And flying planes into buildings in the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermy
Printable View
And flying planes into buildings in the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermy
I live in Michigan. What the hell do I care. Hey rednecks, quit taking my taxes because your penis feels smaller. I doubt "planes flying into buildings" is in the top 100 reason people died in the US since the year 2000. I know both cow and deer have killed more. Have we started hiring people who can interpret rutting?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
LOL
Tahoe,
If GDP grows in spite of added debt, that's an argument against going into debt. Why borrow money if GDP would go up even more if you hadn't? You just made my point for me about how the GDP-debt ratio thing is complex. :)
The domestic wiretapping I'm speaking of is spying on calls between two people in the same country. OF course, there's a domestic element in spying on calls between U.S. and foreign countries, but that's not the issue that's got people's blood pressure up. Well, unless you're an ISP and your setup don't have a strong notion of "foreign" 0s and 1s vs. "domestic" 0s and 1s, but that's another story.Quote:
But its only domestic wiretapping if you are calling someone in another country who is a known or suspected terrorist, right?
Waterboarding and other mock execution stuff is torture, in my book. Triggering an involuntary gag reflex to make someone think they're choking to death, which is the mildest form of gagging, is a mock execution. And, quite aside from feelings that you or I may have about such things, mock executions are considered torture by the Geneva Convention, which is a part of U.S. law. Oh wait... that doesn't apply because we're not at war, they're not POWs but this nebulous new class of "enemy combatants", yet another torturous redefinition.
It's one thing to say whether or not torture is good or bad or whatnot, and I totally agree with you on that extent. But let's call a spade a spade here. It's a war, there's some POWs, and they're being tortured. Not "there's a conflict of an unspecified nature, there's some 'enemy combatants', and they're being renditioned". Wer're well on our way to 1984-speak and doubleplusungood.
Funny, what country did those people who flew plains into our country's buildings come from? Oh wait -- they're harboring OIL, and heaven forbid they harbor terrorists (despite being a bunch of fuckhead royal family Sauds fueling generations of anti-western sentiment by snorting their country's resources).
Kucinich showing the world what a joke both sides of Congress are...
wow, just wow.
That is/was pretty funny. I guess the Republicans first voted against even discussing the bill, then they thought about it and were running up to change their vote so everyone would have to listen to Kucinich. The Dems went from voting for it to voting against it. Is that close? LOL
I like my flaming California liberals a little less like Kucinich and a lot more like Jerry Brown.
Pat Robertson endorsed Giuliani. Yeah, the pro-choice, pro-gay-rights Giuliani. Hoo boy, the things people will do when the chairman of Fox News also works for the Giuliani campaign. You can always count on Republicans to forget their so-called individuality when the election gets close at hand.
I saw that too. Pat Robertson is hard to look at, let alone listen to. I didn't know about the Fox News ties. Robertson is such a non-player, imo. He won't sway shit. Not sure if this is more about liking Rudy as much as not wanting a mormon for Patsy.
Every Republican whose endorsement is worth a shit is going to line up behind Giuliani. Black fundamentalist pro-lifers who hate Italians, hate New York, and love Islamic terrorism are endorsing Giuliani. The only reason I can think of is good old-fashioned At Least He's Not One O' Them Demmuhcrats.
I'm not so sure. While Rudy is up in national polls, Romney is winning in Iowa and New Hamshire and making up lots of ground on the leadier in South Carolina Fred Thompson.
Rudy leads in most Florida polls but if Romney can win some of the early primaries...blah blah blah, you know the story.
Yeah, but I also know how the GOP works with the king-making. Whenever the front-runner is chosen, everyone completely forgets whatever problems they had with him in the first place and they all fall in line against the forces of godless communism.
It absolutely kills me how weird people are about Romney. He's like the perfect Republican politician. If people didn't have a problem with the fact that he's a Mormon, he'd be a gigantic election-winning juggernaut. Religious bigotry is saving this election for the Democrats.
If the trend continues like in bible-belt SC, they are being swayed.
