Chapter 11 would imply that they have a business plan waiting in the wings that will make them profitable again. Maybe Chapter 7 would be a better bet for them?;)
Also, if someone can stick a hole in this, please do.
Ok:
Let a technically experienced judge rule on this
What makes you think someone who spent a lifetime studying and practicing law is going to be "technically experienced" and able to discern the difference between an IP address and an MP3?
the VC was almost completely annihilated in the Tet Offensive
I'm aware. Too bad our media didn't see it that way at the time. The Tet Offensive was a disaster from a military standpoint. It was a PR coup though.
The final overrunning of South Vietnam by the NVA involved more tanks than Germany fielded in WWII.
I was referring to them being able to successfully stalemale the United States for a decade -- not to the final overrunning of the South.
And, if you haven't noticed, the Iraqi insurgency has *lost*.
And that was because of force of arms or because they decided that blowing up their own country to be part of Al Quada's jihad against the West wasn't a good long term strategy?
You don't seriously think a pack of armed citizens could actually stop the government from tyrannically taking away its rights do you? We've seen how successful "militia" groups have been when put face to face with ATF.
I think a pack of armed citizens would make it a lot harder for the government to do that. Look at all the trouble some insurgents armed with rifles and homemade explosives have caused for us in Iraq.
You can't even say you're ashamed of your president without the public lashing out against you and branding you a traitor.
Umm, where the hell do you live? There's several regions of this country where your just as likely to be called a traitor if you aren't ashamed of the President. New England, California, New York (downstate anyway), the Pacific Northwest, Chicago, etc, etc.
In the last two election cycles, we watched citizens, pundits, and politicians each call the "other guy" a dangerous lunatic with dangerous connections whose dangerously wrong ideas will bring about the end of life on our continent and perhaps the world. And in the next breath, these same people screaming that the end was nigh, made low-brow jokes about those candidates.
Democracy isn't pretty. If you think that's unique to the last two election cycles you didn't pay attention in history class.
If each election determines the fate of humanity, why do we still laugh and sing, and act as if it's business as usual?
Because most sane people who aren't party hacks realize that each election isn't determining the fate of humanity?
I think the reality is that if things should ever come to Nazi Germany here in the US, the vast majority of Americans will shit their pants and hope that by buying a new iPod or pledging allegiance to a favorite cable news company, they will be left alone.
I have more faith in the American people than that but I hope that we never have to find out which one of us is right.
of those Americans who do own guns, more than half of them will shoot their loved ones in the faces, blow out their TVs, accidentally kill a neighbor, or take out a street lamp
What are you basing this on? Most of the citizens I know with guns are better shots than the local police -- which admittedly isn't saying much, but I'd like to know what you are basing these assumptions on.
But maybe, just maybe, the ordinary citizens that comprise our military will refuse to take those tanks into suburbia too.
I would hope so. In the United States the military swears an oath to uphold the Constitution. They don't swear an oath to POTUS.
I don't think I'd trust any armed civilian militia to protect me
Protect you from what? The militia has many functions. I'd rather have an armed civilian militia around in times of natural disaster than a disarmed populace completely at the mercy of criminal thugs. It's an NRA cliche but you'll note how the shops with armed owners weren't vandalized or robbed during the LA riots.....
The armed citizenry of the 18th century had something the armed citizenry of the 21st lacks: a sense of duty to the higher cause of Liberty and a real, qualified distrust of our leaders
Well I'll give you that. I think we've gotten too fat and happy. History suggests that the pendulum will swing back the other way in time though.
You are "safe" in your absolutist arm chair, seeing only the propaganda you are fed on CNN.
Actually I don't watch CNN. I lost my patience with cable news around the time that they decided Britney Spears was more newsworthy than the Iraq War. I get my news from the internet, PBS and the occasional newspaper (mostly for coverage of local events)
If you don't mind innocent children with limbs blown off or burned to
death or vaporized, well, you must be some kind of person.
I'm sorry but I think we are done here. You are drawing conclusions about me that are completely unsupported by my statements. You have no argument to make besides the emotional one. Think of the children!
Tell the other hippies on the commune that Shakrai said hello and that they need to stop bogarting the pipe;)
The problem lies with the individual acquiescing individual sovereignty to the State. There would be no "vacuum" if individuals would insist on what is right and not allow for excuses.
If you are innocent and are killed, it does not matter if it were "by accident" or by intent. And besides, firebombing civilians is no "accident". And just because "everyone else is slaughtering innocents" is no accuse to commit atrocities yourself.
How are they "innocent" if they just acquiesced their sovereignty to the state? In a total war civilians contribute at least as much (if not more) to the war effort as the military does. They are legitimate targets. That fact may make you squeamish but war isn't supposed to be pretty.
One who can see a better way.
If you want the "better way" then I suggest you stop focusing your energies on the United States and start focusing them on the true evils in this World. The United States didn't even have a standing army until fairly recently. The United States was content to hide behind our geography until technology made that geography a moot point.
As far as "Peace by means of MAD", we come perilously close once or twice to hitting that MAD button. And now we carry this insanity out into space?
