This looks a little more comical than I'd prefer. I loved the Lovecraftian style of TFTD and would have preferred to see more of it here.

Can't be as bad as Apocalypse, though. The Gamespot review nailed that when they said, "You'll feel as if you're waging war on the set of The Muppet Show." 15 years later and that quote is still the first thing I think of when I contemplate X-Com: Apocalypse.

Maybe we could all stop talking about whether police checks are right, or whether this guy was an arsehole for doing what he did and just enjoy the fact that these cops were doing their job as rational human beings and we don't always need to be waging war against them.

I'm sorry, but didn't Obama just recently ignore the Constitution and congress, and go to the UN for permission to wage war in Libya? So the UN authorizes the terror bombing of a sovereign country that kills 1000+ civilians for "humanitarian" purposes and this is ok? The UN violates it's own charter and lets NATO install a regime of rebel terrorists as Libya's government and the politician that has a problem with the UN is a whack job?

You statist clowns are unreal.

one major reason why Gingrich could get worse is to wage war with Iran over a scheme to retrieve the downed predator drone, as cheney suggested.

Sure, Barack and I chat all the time about things.

I guess my working model for predicting what Obama does is based on two hypotheses:

1. Obama is really telling us what he wants to see happen in his speeches. He wants to do what he can to address the progressive agenda because he sees it as his moral duty.

2. Obama is, contrary to his speeches, an uber-pragmatist.

It's the second part that gets activist lefties mad at him. He's not interested in waging war on the oligarchs who run the government from their boardrooms, he wants to try to reach out and show them that the progressive agenda is good for both the 99% and the 1%.

Similarly, he's not interested in picking a fights he can't win, just to make an ideological point. He unfortunately doesn't think it's his job to try to shift the Overton window with his words and deeds.

I think people who imagine him to have been some sort of anti-progressive infiltrator or turncoat are just being melodramatic, and I really wish they'd stop issuing all these pronouncements about whether Obama is "with us" or "against us."

He's clearly "with us", he's just not a hardline ideologue who makes everything into some showdown of unwavering and conflicting principles.

He prefers to use the inflexibility of others as his argument to the public for supporting him -- he's being more reasonable, after all. It seems to work out okay for him in the polls, but I think he'd be a much more effective President if he made being firmly on the side of doing what's right a higher priority than being reasonable.

In reply to this comment by Truckchase:
Good talk NR. I'm not convinced.... there are cabinet appointments, etc. he's made that make me not trust him, but I am listening. Ob's speech a couple days ago has me wondering you've got a direct line to him or something.

I learn so much about what I believe when I talk with you. And here I thought I wanted to reform our election system so that corporations could not so easily subvert the democratic process. And here I thought I wanted to reform our economic system so that corporations were held responsible for their actions and not allowed to siphon and hoard societal wealth. Who knew that I was such a fan of the global corporate empire? And who knew that removing all barriers to corporate wealth and power would result in liberty? It sounds so unintuitive and absurd on it's face that I would not have believed it had I not learned it from someone in possession of such formidable mental prowess. Your advanced wisdom is truly indistinguishable from magic. Expecto Patronum Mano Invisablo!>> ^marbles:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
^The more we deregulate, privatize, cut taxes for the wealthy and cut services for the rest, the worse things get. Unregulated capitalism has become its own worse enemy. If we want to save capitalism from itself, we need regulate it, so that it can not be used as a weapon to subjugate the working poor, the middle class and labor. The economic reforms you call for are the same reforms called for by corporatists and plutomists like the Kochs, The Scaifes, Luntz, Norquist among other corporate elites. How is it that you can rail against crony capitalists and regurgitate their propaganda in the same sentence? In my opinion, it is be you are being manipulated to put for an agenda that appeals to your base nature by people who could not care less about you.
Unregulated capitalism has brought us:
-Vast Income Inequality
-High Unemployment
-Wage Cuts while productivity continues to rise
-Endless War for profit, oil
-Massive political corruption at every level of government
The 'free market' you dream of is a pie in the sky, no different from St. Peter and the Pearly Gates or 72 Virgins. "Free" Market ideology has been at work in American Government for over 30 years, and it has resulted in the creation of a global corporate state that is anything but free. Stop making excuses for failure. It's OK to admit you were wrong. Being wrong only becomes problem when your foolish pride hinders you from assessment. Pull your head out of the sand. @marbles

