Pangloss

I don't think she was fired either, exactly. But it had to be a factor in the negotiations, as john5746 says. Couldn't not be.

Well it certainly would be if the money were granted to rich white Christian males.

This answer may be of little worth, and solely my opinion, but I'll toss it out there anyway. You remember the case recently of the NASA astronaut who was arrested recently for attempting to kidnap a woman (the result of some sort of nasty love triangle involving another astronaut)? Well one of the few comments she made at the time of her arrest was "I wasn't trying to kill her", and she pointed out to authorities that she did not have a firearm in her posession, though she did have a toy that LOOKED like a real pistol. This probably doesn't bear a whole lot of analysis, because who knows what goes through the minds of the love-crazed at their worst, but I just thought it interesting that she felt that her lack of a firearm constituted a legitimate defense against an attempted murder charge. As if to say "I couldn't possibly have killed her -- I didn't have a gun, which is the only way you can kill anybody, as everyone knows." (As if!) Which seems to me as a kind of oddball example of how obsessed we are with firearms in this country. It's not as if we sit around every day talking and thinking about them. But they've become an integral part of our daily lives and national conscience. She actually spent some amount of time thinking about the fact that if she didn't carry a real gun with her, then she couldn't be accused of attempted murder (silly and flawed though that reasoning may be). Guns are a tool, and are understood as such, but they also symbolize an escalation in the severity of one's choices in life. When you think about how your life may go if you follow a certain path, the apperance of guns are a significant milestones in that kind of thinking. Just look at how many infamous killers bought them well in advance of their killing sprees, having little experience with them or knowledge of how to use or care for them, but full awareness of them.

Oh they can have parties. They can even limit the people who vote in their primaries to people who only vote in one primary or the other. They just need to allow people to pick which primary they're going to vote in at the time they walk into the voting booth (instead of having to go downtown and fill out special paperwork, etc). That puts the emphasis on individual franchise, not party success.

I'm registered as a Republican for voting purposes only (I'm not a member of the party). It gives me the right to vote in Republican primaries. There's no way to vote in both party's primaries, so if I want to vote in a primary I have to be registered in a party. I think it's a scam that perpetuates the problem that 60-80% vote along party lines. EVERY vote should be a "swing" vote, IMO. But if I don't participate in it then I miss out on more than half of my franchisal influence. Ideologically I identify a bit more with Republicans than I do with Democrats, although I've actually voted for more Democrats than Republicans, counting local elections.

(Edit: I'm just going to throw this point out in general instead of in response to a specific post.) As I understand it, gun violence has risen in the UK since the laws passed in the wake of Dunblane. That point would seem to stand in response to a number of posts above, and I'm surprised nobody has raised it in this thread. Have I heard incorrectly on this? I'm almost positive I've even heard it reported on these boards before, not just in the news. ---- Incidentally, it looks like Congress will probably do something about the issue of availability of databases on mental illness during background checks for gun licensing. The issue is actually supported by the National Rifle Association and other gun-freedom advocacy groups, and therefore enjoys broad bipartisan support.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-compete26apr26,1,1959536.story?coll=la-news-politics-national They may not agree on much these days, but this week bills sailed through both houses of congress and appear poised for signature by the president. The bills in question will provide funding for 20 new federal education spending programs aimed at students performing below par on mathematics and the sciences, high school teachers working on postgraduate degrees, and scholarships for students entering college in math or science programs. Other funding for the NSF will go specifically to women interested in math and science degrees. The overall amounts are proverbial drops in the bucket these days (a couple billion). But they're going straight to areas that are currently in distress. I have some personal experience in this area -- my sister is a high school teacher in a rural area and has had many problems pursuing an advanced degree. Sounds like a step in the right direction.

BTW, I don't think there was a single victim at Virginia Tech who was under 21. I could be wrong on that, but I seem to recall that most were in their early 20s. They were NOT children. For what it's worth.

True enough. Even setting aside emo'ing about civilians caught in the crossfire, we tie our hands with a million relatively trivial details, like how many hours per day Iraqis are without electricity, what the current unemployment rate is, or whether school's open in Ramala. We're actually running opinion polls on Iraqis to find out what they think about the WAY the job is being done. I don't know about you all, but any time I hear the words "the WAY in which it was done" I just know I'm in for an earful of immature/irrelevent drama. But those are the constraints that we put on our government and our military. We're responsible for demanding that things be done a certain way. We express that demand through the media, and we show no sign of changing our minds about this. Catch-22.

