search results matching tag: ISIS

» channel: learn

go advanced with your query
Search took 0.000 seconds

    Videos (107)     Sift Talk (0)     Blogs (18)     Comments (248)   

male atheists have questions for SJW's

modulous says...

1. I *AM* an LGBTQ person, I don't speak for them, but I am one voice.
I tend to avoid harassing people.

2. No.

3. a) Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I want women to be equal and I want legal protections in place to maintain this. This is not secret information.
b) They do.

4. Question 3b) suggests women should be responsible for their safety. Question 4 seems to criticize the notion of being responsible for your own safety. Glad to see unified thought in this. The answer is I expected random bouts of mockery, judgement, and violence. You know, the other 95% of my life.

5. Because shitting on a group that seeks to change culture to react similarly to loss of black life as it does for white lives, while pointing out where society fails to meet this standard is pretty charactersticly racist.
Also I don't say that "Kill all white people" is not racist.

6. Yes. Did you know that the permanence of objects, the transmission of ideas and culture and systems of law are based on events in the past? That by studying history we can understand how humans work in a unique way, that knowing that say, there was a WWI may help us understand the conditions under which WWII occurred and that this knowledge may help us decide what to do in the aftermath of WWII to avoid a recurrence?
That if a group has historically had problems, many of those problems have probably been inherited along with consequences of the problems (such as poverty, strongly inherited social trait). Yes. Linear time,human affairs, culture. They are all things that exist.

7. Yes, I have many examples of people doing this. Mostly this is due to short lifespan. But there are many manchildren in our culture, who seem to think that other people asserting boundaries is immature.

8. There are programs designed to help boost male education dropout rate. If you 'fight' for 'improvements in the fairness of social order ' to help achieve this, you are a Social Justice Warrior, and so you could just have asked yourself.
Also, American bias? Pretty sure this is not a global stat...

9. Because one focusses on correcting the inequalities between the sexes and was born at a time when women didn't have proper property rights, voting rights etc etc, and so it was primarily focussed on uplifting women and so the name 'feminism'. Egalitarianism on the other hand, is the general pursuit. Many feminists are egalitarian, but not all. Hence different words. English, motherfucker....

10. Nothing, as I am not.

11. No, my grandparents were being enslaved in eastern Europe by the far left and right (but more the right, let's be honest).

Seriously though, I don't remember the liberal protests of "Not all ISIS".

12. Ingroup outgroup hatred and distrust is a universal human trait. Race seems to provoke instinctive group psychology in humans, presumably from evolving in racially separate groups.

13. The phrase is intended to deflate 'Black Lives Matter' whose point is that society seems to disagree, in practice, with this. There's only one realistic motivation to undermining the attempts to equalize how the lives of different races are treated socially.
It's also designed to be perfectly innocuous outside of this context so that white people can totally believe they aren't being dicks by saying it.

14. My social justice fighting is almost always done in secret. I hate the limelight, and I hate endlessly seeking credit for doing the right thing. So I try to keep it to a minimum while also raising consciousness about issues where I can.
Hey wait, did you fall for the bias that the big public figures are representative in all ways of the group? HAHAHAHA! Noob.
Wait, did a man voicing a cartoon kangaroo wearing an Islamic headdress, superimposed on video footage of a woman in a gym grinding her hips tell me to stop trying show off how awesome I am and and to get real?

15. No, they are both not capable of giving consent. Sounds like you have had a bitter experience. Sorry to hear that.

16. I spent two decades trying to change myself. I tortured myself into a deep suicidal insanity. When I stopped that, and when society had changed in response to my and others plights being publicised sympathetically I felt happy and comfortable with myself.
You would prefer millions in silent minorities living through personal hells if the alternative means you have to learn better manners? What a dick.

17. Sure. It's also OK if you say 'nigga' in the context of asking this question. But I'm white and English. You should ask some black Americans if your usage causes unintended messages to be sent. I'd certainly avoid placing joyful emphasis, especially through increased volume, on the word.

