jattaway

Pan beat me to the punch, here is a great article that discusses this and related issues in great detail. http://www.rppi.org/ourscience.shtml

The United States has claim to all entities outside of our atmosphere. Oh, and Canada, not sure why we want it, but we do.

You will, I hope, concede that Global Warming IS a theory and there are plenty of scientists on both sides of the proverbial fence willing to debate it? I will certainly agree that I can not imagine a link between abortion and Breast Cancer, but while I am a huge fan of breasts and the practice of procreation, I do not consider myself an expert (I do, however, intend to continue my research). That said, what is your central point? That Bush is a danger to the sciences? I would be happy to argue against that, I am a firm believer of a certain morality needing to be applied to science. I admit, that Hitler made great medical and scientific breakthroughs, I would rather have waited 20 years though and not had countless jews used as test subjects. Please define your arguement, it is too vague as it stands.

While I would prefer for the voting population in the US to WANT to learn the national language, any citizen should be able to vote. There have been many times in our early history where a language was not shared, what is the difference between our early German, Dutch, French and Gaelic speaking founders? English is the national language, most Americans speak it, but it is nothing new for the great melting pot....

I guess 60 years ago was a long time ago, though the French and the rest of us should remember it well, I am sure they felt safe and secure behind their little line in the sand. I do not really fear an invasion of the US, though there was a great quote from a former soviet Flag Officer, ref there being no plan for the invasion of the United States due to the fact that our population was armed. A 100 million man armed militia is an impressive thing, even against modern weaponry. All that aside, we have gentle neighbors today, and I hope that it always stays that way, but times change. With terrorism changing warfare, it may be more appropriate than it looks at first glance. Also, who could argue that a nation whose population was armed was not more secure from invasion? Let me ask a couple of other questions, while I am at it... What do you think would happen if the people of North Korea were armed? What about China? That is an industrial nation, would the people rebel? I would be willing to wager that the government would be more open to their needs and wants if nothing else, at the very least! Our backgrounds are so different, that i don't think we will find much common ground here... Our points of reference are too disparate.

Hahah That is laughable. As I am sure you are well aware, being the economics expert who you must surely be, I am certain that you are only speaking in jest. As I am sure you are aware, member contributions are calculated based upon the total percentage of member nation contribution to the global economy. As the US represents roughly one fifth of that global economy, principally as a consumer of world goods, do you REALLY think that most nations of the world would be able to afford any form of sanction against us that prohibited us from buying their goods? Oh, there would bankrupt nations to be sure, but the US would not be one of them. For one thing, you do not have to be a member of the United Nations in order to trade with other member nations. Our withdrawal only effects our trade relations IF the UN attempts to sanction us. Given that various members with Veto rights require our trade to be able keep their nations healthy, I don’t see those sanctions happening. For another, with a 20-25% reduction in funds, the UN itself would be in serious financial difficulties. Can other nations pick up the slack? SURE! So long as they are given additional concessions, nothing comes for free, and that is also assuming that a new entity is not created that makes the UN obsolete. Why do we need more than NATO to begin with? Here are a few statistics that you may find interesting, spin them however you like. Rank Country GDP Date of Information 1 World $ 51,480,000,000,000 2003 est. 2 United States $ 10,990,000,000,000 2003 est. China, Japan and India combined are slightly larger than our economy, but no one else is even in the same league. Please allow me to get your expert opinion here… Given how dependent Japan and India are on the US economy and to a much lesser extent China, which way do you think the economic winds will blow with those nations? My opinion is that it will go in which ever way continues to allow them to sell goods in the US. Oh, another little tidbit for you. The top 5 nations are roughly equal to the GDP of the remainder of the world. Then again, we are all off topic. The US destroys more grain each year than most nations could consume, our farmers are paid by government subsidy to grow food that will rot in crates. In the event the US were ever truly isolated, which is a pipe dream that I am sure you richly enjoy, then we could feed ourselves and our neighbors with only minor issue. We are not an over crowded nation that can not ramp up whatever production is needed to feed ourselves, I would be interested to see where you came up with that particular epiphany. You may declare this egotistical; I would submit that the US flourishes because of our relations with other nations. That relationship does not have to involve supporting an entity, even one we created, whose goals are contrary to those of the United States, nor is our ability to trade with other nations necessarily tied to that relationship. The US is not an island, but the UN’s continued instance on meddling with our internal affairs has no place. We are a free people, we are more than capable of deciding what laws serve us best. A disarmed populous, which was the original post, serves no one other than our enemies.