Convince Russia and China to get rid of their nuclear weapons and I'll support the United States getting rid of ours. Like them or hate them nuclear weapons successfully deterred the Soviet Union. Go read the papers from Operation Unthinkable and contemplate the huge superiority in ground forces that the Soviet Union had. Then tell me if you think that Stalin (being the wonderful chap that he was) wouldn't have tried to conquer Western Europe if it hadn't been for our nuclear deterrent.
Well maybe I should stop giving a damn and let homo sapiens eradicate itself from existence due to their own stupidity and refusal to put behind them the sad tribalism of their evolutionary past and think with the neocortex that evolution graced them with.
I didn't say you should stop giving a damn. I just think you should be a little bit more realistic. It only takes one Adolf Hitler to render every single idealist such as yourself a moot point. Frankly I'm glad the United States has the power that we do.
You give a bunch of people a bunch of cars, you're going to get a lot of car trips. You give a bunch of people a bunch of TVs, you've going to get a lot of consumption of entertainment. You give a bunch of people a bunch of guns, you're going to get a lot of shootings. It really is that simple.
Actually more people are killed in automobile accidents than accidental shootings but I'm guessing you really don't care about facts and are only interested in pushing your gun-control agenda. Hell the TV is probably more deadly than the firearms when you account for the fact that 1/3'rd of this country is morbidly obese. Your "lot's of shootings" argument has been dispelled by every single state that has passed shall-issue legislation. 38 states in the Union allow it -- funny how we haven't managed to morph into the Balkens yet isn't it?
And the final bit of stupid bullshit is your argument, oft repeated, that the best way to prevent crime is for everyone to be capable of killing one another with ease.
No, the stupid bullshit is you putting words in my mouth and claiming that I was advocating for killing people "with ease". The vast majority of cases where firearms are used defensively end without a single shot being fired. The mere sight of a gun is enough to deter most aggressors. As for the rest, yes, I think a law-abiding citizen should have the ability to defend him or herself if it comes down to it.
You'll note I said "defend", not "kill", although I suspect the difference is lost on someone like you. The law says you can only use deadly force if you have a reasonable belief that your own life or the life of another is in danger. What's the problem?
Gosh! My world atlas shows Afghanistan and Iraq to be separate countries with entirely different terrain, resources, cultures, government, and histories. I really MUST update my world atlas to match yours
Isn't that what I said? I think you need to look up the definition of !=;)
Now that the original reason given has been shown to be false, no one really does know why we went there
The original reason was false? So Al Quada wasn't hiding in Afganistan and using it as a sanctuary?
Patrick Stewart developed back problems from the compression of the STNG spandex uniforms which forced this change.
Wow, a bit of Star Trek trivia that I didn't know. I'm kind of ashamed;)
I always thought the best thing they ever did in TNG was to get Troi into a real uniform. I know Starfleet isn't supposed to be a strictly military operation but c'mon..... she wore this on the bridge?
Say yes to human rights, no to infant/child circumcision.MGM Bill [mgmbill.org]
I think the movie uniforms looked the best out of all of them in my opinion.
The TOS movie uniforms were the best. No doubt about that. They made an appearance on TNG in "Yesterday's Enterprise" as I recall. Out of the TV series though I liked the TNG ones the best. The DS9 and Voyager suits looked like pajamas. The TOS ones were cool in a 60s kind of way.
I also liked the TNG combadges better than the later ones.
The only thing that's stupid is disarming the law-abiding portion of the population and marking them as easy pray for the armed predators of the world.
And those guys' connection with Bin Laden was more of a bunch of guys hitting up a banker for a loan; Bin Laden's checks had stopped bouncing for a change.
Afghanistan circa 2001 was kind of like Cambodia circa 1970, in that 'the government' had very little control outside of the capital. In 1970 Cambodia, once you got outside of Royal Family-controlled Phnom Penh, you were up to your ass in Khmer Rouge. Likewise, in Afghanistan in '01, step outside the city limits of Kubul, you don't see anybody claiming to be Taliban. When the US, fully knowing the situation there, demanded the Taliban cough up Bin Laden Right Fucking Now Or Else, the Taliban flat out told them 'We can't.' Not "We won't', but 'We can't'. The main reason Bin Laden was out there in a cave 500 miles due west of the 20th Century to begin with was because the Afghani government couldn't get to him out there.
I don't dispute any of that. The Taliban actually wound up being absorbed by Al Quada for the most part. It's debatable if they even had the ability to hand him over to face justice. But why is that a justification for not going in? Should we have thrown our hands in the air and just allowed them to continue plotting attacks or should we have made an effort to take Al Quada and their support structure out?
Nearly 3,000 people were murdered. Do you really think any other nation-state on this planet wouldn't have intervened in Afghanistan after such an attack? Hell, they ought to be thankful that our response was as restrained as it was. The French have actually reserved the right to respond to such an attack with nuclear weapons. Imagine the outcry if an American official said that?
To me, shedding innocent blood for innocent blood shed is just plain wrong, and only makes matters worse in the long run.
That's a noble sentiment but a naive one. Allowing Al Quada a sanctuary to continue plotting and executing attacks on our civilian population would be completely unacceptable. When should we have intervened? When 10,000 of our citizens were killed? 100,000? 1,000,000? How many zeros does it take before we should have gone in?
I mean, we are only talking about the actions of 16 or so individuals; not an entire army
How about the individuals that trained them, supported them and ordered them to carry out the attacks? They shouldn't be brought to justice? They should remain free to plan future attacks?