18. Ah, you've confused a mixture of ideas and notions within a group as a contradiction of group idealogy. Whoops. I don't understand gender identity. I get gender, but I never felt membership in any group. That's how I feel, and have since the 1990s. The internet has allowed disparate and rare individuals to form groups, and some of these groups are people with different opinions about how they feel about gender and they are very excited to meet people other people with idiosyncratic views as they had previously been alone with their eccentric perspective.

19. If white men are too privileged then the society is not my notion of equal.

20. After rejecting the premise as nonsensical. In as much as I want rules to govern social interactions that take into consideration the diversity of humanity as best as possible, I recognize those same rules will govern my behaviour.

21. Women can choose how to present themselves. Video Game creators choose how to present women in their art. I can suggest that the art routinely portrays women as helpless sex devices, while supporting women who wish to do so for themselves.

22. You DO that? I've never even had the notion. I just sort of listen and digest and try to see if gaps can reasonably be filled with pre-existent knowledge or logical inferrences and then I compare and contrast that with my own differring opinion and I consider why someone might have come to their ideas. Assuming they aren't stupid I try to understand as best I can and present to them my perspective from their perspective. I don't sing, or plug in headphones or have an imaginary rock concert.

23. I have done no such thing. Look, here I am listening to you. You have all been asking questions that have easy answers to if you looked outside your bubble of fighting a handful of twitter and youtube users thinking these people represent the entirety of things and seeking only to destroy them with your arguments rather than understanding the ideas themselves.

24. Reverse Racism is where white guys are systematically (and often deliberately) disadvantaged - such as the complaints against Affirmative Action. I'm sure your buddies can fill you in on the details. The liberal SJWs you hate tend to roll their eyes when they hear it too. Strange you should ask.

25. No. I've never seen the list. I just use whatever pronouns people feel comfortable with. Typically I only need to know three to get by in life, same as most other English speakers.

26. I'm the audience motherfucker, and so are you. That's how it works.

27. I don't do those things, but yes, I have considered the notion of concept saturation in discourse. Have you considered the idea that people vary in their identification of problems, based on a number of factors. Some people are trigger happy and this may be a legitimate problem. Since you are aware of this, you also have a duty to try to overcome the saturation biases.
Similarly, if you keep using the word 'fucking', motherfucker, you'll find it loses its impact quite quickly. See this post motherfucker. Probably why you needed to add the crash zoom for impact. You could have achieved more impact with less sarcasm and and a more surprising fuck.

Black Lives Matter Less - Vlogbrothers

modulous says...

Your comment suggests that black people are intrinsically more likely to kill cops, by virtue of their race.

This is racist.

Congratulations on being a racist.

The statistics, presented as you presented them, are incomplete and misleading. Congratualations on propagating racist propaganda. A stellar job sir, neither the Third Reich nor ISIS could have done it without agents, unwitting or otherwise, like you.

Perhaps if you would heed to the message of the video: Listen. It would do you well?

Perhaps you might consider that instead of it being caused by something simple like race and sex, that instead we might consider a vicious circle of cops being disproportionally aggressive to black men, resulting in black men being more aggressive in response, leading to further aggressive actions by the police etc. When you look at the vicious circle and realize that if we're blaming a 'race' it was the white guys that actually started this vicious circle, regardless of which race is acting most poorly today.

Perhaps, if you consider that social problems are complex, just for a moment, you might start discussing with nuance rather than contextually limited statistics.

bobknight33 said:

A police officer is 18 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a cop.


Over the last decade, black males made up 40 percent of all cop killers, even though they're six percent of the population.

from
Heather Mac Donald Book: The War on Cops.

Fox News vs Harvard On ISIS Turns Into Ignorance Fest

vil says...

Forget the unprofessionalism of Fox and TYT.

Where exactly in the interviews do the students say the US is a bigger threat to world peas than ISIS? All they do is avoid the dumb question and explain that ISIS is in some ways the result of US foreign policy so why are you asking this stupid question conservative activist?

