study shows liberals are "smarter" than conservitives

[Alondro]

*nods*  Yup, that's why we should just shoot em all and let God sort em out!  *Charles likes the solution Marge Simpson's crazy uncle came up with!*   

[lucas marcone]

Let me rephrase that. We can't become the RIGHT kind of war machine. in order to pacify the middle east we need to bomb the crap out of it and even when all the middle eastern muslims are dead we'd still be wadeing throug the muck of PR and the rest of the muslim population globaly, and frankly killing all muslims in the middle east is morally wrong. That's the same damn thing they're trying to do to the jews and the christians. The best ,and right, thing we can do is pull out and let them establish what ever the hell they want. If they live in peace after that fine, if they attack us and fund terrorism again time to go back in.

What the muslim extremeists need to realize is that Osama is going to burn in "the thousand hells" for what he did on September eleventh because he declared war on an innocent people.(I'm not totally clear on this let me catch some rest before i clarify on the Osama thing.)

[Boog]

I'm a moderate, so I can just sit here and consider both sides a little silly in their reasoning. *munches popcorn*

However, a couple things on the subject that this thread has stumbled upon.
The issue of the war is, indeed, a mess. Our president screwed up. As for how to fix it though, that's tricky. Keeping our troops there isn't going so well because for one thing we really don't have the manpower for it. Correct me if I'm wrong (and it's quite possible) but a majority of the power that the US army has is in the form of munitions and armor and suchlike; we can equip and train our soldiers really well, we just don't have enough of them to occupy anyone else. However, up and vanishing could introduce its own problems because we don't know it wont all go wahooni shaped immediately after. Just look at the last time we didn't clean up after ourselves in the middle east. That's why this whole thing is such a problem; the president got us into something that is extremely hard to get out of.
Right, said my bit. Back to the sidelines.

[Fuyudenki]

the US has an all-voluntary military, and there's no draft in sight, no matter what the media may be saying.  If we've still got a soldier shortage, then something is being done very not right.

Also, as you may recall, the so-called "WMDs" which we invaded Iraq over were found... in a locker in the UN building in New York.  The inspectors had brought them back without even thinking about it, and then promptly forgotten about them.  They had to shut down and evacuate something like a quarter of New York City for half a day to get them out safely.

Biological and chemical weapons.  Nasty stuff.  Exactly what we'd been looking for.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

... and provided by the USA to Saddam in the 1980's. Not that I'm pointing fingers or anything....

[superluser]

Also, as you may recall, the so-called "WMDs" which we invaded Iraq over were found... in a locker in the UN building in New York.  The inspectors had brought them back without even thinking about it, and then promptly forgotten about them.  They had to shut down and evacuate something like a quarter of New York City for half a day to get them out safely.

Biological and chemical weapons.  Nasty stuff.  Exactly what we'd been looking for.

Source please?

[Zorro]

... and provided by the USA to Saddam in the 1980's. Not that I'm pointing fingers or anything....

Provided to checkmate Iran in the Iraq - Iran war.

BUT...We also collaborated with the Soviet Union against the Nazis too as did all the allies in WWII.

One enemy at a time, and NO NATION makes perfect decisions, just the best achievable at the time it is made.

[Fuyudenki]

Also, as you may recall, the so-called "WMDs" which we invaded Iraq over were found... in a locker in the UN building in New York.  The inspectors had brought them back without even thinking about it, and then promptly forgotten about them.  They had to shut down and evacuate something like a quarter of New York City for half a day to get them out safely.

Biological and chemical weapons.  Nasty stuff.  Exactly what we'd been looking for.

Source please?

you can not have missed the big fuss around Labor Day this year.  It was all over the radio.  Especially Republican talk radio.

and yeah, as Zorro said, we've had a bad habit of giving good stuff to our allies, and then having them become our enemies the following decade.

[superluser]

you can not have missed the big fuss around Labor Day this year.  It was all over the radio.  Especially Republican talk radio.

So eleven years ago, we found WMDs in Iraq.  That justifies us invading then four years ago (that's 7 years since they were found) how?

[Fuyudenki]

wasn't that why we went after them?

It was the more recent inspection when they were found, and it was the more recent inspection for which we invaded.

Or perhaps you think the Iraqi citizens were better off under a tyrant who threw people into wood chippers because they voted against him.

