I agree that it was political. But as a realist, that is the nature of our government. The military is pretty much just the muscle behind the mouthpiece.
The military is the muscle behind the Commander-in-Chief but it's still not right for a politician to use the military to advance his own political ambitions or electoral strategy.
As I said, I wouldn't have had a problem if it had just been a speech to our servicemen and women. The White House crossed the line when they made it into a political event. Our military is there to carry out the orders of the Commander-in-Chief -- they aren't there to ensure that the Commander-in-Chief gets another term.....
However, I'm not sure it's a disgrace. What harm does he pose anyone in the United States going forward?
He's murdered thousands of American citizens and would do so again if he had the means and the opportunity?
Leaving the cynicism aside for a moment, what purpose do you think his death would serve anyways?
What purpose does allowing him to continue living serve? He murdered almost three thousand people.
I doubt that it would deter anyone else with similar ambitions
It probably wouldn't. We could deter people with similar ambitions but to do it we'd probably have to throw out the modern rulebook and play the game by the old rules. Can you imagine what the Romans would have done if somebody had murdered several thousand Roman citizens? They would have marched into his homeland, burn all the crops, murder all of the men, rape the women and children and sell the survivors into slavery. I'll never understand why we play the game by the rules when we are fighting people who don't.
In WW2 we followed the Geneva conventions (for the most part) in Europe because the Germans also followed them (on the Western front anyway). In the Pacific we didn't bother because the Japanese refused to follow them -- they abused their POWs and committed perfidy. On many battlefields we refused to accept surrender and promptly shot any who attempted to surrender (or more likely whom were attempting to get close enough under the cover of a white flag to do something nasty).
Osama Bin Laden's death at the hands of the americans would make him immortal...
Good for him. He'll still be dead though. I'll take a dead martyr over a living murderer any day of the week.
We blow up our own ships in the harbors of our enemies [wikipedia.org] and use it a pretext to declare war! How clever is that?
Umm, and what exactly are you basing your conclusion on? Are you actually saying that the United States purposefully caused the explosion on the Maine? That conclusion would seem to be at odds with almost every bit of historical evidence and the article that you linked.
And with all that just said, I am sickened by the American attitude towards the French
Are you equally sickened by the French attitude towards Americans? As a recent example I recall one of their Ministers saying something about how "Anglo-Saxon capitalism" was responsible for the current economic crisis. From my vantage point a comment like that goes back to the whole cultural inferiority complex that they seem to have regarding all things English and/or American.
I traveled through Italy a few years ago. Almost without fail every single time we ran into French people they started muttering under their breaths about "those Americans". Are we really so offensive that the mere sight of us justifies that type of behavior?
BTW, I did read your other post. The reason why I wouldn't advocate taking honors away from Lafayette or returning the Statue of Liberty is because at the end of the day there's more to the Franco-American relationship than our disagreements. They are a fellow democracy, trading partner and we have a long history of working and fighting together with them. That should count for more than our disagreements.
The First World War was started by the US and UK invading Iraq for oil.. of course it's still going to go on
Umm, WTF are you smoking and can I have some? Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) before WW1. The British invaded it after the Turks joined the war on the side of the Central Powers. American forces never fought there. And WW1 didn't start between the Allies and the Turks -- it started between the Allies and the Central Powers, which the Turks joined about a month after the outbreak of hostilites.
You are crazy to think the people are remotely qualified to judge the situation on the ground
The people aren't qualified to judge the situation on the ground, but in a Democracy they are allowed to decide when the war should end. By most accounts the majority of the American people lost their taste for this war over two years ago. Yet we are still there. What's wrong with that picture?
You didn't deserve the troll mod for your comment (clearly the wacko far-left is out in force today) but I would still disagree with you:
Anyone who wants to take it differently just doesn't understand the nature of military operations
I do understand the nature of military operations. The Abraham Lincoln did complete her mission. You need to understand the nature of politics though.
The President flies out to the carrier and stages a political photo-op with the national press in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner. Shortly afterwards the insurgency broke out in full force and American servicemen kept dying. I think you can understand why that would leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people.