Fox News vs Harvard On ISIS Turns Into Ignorance Fest

RFlagg says...

Got to love the country singer's straw man about Hitler and Japan and ignoring the fundamental issue of US policy in the Middle East and acting to protect oil interests over letting them self rule and work out whatever issues they have to work out. I understand the need to try and contain the fallout from the wars between the various Islamic factions (mostly Shia and Sunni) from spilling over to neighboring nations, but the US policy has been overt in serving US interests over the long term interests of the region since the 50's. The US solid backing of Israel, even in cases where it is clearly in the wrong, adds fuel to the fire.

And I know those on the right complain how Obama has backed away from Israel, though the evidence clearly differs as the US still refuses to tell Israel, to the degree we should, to treat people within its occupied zones with proper respect... and the fact so many Americans feel the need to protect Israel and favor Israel over its occupied territories no matter what, again adds fuel to the fire and shows those in Islam how under attack their faith is, which makes them stronger in their faith and more sure that they are on the right path, since the devil is working harder to put their faith down than any other faith... of course I hear this exact same argument from Christians all the time, how the devil is trying to put Christianity down proves that Christianity must be true... amazing how a little empathy would probably help world peace, but neither faith seems to have any... though I've seen enough FB memes about how Christians are so depressed because they have so much empathy and I wonder where it is, as I've yet to see any empathy from Christians as a whole. All of which digresses from the original point...

US foreign policy is directly responsible for the rise of ISIS/ISIL, whatever you want to call it... now ISIS has risen itself up to be a rather large threat via its actions, which are deliberately provoking, as it's easier to radicalize people when the world starts turning against Islam as a whole, as those on the Right are apt to do, than turn against the small segment that aren't peace loving. Of course the Right's preferred response to those provocations are to do exactly what ISIS has publicly stated they want. They want a large war against them, they'd love it if Republicans banned them from coming to the US as it would make lone wolf attacks in the US by US citizens more prevalent, which like they did with Miami (the shooter himself pledged allegiance to ISIS, but he also pledged allegiance to Hezbollah, which is fighting against ISIS)... Republican policies, especially those of Trump and Cruz are so on point with ISIS desires, one has to wonder if they themselves are tied with ISIS interests, or if they are tied to military interests that profit off continuing the war and sacrificing American lives in the name of war profiteering... but Republican Jesus said "Blessed are the warmongers and the war profiteers and cursed be the peace makers"... It was there on the Sermon on the Mount when he also said, "Blessed be the rich employer who pays his employees poorly, and cursed be those employees who are poor and needy and needing assistance. Surely I say unto you, if you give tax breaks unto the rich and cut benefits for the needy and the poor, I shall bless your Nation... oh and forget the sick and dying, they got themselves into their mess, they are responsible for getting out, only the well to do shall have healthcare." Again I digress though...

Trump Praises Saddam

bcglorf says...

For starters, I have to oppose the implied thought that Saddam's reign of terror was preventing this sectarian violence. His rule through the Suni minority to wage genocides against the Kurdish and Shia majority and decades of brutal repression of same all served to make the sectarian hatred and violence worse. Tally up the hundreds of thousands he killed through genocide, the million plus he killed in the Iran-Iraq war and everyone that died by direct execution or deliberate starvation level poverty and compare it doesn't stand out as starkly and objectively a desirable alternative to today.

Now if you ask what would I do differently it depends on what level of power I've got to act with. Ideally, we can go back to first Iraq war and have Bush senior march on Baghdad. This would've aborted one of Saddam's genocides. Equally importantly, this would have kept the Shia Iraqi population's view of America as a liberating force. The standing in the desert and watching Saddam slaughter them thing still carried their mistrust of American forces after Saddam's actual removal later. That singularly stupid move of leaving Saddam in power, at the urging of most of the planet, drove the Shia population of Iraq back to Iran as their sole sympathetic ally.