Nevermind, I did the leg work for you. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/24236.htm We make up 22% of the total buget plus incedentals such as the HQ, various peace keeping forces etc. Before you start talking trade restrictions, with out the US to buy foreign goods, many nations would go bankrupt, so I would avoid talks of huge sweeping economic sanctions. They are empty threats that most nations can not afford. The reality is, a new entity would be formed and while the UN would continue on, its effect on the world would decline. In short, the US may lose veto rights, the UN loses its single biggest backer. I would call that even.

Dictated to us how? Via force of arms? With whose funding? Or whose army? Perhaps you should look up the percentages paid by member nations of total funds that go in to make up the UN before you jump off the deep end here. The numbers may shock you. I would like to see gun safety taught in the public schools, but it should rightly be the option of the State. It is not practical in all States, though I wish it were. In short, I am not in favor of any government mandate unless it comes from a localized State level. Then again, I am in favor of a mandatory 2 years of service in the armed forces after high school. So when people refer to the far right wing of American politics... Well, I see those chaps on my left.

Anyone who is more interested in saying what people want to hear rather than what he thinks has no business leading the most powerful nation in the world. George Bush is consistant in his views, and does what he says. Those are very important traits as far as I am concerned. From a political standpoint, I agree with nothing the left pushes. I believe they are attempting to enslave segments of our population through entitlements just has been done to the American Indian. Dependant people are not free. For me, the left has tried to replace working for what you want in life with a fat government who will give it to them so long as they continue to get their vote. This is doomed to failure, and while republicans are not much better they are by far the lesser of evils. I will vote for a democrat if he expresses a conviction to return the government to state control and shrink the federal government (e.g. Zell Miller) or I will vote for an independant if the democrat running is not a clear danger to the US (e.g. Kerry).

Most minds are made up with both sides detesting the other. THe point of rational discourse from either side is probably past at this point. Though, I really think (obviously being from the close minded Right) that Kerry and Edwards are still looking for a platform and have failed to take a stand on any issue in either debate. Kerry looked more polished than Bush in the first debate, so that was a win, on substance, I thought Bush did fine, but Kerry did great for having no real position on anything. In the VP debate, Edwards just looked inexperienced by comparison.

This site seems to have a lot of research done, I have not attempted to verify most of it, but should make for interesting discussion. http://townhall.townofchapelhill.org/archives/agendas/ca000508/5a-Information%20Report%20--%20World%20Trade%20Org.htm

Don't talk crazy pangloss, of course not. It is only a lie if you don't agree with it. It is the new "subjective" truth of the left. I was going to try to explain but ended up with a long satirical rant on the party of government entitlement. What it really boils down to is: The war see to be going well to conservatives because they understand that it is a lot of work liberating 25 million people with 80% of the neighboring nations wanting you to fail. What has been done in Iraq has never been against so many with so few, so fast and with so little blood shed. How that is anything but amazing, I will never understand. The war is going so badly according to liberals because they are the party of instant gratification where the government, not hard work solves the problems. Iraq can be a free nation, but not with people telling you how you are going to fail at every turn getting in the way.

Grr they closed the our other gun thread, that was a dirty trick... ;-( Anyway, the NRA does a lot of great things as far as gun safety and awareness classes go, among other things. That being said, they are a political organization that requires funding. Making Americans aware of UN pushes to effect our rights is important to both them (as a fresh revenue stream) and us (as an informed populous). The UN has no place in our government. If they insist on meddling, the US should withdraw. There are other nations who are "world" powers that can pick up the slack. If they want to try to push their views via force of arms... Well, I think we have an answer for that also. The issue of the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution is one where a very large portion of our population has a very serious and deadly view, and given that it is our final guarantee of Freedom, it should.

I agree with every statement listed. They are accurate as I see them, and as he sees them, you calling them a lie does not make them one. It was a bold statement, just not an accurate one on your part. There are 2 "lies" that I know of, one was that in his time attending senate meetings as VP, he had yet to meet Kerry. The Drudge Report says they were there at the sam time on 3 occassions, one where they sat side by side. I can easily accept that he did not remember seeing them there or that they did not speak, but that is not what he said. His point which is also important is that Kerry and Edwards are seldom doing their jobs as Senators attending fewer than 20 % of their voting obligations. In short, free riding like the parasites. That was his point, anyway. The other "lie" was sending researchers to factcheck.com rather than factcheck.org Both errors can be attributed to speaking "from the hip" without access to fact finding resources. Since this was all unprepared, I would not call either lies, but mistakes.