According to what I read in the book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union", deals were made after the war. Have you not heard?
You said "making deals with one devil to defeat another", not "making deals with the devil post-war". And FYI, most of the deals with the Soviet Union were made while the war was still an ongoing concern.
Um, what was the Vietnam war all about? Where the US forces slaughtered, by some estimates, 2,000,000 Vietnamese, including children, villages? Just for defending their home turf?
By "defending their home turf" you must mean "trying to conquer the South in violation of their treaty obligations", right?
Not to mention firebombing innocents and nuking others in Japan. And then there was the Korean war...
Like all those innocents that the Japanese raped and killed in Nanjing? Here's a hint: War is hell. It's not supposed to be pretty. As I recall we didn't start either of those wars.
Oh, but I suppose slaughtering innocents en masse is "OK" if the US does it, but it's "Heinous" if done by someone else
There's a bit of a difference between "innocents" killed accidentally and innocents lined up to be shot or sent into the ovens. Apparently that distinction is lost on you. Every single power in WW2 bombed civilians. Why are you reserving your condemnation for the United States and not mentioning the strategic bombing conducted by the Axis powers or the Soviet Union?
So biased. If you were Chinese, you'd rather the Chinese do it. If you were Russian, you'd rather the Russians do it. Why? Because you are not on the receiving end of the stick.
Actually I wouldn't mind it if it was the Brits or the French doing it. I would mind if it was the Chinese or the Russians. I'd be happy to see us cede our "empire" and Great Power status if there was another democracy to take our place. I don't want to see us cede it if the power vacuum is going to be filled by dictatorships with no regard for human rights.
sucks in its attention to the global environment issues
Why, because we wouldn't sign a climate treaty that gave a license to pollute to the developing World while requiring the developed world to destroy our economies? Come up with a climate change treaty that imposes the same hardships on every nation of the world and I'll support it whole heartily.
Like, for example, how divorced dads are treated in court. Woman can get away with just about anything, but dads gets the shaft no matter how good he is.
That's your human rights issue? China engages in forcible sterilization and throws you in jail if you dare to protest shoddy building codes that killed your only child (remember the state tells you that you can only have one) during an earthquake. I'll take the United States any day of the week and twice on Friday, thank you very much. This isn't to say that we don't need to improve -- but I find it disturbing that you can compose paragraphs of rants about the US while ignoring the very real human rights abuses in other countries.
BTW, I don't know what state you live in but here in New York I know three different men that have successfully sued for full custody for various reasons. Mom got no special treatment by the courts and didn't get away with "just about anything"
The real problem is that we have governments that have gotten away from what is best for the individuals, the people, everything expect perpetuating their own existence and forcing us all to be dependent on them.
I agree. I would start by getting rid of most social programs and welfare. Then people won't be so dependent on the government. Something tells me that this isn't what you mean though.
There is nothing "great" about being a "Great Power" that uses that power t
Odds are you have not considered the time-value of money in your calculations.
I thought I had but it's interesting argument. Investing the difference between the two payments at 3.5% for 30 years in a vehicle that compounded 12 times a year would yield around $100,927.75 in interest according to this. That would seem to make up for the $95,916 in extra interest expense and one would think that you could probably do better than 3.5% if you tried
The flip side to that is all that interest income is probably taxable. If it is you've just negated your mortgage interest deduction. In the end it's probably a wash -- although doing all the calculations on taxes and what not are beyond the scope of my attention span at this particular moment;)
So what else should we have done? Turned the other cheek and allowed the Taliban to remain in power after they refused to turn over someone whom admitted his involvement in the murder of 3,000 people? Do you honestly think that any other nation on this planet with the capability to intervene would choose not to do so after the murder of so many of it's citizens?
I mean, making deals with one Devil to defeat another
We didn't make a deal with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Stalin came into the war because of something called Operation Barbarossa. Perhaps you've heard of it? Once the Soviet Union was involved in the war it would have been pretty stupid of Churchill and FDR not to coordinate efforts with them.
And you are suprised that Devil didn't keep whatever promises?
Did I say I was surprised? Stalin's intent was pretty well telegraphed even before the Great Patriotic War. Ask any Finn what they think about the Soviet Union.
And until it's fixed, there will be more wars where more innocents will be piled up like core wood. We scorn Hitler for doing this, and yet we do the same.
We do the same as Hitler? Really? I'm sorry but I just can't take you seriously anymore. You can point out hypocrisy in US policy until the cows come home (there's certainly a lot of it to go around) but a comparison to Adolf Hitler? I don't think you understand what true evil really is.
What would you do if you were China right now?
I certainly wouldn't pull the rug out from the major trading partner that is supplying me with the capital I need to lift my people out of poverty. You seem to think that China would get the worse end of it -- tell me, what happens to the regime in Beijing when those hundreds of millions of upwardly-mobile middle class people lose their jobs because of a trade war?
We just won't be as relevant to the rest of the world as we once were
So what? I'm not a particularly big fan of our interventionism. I'm just a realist about it -- as long as the United States remains a Great Power it will do what Great Powers have always done. Do you really think any other country in our position would be acting any differently? I'm just thankful that it's the United States and not China or Russia. In any case, the worst case scenario is that we'd wind up ceding our position as a super power while retaining our freedom and our nuclear deterrent. We'd be in the same position as the UK or France. Big fucking deal -- and not too likely to happen for a few decades in any event.