Next step, after the removal of Saddam, whether we can do it back then, or only a few years ago as it really happened is to truly setup an occupation government. You don't bring stability to a region by immediately trying to transition to a democracy before the shooting has even stopped. The occupation government would be run by somebody with actual knowledge and experience with Iraq, rather than as Bush senior did by sending in a guy with zero experience and a two week lead to brief himself. The task you should place on this leader, is to setup a federated Iraq, with distinct and autonomous Shia, Sunni and Kurdish states. The occupation government would dictate things after taking input from Iraqi's rather than holding them to the tyranny of the majority as Bush and co allowed. The occupation would setup an initial constitution defining what laws and agreements spanned all three Iraqi provinces/states and what extent of autonomy they had to define their own systems of government. The American military's job would be to enforce this very basic constitutional framework. Each Iraqi state/province would be aided in setting up their own governments with a transition plan again dictated not voted upon. The transition plan would define the point in time when each state transitioned from occupation rule to a self determined future and rule of law.

The above plan on the whole would work, but Bush and co couldn't have managed post Saddam Iraq more poorly if they had actively tried to.

If zero time travel is allowed and we are to 'fix' things today, you need a lot MORE power. You need an army the size of America or Russia's and the political will to spend several years doing things the public will hate you for. The end game is still the same as above, a federated Iraq kicked off under a dictatorial occupation. To get there from today though you need to create stability. You need to take an army and march it across the entire country. As each city is cleared of militants you take a census of everybody and keep it because you need it to track down future militants. In entirely hostile locations like were ISIS has full rule, you bomb them into the stone ages before marching the army in. The surviving population is given full medical treatment. Now, as for sorting militants from civilians though, you do NOT use American style innocent until proven guilty justice. Instead, any fighting age males are considered guilty until proven innocent. This level of rule of law needs to remain in place until stability can be restored. You of course guarantee lots of innocent arrests, but your trying to prevent massive numbers of innocent deaths so it's required. As you stabilize the nation you can relax back to innocent until proven guilty and work on re-integrating the convicted.

You'll note that although the methods I'd declare necessary above are by any count 'brutal', they do not extend into Saddam's usage of genocide, torture and rape as the weapons of choice.

Lawdeedaw said:

Not to poke or prod, but then what would you do to stabilize the country? His fear only worked if he killed harmless civilians, otherwise it wouldn't work at all. It's an all or nothing there.

The democratic government, hardly a corrupt government as the media would have you believe, is actually worse by far now than when Saddam was in power. (Yeah, that's hard to believe...but with the mass terror attacks, beheadings, raping of the Yazidi, unpredictable poverty, and the crime by non-terrorists, it is...) So with wholehearted empathy, I ask again. What would you do to help this even-worse situation?

This Diagram Explains Trump's Response To Orlando

RFlagg says...

The number of attacks on this country will skyrocket if Trump wins, simply because it would be far easier to radicalize people after that. Trump and the Republican party are doing everything they can to appease what ISIS wants us to do, making their job easier.

And while this guy was a Muslim, the constant labeling of him as being with ISIS is a bit out there. Yes he claimed allegiance to ISIS, but he also claimed allegiance to Hezbollah, a group opposed to ISIS that is in fact doing a lot of the fighting against them. So it seems more likely that he was taken in by the anti-gay rhetoric of religion (one shared by the far right Christians) and stepped it up to a mass murder rampage.

Nobody would call those guy who took over the Oregon facility Radicalized Christian Terrorists, though that's what they were. They did it in the name of Christ, saying that God was the one who told them to do it. You don't blame a whole religion for an act of a few radical members. The right then complains that regular Muslims don't do enough to protest the actions of those few, but I don't see masses of Christians counter protesting the God Hates Fags people who are protesting soldier funerals, or will be at the funerals of the people killed at this club... in fact I saw the God Hates Fags people there at the scene and there wasn't a big crowd of Christians fighting against the radicalized Christians spreading hate... Matthew 7:5 may apply to their attitude towards the situation...