In retrospect he should have done the exact same thing but without the cameras and the press. If he had just gone out to the carrier and given a speech to the crew I doubt it would even be remembered by anybody who wasn't aboard ship that day. Instead they turned it into a political photo-op. I think that was a disservice to the military -- politics should be kept as far away from the military as possible, IMHO.
Americans would rather ridicule the French for not deliberately fighting fights they can't win
Yeah, cuz we all know that the French would never be dumb enough to fight a war that can't be won against a third-world country. It's neverhappened.
and generally poke fun at their greater level of social maturity
Social maturity? They are so damned insecure about their language and culture that they refuse to use the word 'e-mail'. Mocking the French isn't solely an American past time either -- ever been to Italy or the UK?
I liken American ridicule for French foreign policy to the ridicule that an angsty 15 year old may direct towards a grown man for not wanting to moon traffic while drunk on a Friday night.
Yeah, French foreign policy is soooo much more mature than ours. Say what you will about the United States but we've never blown up ships in the harbors of our Allies.
No. Neither should we have declared war on Bin Laden.
We shouldn't have declared "war" on him but we damn sure should have tracked him down and killed the SOB. I rather liked the idea of issuing letters of marque to any interested party who was willing to go into Afghanistan/Pakistan and track him down.
Failing that, we should have used our own troops at Tora Bora instead of leaving the heavy lifting to local warlords of questionable loyalty and/or competence. I'll never understand why we sent 4,000 of our sons and daughters to their graves in Mesopotamia but opted not to deploy them in significant numbers when we actually had a chance to capture/kill OBL. WTF?
The fact that OBL still draws breath is a national disgrace.
This is such a stupid talking point that it absolutely boggles the mind. Going back to the pre GWB tax rates is 'wealth redistribution'? How come nobody called his father a socialist when he raised taxes?
And it has nothing to do with her womanhood, there are plenty of Women that I wouldn't mind in office.
If I had to pick from both sides of the aisle I'd go with Sen. Collins for the Republicans. Harder to pick a Democrat because I can't stand Hillary and most of the other big-name female Democrats in the Senate are too far to the left for my tastes (Feinstein comes to mind).
It's all about "voter suppression," most instances of which are better known as enforcing the law and trying to prevent fraud.
So the way you enforce the law is by purging people from the rolls if their name closely resembles that of a convicted felon using lists supplied by Choicepoint (better known for data breaches and inaccurate credit/clue reports)? Or do you enforce the law by challenging every single voter in heavily Democratic areas?
Nothing about Obama's extensive voter suppression during the primaries to steal the nomination from Clinton. Not enforcing the law types, but dirty tricks to single-out Clinton supporters and keep them from voting
If you are going to make an allegation like that it's helpful to have a citation or two. I worked with the Obama campaign during the primaries in five different states (NY, OH, PA, WV and MD) and I didn't see any voter suppression. That's my own experience and it's probably worth next to nothing for this discussion -- but hey you didn't provide a citation for your claim so why can't I use some personal anecdotes?
Nothing about ACORN committing massive registration fraud either.
Registration fraud != voter fraud unless the County Board of Elections is stupid enough to put Mickey House in the pollbooks and the pollworkers are stupid enough to allow him to vote.
It's a decent argument until you step back and realize that POTUS has the nuclear launch codes and John McCain already has one foot in the grave. So unless you want Sarah Palin to have them, voting for McCain to isn't really an option.... at least for me.
He would have done better to have alienated his base and picked Libermann or Ridge. You really think the base would have stayed home after he started running those "redistribute the wealth" ads? Instead he picked someone that appeals to nobody outside of the base and whom scares the hell out of a lot of people. Brilliant move on his part....
Oh, blow it out your fucking ass. His life story isn't sufficiently "American" for you? I thought being an American was all about overcoming obstacles/adversity and being successful?
not half-Americans or whatever.
I wasn't aware of a blood requirement to attain American citizenship. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"
Hmm. Born in Honolulu. Seems like he's an American to me......
