Pangloss

ROFL! So many great quotes from that one. "A woman named John?!?!" Gonna have to rent that again, thanks.

Hey, is that a Buckaroo Banzai image? Man I haven't thought about that movie in years.

Not a Kinks fan, eh?

Actually the draw-down looks to be more like 39,000, and that number is to happen before April. (source) I'm sure you're right about many elected officials, but really what we're discussing is the overall strategy of the Democratic party, which is very much interested in their long-term ability to hold positions of power. This is clearly in disparity with the immediate goals of elected officials, I agree, and for that reason I readily admit that things could well go the way you predict. Democrat and Republican leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their charges in line these days. But there's no question in my mind that Democratic leadership is extremely mindful and wary of taking ownership of Iraq. They have the Vietnam Democratic legacy backing this up, too.

Oh I readily agree that that may be in fact what happens. But as much as I respect your observations on these issues, I don't agree that that's what Democrats really want. They would much prefer for Iraq to be off the table by election time, because that issue carries a HUGE amount of baggage for them. You have to remember that for Moveon it's about WINNING, but for Democrats it's about HOLDING. There is a very subtle difference there. What happens when Hillary enters office with 100,000 troops still in Iraq (which we agree is going to be the case)? Moveon declares victory, but Democrats groan in trepidation. Why? Because no matter what you say about why we are there, at that moment in time it becomes Hillary's problem, and how she deals with it will have EVERYTHING to do with whether she gets re-elected in 2012. Republicans will make sure of that -- they'd be stupid not to.

The thing you have to bear in mind is that being in Iraq is bad for Republicans too. NEITHER side wants Iraq to be the central issue of the next election. Hence Bush's cut-back announcement last night. Put another way, General Petraeus said we need to stay the course, and Bush immediately announced a withdrawl. That's hypocrisy. It's also hypocrisy for Democrats to criticize this decision, because the number of troops coming home THIS YEAR is going to be GREATER than the number of troops THEY voted AGAINST withdrawing in APRIL.

Sure, that's a comparison you hear a lot. Most early Americans who pursued higher education (even in math, science or engineering) also benefitted from classical studies, which is no longer the case. A typical university graduate then would have understood, for example, the specific paradox that Julius Caesar faced, and the collapse of the Roman Republic was front-end-center in the minds of the Founding Fathers in 1776. Today's university graduate MIGHT have heard of him, and thinks "Julius" was his first name. (And by the way, the "friends of reason" are at least as responsible for this as the "enemies of reason" are. Who's controlled the higher education system for the last fifty years? The red-staters are busy farming and shooting things and voting for idiots, or so we are constantly instructed.)

This message is approved for posting by board leadership. (That's not an endorsement, just an indication that we don't believe it's spam, etc.)

I agree that's a valid point. Certainly scientists should not ignore valid evidence. In answer to your question I've been reading and studying Roman history for over 20 years, mainly focusing on pre-Empire eras. I'm currently reading Goldsworthy's "The Punic Wars" and slogging my way through Lombardo's modernist/conversational translation of the Aeneid (the one with the Vietnam Memorial on the cover). I'm particularly interested in the political legacy associations with Roman democracy made by 18th century philosophers at the dawn of the modern era (such as how the American founding fathers viewed themselves as modern versions of republican-era Romans), and how the downfall of the Republic compares with modern political situations.

Absolutely. Along with Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, etc. They have their differences, but these are the ideological partisans that represent the early money. I'm saying they're more responsive to it than they want people to see. Some of them out of fear, others out of belief, still others out of lust for power. But it's all the same thing in the end.

This is the town that's trying to boost it's population, right? I heard about this in a story somewhere. Sounds like a good idea. Not to mention a great deal of fun.

This thread explains exactly why I have Cheese Nips on the stickied Grocery List thread on the moderator's board. This image may also be helpful.

I keep waiting for the Iranian president to be offered a ride to "Space Station Freedom".

No, that's because he's the self-destroy-a. (and it goes like this)

Agreed' date=' I am encouraged by that as well. I thought that was "... for just paying."