Ken Burns slams Trump in Stanford Commencement

Syntaxed says...

The persecution of others to the exclusion of all but the primary religion is a tact shared with many major religions, and yes, Christianity has left its scorching mark upon humanity as a terrifying blot.

However, it is not, on this day, nor in these recent years, the acts of Christians, or Catholics that most burns a hole in our hearts and minds. Indeed, it is the acts of Radical Islamism, which is no more than a literal taking of their Koran brought to life by hate and malice.

And no, Islam is not a religion of peace, neither is Christainity-based religions for that matter. It is a matter of choice, and now, it is the choice of these Muslims, being great in number at this point in the Human Timeline, to continue the exploitation and caging of Women as sex slaves, to behead hundreds of thousands in the name of their God, and to spread their holy war to every corner of the globe until all is ruled by Islam.

That is fact, sir, as they(ISIS) have stated, as they show their brand of religion to state, as they act, and chose to carry forth action.

Sir, yes, all religions have committed to horrible deeds, but, it is always the purview of those of us that realize this to deny the growth of violence-via-religion, and now, in this day and age, that primary religion which we must stop from continuing violence is radicalized Islam.

bareboards2 said:

So you do now see why I thought you were calling him an immigrant? It certainly reads that way. Glad to know you didn't mean it.

As for killing gays in the name of Allah -- turns out not so much, now that reporting and information gathering has had time to happen.

A man who lives in America, being told on all sides that being gay is an abomination and sinful -- by some Christians, Muslims, good lord how many different sources -- who hangs out in gay bars in what pit of self-loathing because of the messages he received during his life....

A perfect case of internalized homophobia. Do a google search to find out how many of the most virulently anti-gay people turn out to actually be gay.

When this first happened, my first thought was to go up those who say gay people are sinners, take them by their lapels, look them in their eyes and say, "The blood of these people is on your hands. Your attacks on the humanity of these people who were made as God made them, have led to this horrific event."

So a hint back at you -- it isn't just sharia law that led to this. It is old fashioned religious bigotry and fear of the "other" -- very few religions are free from this crap. Certainly not Christianity. Westboro Baptist Church ring a bell?

Donald Trump is unfit for the office of the Presidency of the United States of America. This is a fact.

Samantha Bee on Orlando - Again? Again.

RFlagg says...

The fact the gun lobby won't let the CDC do it's job and collect data on gun violence just shows how insane political right is.

Then the right is blaming ISIS... the idiot pledged allegiance to ISIS and Hezbollah, even though they are enemies of each other. He clearly just had an issue with gays, and was using faith as an excuse. Most of the mass shootings in the US aren't done by Muslims in an act of terrorism, they are done by crazy people who have unfiltered access to guns.

I'd be fine if we don't close the gun show loophole or don't ban people from buying assault weapons, for now, so long as we first at least let the CDC get back to doing its job and collect data on gun violence. Then explore it in a few years of data collection to see what measures would be helpful. The fact the right refuses to let that happen must tell you that they know what the data will show, that some loopholes need closed.

And yes, if you are on the federal no flight list (and I haven't seen that this shooter was on such a list, just investigated twice), then you should certainly be delayed in getting a gun. That should be a huge red flag. You should then be told why you were denied and then have a right to argue for the right to own a gun and/or get off the no flight list. It should be a clear process to make such an application, and shouldn't require a lawyer. But odds are that most people on the no fly list aren't there for search history, or library records, but most are on the no fly list undoubtedly for far better reasons.