This is a good thing for our future?
Did I say it was a good thing? Clearly we have a number of challenges that we need to address. Energy, education, health care, blah, blah, blah. What I find interesting is that you are ignoring the challenges facing China and Russia. The former has hundreds of millions of rural poor that they need to pull out of poverty. The latter can't even meet the replacement rate for it's population and just had the rug pulled out from under it's primary revenue source.
All because one side refuses to see the other side as human.
You misunderstand. I see them as human. I just don't see it as being the job of the United States to spread freedom and democracy. Even if it was our job I'm sure you'd admit that spreading democracy at gunpoint into a culture with no history of the concept isn't likely to be particularly successful.
Our mission in Afghanistan should be the creation of a Government that will work for their culture and be able to control the extremists that wish to use that country as a staging area for attacks on the West. If that Government is a liberal democracy then so much the better -- I don't just see that as particularly likely in a country where only 28% of the population is literate.
wished I had know what you have expressed so far when I was your age so good for you
I wish I had known it when I was 21 instead of 27. Didn't really get into good financial shape until 2006 I'm afraid:(
First, an answer to your question: the reason I would choose the 30-year mortgage over the 15-year mortgage is that the payment is lower, so if I've fallen on hard times one month and can make the lower payment but not the higher payment, then I'm ahead. (Of course times could be so tough that I can't make the lower payment as well, but that's always the case and this way gives me some buffer.) Then, I'd pay the 15-year payment amount towards the 30-year mortgage whenever I can, so that best-case I'll still pay it off in 15 years, and will also have some buffer if I need it
That's a decent enough idea. You lose out on the better rate afforded to the 15 year mortgage but it's not usually that great of a discount (around 0.25% according to Bankrate). The only thing I would caution is to make sure that your mortgage doesn't include a prepayment penalty. I've seen quite a few of them with these penalties written into the contract. I wouldn't sign such a contract but we both know how many people sign away their lives without even reading the fine print.....
I've also sold the bi-weekly mortgage package back in college
I used both ideas when I had to borrow money to buy my car. Got a 4 year term because there was no rate difference between a 48 month vs. 36 month. Gives me a small cushion in the event that I have a bad month or two. I'm paying around $163 bi-weekly when the loan term is for a $270/mo payment. I love bi-weekly payments, they are easy to budget for (X amount out of each paycheck) and save you a fair amount of interest expense even if you don't pay any extra.
I'm glad that you've learned at such a comparatively young age that it is important.
I learned the hard way I'm afraid. Racked up a lot of debt in my younger years. Part of it was beyond my control (medical and legal expenses) but a good portion was sheer stupidity. I didn't want to file either -- but by the time my financial situation improved all of my debts had been sold to junk debt buyers whom all wanted to collect 200% to 300% of what I originally owed. It would have taken me 12 years to pay back what they claimed I owed and not a penny of it would have gone to the institutions I originally borrowed the money from. Wound up filing at the end of 2005 after my last attempt to get a reasonable settlement on my debts failed.
Going through bankruptcy wasn't a lot of fun but it sure gives you perspective. I actually have better credit now than I have at any other point in my life (FICO score of 757 according to my credit union) but I don't care. I use credit cards solely to smooth out my cash flow and haven't carried a balance since my bankruptcy. I'll have my car paid off with about 60k miles on it and should be able to rely on it for another two or three years without major maintenance bills. During that time I'll be socking away the money I spend on car payments with the intent of buying my next car with cash. I've also stockpiled about three months worth of expenses (still trying to get to three months of gross salary) in savings and short term CDs.
The only reasons I would see for borrowing money at this point would be to buy a house or go back to school. I'll probably wind up doing the former and should really do the latter before I get too much older.
I have just begun to invest using the VectorVest toolchain
That sounds pretty interesting. I'm going to take a look at that. May I ask how much you are putting into it? I haven't been investing major dollar amounts into the markets -- only what I can afford to lose and don't need access to for the next few years.
Of course, if you get the thirty year nothing prevents you from still paying it off early, you just a slightly worse rate.
The difference then is that if you get a worse job (or in our case, your wife plans on staying home after you have kids) you revert back to the lower monthly payment as a requirement.
You'd better read the fine print if you do that. A lot of mortgages have prepayment penalties written into them.
China has the ability to provide "stuff". We have the ability to provide paper
That's why I'm in favor of retooling much of the auto industry so they're making wind turbines
Umm, in paragraph #1 you imply that we don't have the ability to do anything other than provide paper. In paragraph #3 you mention the auto industry. Hmm..... Point being that we do have the ability to produce stuff.
They could turn that infrastructure around and start making things for their own people.
And how are their own people going to afford to buy them?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know. Chapter 11?
Chapter 11 would imply that they have a business plan waiting in the wings that will make them profitable again. Maybe Chapter 7 would be a better bet for them? ;)
Also, if someone can stick a hole in this, please do.
Ok:
Let a technically experienced judge rule on this
What makes you think someone who spent a lifetime studying and practicing law is going to be "technically experienced" and able to discern the difference between an IP address and an MP3?
