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#326 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-05 09:38:31
Lemmings. Blind lemmings, headed for a cliff.
From Vincent's blog "In the Red Zone" - -
As I've written , the fact that many, if not most, of Basra's constabulary harbors primary loyalties to the city's religious parties is--as you might imagine--a serious problem. To the despair of many secular-minded residents, the British are doing a cracker-jack job of teaching Iraqi police cadets close-order drills, proper arrest techniques and pistol marksmanship, without, however, including basic training in democratic principles and a sense of public duty. As a result, our Anglo allies may be handing the religious parties spiffy new myrmidons to augment their already well-armed militias. Worse, the knowledge that a cop's sympathies may lie more with the Badr Organization than the Basran citizenry erodes general trust in the police. "If someone, say, stole my car, I wouldn't go to the police to get it back," an Iraqi journalist told me. "I'd negotiate directly with the thieves."
Who murdered Vincent? Shia militia most probably, the people who took power in Basra (with Iranian assistance) after we removed Saddam. We created a vacuum, Iranian backed militia filled that vacuum and the Brits are training those folks to be better at what they do.
For the most part, the Shia leave the United States alone. Why? Because we are fighting their mortal enemies - - the Sunni/Baath - - for them. Unless we discuss Iraq in the context of Shia, Sunni and Kurd we are talking nonsense.
The people who murdered Vincent are most likely in cahoots with the police and the local leaders we and the Brits currently acknowledge as the legitimate authority in Basra. Vincent was murdered by the people we helped gain power.
When do we liberate the secular residents of Basra from these militias?
= = =
Shaun, Josh.
I have quoted Mr. Vincent. Do you believe he is telling the truth, here?
= = =
I believe Iran is giving considerable assistance to the Shia in and around Basra and is assisting the current elected Iraqi government. Iran just offered to build a new airport at Najaf to assist pilgrims avoid the instability of Bagdhad. for crying out loud.
I deny Iran is assisting the Sunni/Baath the US Marines are fighting in western Iraq.
#327 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-04 11:00:07
Feeling lonely these days?
GOP gains power and spends, spends, spends with no one to argue the other side.
Hopelessly outnumbered and fighting on two fronts. Relishing every minute of it too. :twisted:
Perfect image for CGI movie?
Do I hear calls for truce?
Hmmm. . .
Lets chat about shuttle derived launch systems, okay?
#328 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-04 10:20:53
I remember that too, and it had more to do with a tech bubble if I recall.
Perhaps. But it was a chance to embrace the notion of fiscal responsibility.
#329 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-04 10:12:40
A mechanism? Well, yes. But was it really used?
That deficit didn't happen because of a one-sided Government afterall. Pork barrel spending is largely the result of a divided government- got to make a deal somehow. But now, well, they still spend the money, they just don't try to make a deal with the other side when doing it.
[sigh] Remember the good 'ol days, when we all hated the government together, instead of hating each other for liking one party versus the other.
I remember January 2001 when we had a budget surplus because a GOP Congress and Bill Clinton reached a deal.
#330 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-04 09:15:04
Agreed. However while the choir berates the lower taxes, I'd prefer to focus on the spending which is after all the real problem.
Feeling lonely these days?
GOP gains power and spends, spends, spends with no one to argue the other side.
= = =
With divided government, there was a mechanism for restraint.
#331 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-04 08:28:49
Cobra, any comments on the new highway bill?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/02/highway.bill.ap
What was it that Michigan conseravtive icon said? Oh yeah, "a party of high deeds in distant lands and higher taxes on the home front."
I suppose spending more yet lowering taxes at the same time is beyond what our mystery author could imagine.
= = =
Speaking of flaky, Arizonan Jeff Flake voted against this Highway Bill.
#332 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-04 06:23:18
In totalitarian regimes, it is common to suggest that one's opponents needed assistance with their mental health or that they are criminals. Do you advocate that we become more Soviet or more fascist in our public discourse?