I don't see the religious right different from any other voting block really. I mean its the primary season and some are endorsing Romney and others Rudy. I expect they'll come together to vote the most conservative in the national. Doesn't seem to be outawhack to me.
I know thats how you think all christians are zip. I've got that already. I think you get this but I was tossin out my thoughts on how they vote as a block in primaries.
Wow! At first I actually thought that was Hitler...Quote:
Originally Posted by Zip Goshboots
What gets me is that Utah is so solidly Republican, even though there's far more Republicans that preach LDS as a satanic cult than Democrats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Swami
Klansmen and southern blacks both tend to be socially conservative, but you don't often see them on the same side of the political table.
This is a theory I have: there are a lot of groups that tend to be natural conservatives.Quote:
Originally Posted by Uncle Mxy
- Blacks tend to be socially conservative and distrust government regulation
- Mexican immigrants are strongly bound to a tradition that emphasizes individual responsibility, saving money, and investing
- "out" gays are lopsidedly upper-middle-class and are very concerned about taxes and public safety
- Feminists are very concerned about authoritarianism and personal freedoms
- Muslims are very socially conservative and crave a law-and-order kind of government that at least pays lip service to God
But they don't (in general) vote for Republicans, because Republicans can't keep themselves from shitting all over these groups, in different ways, and I think I know why.
The GOP made a deal with the devil. They identified a portion of the American public who was dull-witted, easily impressed by authority, easily scared by threats, and easily swayed by flashy marketing. It's not a whole lot of people, but the Republicans totally locked that electorate up so they could be useful in close elections. They're not clever, but they always do as they are told, so you can always count on them to bail you out if the election is just close enough to scare them.
But now this group is starting to get a little more sophisticated and asking the kinds of questions you usually get from this kind of thicko - like "Krang want to know: what in it for Krang, unga bunga?" And "Krang want to know: why you make friend with People From Other Side Of Moutain, unga bunga?"
The Republicans, by refusing to give up Krang and all the rest of the people in his village of grass huts, make it absolutely impossible to court the kind of voters that have even a slightly different agenda than Krang does. The Republicans have gone out of their way to secure a voting bloc that is essentially selfish and paranoid, and this voting bloc is going to eat any Republican candidate that does anything but promise them their firstborn child, a herd of new goats, sharper stone axes, and a tougher stance against The People On The Other Side Of The Mountain.
Musharraf released Bhutto's house arrest yesterday and she jumped right out to the streets. If she gets killed, Musharraf suspends the constitution and it will be on this time, imo.
Musharraf kind of said he put her under house arrest for her protection and that he/gov't gives her plenty of protection while she is out and about. She says thats bullshit.
Hopefully things will settle til the elections in Feb. It all comes down to if Musharraf is serious about giving up power cuz Bhutto WILL win in a fair election.
She'll be dead within a month.
Actually I'm a big fan of Musharraf. He's going to drag that country kicking and screaming into the 20th century (21st century might be a little too much to expect).Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
Have they ever had one of those over there? Ever?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
My opinions about Islam are pretty much totally vindicated by the state of Pakistan.
Pakistan used to be part of British India. Indian Muslims used to pitch around the idea that Muslims needed a homeland of their own "to prevent them from being oppressed by the majority Hindus." But when the British finally left India, the leader of the India Muslim League (Mohammed Ali Jinnah) basically refused to go along with anything unless India was carved up and the Muslims were given their own homeland. He told everyone that he knew for sure there would be riots against the Muslims if India was governed by majority rule. Mohandas Gandhi, who was the intellectual father of modern India, was strongly against partitioning India. In the temples where he was raised, they read from the Vedas and the Guru Granth Sahib (Sikh holy book) as well as the Quran and the Bible. India is a famously religiously tolerant society.
So reluctantly, they came up with a scheme to partition India into a secular state ruled by the majority, and an "Islamic Republic" which would be constitutionally based on Islamic law. But the thing is that the Hindus and the Muslims were basically living right next door to one another throughout the entire country (still do, in many places). So in order to create Pakistan, there was a gigantic forced migration of non-Muslims out of Pakistan and a gigantic voluntary migration of Muslims into Pakistan. And marvel of marvels, there were huge riots anyway, and anywhere from 200,000 people to 1,000,000 people died in the fighting.
