The U.S. would have fuel as long as the strategic petroleum reserve held out which would be long enough to fight a pretty nasty war if civilian use was rationed
It'd last longer than that. There are Western hemisphere sources of oil other than the strategic reserve that would still be available to us. Most of it is in friendly (Canada/Mexico) countries and the rest of it is in countries that wouldn't stand a chance (Venezuela) if we decided to take it away from them. They'd either keep selling it to us or we'd take it by force. Short of using nuclear weapons, is there another country on this planet that could stop us from doing whatever the hell we want in our own hemisphere?
In addition, China is much more vulnerable to an oil blockade than we are. Most of their oil comes from the Middle East through sea-lines of communication. Ask the Japanese how well that worked out for them when they decided to go to war with the United States. The US Navy owns the world's oceans. That isn't likely to change for at least another two generations.
Fighting a total war with the United States is sheer insanity.
When the US engages in war, for the rest of its flaws and faults, it owns the sky.
When the US engages in war it owns the entire battlefield. When we engage in politically micromanaged "police actions" it tends to end a little differently, I'm afraid:(
This has been a longtime problem with the U.S.' multi-tiered military. The USAF brass likes shiny fighter planes because they're cool. They're like movie stars - all glamor and glitz and catch everyone's attention. But in a war their job is simply support. Actually it's support for support - they clear the air for bombers, who drop bombs to support the infantry. The Army has been begging the USAF for more close air support aircraft like the A-10.
I've always thought that splitting the Air Force from the Army was one of the worst decisions we ever made, primarily grounded in the incorrect belief that bombing campaigns alone would win wars.
France isn't known for checking with us before they sell military hardware, either.
Actually the worst offender in this arena isn't France or Russia -- it's our "major ally" Israel. At least when the French and Russians sell hardware to our adversaries they are selling stuff that they designed with their own resources. The Israeli's are all to happy to sell stuff that we designed.
There is a reason most people who have the money send their children to private schools: they're usually better.
Including the current occupant of the White House, no less.
I've always found it amusing that the champions of public education usually send their kids to private school while simultaneously fighting policies that would give the rest the sheep the ability to do the same thing. I guess loyalty to the public school teachers unions that vote for your party is more important than the ability of the next generation of Americans to compete successfully in the global economy.
If it was any other plane I'd agree with you but these things barely get into the air before breaking down.
The F-14 did the same thing when it was first deployed until the Navy worked the bugs out of it. Once they did it was arguably the best carrier-borne air superiority aircraft of all time.
As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
Not every private sector health and education provider is driven by profit and even those that are still more accountable to you than anything that comes out of Washington. If the product you are getting from your Doctor or private school sucks you can take your money elsewhere. If the product you are getting from Washington sucks your only choice is to try and defeat your Congress-critter with the gerrymandered district designed to ensure that he wins re-election. Good luck with that.
Then there's the matter of political considerations. Everything the Government does has a political calculation behind it. Is birth control and abortion going to be covered under Obama-care? No matter what decision you make on that you will alienate half of this country and set up a policy that will flip-flop every single time control of Washington changes.
As a bonus, we will have an unstoppable Air Force. Oh wait, we already did before the F-22.
We have an unstoppable Air Force because we haven't fought a country with the industrial base and wherewithal to build a real air force since World War II. Should we ever find ourselves in a conflict with another Great Power we may well come to regret this decision.
After removing the tax, applying the exchange rate and dropping the price a bit, I've worked out that it'll retail for around $6,500,000.50 (+/- $.50) in the US.
No problem, I got my wheel barrel full of cash right here. I was going to use it to heat my house but what the hell, might as well splurge a little. Or would it be better to exchange some goods and services instead of fiat currency? I've got some ammo and canned food laying around here somewhere, hey, you wouldn't happen to have an extra can opener for sale would you?
We got the guns, the ammo, the canned food and the chicks to repopulate the species with, but some jackass forgot to put "can opener" on our getting-ready-for-the-apocalypse shopping list......
Why not? Believe it or not people are able to sue when they are harmed by somebody, even in China.