Its also a sign that one' s opponent is, shall we say, "out of ammo"
Thanks for the support Shaun. Your comments assure me I am on the right track.
8)
I repeat a quote from a man revered by Ronald Reagan:
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace comes to pass in an era of Righteousness -- that is, national or ideological self-righteousness in which the public is persuaded that "God is on our side," and that those who disagree should be brought here before the bar as war criminals.
#333 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 21:54:14
Bingo!
Is the author a Leftie or a Rightie?
#334 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 21:12:19
A challenge, and I ask clark to refrain from answering, except perhaps by private message. His google skills are too good.
Who said/wrote this and when:
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace comes to pass in an era of Righteousness -- that is, national or ideological self-righteousness in which the public is persuaded that "God is on our side," and that those who disagree should be brought here before the bar as war criminals.
. . . Just now I conclude my thoughts on Republican errors by suggesting that it would be ruinous for the Republicans to convert themselves into a party of high deeds in distant lands and higher taxes on the home front. Such a New World Order, like the Pax Romana, might create a wilderness and call it peace; at best, it would reduce the chocolate ration from thirty grams to twenty. And in the fullness of time, the angry peoples of the world would pull down the American Empire, despite its military ingenuity and its protestations of kindness and gentleness -- even as the Soviet Empire is being pulled down today, thanks be to God.
#335 Re: Human missions » Mars Mission & Space Weather "Hole" » 2005-08-03 20:08:37
*Bill, did you read my 3rd post in this thread?
--Cindy
Are you saying there is a side of the Sun we have not seen yet?
It seems to me that as the year elapses the line from Sun to Earth moves across the face of the Sun, and traces a great circle around the entire Sun. Therefore over time we experience the Sun's insolation from every point on the sun, at least along the plane of the Earth's orbit.
Unless the surface of the Sun moves at exactly the same rate as the Earth circles the Sun. Like those theories about planet X exactly behind the Sun.
#336 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 19:57:13
To take them on is beyond foolish.
Dreams don't do math. Any Mars lover knows that.
Yup.
But Citibank does. To the penny.
#337 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 18:49:46
CM Edwards, you are probably right about that statistic being an urban legend. I have heard it tossed about a number of times in various contexts but never really looked into it systematically as a census type question.
I am often approached by potential clients wanting to start "Mom & Pop" retail or restaurant business-es and they are invariably under-capitalized and they fail to acknowledge the brutal competition extended by the franchises and big box retailers.
Also, these potential clients routinely rely upon being able to start taking paychecks far sooner than is realistic. In good conscience, I believe I must discourage spending the 401(k) nest egg or maxing out a home equity loan to start up such a business.
Speaking of restaurant franchises, in Chicago we have a staggering number of good upscale franchise restaurants like Maggianos which deliver a terrific product and are backed up by many, many millions of dollars in capital.
To take them on is beyond foolish. :?
#338 Re: Human missions » Mars Mission & Space Weather "Hole" » 2005-08-03 13:30:08
Ummmm... the folks that wrote this do know that the Sun, uh, spins... right? You know? With the rotating? And junk?
"literally just the line between Earth and the Sun"
Ummmmmmmmm? If the sun spins, then we have a pretty good idea about how it works from all directions around the equitorial longetudes that the planets orbit.
This "Dr. Foulloun" is just making a "VSE needs us, please don't defund us Griffin!" pitch... to the ignorant media no less.
Edit: Taking a second skim through the link, note how the Doc wants probes. Lots of probes. Expensive, long-term project probes, which will of course need her services as principle investigator.
The assertions that "its too dangerous because we don't know!" is, being charitable by using the initials, B.S.
Yup. I concur. Not only does the Sun spin but we revolve around the Sun.
Maybe there is a "sunspot" on the opposite side which we never see which emits a nasty particle beam. :? Uh oh better fund some studies.