[lucas marcone]

bah smoke mirrors and pandering. i still say that the government never found the WMDs and just told the news to say we did.


in more recent news colbert had a guest that was trying to prove the usa is becomeing a fashist state. she actually made a very convinceing arguement wich really made me sad for our future.

[Fuyudenki]

bah smoke mirrors and pandering. i still say that the government never found the WMDs and just told the news to say we did.


in more recent news colbert had a guest that was trying to prove the usa is becomeing a fashist state. she actually made a very convinceing arguement wich really made me sad for our future.

You would say there were no WMDs in Iraq if Saddam himself rose from the grave, knocked on your door, and told you himself that he'd been stockpiling the most grievous weapons ever imagined so that he could attack the United States.  you would say there were no WMDs if you were marched over to Iraq and shown chemical drums full of biological and chemical weapons.  You would say the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam's rule if you saw the entire population beheaded for sneezing at the wrong time.

I say this because I've seen it before.  This is what we in the industry call "Blind faith."  Faith should never be blind.  If it hasn't been tried by fire, then it's worthless.  Faith is a good thing to have, whatever your faith happens to be in.  Blind faith is always a bad thing to have, and part of our development as human beings should be a striving to eradicate blind faith from our minds.

That is why I cast my lots with the Conservative party rather than the Liberal.  Time and time again, I've seen the Liberals of America cast blind faith in anything that isn't Conservative, while the conservatives work hard to make sure our what we're putting our faith in is tried and true.

Note I did not say Republicans and Democrats.  This is because the leadership in the Republican party, as stands, is almost more liberal than the Democratic party has ever dreamed of being.

As for my faith, I'll say this much.  I will never put my faith in humanity, because the only thing they've reliably shown themselves able to do right is royally screw their situation up more than it ever was before.

[lucas marcone]

and you would belive that it raining spanish dabloons and chocolate if you saw it on the news and bush SWORE it was true. point being none of us can prove they were there. he same way we cant prove they wernt. when i watched the news they were always comeing up empty and they KNEW where they took them next but never actually got them.

[Fuyudenki]

and you would belive that it raining spanish dabloons and chocolate if you saw it on the news and bush SWORE it was true.

Hardly.  The difference between a comic book and a news broadcast is that the comic book at least admits that it's fiction.

I don't watch the news anymore.  It's a load of sensationalism and hardcore leftist propaganda, and that's including Fox news's accused right-wing conspiratism.

Also, Bush has shown himself to be a weak leader, and is one of the Republican leadership who I said was too far liberal for my liking.

[superluser]

It was the more recent inspection when they were found, and it was the more recent inspection for which we invaded.

More recent insp...You mean the `96 inspection?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/30/AR2007083000978.html

Or perhaps you think the Iraqi citizens were better off under a tyrant who threw people into wood chippers because they voted against him.

Right.  Because we kill them so much more lovingly.

Saddam killed somewhere between 70 and 125 people per day when he was in power.  In the 1300 or so days from the start of the invasion up until the most recent report from the Iraq Health Ministry, there have been somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 civillian deaths.  There have been 4,000 coalition soldiers killed, 7000-10000 Iraqi combatants, 11,000 insurgents (can't find a real source for this, sorry), and possibly others that I'm missing.  That adds up to 90-129 people per day.

Way to go killing more people than Saddam!

(anyways, the Iraq war probably is a bit off the topic, so I don't think I'll say any more on this)

Edit: OK.  One more.

You would say there were no WMDs in Iraq if Saddam himself rose from the grave, knocked on your door, and told you himself that he'd been stockpiling the most grievous weapons ever imagined so that he could attack the United States.

Actually, it seems that Saddam was pretty much playing coy about WMDs because Saddam was paranoid that if any other country ever found out that they didn't have them, Iraq would be wiped off the map.

[Reese Tora]

I understand we have a LOT of people in Iraq.  What are they doing? building infrastructure.

The majority of our effort isn't spent pacifying anything, our occupying force has patrols, true, but they're acting more like police than military at this point.

I don't think you can just stand there and point your finger at this and say that it's all bad or all good.  There's a lot of bad there, true, but there's also good being done, and I think that the good being done is at least balancing the bad that's going on, and more than likely trumps it.

Personally, I think we shouldn't have gone to Iraq a second time, we screwed up.  But! But I think we're there now, and I think that any sort of pulling out, if not done delicately, with much forethought and precision, will do as much, if not more, damage than did our initial invasion and occupation efforts.

