winning Economists agree.

There's only one path forward that we want and that's growth, and there's only one way I know of to do it. And that is that we need to create a demand so large it rivals the needs of the opposing forces of a world war.

Kinetic Life > Potential Life

As long as the fetus is reliant on the mother for nutrients and is inside her body, her life is more important than that of the fetus and she has the right to do with it as she wants. I think the most justifiable positions for abortion are those which seek to remove pain. Pain being a very amorphous term, I believe there's a lot of leeway for determining when an abortion is the right thing to do.

At 6/3/12 02:45 AM, Patcoola wrote:

At 6/2/12 09:48 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: I don't know how to talk about how much processing power I need. Right now, not much. In the future, I guess it could go up. Right now I'm probably pretty minimal, but I'd like to be on a server that isn't over leveraged.

personally I like 1and1.com

Not sure I want to work with 1and1 either based on the reviews I've read.

I don't want to go with anyone who has "unlimited" on any of their pages when we all know its clearly a lie.

At 6/2/12 02:34 PM, liljim wrote: Budget? Specs you require? Don't you think these are important factors when it comes to people bringing up suggestions?

Yeah... sorry host said "unlimited" everything (didn't think that meant down time to, lol), so I'm not used to thinking that way.

Here goes:

Sql databases, more than one if possible.

Right now I've got a database that's 14mb. It'll grow a lot larger if I let it. So, let's say 5gb is possible before I'd start worrying about switching hosts, and that's probably a few years from now.

I've got another that's 20mb. It's pretty static as I won't be updating it.

I've got a phpbb forum. Its only 2mb. Not sure how those scale up. Possible that one day it will.

Planning another database, but I might just make it a set of tables in an existing one if necessary.

I'm around 90mb of static pages & images. I expect that to grow if I start accepting images from other people, for their cards.

I don't know how to talk about how much processing power I need. Right now, not much. In the future, I guess it could go up. Right now I'm probably pretty minimal, but I'd like to be on a server that isn't over leveraged.

So dreamhost really isn't nearly as good as it used to be. I heard wonderful things about it and worked for a long time, but now I need to go somewhere else. Uptime just isn't a possibility for them apparently...

Any suggestions on a good hosting solution?

At 5/29/12 11:42 PM, KILLER80804 wrote: why is the catholic church being forced by the obama admin. to sell contraceptives? thats unconstitutional.

They aren't. The insurance they buy their employees is required to cover contraceptives. Basically if they only hire good little Catholics no one will ever buy contraceptives and it won't be a big issue.

The argument against this is basically the argument that says your employer is aloud to regulate what you buy with your earnings. Its pretty much a corporate invasion into your buying power. This is honestly the last thing any catholic should want on earth.

At 5/28/12 11:35 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 5/28/12 10:43 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Old news is old.

A blip on a Time blogger's webpage?

They do that for tons of stories. They only right about the really big ones. Two mentions is more than a lot of stories get.

Ah, yes, the New York Times Online, a major television news network that someone without cable TV would be able to catch after he gets off work.

Its a major news paper that many people not even in new york get delivered to their homes...

Oh, wait, those are online articles, none of which showed up in the google search I linked to earlier. WHOOPS, you think the webmasters at Google might have left those articles unlisted in google search?

lol, no. I think they probably weren't ranked very high because this isn't very important.

That was like 5 seconds of looking.

I want your internet connection and whatever sort of speed you're mainlining, I could shit DONE at work.

Then maybe that free market isn't serving you very well. Jump on the socialism train already. It runs smoother.

Maybe you're insular attitudes and practices are keeping you from paying attention to what people who aren't fox news do and say.

Fox news didn't report this, remember?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/21/catholic-dioceses-colle ges-sue-over-obama-mandate/

That video there was broadcasted, btw.

Anyhow, it was reported. The reason it didn't make the half hour news shows is that until its actually in court or a ruling is being made it won't have an effect on peoples lives. Those half hour news shows are for interesting or important things that will keep people coming back. Its also for the most current and effective events. Its not unusual at this point for law suits to take place, or really even for the catholic church to partake in one. And in this country everyone is innocent until proven guilty. So, bringing up the suit for a 3 minute segment would be kind of like putting a leash around a chicken egg and taking it for a walk.

Beyond that, the people who really care about this, Catholics, were read an announcement in church. So any faithful who care about this found out when they attended mass way back when. The rest of the world really doesn't care what the pope thinks. In fact, half of the christian faith broke off from the pope because politics corrupt religion.

Anyhow, enjoy your little pity party. Hope its a good one.

At 5/28/12 04:41 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 5/28/12 04:39 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Its funny because I heard about the catholic church suing obama from the news media, that reported on it. lol

Prove it.

Old news is old.

http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=catholic%20sues&sortBy=date

http://thepage.time.com/2012/05/21/religious-orgs-sue-obama/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230401940457741 8291623540400.html?mod=WSJ_elections_article_liveupdate#prin tMode

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/us/catholic-groups-file-su its-on-contraceptive-coverage.html?_r=2

That was like 5 seconds of looking.