= = =
That said, a really good water shield and an emergency storm shelter remain good ideas.
#339 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 09:04:46
Maybe Cobra's plan would work IF we encouraged the resurgence of labor unions.
But then again, in his world passing laws to assist the lions to feed while prohibiting the chimpanzees from ganging up (unions) is the essence of freedom. Too bad that collective action is how we chimps rose to the top in the first place.
By the way, Adam Smith (and I claim him as a liberal) called this system mercantilism not free market enterprise.
= = =
Sadly, ever since Hillary got trounced in the early 1990s on single payor health care the battle as been about myths rather than logical rational provision of health care and about profts for some really BIG companies and campaighn donors.
#340 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 08:31:10
Okay, dude. Send Bill Frist a letter. Maybe he will go for it.
#341 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 08:14:29
LO
Many of America's best decades of economic performance came after the New Deal, which I believe was an effort to blend the best attributues of capitalism and socialism.
I think there is not a good or perfect system in the absolute, each system creates its own "antigenes" such as the more its goes, the closer its reaches to a breakdown point.
Capitalism tends to unbearable inequalities between peoples, socialism tends to unproductivity as seen with the english industry in the years 1970.
Right now, I think that power of money owners have gone too far, and that soon or later, there will be a clock beam return, be smooth or brutal.
Economists know that for a long term period, the average industry profit rate is about 3.25% (over inflation rate). Now investissors seek for profits rates over 10%, then they act as predators, throwing attacks at industrial groups, dismanteling them, keeping only the most valuable departments, closing the less profitables ones, without any consideration on their market positions, firing as many workers as possible, without thinking that wrecked employment regions become marketless regions. At least Mr Ford 1 had the intelligence to consider his employees as his enterprise best clients.
I agree with this.
When designing an electrical circuit which is more important, the positive wire or the negative?
If either Labor or Capital grow too ascendant the circuit fails.
#342 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-03 08:01:47
And I know people who stay at their big company jobs (that they hate) instead of starting a new business because they cannot risk a spouse or child getting sick without insurance. Rather than promoting rugged individualism, this creates a nation of Dilberts, company man who are too timid to strike out on their own.
Hardly the mythical American dream.
Which comes back to what I was saying, the present health insurance paradigm needs to be dumped in its entirety.
The problem you describe is a direct result of centralized healthcare and in a roundabout way, of socialist-style thinking.
Our current health care system arose through market forces.
Are you saying government should break up the insurance industry to better assure competition and direct access (and payment) between patients and doctors?
Dude, welcome to the Leftie Revolution! :grin:
= = =
Next, I will bet that the lion's share of political donations from Big Pharma and the medical insurance industry go to GOP candidates. The HMOs and large insurers are the middle men who take a large slice of pie leaving less for the rest of us.
Therefore, your plan is "pie in the sky"
In the meantime, Wal-Mart encourages its employees to apply for state subsidized medical care. First they seek tax breaks from local governments by promising local jobs then they dump the health care component cost from those same jobs back on the State government.
It's what Warren Buffet calls the sharecropper society. established under a false veneer of "rugged individualism" perpetuated by its apologists.
I guess that makes Buffet a communist! :shock:
#343 Re: Not So Free Chat » Military History: Gettysburg » 2005-08-02 20:19:58
I had the good fortune (perhaps) to have written a genuine history paper my 4th year in college based on original records from the National Archives in Washington.
I reviewed about 500 pension applications handwritten (d'oh!) between 1810 and 1830 (as I recall) from Revolutionary War veterans and drew conclusions about social mobility. It was an undergraduate's work but I saw first hand the tedious BORING nature of shifting through original records - - not the ebb and flow of ideas but adding up how many acres of land and how many children these veterans had.
To evaluate Carhart's theory in detail for myself I will need to get copies of the sources he cites and examine them myself, and decide. That said, I am sure plenty of professional historians will want to tackle this same assignment and waiting for a consensus of scholars is another way to go.