Also can anyone actually explain why we should be bailing out these banks in the first place?
The theory is that if the credit markets froze up it would trickle down to "Main Street" and impact people who didn't make stupid decisions. Most businesses (particularly so-called "small" businesses) are dependent upon access to short term credit to smooth out their cashflow. If they lose their access to this type of credit they'll have to raise prices and/or lay off workers.
Now GM is looking for a handout because they can't make a car that anyone wants and somehow thats the tax payers fault
GM's problems go much deeper than not being able to build cars people want. They can and do build smaller fuel efficient cars..... for the European and Asian markets. Until recently those types of cars didn't sell here -- SUVs did. That doesn't completely excuse GM (why didn't they diversify their production lines?) but it does provide some context to their problems.
They also have deeper problems -- like the fact that they have to eat the health care costs for their workers while the Asian and European outfits they are competing with can offload a lot of that expense onto the Government. There's also some blatant unfairness in the automobile market -- Japan refuses to open up their market (>95% of the cars on the road in Japan are Japanese) to imports while we continue to allow them to flood our markets with their automobiles. How is that "free" trade?
I'm not saying any of that justifies bailing out Detroit. Just pointing out that it's a lot more complicated than the types of cars they are building.
It seems our whole economic system is unsound. Its all based on retail sales of mostly useless crap that is designed to fail or has planned obsolesence so you have to buy more
That's not our whole economy -- just a large part of it and the aspect that most Americans deal with on a day to day basis. Google is a part of the American economy -- are they based on retail sales of useless crap? What about Microsoft? Or the pharmaceutical/bio-tech industry? Is Boeing building useless crap that sells at retail?
The last thing this country needs is having the top 3 spots in the hands of Obama, Reed, and Pelosi, I have trouble imagining anything worse.
How about George W. Bush, Hastert and Lott?
I do find it amusing that the Republicans are resorting to the "divided Government" card and warning us all about the dangers of a single party controlling Congress and the White House. If they were being just a little bit more intellectually honest they'd end the argument with "Look how badly we fucked it up when we had that much power!"
I think that it is obvious that the "being an empire" thing is not worth the money that it costs.
The problem with withdrawing from the World is that nature abhors a vacuum. If the United States isn't the global interventionist superpower then who is? I doubt you'll see another Democracy step forward and assume the role -- and given the choice between the US or Russia/China I'll take the US any day of the week.
Nobody's vote counts, and as soon as we realize that we can start actually fixing problems.
So your purposed method of fixing the problems is to allow the same asshats to keep getting re-elected year after year because you don't bother to vote or get involved?
It takes courage and conviction to resist the "vote or die" crowd, but it MUST BE DONE.
Yeah, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to sit on your ass watching American Idol instead of taking 15 minutes to go to the polling place and vote.
Wasn't his Mother quoted as saying something along the lines of "If Marx had spent more time making capital instead of talking about it we would have been better off"?
Agreed. Now we just need someone to act as a mediator over all the comments. That way we won't have to sift through all sorts of useless drivel. Any volunteers?
Funny, the guy used to talk about himself as a Small Business owner with great pride. We'll call him Joe the Pimp.
I hear that Obama's tax proposals are going to be real hard on small business owners like him;) Hell the health care proposals too.... probably not cheap to get health insurance on your call girls;)
and I'm not easily searchable in a database of who crossed and when.
I hate to break it to you but unless you drive a different car across that bridge every day then you are probably still quite trackable. Your car has license plates, right? The bridge has security cameras, right?
It could even be in that feared database and subject to search with a simple select statement. License plate readers have been around for awhile and it doesn't seem like a stretch to dump all of the data they collect into a database.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that it was political. But as a realist, that is the nature of our government. The military is pretty much just the muscle behind the mouthpiece.
The military is the muscle behind the Commander-in-Chief but it's still not right for a politician to use the military to advance his own political ambitions or electoral strategy.