60 Minutes ran a fascinating piece this past week about the movement, primarily in poor African American communities, called "Stop Snitchin'". The general idea of this movement, which has widespread support, is to stop people from cooperating with police in any way, from plea agreements to eyewitness testimony. You can watch the entire 13-minute video segment at this URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?channel=60Sunday A "print" version of the story is available here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/19/60minutes/main2704565.shtml The Wikipedia has a writeup of the phenomenon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_snitchin The 60 Minutes story featured video clips of rapper after rapper passing the slogan on not only in their music lyrics, but also during interviews and awards ceremony speeches. This isn't just something that a few malcontents are playing around with. It's a real influence on the community. Fortunately it's being opposed by some in mainstream black leadership. But it's also being ignored by other black leaders. One of the more interesting aspects of it is the charge of corporate involvement. Rappers can get away with this, essentially, because the music industry polices itself through its content ratings system, which ostensibly warns parents of dangerous influences, but which prevents nothing. But even accepting a first-amendment argument here, there would seem to be a point to be made that corporations are benefitting at the expense of real harm that's being done to the institution of justice in America. Frankly I think it's one of the most eggregious cases of "two wrongs making a right" that one can imagine. What do you all think?

Don't mince words, YT! Tell us what you really feel!

Oh don't be silly, she's just m!ssunderstood.

I disagree. Islam has exactly the same level of difficulty with modern science as any other religion does. It's just not a trumpet cause for its followers at the moment, the way it is with many Christians. There are Islamic leaders who believe in Creationism, for example. The Wikipedia has a write-up on the subject here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_creationism Christian opposition to science is a cultural phenomenon, not a religious one. Historically, sometimes religious cultures support science, sometimes they peacefully coexist with it, sometimes they oppose it. The precise reglion in question is irrelevent.

I laughed so hard carbon credits came out of my nose.

Lol, you brainwashed puppet. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, I guess.

What is "kuffur"?

I disagree. I think it is a cost/benefit decision like anything else. Trouble is that the costs are difficult to measure and the benefits even more so. That is why we invade Iraq and not Korea or Darfur. The perceived costs were low when compared to the perceived benefits. I did get a bit carried away there. That's probably a more reasonable way to look at it. 3' date='000 dead Americans who volunteered to help out, equating to 650,000 dead Iraqis fighting for their freedom... that sounds about right. (Who said moral equivalence was a bad argument anyway?) Bear in mind, of course, that we can't sit down and map out X number of lives for Y benefit with these kinds of enterprises. That kind of "CBO" just isn't going to be real accurate when applied to this particular game. I agree. IMO the great tragedy of Iraq would be if 650,000 Iraqis died and got nothing for it.

The pigs are definitely upright and walking on the EIB network.

The number of people who die in a just cause is irrelevent. I'm not callous about death, in fact I think I respect it more than someone who's unwilling to let people expend it on something so important. But regardless of how you feel about death, it's quite clear that the number of people who are going to die should never be an overwhelmingly preventative dictate in foreign policy. If it is then you might as well fold the tent and go home, because you're simply not going to have any impact on international affairs. That is the ugly truth of the world. It's really not, it just seems that way because people think it would be so awful for people in their own situation to die. You know, people who live in a democratic, free, economically successful region. Such a death is just too awful to countenance. Such a death just has to be wrong, and avoided at all costs. That's why those of us who are smart enough to know better (scientists and engineers) have to step up and point out what that cost truly is. We have to be better than trendy social memes and media-driven panic modes. We're the intelligent ones -- we're supposed to avoid these kinds of mental traps. Interesting choice of metaphor, because surgery and chemotherapy are pretty drastic, life-threatening treatments. Perhaps you meant "drugs", which would certainly be a preferable cancer treatment. So I get your point, but I think it's worth noting that when all of those things fail, how do we treat cancer then? By any means necessary. No matter how drastic. You're right about alternatives -- they should all be tried. Yup. And then we have to be ready to go for the tough stuff. We did all of that with Iraq, and it didn't do any good. IMO we should not have gone in at that point. But you can't argue we didn't try other tactics first. --------- Let me give you an example of where I think force could and should be immediately used: The Sudan. The quickest and easiest way to solve the problem of genocide in the Sudan would be for an international force to immediately invade that country and replace the current government. A large peacekeeping force should remain in the country until a new government is established, then it should leave. If the same thing happens again, another force should immediately come in and do the same thing all over again, until these people get the idea and solve the problem. If we do that, a large number of people will die. But here's the most relevent question you can ask yourself today: SO WHAT? Far larger numbers have died already while we sat by and tried all those other methods you talked about earlier. They did no good because the Sudanese government knew full well that we weren't about to invade their country. They still know that, and that's why civilians keep dying. THAT's why people die in Darfur. Not because the Sudanese government is killing them, but because the rest of the world, in the final analysis, is unwilling to fight for them.