It's all well and good to say we should have done this or that... If the WWI allies hadn't screwed up with the Treaty of Versailles in the first place... if England hadn't screwed up the middle east after WWII in the first place... If the French hadn't screwed up in Vietnam in the first place...  If Bush hadn't screwed up invading Iraq in the first place.

It's all well and good to say what we should or should not have done, and the ones responsible should certainly be appropriately punished, but allowing what we've screwed up in the past to dictate, without any input from the present, what we will do is a recipe for further screwups.

[superluser]

Personally, I think we shouldn't have gone to Iraq a second time, we screwed up.  But! But I think we're there now, and I think that any sort of pulling out, if not done delicately, with much forethought and precision, will do as much, if not more, damage than did our initial invasion and occupation efforts.

Consensus is good.  I agree with this.  If we don't have a slow withdrawal plan that has the option to send troops back in if things start to get really bad, it will be worse than...just about anything short of a land war in Asia (which that technically is, anyway).

Also, I think we need to build a time machine and burn the cocktail napkin the British used to draw the borders of the Middle East.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Consensus is good.  I agree with this.  If we don't have a slow withdrawal plan that has the option to send troops back in if things start to get really bad, it will be worse than...just about anything short of a land war in Asia (which that technically is, anyway).

Er? A war in Iraq is a land war in Asia?

... when did Iraq get moved to the east by, oh, about 4 or 5 countries?

[Goatmon]

I'm a Republican.  I have a degree in biology and work in a renowned research facility in one of the best hospitals in the country.

Tom Cruise is a liberal.  He believes in Scientology.  Nuff said.   

Please don't lob us Libs in with Scientologists.  I would get aggressive about it, but the mere idea is ****ing depressing, and makes me want to start crying.  Those people are completely despicable. 

[lucas marcone]

make you feel any better goatmon?

[superluser]

Er? A war in Iraq is a land war in Asia?

... when did Iraq get moved to the east by, oh, about 4 or 5 countries?

Asia Minor (the classical "Asia") would have included most of Turkey and bits of the Middle East, so it seems odd to call Iraq European.  And it also seems odd to call anything east of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles something other than Asia.

[Alondro]

We have an alternative source of energy.  It's called nuclear power.  If we relied on it for as long as the uranium sources would last, we could spend that time trying to come up with something else that would hopefully work for the forseeable future.

Oh wait.  Libs hate nuclear power too.

Or we could put up wind tubines in Massachusetts! 

Oh wait.  Edwards doesn't want his view spoiled.

Meh.  I still say the best way to solve humanity's problems is to exterminate the humans.   

[superluser]

Oh wait.  Libs hate nuclear power too.
...
Oh wait.  Edwards doesn't want his view spoiled.

Actually, quite a few liberals really like nuclear power.

And one man does not a political party make.

[Alondro]

The way things usually work, one person almost always is held up as the party standard, either to magnify or to demonify.  It can be a different person at different times, but the method is the same.  Place one member on a pedestal and shine all the lights on him/her. 

And that's how the media manipulates the public.

But I too know how to play that little game.   

Anyway, the acceptance of nuclear energy is filtering into the moderates for the time being.  But I have a feeling the current Democratic Party will be far more swayed by the radical left when it comes time to actually build a nuclear plant, especially if they already have the Presidency.  Then they don't have to pretend to care about being sensible anymore and can focus on their true goal of solidifying their power base with a socialist society pandering to the greedy and lazy public who want everything handed to them, further enlarging the pool of people trapped by 'learned helplessness' who will always vote for them because they're incapable of survival without massive government support to make laws to tell them not to set themselves on fire and put warning labels on knives instructing "Do not insert into head, chest, or any other body part" because they have no common sense of their own.

Plus, they must make sure all the children are 'safe', so all physical activity will be banned in schools, lest a child get a scraped knee and the parents sue.

And let us not forget the mandated 'equality' that will be pushed into every aspect of life.  But not for the betterment of society, no no.  The trend will be as it has been for the past 20 years, to bring everyone down to the lowest level and make sure no one feels bad about themselves.

And then, once the 'living document' standard is fully applied to the Constitution and it is ammended into a massive volume of legal jargon which only the political elite and their teams of lawyers can possibly interpret, everyone shall be made completely equal in all things... and we shall have Harrison Bergeron.