As I said, I wouldn't have had a problem if it had just been a speech to our servicemen and women. The White House crossed the line when they made it into a political event. Our military is there to carry out the orders of the Commander-in-Chief -- they aren't there to ensure that the Commander-in-Chief gets another term.....
However, I'm not sure it's a disgrace. What harm does he pose anyone in the United States going forward?
He's murdered thousands of American citizens and would do so again if he had the means and the opportunity?
Leaving the cynicism aside for a moment, what purpose do you think his death would serve anyways?
What purpose does allowing him to continue living serve? He murdered almost three thousand people.
I doubt that it would deter anyone else with similar ambitions
It probably wouldn't. We could deter people with similar ambitions but to do it we'd probably have to throw out the modern rulebook and play the game by the old rules. Can you imagine what the Romans would have done if somebody had murdered several thousand Roman citizens? They would have marched into his homeland, burn all the crops, murder all of the men, rape the women and children and sell the survivors into slavery. I'll never understand why we play the game by the rules when we are fighting people who don't.
In WW2 we followed the Geneva conventions (for the most part) in Europe because the Germans also followed them (on the Western front anyway). In the Pacific we didn't bother because the Japanese refused to follow them -- they abused their POWs and committed perfidy. On many battlefields we refused to accept surrender and promptly shot any who attempted to surrender (or more likely whom were attempting to get close enough under the cover of a white flag to do something nasty).
Osama Bin Laden's death at the hands of the americans would make him immortal...
Good for him. He'll still be dead though. I'll take a dead martyr over a living murderer any day of the week.
We blow up our own ships in the harbors of our enemies [wikipedia.org] and use it a pretext to declare war! How clever is that?
Umm, and what exactly are you basing your conclusion on? Are you actually saying that the United States purposefully caused the explosion on the Maine? That conclusion would seem to be at odds with almost every bit of historical evidence and the article that you linked.
And with all that just said, I am sickened by the American attitude towards the French
Are you equally sickened by the French attitude towards Americans? As a recent example I recall one of their Ministers saying something about how "Anglo-Saxon capitalism" was responsible for the current economic crisis. From my vantage point a comment like that goes back to the whole cultural inferiority complex that they seem to have regarding all things English and/or American.
I traveled through Italy a few years ago. Almost without fail every single time we ran into French people they started muttering under their breaths about "those Americans". Are we really so offensive that the mere sight of us justifies that type of behavior?
BTW, I did read your other post. The reason why I wouldn't advocate taking honors away from Lafayette or returning the Statue of Liberty is because at the end of the day there's more to the Franco-American relationship than our disagreements. They are a fellow democracy, trading partner and we have a long history of working and fighting together with them. That should count for more than our disagreements.
The First World War was started by the US and UK invading Iraq for oil.. of course it's still going to go on
Umm, WTF are you smoking and can I have some? Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) before WW1. The British invaded it after the Turks joined the war on the side of the Central Powers. American forces never fought there. And WW1 didn't start between the Allies and the Turks -- it started between the Allies and the Central Powers, which the Turks joined about a month after the outbreak of hostilites.
You are crazy to think the people are remotely qualified to judge the situation on the ground
The people aren't qualified to judge the situation on the ground, but in a Democracy they are allowed to decide when the war should end. By most accounts the majority of the American people lost their taste for this war over two years ago. Yet we are still there. What's wrong with that picture?
You didn't deserve the troll mod for your comment (clearly the wacko far-left is out in force today) but I would still disagree with you:
Anyone who wants to take it differently just doesn't understand the nature of military operations
I do understand the nature of military operations. The Abraham Lincoln did complete her mission. You need to understand the nature of politics though.
The President flies out to the carrier and stages a political photo-op with the national press in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner. Shortly afterwards the insurgency broke out in full force and American servicemen kept dying. I think you can understand why that would leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people.
In retrospect he should have done the exact same thing but without the cameras and the press. If he had just gone out to the carrier and given a speech to the crew I doubt it would even be remembered by anybody who wasn't aboard ship that day. Instead they turned it into a political photo-op. I think that was a disservice to the military -- politics should be kept as far away from the military as possible, IMHO.