I'll go along with that.

Believe me, Lance, I hear your Skepticism (what a witicism on my part! <back-pat, back-pat>). You ask why not invade other nations, and I'm with you in that skepticism 100%. We can't be hypocritical about the use of violence, and we should think long and hard about each case. We should be prepared to use EVERY weapon in our formidable arsenal of diplomatic, military and economic assets. We like to talk about learning the lessons of history, well we should be willing to put our money where our mouth is and be willing to flex ALL those muscles -- not just the military ones. It certainly can happen through peaceful means. South Korea is a prime example -- a brutal dictatorship turned into a thriving democracy through the means of near-infinite patience. It took decades for that to happen, but eventually they came around. There's no reason to think that can't happen again. They sure did. Human life is infinitely precious. Which is why we have to honor them by recognizing that they died for a higher purpose. Our problem isn't that people are dying all over the world. It's that they too often die for stupid reasons like money or power or entertainment. There are also GOOD reasons to die. GOOD causes to die for. We can't be so afraid of death that we're unwilling to let people truly live. Those people are noble martyrs and heroes. Painting them as victims robs them of the only coin that any of us ever truly have to spend. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

I agree. Well here I disagree, I'm afraid, except insofar as it pertains to Iraq. This statement also seems to break your own rule about there being no easy answers. Didn't WW2 prove that it's possible to reach a point where war is the ONLY answer? I agree that that was not the case when it comes to Iraq. I think it's a reasonably debatable point (with valid points raised by both sides) when it comes to Afghanistan, and my opinion is that war was a valid response in that case. At any rate, the purpose of the war in Afghanistan was not to stop terrorism, it was to put an end to one particular state's sponsorship of terrorism. In that regard it was 100% successful -- Afghanistan no longer has nationally-supported terrorist capability. Is that the prefered way to deal with state-sponsorship of terrorism? Absolutely not. Not really. I think it was pretty darn near negligible. And you're welcome to put up the numbers and I'll happily repeat that statement right in the face of those numbers, including human cost, if you're determined to make me look inhumane (at which point I'll go on to explain why I'm not the inhumane one). We've been around this block before and I think we know how this argument goes. As you say, there is no easy solution. Just as war is not an easy solution, neither is ignoring a problem hoping it will go a way, nor are "sanctions" that are regularly and consistently undermined. But the Taliban is no longer in charge of the country. That fact was directly achieved by that war. Whether the Taliban RETURNS to power is an absolutely open question, but you know what? That could just as well be the case had we not invaded Afghanistan but somehow, miraculously, managed to remove them from power by some other means. But here's the thing I want to know -- do you actually believe that the Taliban would NOT be in power today had we not invaded? Isn't it more likely that they would still be in power, and that Al Qaeda would be a much stronger entity today if that were the case? I totally get your point about it not eliminating Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and I'm right there with you about war not being an easy solution to this problem. But I think if you declare that you're not ever going to use war under any circumstances then you take most of your peaceful negotiating power right off the table. Why should any government ever comply with international demands when it knows full well that those demands will never be backed up with power? A civilization that isn't willing to go to war to defend itself and what it believes cannot survive, even in these enlightened times. We're simply not there yet, and we've got a long way to go.

What makes you think we could have captured or killed its operatives more effectively without an invasion? I point out that not all of them have been captured or caught even WITH an invasion. Do you really think that could have been MORE successfull WITHOUT an invasion? I respect your opinion more than most, SkepticLance, and no different here -- we'll probably have to agree to disagree. But I think the evidence that invasion was a success here is more than adequate. We toppled a hostile enemy government to the overwhelming relief and appreciation of the local population. What happens after is another story, and simply has zero bearing on that issue. The Japanese were laughing after Pearl Harbor too. Just not for long. And not all Germans were Nazis, but we sure killed a lot of Germans in the early 1940s. Wanna take that one back too?

And how do you propose she do that? She doesn't have the authority to give orders to the troops.

The reason for the restriction is that changing the contents of a post causes confusion downstream in a thread over time. It's very common for threads on this board to extend into multiple pages (sometimes a dozen or more), and a user could go back and change something earlier in a thread and then say "well I never said that", or words to that effect, and then the responder might face a reprimand from board leadership when in fact they were responding correctly.