I agree with all of that. I live in a very conservative county. Democrats don't even bother to run here. For me the choice is ultra conservative or religious conservative, and sometimes there are no choices, it is just the ultra religious conservative. ;-) That being said, my advice to anyone is would be vote your ideals in local elections and vote logic in the national. The lesser of evils is the best any of us can honestly expect. All things considered, the UK has the best form of government followed by the US, at least since our civil war. Pre civil war, I think our government was better suited to meeting the needs and desires of the People. 3 Party systems put you in the same boat with Spain in that a fringe group can saddle you with a communist government just because the other 2 parties don’t reflect the needs of the populous close enough for them to reach a consensus.

Ack! You will burn out my eyes reading stuff like that! I like conservationalist practices, but I don't want the government making it mandatory or special interests groups, like Green Peace, going way off the deep end. I prefer science and the basic laws of supply and demand to regulate environmental conservation. There is too much junk science out there for most people to make an informed decission regarding a lot of environmental issues... People are also pretty lazy when it comes to doing their own research. Pretty sad really ;-(

This is a Red Herring and a bit on the intellectually perfidious side. It is impossible to find meaningful evidence in a country that size with so few people doing the searching and a government actively working against you. 2 weeks or 2 years would not have made a significant difference. As to the existence of WMDs, if they existed or not are still very much in question even if both sides have backed off of it. Saddam moved weapons systems to neighboring countries during the first gulf war; there is no reason to believe he did not do the same in this one. There are also many from within the regime that say that they were sent to Syria. I am not arguing for or against either theory, just pointing out the weakness in the above statement.

/agree with YT I prefer to vote Libertarian on most issues. Big governement / socialism = bad in my book. There is merit to the "change your party from within" mentality, but having your vote elsewhere tends to get more notice I think. Additionally, I feel better about it ;-) The US is really a 2 party system though, it will be hard for a third party to really take root here. Still it does keep it interesting.

On the topic of the debates... Kerry did a great job, his bid could have been over last night, but he has managed to buy himself some time. I don't think that he changed many peoples minds, but he did as well as he could have. Bush, well... Bush is Bush... He was on topic, and did not change any minds either. Given his current lead, he did not really have to though. For those interested, I like this utility for monitoring current trends. It is a free download. http://www.adorons.com/a/ESGI/enig_sv_public_22.html

Had it not been for appeasment style democrats like Kerry, they would not be using the reactors Clinton built for them to enrich Uranium. As with most things comming from the extreme far left, it is easy to point out what is wrong, the harder thing is showing a realistic plan for what you would do different and more important how you would pay for it. The leftist media spin is that the current crisis in North Asia is the result of George W. Bush calling Pyongyang a member of the 'axis of evil.' In reality, the soft-line appeasement policy taken by Clinton against North Korea and China is what has led us to this point. For example, former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, now serving as a talking head on CNN, claimed that the Clinton administration contained the threat from North Korea. Clearly, Mr. Begala missed the 1990s. Of course, Mr. Begala simply forgot that Clinton's military chief of staff testified in 1998 that North Korea did not have an active ballistic missile program. One week later the North Koreans launched a missile over Japan that landed off the Alaska coast. During the early Clinton years, hard-liners and so-called conservative hawks advocated a pre-emptive strike to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons development before it could field an atomic bomb. Instead of taking the hard line, President Clinton elected to rely on former President Jimmy Carter and decided to appease the Marxist-Stalinist dictatorship. Carter met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and returned to America waving a piece of paper and declaring peace in our time. Kim, according to Carter, had agreed to stop his nuclear weapons development. The Clinton appeasement program for North Korea included hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, food, oil and even a nuclear reactor. However, the agreement was flawed and lacked even the most informal means of verification. In return, Kim elected to starve his people while using the American aid to build uranium bombs. The lowest estimate is that Kim starved to death over 1 million of his own people, even with the U.S. aid program. Stop blaming the Right for the failings of the Lefts foreign policy. As with the US economy, we were left with cleaning up the mess you and those who think like you have created. All you are really doing is fussing at us for not cleaning it up fast enough.

Chemical and biological weapons are most effective against civilians rather than modern troops, but there are a lot of different uses for them that seem to be being ignored, or perhaps just not thought about. One of the chief tenants in war is to disable and not kill the enemy. It is better to wound rather than kill. The reason being that it takes more soldiers out of the fight in that healthy soldiers have to care for injured ones. The fatality rate of some of these agents may not be that high due to a number of reasons, but you can still incapacitate an attacking or defensive force making it easier for your conventional forces to secure an area. In addition to this, there are other uses. Defoliating food sources with the intent of starving the enemy into submission. Contaminating water supplies. Killing ill protected civilians as listed above. Removing cover and concealment from the enemy making it easier to strike at them as well as many others that I have forgotten from my NBC training 15 years ago... Development of chemical and biologic weapons has been slow since the Geneva Convention was signed. That does not mean that there are not a lot of ways to use the current methods or that more effective ones can not be developed. The Sarin nerve gas used in Japan in 1995 is a good example of how to use nerve agent. It killed 12 and injured 6000. Spread terror and had a large negative effect on Japanese moral. As pointed out many times in this thread, these weapons are not that great at killing. My entire reason for posting is that they are very dangerous when used as part of a larger plan, to cause terror or incapacitate troops than they are in and of themselves. Please don't think they are less than deadly just because they do not make the kills themselves. Also, things like Sarin are the poor mans weapons, things like botulinum toxin are listed as 100,000 times more deadly. This used in a subway could kill thousands and hospitalize 10 times that. (this won't be something likely to be mixed up by anything other than State sponsored terrorists, however, hence the importance of destroying nations that have a history of assisting terrorists).