You realize that families who lost their children as a direct result of incompetence and negligence haven't even been able to seek redress under the Chinese system? You really think some poor bastard working for an industrial conglomerate stands a chance? I think you've wandered away from the reservation on this one....
Parents devastated at the loss of sons and daughters, most born under China's strict "one couple, one child" family planning policy, have sought a government accounting and a proper explanation as to why so many schools fell down.
Police and local officials have blocked parents of the dead children from staging protests to seek information. An Amnesty International report this week chronicles instances in which parents were detained by police while seeking answers from courts.
Lawyers who took on such cases came under pressure to drop their involvement.
I think you've got the analogy backwards. It actually shows how powerful and capable those early micros were. Kind of embarassing when your multi-gigahertz PC can barely run a word processor, or stalls when trying to display a photo, huh?
Of course those early micros relied mostly on ROM according to TFA and didn't have to wait for disk i/o. The CPU is rarely the bottleneck in a modern computer system....
The best proof is, arguably, the fact that the Russians never disputed it. They had the tracking necissary to see the ship heading out, the recievers necissary to recieve the transmissions coming back, and the motivation to destroy the US's reputation; but not once did the Russian government ever dispute the facts of the moon landing.
Nah, that's just proves they were in on the conspiracy. I bet they had a hand in helping the Jews stage 9/11 and the US Navy shoot down TWA Flight 800 too.
Yup, just like every slave owner was perfectly within his rights to beat his slaves to death.
Wow, you are comparing efforts to enforce copyright to efforts to track down a sentient human being and force him back into servitude at gunpoint? I think you need some perspective.
as opposed to several countries I've been to where guns and other weapons are on display in the larger tobacco stores
What countries are those, out of curiosity?
Especially when people like you point out that weapons can be used for self defense. Man, that would be just the thing we need! Untrained people trying to shoot 'invaders' off their lawn! I can see how that worked on a ranch somewhere in the Wild West, but we live in a crowded, somewhat civilized 20th-century world now.
And even in the crowded "somewhat civilized" 20th-century world you still have the right to defend your life against those that would take it away. Why is it that people always need to bring up stupid examples like "scare people off your lawn"? In no country that I'm aware of are you allowed to use deadly force on a mere trespasser. You are allowed to use it when you are confronted with the use or imminent use of deadly force and a reasonable person would believe that your life is in danger. What's wrong with that standard?
Plus, when do you think you'd be using your gun for self defence
Hopefully never. I don't want to live with the knowledge that I've taken a human life. But the choice between having to live with that and being dead myself is not a hard one to make.
If defending yourself would require bullets, you can count on your adversary wielding something way more dangerous than you own
Says who? What about some thug with a knife? Are you going to try and take it away from him when he spent the last few years pumping iron in prison?
not to mention his/hers ability to use it
Why do you assume that a criminal is automatically going to be better equipped to handle a firearm than a law-abiding civilian? Most criminals are uneducated thugs who expect people to fold and surrender at the mere threat of violence.
I really don't think you'll be wanting to wave a gun in the face of danger, unless you're a cop or well trained.
You don't "wave a gun". Stop repeating misconceptions and at least learn a few things about the topic. It's illegal in every jurisdiction that I'm aware of to brandish a firearm unless you honestly believe that your life is in imminent danger. You don't get to brandish it to scare off some thug who doesn't represent an imminent threat to your life. No responsible gun owner would "wave a gun in the face of danger". The gun isn't coming out unless the choice is kill or be killed.
As far as I'm concerned nobody has the right to tell someone that they have to be defenseless and meekly accept their fate should they ever be unfortunate enough to find themselves in a bad situation. We may live in a "somewhat civilized" society but the agents (i.e: law enforcement) of that somewhat civilized society aren't always able to protect us or even to respond in a timely manner when we need assistance. You are your own first and last line of defense. You'd better be ready.
Plenty, as any country in which the possession of arms is more sternly regulated can attest to. No need to be scared shitless of your citizens to deny them free access to lethal arms.
And in those countries you don't have 'citizens', you have 'subjects'.