The 'universal health care' system is the real start to socialism.  No matter what 'Hillary Care' promises, the REAL cost cannot even be calculated.  I work closely with the medical field and no one I know is happy about the prospect of that program.  It is already quite clear that it will be a disaster for the medical field in the US.

And by the way, who's going to pay for it?  Tax the rich some more?  Ha ha ha!  They'll just leave for Mexico or China, where they can bribe officials for a whole lot less than the taxes they're currently paying.

We've gotten into the trouble we're in by relying on the government too much.  Every government run program in existence is bloated, backwards, inefficient, overly costly, filled with nepotism, and rife with corruption.  And now people want to give the government absolute power over their health care system?  Well, stupid is as stupid does.

[Caswin]

Consensus is good.  I agree with this.  If we don't have a slow withdrawal plan that has the option to send troops back in if things start to get really bad, it will be worse than...just about anything short of a land war in Asia (which that technically is, anyway).

I've actually heard more than one columnist advocating leaving and letting Iraq fall apart because it's too late to save it now.

That definitely doesn't sound right.

[Reese Tora]

We've gotten into the trouble we're in by relying on the government too much.  Every government run program in existence is bloated, backwards, inefficient, overly costly, filled with nepotism, and rife with corruption.  And now people want to give the government absolute power over their health care system?  Well, stupid is as stupid does.

As I and my coworker put it:
me: who wants the health care system run by the people running the IRS?
him: who wants the health care system run by the people running the DMV?

[Valynth]

There is a basic reason socialized medicine with never work.  You're still paying for it, but this time you don't have a choice on how it's spent.  Oh, and you're obligated to pay for it even if you don't use it.  Or they throw you in jail.

[superluser]

There is a basic reason socialized medicine with never work.

Seems to be working pretty well in some countries. (NOTE: THIS EXCLUDES CANADA!  NO ONE LIKES CANADA'S NATIONAL HEALTH CARE.  NOT EVEN 58% OF CANADIANS!)

But there's a difference between `works' and ``is a good idea.''

I used to think that it was a bad idea, since I didn't trust big government to control that sort of stuff.

But now I'm not so sure.  Is Big Pharma really any better?

[Fuyudenki]

Mail system, airlines, medicine, computers, agriculture, nearly everything tends to both run cheaper and provide better service when released to the capitalist public.  Barring total brainwashing, customers vote with their dollars, and they vote for the service they think is best.  If that means I'm paying a thousand dollars to get halfway-decent doctor seervice, or that I have to buy my meal at the airline for $15 on top of my $30 plane tickets, as opposed to paying nothing and ending up performing my own appendectomy or getting ever-famous Airline food for free on top of my $100+ ticket, then that sounds good to me.

In short, I'd rather have a megacorporation running nearly anything than let the government handle it, because the government's response to financial shortages is to tax the public more.  If the megacorporation starts overpricing or handing out bad service, then at best, they lose some of those much-needed customers.  At worst, they get slapped with a collective lawsuit, and blasted from the face of the planet by legal fees and reparations.

In every event I've seen, giving the government more power is invariably a really bad idea.  Hey, Communism seems like a GREAT idea when you look at it, but when you go to implement it, it tends to collapse, and not like a tower of kindergarten blocks, either.  More like Bikini Atoll when it got hit with the nuclear bomb tests.

[superluser]

Mail system, airlines, medicine, computers, agriculture, nearly everything tends to both run cheaper and provide better service when released to the capitalist public.

We have independent confirmation of all but medicine.  Specifically, the NHS system (everybody gets a decent public health care system with the option to pay for private insurance on top of it) in the UK seems to be pretty comparable if not better than ours.

In short, I'd rather have a megacorporation running nearly anything than let the government handle it, because the government's response to financial shortages is to tax the public more.  If the megacorporation starts overpricing or handing out bad service, then at best, they lose some of those much-needed customers.

I really, really wish I could agree with you on this.  It fits in so well with my Libertarian ideology, but it just isn't correct.  The megacorporation's response to financial shortages is to lie to their customers, file for bankruptcy, sell off the services that their customers might want, and jack up rates. (remember HealthSouth?  What about AIDS drugs?  In some parts of the world, they're very well-priced.  Not in the US.)

Basically, health care is so messed up in the US that I don't see how the government could possibly make it any worse.