Pakistan's people are the same people as India's people, and the only difference is that they are a different religion. I'm not saying India is perfect by any stretch, but India has at least managed to move past some of the horrible things (assassinations, etc.) that have plagued it over the years. Pakistan has just gone completely fubar and it's not going to get better anytime soon, and the only reason I can come up with is that they are Muslims.
Good stuff. I remember reading on this but this definately knock the rust off.
Also, the Brits (actually Churchill) wanted to divide up what we know as Iraq into 3 countries for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, but was shot down and they made it Iraq, iirc. That would be Churchill way before he was PM, but whatever position he held at the time.
The British and French definitely set the stage for the current state of the greater Middle East. It's way too late for them to take part in the un-fucking of it all though. Not too many countries in the world really have a pure, perfectly good reason to blame colonial empires for their problems, but Iraq happens to be one of them. There was basically nothing that made Iraq a valid country at all except the fact that it was made up of some old Ottoman Empire districts that were controlled by the British after WWI.
The British also helped the Saudis set up their nation, and so all their advice as to how to deal with Iraq came from the Saudi kings. When the British needed an Iraqi in a position of power, they always selected Sunnis (based on the advice of the Saudi kings - Sunnis all the way, of course). This was a monumental fuckup that is getting people (including American soldiers) killed to this very day. I'm telling you man, this map is what the Middle East really should look like:
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x..._map_after.jpg
??? Arab Shia State??? Iran is Persians and Arab Shia State would be Shiite ???
Yeah, before the Ottomans took over, Mesopotamia was ruled over by Persians, and that's why so much of the country are Shiites. But Iraqi Shiites aren't ethnically Persian, they're Arabs. They don't want to be part of Iran - Iranians speak a different language and they're ethnically different.
This map carves up Iraq and gives the Mesopotamian Sunni Arabs their own country, it gives the Kurds their own country, and it creates a new country for Arab Shiites. It's basically the "3-country solution" for Iraq, but put in the context of the best possible borders for every single Middle East country.
Reminds me of a Middle Eastern joke:
The Iranians say that 3 languages were spoken in the Garden of Eden. When Adam spoke with Eve, they spoke in Farsi (Persian), "the language of love." When Adam spoke with God, they spoke Arabic, "the language of law." When the angels with the flaming swords ordered them out of the Garden of Eden, they spoke Turkish, "the language of scaring the shit out of people."
To you and me, all 3 languages sound like an identical throat infection.
Swami, I thought I heard the same story (india-Pakistan) about Pakistan-Afghanistan.
This may be a dumb question, but how in the FUCK are you going to keep Israel safe (and should we?), and how in the FUCK do you stop these people from killing each other by just drawing up new countries?
thx and I've seen that map before or one similar.
You wonder if when the UN had given statehood to Israel if at the same time Palestine would have been put on the books, how differently things would be now.
It didn't matter. Once Israel was given statehood the majority of Arab states went to war. In fact many Palestinians were told to leave so that Israel could be attacked and the they could later simply head home. Didn't work out that way though.
al-Maliki says sectarian violence in Bagdad is "closed" which I assume means done.
Hopefully it holds.
There pretty much aren't any more Sunnis left in Baghdad. No reason to commit violence now if everyone is in the same sect.
And here we are back to describing why I like Musharraf so much. Guys like him are the only future the Middle East has. Musharraf isn't aiming his missles at Israel. He's not trying to institute Sharia law in Pakistan. He's not funding suicide bombers. He's ruling his country with an iron fist so none of that bullshit happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zip Goshboots
What is going to happen, when all is said and done, to the little republick of Kowalskistan?
Oh noes, kielbasas of mass destruction!Quote:
Originally Posted by Zip Goshboots
I think it has more to do with AQ being chased out of Bagdad and other areas. The surge did a lot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Swami
Which begs the question: Why did we need a surge? Why did we go into the situation ill prepared, under informed, and under armed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
Which sends us to another question: How long do you keep "surging"?