So, where was your need to bear arms again?
There are lots of reasons to need to keep and bear arms other than the need to have a check on Governmental power. Hunting, self-defense, recreation, the collection of rare or valuable firearms, etc, etc.
Yes, because we all know that every locale has magic electricity faeries just waiting to produce low-carbon-footprint electricity.
Well, there is one extremely low carbon footprint technology that we know works and scales well. Too bad the people who oppose it do so without offering any real alternative besides the "renewables" that we've been waiting decades for or the prospect of a lower standard of living.....
I think you've missed the point. Regardless of the feasibility of overthrowing a modern government by force of arms the GP quoted text that said "democracy is being taken over by people who despise liberty and fundamentally are terrified of the average citizen." If you aren't terrified of the average citizen than what argument can you come up with for disarming him?
I would also say that the fact that the government has nuclear weapons is largely irrelevant. If the shit ever hit the fan to the point that an actual rebellion was underway it's a reasonably safe assumption that a large portion of the armed forces would side with the citizenry and not the government trying to oppress them. I can't speak for other countries but in the US our armed forces swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. They don't swear an oath to one person or one office.
You think you can find someone in the US armed forces willing to drop an h-bomb on an American city? Good luck with that.
There's always drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. YMMV, many countries are far less nanny states than mine (USA).
Yeah, but in most of those countries you can't legally own firearms and you don't have true free speech. Take a look at the firearms laws in the UK and the "hate speech" laws in France/Germany and on balance the US doesn't look so bad.
That isn't to say we can't do better mind you, but I'm hard pressed to think of someplace else I'd rather live.
Slashdot Mirror
The U.S. would have fuel as long as the strategic petroleum reserve held out which would be long enough to fight a pretty nasty war if civilian use was rationed
It'd last longer than that. There are Western hemisphere sources of oil other than the strategic reserve that would still be available to us. Most of it is in friendly (Canada/Mexico) countries and the rest of it is in countries that wouldn't stand a chance (Venezuela) if we decided to take it away from them. They'd either keep selling it to us or we'd take it by force. Short of using nuclear weapons, is there another country on this planet that could stop us from doing whatever the hell we want in our own hemisphere?
In addition, China is much more vulnerable to an oil blockade than we are. Most of their oil comes from the Middle East through sea-lines of communication. Ask the Japanese how well that worked out for them when they decided to go to war with the United States. The US Navy owns the world's oceans. That isn't likely to change for at least another two generations.
Fighting a total war with the United States is sheer insanity.
When the US engages in war, for the rest of its flaws and faults, it owns the sky.
When the US engages in war it owns the entire battlefield. When we engage in politically micromanaged "police actions" it tends to end a little differently, I'm afraid :(
This has been a longtime problem with the U.S.' multi-tiered military. The USAF brass likes shiny fighter planes because they're cool. They're like movie stars - all glamor and glitz and catch everyone's attention. But in a war their job is simply support. Actually it's support for support - they clear the air for bombers, who drop bombs to support the infantry. The Army has been begging the USAF for more close air support aircraft like the A-10.
I've always thought that splitting the Air Force from the Army was one of the worst decisions we ever made, primarily grounded in the incorrect belief that bombing campaigns alone would win wars.
Personally.. I like the *idea* of everyone being able to get the same access to health care and education..
I don't, because if everybody gets the "same" then it's going to suck for everybody.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery"
I guess you've never heard of a not-for-profit hospital?
France isn't known for checking with us before they sell military hardware, either.
Actually the worst offender in this arena isn't France or Russia -- it's our "major ally" Israel. At least when the French and Russians sell hardware to our adversaries they are selling stuff that they designed with their own resources. The Israeli's are all to happy to sell stuff that we designed.
What, she also has advanced stand-off capability?
It's called a .38 special ;)
There is a reason most people who have the money send their children to private schools: they're usually better.
Including the current occupant of the White House, no less.
I've always found it amusing that the champions of public education usually send their kids to private school while simultaneously fighting policies that would give the rest the sheep the ability to do the same thing. I guess loyalty to the public school teachers unions that vote for your party is more important than the ability of the next generation of Americans to compete successfully in the global economy.