Maybe you're insular attitudes and practices are keeping you from paying attention to what people who aren't fox news do and say.

Its funny because I heard about the catholic church suing obama from the news media, that reported on it. lol

So actually they did and you're just being butt hurt.

Par for the course I suppose. The world doesn't revolve around the pope, just don't tell but hurt right wingers that.

At 5/25/12 11:48 AM, egg82 wrote:

At 5/25/12 11:36 AM, TomFulp wrote:

At 5/25/12 11:31 AM, KhawnerL wrote: thats all amazingly cool and all BUT WHEN OH WHEN WILL WE BE ABLE TO DELETE STUFF

If you have published stuff you want to delete, you can PM me the URLs or tag them with "deletion" - if you have unpublished projects you want to delete, you'll have to wait until the unpublish / delete project functionality arrives. Sorry for the delay on those.

actually, i'm curious. It seems (though obviously I don't know the inner-workings of the NG site) that it would be easy to create a button that fires an SQL delete query. Is there any information on why there's a delay? I know it would be here already if it was ready, but i'm just wondering what's slowing the progress down.

Just an opinion from a developer that works elsewhere.

Priority.

Would you rather have someone spend half a day to maybe a day testing stylesheets and delete functions to remove content from your website; or would you rather have that same person do something to create cool new content to attract visitors and artists?

If you only have so much staff you'll see the choice is pretty easy to make. Progress will always win out.

I pass through like a tumbleweed now and again

At 5/16/12 12:34 PM, brokenrecord6299 wrote: You might get a more... quality response in the Politics Forums. We generals like to talk about more pointless things than things that actually matters.

But with politics, it IS hard to tell sometimes.

Was meant to be a photo shop thread, but the photo won't upload, if someone could post the photo I linked to, I'd be very appreciative. :D

Might be a problem with the upload feature....

Here's the image if it doesn't post this second time. Apologies. :/

This is the republican house speaker here in the U.S.

He seems upset.

Why is that?

At 5/5/12 09:13 PM, CaptainCornhole wrote:

At 5/5/12 02:30 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 5/5/12 02:28 PM, MrFlopz wrote: Dems and Repubs are all pulled by the way strings. The two parties are more similar than they're made out to be. They campaign on radically different values but they govern the same (at least at the presidential level).

People who say this fail to see a different and more likely conclusion.

There is only so much any president can do.

Actually big bizznizz donates more to Dems then Reps. http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/php/CEOPAY11.html?mod=e2tw

Maybe in the past, but right now if you look at the percentage of people donating to who:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/index.php?ql3

Barack has received 45% from small donations, which I'll give you is less than half.
But Mitt Romney only received 11% from smaller donations.

And when you get into the SUPER PACS its worse.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/superpacs.php?type=w&cycle =2012

At 5/3/12 11:32 AM, Camarohusky wrote: I'm no fan of these measures, but can we all stop the boogeyman act?

Thousands of people had their phones tapped illegally. In more recent times the government was putting GPS tracking devices on cars without warrants (now ruled unconstitutional, btw).

I trust the government to be bureaucratic, not to be mind police.

And it doesn't matter if I've been directly affected as long as someone has. Where's your sense of social justice?

The worst that's ever happened to me was being swabbed for chemicals because I had a brace on my arm with some metal on it when I went through a metal detector at an airport. They didn't check to see if the metal was removable or even sharp, and basically missed the most threatening possible part of the whole thing. Basically the point I'm making is that the inconvenience is the real issue, its the fact that they are ineffective, intrusive, and sometimes unconstitutional.

At 5/3/12 03:02 PM, adrshepard wrote:

At 5/3/12 07:25 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: No it was an atrocious crime against us. However, me taking off my shoes and having my e-mail stolen by the government doesn't make me safer, nor do my phones being tapped without warrant. You don't shoot your horse because it stumbled.

Because taking your shoes off is such an outrageous violation of your principles? It takes five seconds. Grow a pair.

Also, don't delude yourself into thinking the government gives a crap about your emails. You aren't that important. And even if you were, how would you be any less free?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_
States_Constitution

Read up.

I don't see anything there suggesting it's been used to further some oppressive end.

Its the fact that its unconstitutional and an invasion of our privacy and hence an abridgment of our freedoms.

Pakistan created tons of these splinter groups because they were worried about India and having an Amero-Indian friendly state next to them. In fact, their intelligence agency has very close ties to the taliban & al qaeda.

That's true. But you're making the intelligience agency out to be just another extension of the central government when in fact, it's more like a independent entitity, with people who could support the Taliban or hide bin Laden without the political leadership's knowledge.

Well that sounds like the most horrible kind of ally to have. one that can't even control its own intelligence agency to the point its supporting terrorists who are attacking your allies.