I'll fight to retain the right for most Americans to own a gun. Both a hand gun for personal home defense, and hunting rifles and the like. However if you are in a situation that requires an AR-15 to defend yourself, you are way over your head.... and don't give me some bull shit about protecting yourself from the government, remember how well having even more powerful weapons and training did for the people in Waco. Where do people who argue that those should be sold without restriction want to draw the line (and to be clear, I'm not arguing against the right to own one necessarily, but I am against buying it without restrictions, for a smaller wait time than it would take to buy a handgun)? Do we let people buy a bazooka? A surface to air missile launcher? A nuclear bomb? Where do you draw the line on putting restrictions, or at least a wait time on weapons of mass harm?

Samantha Bee on Orlando - Again? Again.

Mordhaus says...

We have always been a gun violence culture up until the post WW2 era. Think frontier, wild west, duels, and mafia shootouts. We glorify violence everyday, we even give sickos who shoot up groups of people mass media coverage. For a person who wants to go out in a blaze of infamy, we are custom tailored to give them their last 15 minutes of 'fame'.

Again, we have a nebulous definition of what it takes to get on the watch list. I could be placed on it simply by stating something to the effect that "I support ISIS", even though I don't. Restricting people who manage to end up on a government list is the same as removing their right to a firearm after committing a felony offense, only you have removed every single bit of their right to a legal defense. There is no due process to being placed on a US watchlist, you get put on and fuck you if it was a mistake. Maybe they'll take you off later, who knows?

I am not going to defend a slippery slope argument on this, I don't have to. It's already happened in the years since 2001. The Patriot Act, meant to be a well intended set of rules to help us protect ourselves, has been perverted to lessen quite a few of our rights. Not only our rights, but other countries. We have violated their security, spied on their people and leaders, and we perform acts of war on their territories with impugnity. All because we lost two buildings and 2,996 people; a heinous act, but one our government exploited to put us into 2 wars with a death toll to people who may not even be our enemies that dwarf our loss. In short, we fucking have the slippery slope process down to a SCIENCE.

RedSky said:

@Mordhaus

The idea of US being a gun violence culture just makes no sense to me. A gun ownership culture among a subset of the population sure, but a culture of resolving conflict with violence? No, it's a product of gun availability. The numbers ChaosEngine quoted on guns / 100 people really is the unique differentiator that makes murder rates some 5-20x the developed country average.

Poverty leading to crime, poor mental health treatment are the tinder but the easy access to weapons is what leads to the death tolls to combust incomparable to any other developed country. Also if legislators can't pass gun control after Sandy Hook, or even restrict people on or previously on the terrorist watch-list from buying guns then the idea of any kind of slippery slope is farcical.

Samantha Bee on Orlando - Again? Again.

Mordhaus says...

Sorry, but I am still against banning people from owning weapons based on browser history. Our government has a very nebulous definition of what it takes to be considered a terrorist.

Look at the individual in this shooting, the FBI suspected him, he underwent three FBI interviews and an undercover probe where he admitted to having terrorist ties. The FBI removed him from the terrorist watch list after all of that. Yet you can get added to the watchlist by looking at ISIS affiliated websites.

So, if we did follow the recommendations of the President, the terrorist would still have been OFF the watch list and able to buy guns, while the person who went to an ISIS site might be unable to.

The point is that no specific regulation is going to stop these shootings, other than to ban firearms altogether. I'm not willing to sacrifice that right.

ChaosEngine said:

But hey getting on a plane isn't a constitutional right, but apparently being able to murder the fuck out of your fellow citizens is!
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Obama-isnt-looking-to-disarm-you

Indiana Jones & Pascal's Wager: Crash Course Philosophy #15

ChaosEngine says...

er, by the time of the Last Crusade, Indy has seen:
- the literal manifestation of the power of god melt Nazis faces
- some magic rocks burning an Indian guy

I think it's pretty safe to say that Indy has accepted that in his fictional universe, the supernatural is real. Hell, if I saw what he'd seen by that point, I'd be a god-fearing Christian.

As for Pascal's wager, I've always viewed it as the height of moral cowardice. If you want to believe in God and you're not shoving your beliefs down everyone else's throat (looking at you, ISIS, evangelicals, catholic church in Ireland, etc), go nuts.