Americans would rather ridicule the French for not deliberately fighting fights they can't win
Yeah, cuz we all know that the French would never be dumb enough to fight a war that can't be won against a third-world country. It's never happened.
and generally poke fun at their greater level of social maturity
Social maturity? They are so damned insecure about their language and culture that they refuse to use the word 'e-mail'. Mocking the French isn't solely an American past time either -- ever been to Italy or the UK?
I liken American ridicule for French foreign policy to the ridicule that an angsty 15 year old may direct towards a grown man for not wanting to moon traffic while drunk on a Friday night.
Yeah, French foreign policy is soooo much more mature than ours. Say what you will about the United States but we've never blown up ships in the harbors of our Allies.
No. Neither should we have declared war on Bin Laden.
We shouldn't have declared "war" on him but we damn sure should have tracked him down and killed the SOB. I rather liked the idea of issuing letters of marque to any interested party who was willing to go into Afghanistan/Pakistan and track him down.
Failing that, we should have used our own troops at Tora Bora instead of leaving the heavy lifting to local warlords of questionable loyalty and/or competence. I'll never understand why we sent 4,000 of our sons and daughters to their graves in Mesopotamia but opted not to deploy them in significant numbers when we actually had a chance to capture/kill OBL. WTF?
The fact that OBL still draws breath is a national disgrace.
Do I want my wealth 'redistributed', no
This is such a stupid talking point that it absolutely boggles the mind. Going back to the pre GWB tax rates is 'wealth redistribution'? How come nobody called his father a socialist when he raised taxes?
And it has nothing to do with her womanhood, there are plenty of Women that I wouldn't mind in office.
If I had to pick from both sides of the aisle I'd go with Sen. Collins for the Republicans. Harder to pick a Democrat because I can't stand Hillary and most of the other big-name female Democrats in the Senate are too far to the left for my tastes (Feinstein comes to mind).
It's all about "voter suppression," most instances of which are better known as enforcing the law and trying to prevent fraud.
So the way you enforce the law is by purging people from the rolls if their name closely resembles that of a convicted felon using lists supplied by Choicepoint (better known for data breaches and inaccurate credit/clue reports)? Or do you enforce the law by challenging every single voter in heavily Democratic areas?
Nothing about Obama's extensive voter suppression during the primaries to steal the nomination from Clinton. Not enforcing the law types, but dirty tricks to single-out Clinton supporters and keep them from voting
If you are going to make an allegation like that it's helpful to have a citation or two. I worked with the Obama campaign during the primaries in five different states (NY, OH, PA, WV and MD) and I didn't see any voter suppression. That's my own experience and it's probably worth next to nothing for this discussion -- but hey you didn't provide a citation for your claim so why can't I use some personal anecdotes?
Nothing about ACORN committing massive registration fraud either.
Registration fraud != voter fraud unless the County Board of Elections is stupid enough to put Mickey House in the pollbooks and the pollworkers are stupid enough to allow him to vote.
I'm pretty certain that is their argument.
It's a decent argument until you step back and realize that POTUS has the nuclear launch codes and John McCain already has one foot in the grave. So unless you want Sarah Palin to have them, voting for McCain to isn't really an option.... at least for me.
He would have done better to have alienated his base and picked Libermann or Ridge. You really think the base would have stayed home after he started running those "redistribute the wealth" ads? Instead he picked someone that appeals to nobody outside of the base and whom scares the hell out of a lot of people. Brilliant move on his part....
That he was a little more American
Oh, blow it out your fucking ass. His life story isn't sufficiently "American" for you? I thought being an American was all about overcoming obstacles/adversity and being successful?
not half-Americans or whatever.
I wasn't aware of a blood requirement to attain American citizenship. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"
Hmm. Born in Honolulu. Seems like he's an American to me......
Also can anyone actually explain why we should be bailing out these banks in the first place?