The whole idea of the surge was to protect major population centers and give time to the Afghan security forces to improve. It wasn't to go after Al-Qaida or kill bin Laden.

Right, well the whole point of going into afganistan was to get terrorists. Its Bush that over threw a government and completely missed the point of the reason we should have gone in.

At 5/2/12 09:36 PM, adrshepard wrote: So 3000 dead is what, just part of the cost of freedom? I don't think so. There's plenty of middle ground, and even with the Patriot Act you are just as free now as you were before its passage.

No it was an atrocious crime against us. However, me taking off my shoes and having my e-mail stolen by the government doesn't make me safer, nor do my phones being tapped without warrant. You don't shoot your horse because it stumbled.

I forgot; you think the evidence for WMDs was a giant conspiracy, too.

There was none. And we didn't find any.

And all discussion is conjecture and guesswork about what "might" have happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermath _of_the_2003_Iraq_War

Like what? The DOJ review said it was all pretty much agent error and poor record keeping, nothing malicious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co ntroversy

And in return, they sacrifice US assistance in their fight against an enemy that's killed thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians over the past several years. Their leaders want US help, they just don't want to admit it publicly. Killing bin Laden is obviously worth a month or two of non-critical supply hassles, and there's no evidence that it led to any formal Pakistani policy of arming and coordinating attacks against US troops. Their government is a mess; the Taliban sympathizers lurking in it don't need to wait for a political opportunity to do something they'd just deny anyway.

You don't know fuck about Pakistan. Pakistan created tons of these splinter groups because they were worried about India and having an Amero-Indian friendly state next to them. In fact, their intelligence agency has very close ties to the taliban & al qaeda. Which is why bin laden was able to hide in their country for 10 years.

Yeah, and by 2007, when Romney said that, the mission had obviously changed to helping Afghanistan fend for itself against the Taliban and so prevent it from becoming another haven for terrorists.

Which is why we've really buckled down against the taliban rather than entering negotiations with them and we're paying so much attention to Pakistan... right. All reports pretty much say that the depressed PTSD population of Afghanistan can't be helped because they have no hope and have entered a state of solitary survival.

At 5/2/12 06:18 PM, adrshepard wrote:

At 5/2/12 04:45 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: No, its not the truth value of something that makes the politics of fear wrong. In fact it was usually that the politics of fear weren't to scale of the problem.

Nor were we under direct threat of attack from some huge army.

9/11 wasn't caused by some huge army. The nature of a serious threat has changed since WWII.

No, it really hasn't. A serious threat to national security is a large invading force. Terrorists have always been around, have always caused problems, and have never been cause to revoke freedoms on a national level from ordinary citizens.

Invading Iraq did nothing to improve US security.

Only if you think WMD proliferation has no impact on US security.

Right, because we found tons of WMDs in Iraq. The only thing that even fell into the WMD category was a class of missile that could reach slightly further than it should have. The yellow cake (completely unprocessed) they found had all been registered by the U.N. and nothing had been done with it since. Even the chemical weapons had been put on a halt since the last war.

WMD proliferation might be a reason to go against Iran or North Korea, but certainly not Iraq. And that begs the question of whether we should invade every country just because they are thinking about making a nuke.

"We don't want a conflict with you, so we'll just annihilate you now. Sounds great."

Sounds to me like horrible policy.

It is also contestable that the patriot act improves our security without simultaneously destroying our individual security.

After 9/11, I'd put the threat of a terrorist attack miles above the threat of some secret government conspiracy to blackmail me over what I whack off to or "disappear" me to Guantanamo.

And yet, there was tons of warrant-less wire tapping and abuses were found in investigations largely related to political activity of the non-terrorist sort.

Gates was against the move initially and they only had a 50/50 confidence on the issue. When you look at the consequences of failed moves like this into someone else's territory (The bay of pigs for instance lead up to our stand off with russia and the verge of nuclear war) it actually is a very gutsy move.

This wasn't the Bay of Pigs. Special forces teams had been operating in and out of Pakistan for years, often with Pakistan's tacit consent. Even killing Pakistani security forces by accident hasn't fundamentally changed our relationship, I doubt a raid that turned up empty handed would have somehow been more damaging.

Then you don't understand foreign policy very much. When we botch something up in Pakistan, the Pakistani's stop our convoys and help set up raids on our service men. Attacking a compound that way was way over the lines of anything we'd previously done (drone attacks) and set off a fire storm of criticism from inside Pakistan even though we got the man we wanted. Would have been great if we'd attacked civilians, I can tell you.

Romney did say he didn't want to go after bin Laden.

No, he didn't. He said, "itâEUTMs not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," and he's right. We aren't in Afghanistan solely to get bin Laden. It's a nice symbolic accomplishment, but it doesn't change our real objectives.

We were there to root out Al Qaeda. That was the motivator. He was in charge of the group. Taking out or capturing the leader of that group was of the highest priority if we wanted to actually destroy Al Qaeda.