Fucking hypocrites.
If it was any other plane I'd agree with you but these things barely get into the air before breaking down.
The F-14 did the same thing when it was first deployed until the Navy worked the bugs out of it. Once they did it was arguably the best carrier-borne air superiority aircraft of all time.
As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
Not every private sector health and education provider is driven by profit and even those that are still more accountable to you than anything that comes out of Washington. If the product you are getting from your Doctor or private school sucks you can take your money elsewhere. If the product you are getting from Washington sucks your only choice is to try and defeat your Congress-critter with the gerrymandered district designed to ensure that he wins re-election. Good luck with that.
Then there's the matter of political considerations. Everything the Government does has a political calculation behind it. Is birth control and abortion going to be covered under Obama-care? No matter what decision you make on that you will alienate half of this country and set up a policy that will flip-flop every single time control of Washington changes.
Thanks, but no thanks.
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
As a bonus, we will have an unstoppable Air Force. Oh wait, we already did before the F-22.
We have an unstoppable Air Force because we haven't fought a country with the industrial base and wherewithal to build a real air force since World War II. Should we ever find ourselves in a conflict with another Great Power we may well come to regret this decision.
After removing the tax, applying the exchange rate and dropping the price a bit, I've worked out that it'll retail for around $6,500,000.50 (+/- $.50) in the US.
No problem, I got my wheel barrel full of cash right here. I was going to use it to heat my house but what the hell, might as well splurge a little. Or would it be better to exchange some goods and services instead of fiat currency? I've got some ammo and canned food laying around here somewhere, hey, you wouldn't happen to have an extra can opener for sale would you?
We got the guns, the ammo, the canned food and the chicks to repopulate the species with, but some jackass forgot to put "can opener" on our getting-ready-for-the-apocalypse shopping list......
Why not? Believe it or not people are able to sue when they are harmed by somebody, even in China.
You realize that families who lost their children as a direct result of incompetence and negligence haven't even been able to seek redress under the Chinese system? You really think some poor bastard working for an industrial conglomerate stands a chance? I think you've wandered away from the reservation on this one....
Parents devastated at the loss of sons and daughters, most born under China's strict "one couple, one child" family planning policy, have sought a government accounting and a proper explanation as to why so many schools fell down.
Police and local officials have blocked parents of the dead children from staging protests to seek information. An Amnesty International report this week chronicles instances in which parents were detained by police while seeking answers from courts.
Lawyers who took on such cases came under pressure to drop their involvement.
I think you've got the analogy backwards. It actually shows how powerful and capable those early micros were. Kind of embarassing when your multi-gigahertz PC can barely run a word processor, or stalls when trying to display a photo, huh?
Of course those early micros relied mostly on ROM according to TFA and didn't have to wait for disk i/o. The CPU is rarely the bottleneck in a modern computer system....
and then secreted Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to a sound stage to film the moon landing
Was OJ Simpson involved or did that only come later? ;)
The best proof is, arguably, the fact that the Russians never disputed it. They had the tracking necissary to see the ship heading out, the recievers necissary to recieve the transmissions coming back, and the motivation to destroy the US's reputation; but not once did the Russian government ever dispute the facts of the moon landing.
Nah, that's just proves they were in on the conspiracy. I bet they had a hand in helping the Jews stage 9/11 and the US Navy shoot down TWA Flight 800 too.
but here we are in 2009 and currently looking at something like 2017 or 2020 before they are extended again
Fixed that for you :)
(Yeah, I know, you said "theoretically", but let's be real....)
Yup, just like every slave owner was perfectly within his rights to beat his slaves to death.
Wow, you are comparing efforts to enforce copyright to efforts to track down a sentient human being and force him back into servitude at gunpoint? I think you need some perspective.
(At least you didn't Godwin yourself though ;)
as opposed to several countries I've been to where guns and other weapons are on display in the larger tobacco stores
What countries are those, out of curiosity?