I explain Vietnam by equivalence of arms
So they had B-52s and aircraft carriers?
the VC was almost completely annihilated in the Tet Offensive
I'm aware. Too bad our media didn't see it that way at the time. The Tet Offensive was a disaster from a military standpoint. It was a PR coup though.
The final overrunning of South Vietnam by the NVA involved more tanks than Germany fielded in WWII.
I was referring to them being able to successfully stalemale the United States for a decade -- not to the final overrunning of the South.
And, if you haven't noticed, the Iraqi insurgency has *lost*.
And that was because of force of arms or because they decided that blowing up their own country to be part of Al Quada's jihad against the West wasn't a good long term strategy?
So you need your guns to shoot at people who are destroying your property and beating the shit out of innocent people?
Fixed that for you.
Implying that Warren Buffet hasn't been very lucky is quite absurd.
Implying that he owes his success entirely to luck is equally absurd.
Equivalency of arms and armory
If you need equivalence of arms in order to successfully resist then how do you explain Vietnam and the Iraqi insurgency?
You don't seriously think a pack of armed citizens could actually stop the government from tyrannically taking away its rights do you? We've seen how successful "militia" groups have been when put face to face with ATF.
I think a pack of armed citizens would make it a lot harder for the government to do that. Look at all the trouble some insurgents armed with rifles and homemade explosives have caused for us in Iraq.
You can't even say you're ashamed of your president without the public lashing out against you and branding you a traitor.
Umm, where the hell do you live? There's several regions of this country where your just as likely to be called a traitor if you aren't ashamed of the President. New England, California, New York (downstate anyway), the Pacific Northwest, Chicago, etc, etc.
In the last two election cycles, we watched citizens, pundits, and politicians each call the "other guy" a dangerous lunatic with dangerous connections whose dangerously wrong ideas will bring about the end of life on our continent and perhaps the world. And in the next breath, these same people screaming that the end was nigh, made low-brow jokes about those candidates.
Democracy isn't pretty. If you think that's unique to the last two election cycles you didn't pay attention in history class.
If each election determines the fate of humanity, why do we still laugh and sing, and act as if it's business as usual?
Because most sane people who aren't party hacks realize that each election isn't determining the fate of humanity?
I think the reality is that if things should ever come to Nazi Germany here in the US, the vast majority of Americans will shit their pants and hope that by buying a new iPod or pledging allegiance to a favorite cable news company, they will be left alone.
I have more faith in the American people than that but I hope that we never have to find out which one of us is right.
of those Americans who do own guns, more than half of them will shoot their loved ones in the faces, blow out their TVs, accidentally kill a neighbor, or take out a street lamp
What are you basing this on? Most of the citizens I know with guns are better shots than the local police -- which admittedly isn't saying much, but I'd like to know what you are basing these assumptions on.
But maybe, just maybe, the ordinary citizens that comprise our military will refuse to take those tanks into suburbia too.
I would hope so. In the United States the military swears an oath to uphold the Constitution. They don't swear an oath to POTUS.
I don't think I'd trust any armed civilian militia to protect me
Protect you from what? The militia has many functions. I'd rather have an armed civilian militia around in times of natural disaster than a disarmed populace completely at the mercy of criminal thugs. It's an NRA cliche but you'll note how the shops with armed owners weren't vandalized or robbed during the LA riots.....
The armed citizenry of the 18th century had something the armed citizenry of the 21st lacks: a sense of duty to the higher cause of Liberty and a real, qualified distrust of our leaders
Well I'll give you that. I think we've gotten too fat and happy. History suggests that the pendulum will swing back the other way in time though.
Since the outright ban on handguns was introduced in the UK, gun crime has increased.
What, you mean criminals don't obey a ban on gun ownership? Who'd of thunk it!
Especially since it seems to be the obvious outcome of libertarian ideology: the rich prosper, the rest face the choice between slavery or death.
Do you really have so little faith in your own abilities that you think you'd starve to death without Governmental intervention?
You are "safe" in your absolutist arm chair, seeing only the propaganda you are fed on CNN.
Actually I don't watch CNN. I lost my patience with cable news around the time that they decided Britney Spears was more newsworthy than the Iraq War. I get my news from the internet, PBS and the occasional newspaper (mostly for coverage of local events)
If you don't mind innocent children with limbs blown off or burned to death or vaporized, well, you must be some kind of person.
I'm sorry but I think we are done here. You are drawing conclusions about me that are completely unsupported by my statements. You have no argument to make besides the emotional one. Think of the children!
Tell the other hippies on the commune that Shakrai said hello and that they need to stop bogarting the pipe ;)
The problem lies with the individual acquiescing individual sovereignty to the State. There would be no "vacuum" if individuals would insist on what is right and not allow for excuses.
If you are innocent and are killed, it does not matter if it were "by accident" or by intent. And besides, firebombing civilians is no "accident". And just because "everyone else is slaughtering innocents" is no accuse to commit atrocities yourself.
How are they "innocent" if they just acquiesced their sovereignty to the state? In a total war civilians contribute at least as much (if not more) to the war effort as the military does. They are legitimate targets. That fact may make you squeamish but war isn't supposed to be pretty.
One who can see a better way.
If you want the "better way" then I suggest you stop focusing your energies on the United States and start focusing them on the true evils in this World. The United States didn't even have a standing army until fairly recently. The United States was content to hide behind our geography until technology made that geography a moot point.