Was that before or after Hagel did something to deserve it? That was the thing that irked me about Moveon, that they took that position before the man even testified. Sure he might be a Bush operative, but what does that say about Moveon? It says to me that they never had any intention of listening to what he had to say. They don't care about Iraq or our soldiers. They want whatever Bush doesn't want. Period. Also I'm getting tired of Moveon being dismissed as extremist and non-representative. It is the base. Every bit as much as Rush Limbaugh is. Congressional Democrats need to take ownership of their responsiveness to that base and their hypocrisy in condemning Moveon's ad. BTW with regard to General Petraeus's focus on Anbar, I saw a Republican response somewhere that said that it still may be reasonable to discuss Anbar because that's where most of the American casualties occurred. I don't know if that generalization is accurate or not, but assuming it is, I'm not sure I agreed with that Republican response because I don't know that specific examples deny the overall assessment that we're failing to accomplish our goals. Put another way, he (and Bush) wins some points with me about progress in certain areas and I understand the desire to see the thing through. But I simply don't think in the end that this is going to be one of those cases, and even if it is I don't think it's worth the investment we're putting into it. (And please FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY will somebody shoot the next politician who calls it "blood and treasure"! What an overused cliche!!)

Politicians already have one. It's called the oath of office. (Fat lot of good that's done, huh?)

Don't speak a word of it, just if you listen closely you can hear those two words throughout the report. I admit the phonetic "-bush-" is perhaps common in many Russian words, but I don't think "American-ski" refers to foreign tourists at winter resorts in the Urals. (grin) As for the context, it's not hard to imagine what it was. Even if all they did was mention the American MOAB, they have served Putin's purpose well. That's why he made it. Well, that and to drop on movie theaters full of hostages, I suppose.

Q: What do you call an neutron that's been around a while? A: An oldtron! (My niece told me that today and I was so overjoyed to hear her use the word "neutron" that I just had to post it!)

As with much of what happens in Russian militarily these days, this is mainly for show. The most revealing thing about that video was the use of a Blackjack to drop the bom-bah. They've only got a few of those, and mainly use them for airshows and displays and movies and such. Low-alt Mach-1 overflights of terrorist camps with the bomb bay doors open. Stuff like that. Whatever publicity a growing military dictatorship needs. Even I could hear the "Americansky" and "Bush" words scattered throughout the report.

Fine, if you want to amend your position, more power to you. But you're flat-out wrong about this: Here's where you did precisely that:

I saw a couple minutes of Ron Paul last night on Bill O'Reilly and was really disappointed. Granted BOR was being pretty stiff and maybe even rude with the guy, but all he was doing was making Bush wrong -- every answer he gave with regards to Iraq was "two wrongs" reasoning or some other illogical response. I couldn't tell if he was just flustered or what. For example, in answer to a question about Iranian operatives participating in suicide attacks, Paul asked what about Saudis participating in suicide attacks. Huh? I need to dig in a bit and see what his real message is with regard to Iraq, but I've seen Paul do that before and frankly it just doesn't cut the mustard. We need answers and solutions, not two wrongs making a right. Where RP scores points with me is when he gets back to the libertarian message of forgotten Republican positions, e.g. the points Bascule made earlier: That stuff is fine and dandy, but I don't think he can sell it by telling people how wrong neoconservatives are/were. You have to actually tell people what the benefits of these things are. Why we should pursue them. What they will give us. Why the negatives (and there are many!) outweight the positives.

I think Tom Lehrer said it best:

You can also embed YouTube videos in other web sites, so if your goal is to repost a YouTube video elsewhere you might find that approach more useful. That way you're using their bandwidth and disk space, too.

Nonsense. You posted the intellectual equivalent of a spelling correction, and you know it. 12 examples versus millions of bytes of data over decides' date=' if not centuries? You make my case for me. Is that really the best you can do, producing more singular examples that actually SUPPORT the notion of being careful about which data is selected for a STATISTICAL model? A model that's SUPPOSED to look at the big picture and ignore minor fluctuations? Really? Your examples do not eliminate the possibility that such waves are rare events. They SUGGEST that they are not rare -- of course they do, and as we now know they aren't rare. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong about rogue waves, I'm saying you're ascribing incorrect motives and motivations to scientists, and suggesting a very poor course of action in trusting faith over evidence. Let me give you a perfect example of something that YOU think we should ignore (and thus behaving exactly like the scientists you're criticizing): This runs COMPLETELY IN THE FACE of what you claimed earlier -- it is an absolute contradiction on your part. You insisted that we accept the claims of ship captains and knowledgable sailors not because they were ship captains and knowledgeable sailors but because they had faith in what they had seen. Now you're asking us to selectively ignore a different group of people who has exactly the same level of faith in what they've seen? What exactly are you trying to hawk here? Your case has just completely fallen apart.