The book was dated April 2005 so its too early for any serious response.
All this said, the introduction was written by an esteemed Civil War scholar and he seems persuaded.
clark, I agree with your last post as far as the onus to establish a revisionist theory. What is cool for me is an opportunity to witness nuts and bolts historiography (doing history) which was an academic path I very briefly considered.
#344 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-02 19:44:42
Bill:-
General Motors and US Steel are hardly paragons of rugged individualism.
= = =
Many of America's best decades of economic performance came after the New Deal, which I believe was an effort to blend the best attributues of capitalism and socialism.
It has also been argued that liberal (meaning easily available) bankruptcy laws allow American business folk to take risks Europeans would never dream of taking.
Is easy access to bankruptcy protection (debt relief) free enterprise or socialism? I say that's a hard question to answer.
Good points, Bill, and you've demonstrated one can analyze this enormous subject down into an infinite array of smaller tricky questions; thus getting bogged down in the minutiae of history. And what is history? (I think we could get bogged down in that one, too!
-- Nevertheless - and perhaps my point wasn't made clearly enough - as I understand it, and compared to other countries, America has generally expected its citizens to look after themselves. 20th century America isn't famous, as far as I'm aware, for a broad-based welfare safety net and universal 'free' medical care.
Shaun, as a lawyer I help people start up new small businesses. Most fail.
The statistics are grim, like 70% of all new business start-ups fail. Maybe that's okay because trying is good and should be encouraged.
But if you have a family, to go naked without health insurance and start a business is pretty damn foolish. Unless your employer offers health insurance the rates border on unaffordable. Among my construction clients most have a wife who works full time at a really big company and therefore gets excellent group medical insurance.
And I know people who stay at their big company jobs (that they hate) instead of starting a new business because they cannot risk a spouse or child getting sick without insurance. Rather than promoting rugged individualism, this creates a nation of Dilberts, company man who are too timid to strike out on their own.
Hardly the mythical American dream.
#345 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri VIII » 2005-08-02 19:27:44
http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/fisking … .html]Juan Cole's latest - - Enjoy!
#346 Re: Not So Free Chat » Military History: Gettysburg » 2005-08-02 17:00:11
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-rev … =UTF8]This review gets the Carhart quote right. Does Carhart gets Lee's quote right? Don't know.
Anyway Robert E. Lee is said to have said, a day later, before any communication with Stuart:
"I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett's division of Virginians did to-day in that grand charge upon the enemy. And if they had been supported as they were to have been, -- but, for some reason not yet fully explained to me, were not -- we would have held the position and the day would have been ours. Too bad! Too bad! OH! TOO BAD!"
clark, to answer you I will need to sift Carhart's original evidence.
= = =
The amazon.com reviews set up quite a flame war on this book.
#347 Re: Not So Free Chat » I'll take malaprops for *5* Bob - Apropos of Nothing continues. . . » 2005-08-02 16:26:34
Another great sig:
OK; I know they aren't real, but some of those voices have really good ideas!
#348 Re: Meta New Mars » WIKI: We now have a useable wiki... » 2005-08-01 22:17:23
Actually, I have read that story.
#349 Re: Meta New Mars » WIKI: We now have a useable wiki... » 2005-08-01 21:50:44
Hey clark, lets do some Mars fiction book reviews.
KSR, Bova, White Mars, Rainbow Mars, Black Mars (ooops I haven't written that one yet - - its the alt-history where Hitler wins WW2 and von Braun watches Mars One launch from Somalia in 1979)
and of course, Bradbury.
#350 Re: Human missions » Shuttle Derived II - last thread crashed » 2005-08-01 18:20:47
The capsule depicted in the SpaceRef piece appears not unlike the t/Space capsule (or vice versa).
Properly designed and balanced, it should right itself for care free re-entry (Rutan's term) regardless of its orientation when first reaching the atmosphere.
Transpirational cooling perhaps?