As far as "Peace by means of MAD", we come perilously close once or twice to hitting that MAD button. And now we carry this insanity out into space?
Convince Russia and China to get rid of their nuclear weapons and I'll support the United States getting rid of ours. Like them or hate them nuclear weapons successfully deterred the Soviet Union. Go read the papers from Operation Unthinkable and contemplate the huge superiority in ground forces that the Soviet Union had. Then tell me if you think that Stalin (being the wonderful chap that he was) wouldn't have tried to conquer Western Europe if it hadn't been for our nuclear deterrent.
Well maybe I should stop giving a damn and let homo sapiens eradicate itself from existence due to their own stupidity and refusal to put behind them the sad tribalism of their evolutionary past and think with the neocortex that evolution graced them with.
I didn't say you should stop giving a damn. I just think you should be a little bit more realistic. It only takes one Adolf Hitler to render every single idealist such as yourself a moot point. Frankly I'm glad the United States has the power that we do.
You give a bunch of people a bunch of cars, you're going to get a lot of car trips. You give a bunch of people a bunch of TVs, you've going to get a lot of consumption of entertainment. You give a bunch of people a bunch of guns, you're going to get a lot of shootings. It really is that simple.
Actually more people are killed in automobile accidents than accidental shootings but I'm guessing you really don't care about facts and are only interested in pushing your gun-control agenda. Hell the TV is probably more deadly than the firearms when you account for the fact that 1/3'rd of this country is morbidly obese. Your "lot's of shootings" argument has been dispelled by every single state that has passed shall-issue legislation. 38 states in the Union allow it -- funny how we haven't managed to morph into the Balkens yet isn't it?
And the final bit of stupid bullshit is your argument, oft repeated, that the best way to prevent crime is for everyone to be capable of killing one another with ease.
No, the stupid bullshit is you putting words in my mouth and claiming that I was advocating for killing people "with ease". The vast majority of cases where firearms are used defensively end without a single shot being fired. The mere sight of a gun is enough to deter most aggressors. As for the rest, yes, I think a law-abiding citizen should have the ability to defend him or herself if it comes down to it.
You'll note I said "defend", not "kill", although I suspect the difference is lost on someone like you. The law says you can only use deadly force if you have a reasonable belief that your own life or the life of another is in danger. What's the problem?
Gosh! My world atlas shows Afghanistan and Iraq to be separate countries with entirely different terrain, resources, cultures, government, and histories. I really MUST update my world atlas to match yours
Isn't that what I said? I think you need to look up the definition of != ;)
Now that the original reason given has been shown to be false, no one really does know why we went there
The original reason was false? So Al Quada wasn't hiding in Afganistan and using it as a sanctuary?
Patrick Stewart developed back problems from the compression of the STNG spandex uniforms which forced this change.
Wow, a bit of Star Trek trivia that I didn't know. I'm kind of ashamed ;)
I always thought the best thing they ever did in TNG was to get Troi into a real uniform. I know Starfleet isn't supposed to be a strictly military operation but c'mon..... she wore this on the bridge?
Say yes to human rights, no to infant/child circumcision.MGM Bill [mgmbill.org]
Off-topic, but amen to that.
I think the movie uniforms looked the best out of all of them in my opinion.
The TOS movie uniforms were the best. No doubt about that. They made an appearance on TNG in "Yesterday's Enterprise" as I recall. Out of the TV series though I liked the TNG ones the best. The DS9 and Voyager suits looked like pajamas. The TOS ones were cool in a 60s kind of way.
I also liked the TNG combadges better than the later ones.
Being tolerant doesn't mean being stupid.
The only thing that's stupid is disarming the law-abiding portion of the population and marking them as easy pray for the armed predators of the world.
And those guys' connection with Bin Laden was more of a bunch of guys hitting up a banker for a loan; Bin Laden's checks had stopped bouncing for a change.
Afghanistan circa 2001 was kind of like Cambodia circa 1970, in that 'the government' had very little control outside of the capital. In 1970 Cambodia, once you got outside of Royal Family-controlled Phnom Penh, you were up to your ass in Khmer Rouge. Likewise, in Afghanistan in '01, step outside the city limits of Kubul, you don't see anybody claiming to be Taliban. When the US, fully knowing the situation there, demanded the Taliban cough up Bin Laden Right Fucking Now Or Else, the Taliban flat out told them 'We can't.' Not "We won't', but 'We can't'. The main reason Bin Laden was out there in a cave 500 miles due west of the 20th Century to begin with was because the Afghani government couldn't get to him out there.
I don't dispute any of that. The Taliban actually wound up being absorbed by Al Quada for the most part. It's debatable if they even had the ability to hand him over to face justice. But why is that a justification for not going in? Should we have thrown our hands in the air and just allowed them to continue plotting attacks or should we have made an effort to take Al Quada and their support structure out?
Nearly 3,000 people were murdered. Do you really think any other nation-state on this planet wouldn't have intervened in Afghanistan after such an attack? Hell, they ought to be thankful that our response was as restrained as it was. The French have actually reserved the right to respond to such an attack with nuclear weapons. Imagine the outcry if an American official said that?
To me, shedding innocent blood for innocent blood shed is just plain wrong, and only makes matters worse in the long run.