Especially when people like you point out that weapons can be used for self defense. Man, that would be just the thing we need! Untrained people trying to shoot 'invaders' off their lawn! I can see how that worked on a ranch somewhere in the Wild West, but we live in a crowded, somewhat civilized 20th-century world now.
And even in the crowded "somewhat civilized" 20th-century world you still have the right to defend your life against those that would take it away. Why is it that people always need to bring up stupid examples like "scare people off your lawn"? In no country that I'm aware of are you allowed to use deadly force on a mere trespasser. You are allowed to use it when you are confronted with the use or imminent use of deadly force and a reasonable person would believe that your life is in danger. What's wrong with that standard?
Plus, when do you think you'd be using your gun for self defence
Hopefully never. I don't want to live with the knowledge that I've taken a human life. But the choice between having to live with that and being dead myself is not a hard one to make.
If defending yourself would require bullets, you can count on your adversary wielding something way more dangerous than you own
Says who? What about some thug with a knife? Are you going to try and take it away from him when he spent the last few years pumping iron in prison?
not to mention his/hers ability to use it
Why do you assume that a criminal is automatically going to be better equipped to handle a firearm than a law-abiding civilian? Most criminals are uneducated thugs who expect people to fold and surrender at the mere threat of violence.
I really don't think you'll be wanting to wave a gun in the face of danger, unless you're a cop or well trained.
You don't "wave a gun". Stop repeating misconceptions and at least learn a few things about the topic. It's illegal in every jurisdiction that I'm aware of to brandish a firearm unless you honestly believe that your life is in imminent danger. You don't get to brandish it to scare off some thug who doesn't represent an imminent threat to your life. No responsible gun owner would "wave a gun in the face of danger". The gun isn't coming out unless the choice is kill or be killed.
As far as I'm concerned nobody has the right to tell someone that they have to be defenseless and meekly accept their fate should they ever be unfortunate enough to find themselves in a bad situation. We may live in a "somewhat civilized" society but the agents (i.e: law enforcement) of that somewhat civilized society aren't always able to protect us or even to respond in a timely manner when we need assistance. You are your own first and last line of defense. You'd better be ready.
Plenty, as any country in which the possession of arms is more sternly regulated can attest to. No need to be scared shitless of your citizens to deny them free access to lethal arms.
And in those countries you don't have 'citizens', you have 'subjects'.
So, where was your need to bear arms again?
There are lots of reasons to need to keep and bear arms other than the need to have a check on Governmental power. Hunting, self-defense, recreation, the collection of rare or valuable firearms, etc, etc.
Yes, because we all know that every locale has magic electricity faeries just waiting to produce low-carbon-footprint electricity.
Well, there is one extremely low carbon footprint technology that we know works and scales well. Too bad the people who oppose it do so without offering any real alternative besides the "renewables" that we've been waiting decades for or the prospect of a lower standard of living.....
I think you've missed the point. Regardless of the feasibility of overthrowing a modern government by force of arms the GP quoted text that said "democracy is being taken over by people who despise liberty and fundamentally are terrified of the average citizen." If you aren't terrified of the average citizen than what argument can you come up with for disarming him?
I would also say that the fact that the government has nuclear weapons is largely irrelevant. If the shit ever hit the fan to the point that an actual rebellion was underway it's a reasonably safe assumption that a large portion of the armed forces would side with the citizenry and not the government trying to oppress them. I can't speak for other countries but in the US our armed forces swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. They don't swear an oath to one person or one office.
You think you can find someone in the US armed forces willing to drop an h-bomb on an American city? Good luck with that.
We could make T-shirts saying "Computer scientists BOINC faster", but I not sure that sends the right message.
Most women who've slept with computer scientists would agree that they are pretty fast ;)
There's always drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. YMMV, many countries are far less nanny states than mine (USA).
Yeah, but in most of those countries you can't legally own firearms and you don't have true free speech. Take a look at the firearms laws in the UK and the "hate speech" laws in France/Germany and on balance the US doesn't look so bad.
That isn't to say we can't do better mind you, but I'm hard pressed to think of someplace else I'd rather live.