But don't believe because you're afraid of hell. If you're a good person and you die and it turns out there is a god, if he condemns you to eternal suffering for not believing in him, then fuck him, he's an asshole and I wouldn't want to spend eternity under his thumb anyway.

Assassin's Creed Trailer

Spike Lee's "Wake Up" | Bernie Sanders

RFlagg says...

Hmm... Democrat failure of 8 years? I seem to recall the Republicans have controlled the budget, more or less for 6 of those 8 years, and solidly for the last 2. I seem to recall we were in a budget surplus before Bush Jr took us out of it for an unjust war built on, at best misinformation, and very possibly lies. All the while the same people crying about the deficit now said then that deficits don't matter. What happened is a failure of Obama, it's a failure of the Republican policies as Obama's weren't even given a shot as the modern day Republican doesn't want a democracy, what they want is a dictatorship where they dictate the rules and compromise with the other side of the isle, formally known as politics, is bad and it's my way or the highway mentality is the rule of law for the party. Hell, the party abandoned its very own plan for affordable health care and now call it one of the worst things ever... their own plan... the same plan, funded the same way with the same penalties for not participating, that they tried to pass into federal law 3 times is now one of the worst things that our government has ever passed.

Cruz and Trump will isolate America from our allies, especially if Trump won. None of our allies (save perhaps Israel) would want to associate with us. They are already mad at us for Bush's wars and both Cruz and Trump want to escalate those wars and "carpet bomb" millions of innocent people to get to a few bad people? Trump wants to kill their families, which will make it easier to radicalize more and more people... and before one says that is the brutality of that religion, which religion is the one wanting to carpet bomb innocent people to kill a few guilty people and torture people and other crimes that their Christ would never support? Of course everything the Republicans want to do is exactly what ISIS has publicly stated they want other nations to do, so perhaps the Republican party is in league with ISIS?

Their policies, especially Trump's, regarding items made out of the country (jobs sent overseas by the same people that Republicans love... the same people who take for themselves while they refuse to pay living wages to their employees for pure greed reasons) would result in an economic melt down in the US as countries and businesses refuse to do as much business with us... or they move from the US dollar as the standard currency as retribution, which again wrecks the US economy.

Of less importance is that a Trump presidency and likely a Cruz as well would result in a guarantee that we'd lose the bids for the 2024 Olympic games and the 2026 World Cup, both of which we have a decent lead on as of now, but if men of hate and discrimination get in, then why would games of peace come? Trump wants to refuse to let Muslims even visit, and that would make a huge percentage of those who'd come for either or.

Anyhow to the subject of Bernie. Yes the Republican's would block everything as they do with Obama, but the conversation is moved and advanced for the people. I'd fear that if Clinton got in, the Republicans would spend all their time trying to impeach her rather than go about the process of governing. Bernie they'd just try to ignore and then get caught off guard as the nation caught onto his ideas and wanted to run with it and gave him a congress that would work with him.... of course a Trump nomination means they'd likely lose the Senate anyhow... which will be hilarious, doesn't matter if it's Clinton or Sanders in the office, because moments after the election, Obama pulls the moderate Supreme Court Justice nomination that the Republicans asked for by name before it became a political issue, and they instead get a more liberal justice... (I'm further amused by how they say they just want American's to vote on it... they did folks, 4 years ago, everyone knew there'd likely be an opening or two during his terms and he still won.)

The Most Costly Joke in History

Mordhaus says...

I've already discussed why helicopters and drones are good in areas of light cover while sucking in areas of high cover. They fulfill a role, but realistically they aren't always the best option.