That's a noble sentiment but a naive one. Allowing Al Quada a sanctuary to continue plotting and executing attacks on our civilian population would be completely unacceptable. When should we have intervened? When 10,000 of our citizens were killed? 100,000? 1,000,000? How many zeros does it take before we should have gone in?
I mean, we are only talking about the actions of 16 or so individuals; not an entire army
How about the individuals that trained them, supported them and ordered them to carry out the attacks? They shouldn't be brought to justice? They should remain free to plan future attacks?
According to what I read in the book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union", deals were made after the war. Have you not heard?
You said "making deals with one devil to defeat another", not "making deals with the devil post-war". And FYI, most of the deals with the Soviet Union were made while the war was still an ongoing concern.
Um, what was the Vietnam war all about? Where the US forces slaughtered, by some estimates, 2,000,000 Vietnamese, including children, villages? Just for defending their home turf?
By "defending their home turf" you must mean "trying to conquer the South in violation of their treaty obligations", right?
Not to mention firebombing innocents and nuking others in Japan. And then there was the Korean war...
Like all those innocents that the Japanese raped and killed in Nanjing? Here's a hint: War is hell. It's not supposed to be pretty. As I recall we didn't start either of those wars.
Oh, but I suppose slaughtering innocents en masse is "OK" if the US does it, but it's "Heinous" if done by someone else
There's a bit of a difference between "innocents" killed accidentally and innocents lined up to be shot or sent into the ovens. Apparently that distinction is lost on you. Every single power in WW2 bombed civilians. Why are you reserving your condemnation for the United States and not mentioning the strategic bombing conducted by the Axis powers or the Soviet Union?
So biased. If you were Chinese, you'd rather the Chinese do it. If you were Russian, you'd rather the Russians do it. Why? Because you are not on the receiving end of the stick.
Actually I wouldn't mind it if it was the Brits or the French doing it. I would mind if it was the Chinese or the Russians. I'd be happy to see us cede our "empire" and Great Power status if there was another democracy to take our place. I don't want to see us cede it if the power vacuum is going to be filled by dictatorships with no regard for human rights.
sucks in its attention to the global environment issues
Why, because we wouldn't sign a climate treaty that gave a license to pollute to the developing World while requiring the developed world to destroy our economies? Come up with a climate change treaty that imposes the same hardships on every nation of the world and I'll support it whole heartily.
Like, for example, how divorced dads are treated in court. Woman can get away with just about anything, but dads gets the shaft no matter how good he is.
That's your human rights issue? China engages in forcible sterilization and throws you in jail if you dare to protest shoddy building codes that killed your only child (remember the state tells you that you can only have one) during an earthquake. I'll take the United States any day of the week and twice on Friday, thank you very much. This isn't to say that we don't need to improve -- but I find it disturbing that you can compose paragraphs of rants about the US while ignoring the very real human rights abuses in other countries.
BTW, I don't know what state you live in but here in New York I know three different men that have successfully sued for full custody for various reasons. Mom got no special treatment by the courts and didn't get away with "just about anything"
The real problem is that we have governments that have gotten away from what is best for the individuals, the people, everything expect perpetuating their own existence and forcing us all to be dependent on them.
I agree. I would start by getting rid of most social programs and welfare. Then people won't be so dependent on the government. Something tells me that this isn't what you mean though.
There is nothing "great" about being a "Great Power" that uses that power t
Odds are you have not considered the time-value of money in your calculations.
I thought I had but it's interesting argument. Investing the difference between the two payments at 3.5% for 30 years in a vehicle that compounded 12 times a year would yield around $100,927.75 in interest according to this. That would seem to make up for the $95,916 in extra interest expense and one would think that you could probably do better than 3.5% if you tried
The flip side to that is all that interest income is probably taxable. If it is you've just negated your mortgage interest deduction. In the end it's probably a wash -- although doing all the calculations on taxes and what not are beyond the scope of my attention span at this particular moment ;)
All over Osama bin Laden, or so we are told.
So what else should we have done? Turned the other cheek and allowed the Taliban to remain in power after they refused to turn over someone whom admitted his involvement in the murder of 3,000 people? Do you honestly think that any other nation on this planet with the capability to intervene would choose not to do so after the murder of so many of it's citizens?
I mean, making deals with one Devil to defeat another
We didn't make a deal with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Stalin came into the war because of something called Operation Barbarossa. Perhaps you've heard of it? Once the Soviet Union was involved in the war it would have been pretty stupid of Churchill and FDR not to coordinate efforts with them.
And you are suprised that Devil didn't keep whatever promises?
Did I say I was surprised? Stalin's intent was pretty well telegraphed even before the Great Patriotic War. Ask any Finn what they think about the Soviet Union.
And until it's fixed, there will be more wars where more innocents will be piled up like core wood. We scorn Hitler for doing this, and yet we do the same.
We do the same as Hitler? Really? I'm sorry but I just can't take you seriously anymore. You can point out hypocrisy in US policy until the cows come home (there's certainly a lot of it to go around) but a comparison to Adolf Hitler? I don't think you understand what true evil really is.
What would you do if you were China right now?
I certainly wouldn't pull the rug out from the major trading partner that is supplying me with the capital I need to lift my people out of poverty. You seem to think that China would get the worse end of it -- tell me, what happens to the regime in Beijing when those hundreds of millions of upwardly-mobile middle class people lose their jobs because of a trade war?