[ Agreed, but that is not really the point though, is it? You can see clearly that the cause is the individual, and not the gun. Japan has a very low crime rate (in the same league as the Swiss) but no firearms. They also have police searches of their homes and some extreme views on police brutality, but that is not really the point either. Violence in the inner cities of the US will exist with or without guns (and I stress, just like drugs, it is impossible to keep them out given our border situation). The difference is that by allowing private citizens to carry firearms; the law abiding private citizen is able to protect himself and his property. If we accept the above test beds with the Swiss, and I really think anyone with a modicum of intellectual honesty will agree that they make a great example, it is easy to see that guns are a neutral element when it comes to crime and violence. With that in mind, an educated, informed populous that is armed, is safer so long as their endeavors remain lawful. Gun control only helps criminals. As to the entire justice angle, in the US we maintain a different attitude than some of our Euro neighbors. A criminal’s rights end when he crosses the threshold into my home. This is a separate argument, however, and unrelated to the core focus of this discussion which was focused on the merits of gun ownership.

The Swiss are all issued assault weapons during their mandatory term in the armed services, after their tour, they take the weapons home with them. They have very low crime rates compared with other european nations. http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/wallstreet.html Very interesting read with a lot of statistical information. http://www.ncpa.org/pi/crime/pd061099b.html This link I put here just because I found it interesting and brief (i.e. has better chance of you actually reading it)

Ruby Ridge and Wako are Red Herrings. 20 people, 50 people or 50,000 people are not going to change the face of US Government. Wako you can blame on Hillary and Reno, those people where crazy, but should not have been gunned down like that, and the children murdered there bring my blood to a boil. In short, a bad situation with a terrible result. The point to the second amendment, and why it is the most important amendment that we have is that it gives the majority of our population the ability to change a hostile government if it ever became oppressive. As for the UK, Australia and other areas, every place that has removed guns from law abiding citizens have seen their crime rates sky rocket. I will find as many resources that you like, the information is all public record or published information. http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/firearms/control.html This link is a link to multiple links and sources with information like that listed below: One year after gun-owners were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms, including semi-automatic .22 rifles and shotguns, to be destroyed in a government program costing over 500 million dollars, the results are in... The latest crime statistics reveal a dramatic increase in criminal activity. Gun control advocates respond "Just wait... we'll be safer... you'll see...". Unfortunately, the ban has made the Australian criminal safer now. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OBSERVABLE FACT AFTER 12 MONTHS OF DATA Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2%. Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6%. Australia-wide, armed-robberies are up 44%. (yes, FORTY-FOUR PERCENT) In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300%! The steady decrease in homicides-with-firearms that occurred during the previous 25 years became an increase in the last 12 months. The steady decrease in armed-robbery-with-firearms that occurred during the previous 25 years became an increase in the last 12 months. There has been a dramatic increase in breakins-and-assaults-of-the-elderly. At the time of the ban, the Prime Minister said "self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm". From 1910 to present, homicides in Australia have averaged about 1.8-per-100,000 or lower, a safe society by any standard. The ban has destroyed Australia's standings in some international sport shooting competitions. The membership of the Australian Sports Shooting Association has increased by 200% in response to the ban and in an attempt to organize against further controls, which are expected. Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain why no improvement in "safety" has been observed after such monumental effort and expense was successfully expended in "ridding society of guns". Their response has been to "wait longer".

I think we are back to . ;-) Assuming you could remove guns from the hands of criminals (which is no more possible than removing drugs) then other means would be used to achieve the same end. You would have people killed with improvised weapons, or any number of items that can be picked up at a hardware store (ax, machete, knife, etc). So the argument that people would be killed less frequently is not that strong. If you are referring to accidental shootings, as a percentage, swimming pools are more dangerous, as are ponds, lakes, streams, roads, trains and accidental stabbings with scissors and knives. My wife with a handgun >= thug with a hand gun With no other weapon does that equation hold true.