I also explained what happens in real combat. So called fast movers end up being tasked to do roles that they were not designed for. No plan stays certain in the face of the enemy. There will come a time when the F35 is expected to provide the same type of support as the A-10 and it is going to suck hard at it, planes will be shot down and pilots will die or be captured. I suspect this will happen especially with the forces using the F35 that are not the Air Force, such as the Marines. Here is a link to the laughable failures that the Marines had with the plane, but due to the 'cannot fail' nature of the project, they certified it anyway. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/not-a-big-suprise-the-marines-f-35-operational-test-wa-1730583428

Finally, the A-10 was absolutely not designed initially to be a Soviet tank killer. The initial A-X program was created because of the DISMAL performance of the Air Force and F4 in providing close air support to troops.

The Secretary of the Air Force contacted Pierre Sprey and asked him to come up with a design spec for a close air support plane. After consulting with the pilots we had in Vietnam, mostly the successful ones that were flying the prop driven A-1 Skyraider (which btw, destroyed the F4 JET in CAS operations), it was indicated that the ideal aircraft should have long loiter time, low-speed maneuverability, massive cannon firepower, and extreme survivability. It was only later, after the plane had been mostly designed, that the USAF asked that it be also tasked to counter the Soviets.

As I said, the Air Force has always hated providing CAS to the other branches of the Armed Forces. They constantly forget that you need to make a multi-role fighter actually function in a multi-role environment, preferring to think that they can buzz in and buzz out while the rest of the military does the 'dirty' work. However, they always get burned for it. Just like now, when they were fighting as hard as possible to kill the A-10, they discovered that fighting a force that is mobile and that hides in cover/cities (ISIS) is damn near impossible with fast planes/drones. Which is why they changed paths and rescheduled the A-10 phase out to 2028 (or beyond).

transmorpher said:

I'm saying that the F-35 doesn't need to do the job of the A-10 in the same style, because helicopters and drones already fill that loitering style of close air support. And they fill it better than the warthog. Drones loiter better and longer, and helicopters are less vulnerable while having just as much fire power, with the ability to keep enemies suppressed without stopping to turn around and run in again. Helicopters don't even fly that much slower than the A-10 and they have the advantage of being able to stay on the friendly side of the battle-line while firing at the enemy, as well as being able to use terrain as cover.
And fast movers do a better job of delivering bombs.

The warthog was created as a soviet tank killer and hasn't been used in the role ever, since the cold war never became a hot war. It was created in a time where high losses were acceptable. You could argue it was made to fight a war that didn't happen either. But it's been upgraded with all sorts of sensors that are already in helicopters and drones to extend it's role into something it wasn't really designed for in the first place.

I'm not beating up the warthog, it's my 2nd most favourite plane. I've logged some 400+ virtual flying hours in the A-10C in DCS World. I know what every single switch does in the cockpit. And I've dropped thousands of simulated laser and GPS guided bombs, launched thousands of mavericks, and strafed thousands of BMPs. I love the thing really
But it's duties are performed better by a range of modern aircraft now.

eric3579 (Member Profile)

radx says...

Three pieces for your entertainment:

The Grauniad ran an opinion piece by former NYT executive editor Jill Abramson abtly titled "This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest". The headline is enough to make my head spin, nevermind the content. Not worth spending time on, really. You can guess what the comment section thought of it. Not surprisingly, it was closed after an hour.

Worth a read, however, is a recent polemic by Sean Kerrigan: Will We Elect Hillary After Her Many, Many War Crimes?

What made me laugh was this: the supposed presidential frontrunner would have been hanged if judged by the standards set at the Nuremberg Trials, yet Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer, holds a fundraiser for Clinton at $350k per pair for seats at her majesty's table. Who the hell needs satire anyway, not even Doug Stanhope could come up with most of the twisted shit reality confronts us with day in, day out.

Last but not least, Robert Fisk wonders why neither Cameron nor Obama seem to be celebrating the retaking of Palmyra from the IS.

"Here are the Syrian army, backed, of course, by Vladimir Putin's Russkies, chucking the clowns of Isis out of town, and we daren't utter a single word to say well done."



Send this Article to a Friend



Separate multiple emails with a comma (,); limit 5 recipients






Your email has been sent successfully!

Manage this Video in Your Playlists

Beggar's Canyon