We just won't be as relevant to the rest of the world as we once were
So what? I'm not a particularly big fan of our interventionism. I'm just a realist about it -- as long as the United States remains a Great Power it will do what Great Powers have always done. Do you really think any other country in our position would be acting any differently? I'm just thankful that it's the United States and not China or Russia. In any case, the worst case scenario is that we'd wind up ceding our position as a super power while retaining our freedom and our nuclear deterrent. We'd be in the same position as the UK or France. Big fucking deal -- and not too likely to happen for a few decades in any event.
This is a good thing for our future?
Did I say it was a good thing? Clearly we have a number of challenges that we need to address. Energy, education, health care, blah, blah, blah. What I find interesting is that you are ignoring the challenges facing China and Russia. The former has hundreds of millions of rural poor that they need to pull out of poverty. The latter can't even meet the replacement rate for it's population and just had the rug pulled out from under it's primary revenue source.
All because one side refuses to see the other side as human.
You misunderstand. I see them as human. I just don't see it as being the job of the United States to spread freedom and democracy. Even if it was our job I'm sure you'd admit that spreading democracy at gunpoint into a culture with no history of the concept isn't likely to be particularly successful.
Our mission in Afghanistan should be the creation of a Government that will work for their culture and be able to control the extremists that wish to use that country as a staging area for attacks on the West. If that Government is a liberal democracy then so much the better -- I don't just see that as particularly likely in a country where only 28% of the population is literate.
wished I had know what you have expressed so far when I was your age so good for you
I wish I had known it when I was 21 instead of 27. Didn't really get into good financial shape until 2006 I'm afraid :(
First, an answer to your question: the reason I would choose the 30-year mortgage over the 15-year mortgage is that the payment is lower, so if I've fallen on hard times one month and can make the lower payment but not the higher payment, then I'm ahead. (Of course times could be so tough that I can't make the lower payment as well, but that's always the case and this way gives me some buffer.) Then, I'd pay the 15-year payment amount towards the 30-year mortgage whenever I can, so that best-case I'll still pay it off in 15 years, and will also have some buffer if I need it
That's a decent enough idea. You lose out on the better rate afforded to the 15 year mortgage but it's not usually that great of a discount (around 0.25% according to Bankrate). The only thing I would caution is to make sure that your mortgage doesn't include a prepayment penalty. I've seen quite a few of them with these penalties written into the contract. I wouldn't sign such a contract but we both know how many people sign away their lives without even reading the fine print.....
I've also sold the bi-weekly mortgage package back in college
I used both ideas when I had to borrow money to buy my car. Got a 4 year term because there was no rate difference between a 48 month vs. 36 month. Gives me a small cushion in the event that I have a bad month or two. I'm paying around $163 bi-weekly when the loan term is for a $270/mo payment. I love bi-weekly payments, they are easy to budget for (X amount out of each paycheck) and save you a fair amount of interest expense even if you don't pay any extra.
I'm glad that you've learned at such a comparatively young age that it is important.
I learned the hard way I'm afraid. Racked up a lot of debt in my younger years. Part of it was beyond my control (medical and legal expenses) but a good portion was sheer stupidity. I didn't want to file either -- but by the time my financial situation improved all of my debts had been sold to junk debt buyers whom all wanted to collect 200% to 300% of what I originally owed. It would have taken me 12 years to pay back what they claimed I owed and not a penny of it would have gone to the institutions I originally borrowed the money from. Wound up filing at the end of 2005 after my last attempt to get a reasonable settlement on my debts failed.
Going through bankruptcy wasn't a lot of fun but it sure gives you perspective. I actually have better credit now than I have at any other point in my life (FICO score of 757 according to my credit union) but I don't care. I use credit cards solely to smooth out my cash flow and haven't carried a balance since my bankruptcy. I'll have my car paid off with about 60k miles on it and should be able to rely on it for another two or three years without major maintenance bills. During that time I'll be socking away the money I spend on car payments with the intent of buying my next car with cash. I've also stockpiled about three months worth of expenses (still trying to get to three months of gross salary) in savings and short term CDs.
The only reasons I would see for borrowing money at this point would be to buy a house or go back to school. I'll probably wind up doing the former and should really do the latter before I get too much older.
I have just begun to invest using the VectorVest toolchain
That sounds pretty interesting. I'm going to take a look at that. May I ask how much you are putting into it? I haven't been investing major dollar amounts into the markets -- only what I can afford to lose and don't need access to for the next few years.
Of course, if you get the thirty year nothing prevents you from still paying it off early, you just a slightly worse rate.
The difference then is that if you get a worse job (or in our case, your wife plans on staying home after you have kids) you revert back to the lower monthly payment as a requirement.
You'd better read the fine print if you do that. A lot of mortgages have prepayment penalties written into them.
China has the ability to provide "stuff". We have the ability to provide paper
That's why I'm in favor of retooling much of the auto industry so they're making wind turbines
Umm, in paragraph #1 you imply that we don't have the ability to do anything other than provide paper. In paragraph #3 you mention the auto industry. Hmm..... Point being that we do have the ability to produce stuff.
They could turn that infrastructure around and start making things for their own people.
And how are their own people going to afford to buy them?