The theory is that if the credit markets froze up it would trickle down to "Main Street" and impact people who didn't make stupid decisions. Most businesses (particularly so-called "small" businesses) are dependent upon access to short term credit to smooth out their cashflow. If they lose their access to this type of credit they'll have to raise prices and/or lay off workers.
Now GM is looking for a handout because they can't make a car that anyone wants and somehow thats the tax payers fault
GM's problems go much deeper than not being able to build cars people want. They can and do build smaller fuel efficient cars..... for the European and Asian markets. Until recently those types of cars didn't sell here -- SUVs did. That doesn't completely excuse GM (why didn't they diversify their production lines?) but it does provide some context to their problems.
They also have deeper problems -- like the fact that they have to eat the health care costs for their workers while the Asian and European outfits they are competing with can offload a lot of that expense onto the Government. There's also some blatant unfairness in the automobile market -- Japan refuses to open up their market (>95% of the cars on the road in Japan are Japanese) to imports while we continue to allow them to flood our markets with their automobiles. How is that "free" trade?
I'm not saying any of that justifies bailing out Detroit. Just pointing out that it's a lot more complicated than the types of cars they are building.
It seems our whole economic system is unsound. Its all based on retail sales of mostly useless crap that is designed to fail or has planned obsolesence so you have to buy more
That's not our whole economy -- just a large part of it and the aspect that most Americans deal with on a day to day basis. Google is a part of the American economy -- are they based on retail sales of useless crap? What about Microsoft? Or the pharmaceutical/bio-tech industry? Is Boeing building useless crap that sells at retail?
The last thing this country needs is having the top 3 spots in the hands of Obama, Reed, and Pelosi, I have trouble imagining anything worse.
How about George W. Bush, Hastert and Lott?
I do find it amusing that the Republicans are resorting to the "divided Government" card and warning us all about the dangers of a single party controlling Congress and the White House. If they were being just a little bit more intellectually honest they'd end the argument with "Look how badly we fucked it up when we had that much power!"
I think that it is obvious that the "being an empire" thing is not worth the money that it costs.
The problem with withdrawing from the World is that nature abhors a vacuum. If the United States isn't the global interventionist superpower then who is? I doubt you'll see another Democracy step forward and assume the role -- and given the choice between the US or Russia/China I'll take the US any day of the week.
Nobody's vote counts, and as soon as we realize that we can start actually fixing problems.
So your purposed method of fixing the problems is to allow the same asshats to keep getting re-elected year after year because you don't bother to vote or get involved?
It takes courage and conviction to resist the "vote or die" crowd, but it MUST BE DONE.
Yeah, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to sit on your ass watching American Idol instead of taking 15 minutes to go to the polling place and vote.
Marx was a fine guy.
Wasn't his Mother quoted as saying something along the lines of "If Marx had spent more time making capital instead of talking about it we would have been better off"?
Should we also mention that Congress, not the President, makes the budget.
True, but POTUS has the bully pulpit and the veto pen.....
Agreed. Now we just need someone to act as a mediator over all the comments. That way we won't have to sift through all sorts of useless drivel. Any volunteers?
Isn't that what the moderation system is for?
I hadn't noticed
So I take it you are going to write-in Cowboyneal? ;)
For years our society had the nasty habit of punishing women who reported rape, and where did that get us as a society?
Best. Strawman. Ever.
He didn't abuse the security breach and he reported it to the relevant authorities
Copying the privileged data isn't abusing the security breach?
Funny, the guy used to talk about himself as a Small Business owner with great pride. We'll call him Joe the Pimp.
I hear that Obama's tax proposals are going to be real hard on small business owners like him ;) Hell the health care proposals too.... probably not cheap to get health insurance on your call girls ;)
Only when I'm stoned ;)
and I'm not easily searchable in a database of who crossed and when.
I hate to break it to you but unless you drive a different car across that bridge every day then you are probably still quite trackable. Your car has license plates, right? The bridge has security cameras, right?
It could even be in that feared database and subject to search with a simple select statement. License plate readers have been around for awhile and it doesn't seem like a stretch to dump all of the data they collect into a database.