Good Job. I link an essay that specifically identifies the problems and you respond with hollow partisan talking points that ignore the problems. Nationalizing risk by the big banks and privatizing profits is not free market capitalism, no matter how much you claim it to be.
Free market ideology didn't create a global corporate state. Putting our economy in the hands of a select few did. The Federal Reserve is an above the law private banking cartel. And whether you believe in a free market or not is irrelevant. Believing that Wall Street politicians are going to solve the problems that they help create is the real delusion.
Banks have taking over the government. Your solution: Support Wall Street puppets and regurgitate their talking points.
Banks have taking over the regulatory agencies. Your solution: Pass more Wall Street written regulations.
Government uses our tax money to bailout corporations and wage war around the world. Your solution: Give them more money to funnel to the top and fund more death and destruction.
So who's really being manipulated here? The corporate shadow government is erecting bars around your glass house and you're busy parroting their talking points. Good job pal.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

^The more we deregulate, privatize, cut taxes for the wealthy and cut services for the rest, the worse things get. Unregulated capitalism has become its own worse enemy. If we want to save capitalism from itself, we need regulate it, so that it can not be used as a weapon to subjugate the working poor, the middle class and labor. The economic reforms you call for are the same reforms called for by corporatists and plutomists like the Kochs, The Scaifes, Luntz, Norquist among other corporate elites. How is it that you can rail against crony capitalists and regurgitate their propaganda in the same sentence? In my opinion, it is be you are being manipulated to put for an agenda that appeals to your base nature by people who could not care less about you.
Unregulated capitalism has brought us:
-Vast Income Inequality
-High Unemployment
-Wage Cuts while productivity continues to rise
-Endless War for profit, oil
-Massive political corruption at every level of government
The 'free market' you dream of is a pie in the sky, no different from St. Peter and the Pearly Gates or 72 Virgins. "Free" Market ideology has been at work in American Government for over 30 years, and it has resulted in the creation of a global corporate state that is anything but free. Stop making excuses for failure. It's OK to admit you were wrong. Being wrong only becomes problem when your foolish pride hinders you from assessment. Pull your head out of the sand. @marbles


Good Job. I link an essay that specifically identifies the problems and you respond with hollow partisan talking points that ignore the problems. Nationalizing risk by the big banks and privatizing profits is not free market capitalism, no matter how much you claim it to be.

Free market ideology didn't create a global corporate state. Putting our economy in the hands of a select few did. The Federal Reserve is an above the law private banking cartel. And whether you believe in a free market or not is irrelevant. Believing that Wall Street politicians are going to solve the problems that they help create is the real delusion.

Banks have taking over the government. Your solution: Support Wall Street puppets and regurgitate their talking points.

Banks have taking over the regulatory agencies. Your solution: Pass more Wall Street written regulations.

Government uses our tax money to bailout corporations and wage war around the world. Your solution: Give them more money to funnel to the top and fund more death and destruction.

So who's really being manipulated here? The corporate shadow government is erecting bars around your glass house and you're busy parroting their talking points. Good job pal.

Not sure how to untangle this case from all the anti-Obama rhetoric, considering how often the republicans keep saying Obama must be a one term president, no matter how that's achieved, or even if his performance as president actually benefits the country.

What happened to all the arguments against waging war on countries when you're actual enemy are groups of people hiding in whatever country they can, with instant global communication to aid them?

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^packo:
>> ^NetRunner:
There are two key questions that I think we should try to keep distinct here.
First, was this legal? Well, yes. This isn't a criminal matter, this is war. You don't put enemy forces on trial before you shoot them, you just shoot them. There are still limits on what you're allowed to do in war, but simply killing people is generally considered legal. Even targeting specific people providing aid and comfort to the enemy is not forbidden under the rules of war.
The other question is...should this be legal?
Well, I think the fact that declaring war on non-state organizations gives government latitude so wide that it becomes legal to engage in targeted killing of one of its own citizens is a pretty powerful reason to believe that it shouldn't be legal. An easy way to change the law to make it illegal would be to pass a resolution delcaring that AUMF against Al Qaeda null and void. Then this whole thing would revert to a matter of law enforcement, and not "national security".
The thing is, to prevent future Congresses from being able to declare war on non-state entities would require an amendment to the Constitution -- right now it just says Congress has the power to declare war, full stop. It doesn't say that they can't declare war on whatever entity they choose.
But I think people out there wanting to claim that it already is illegal simply haven't been paying attention.
politics

technically it isn't war because terrorists are not afforded the same rights as active participants in war... via the Geneva Convention for example
the burden of proof, and right to trial... are paramount in these times... when things are at their darkest, that's when upholding these value is MOST important (to point the finger at your opponent and say they aren't playing by the rules is quite CHILDISH, especially when you've went through such lengths to formalize the opinion in your citizens that the reason the enemy attacks is because they hate your freedoms/way of life
the problem with classifying people as terrorists and then assassinating them without any due process is that the "arguement" is made in the court of public opinion... usually by the media networks who are biased and lacking of journalistic integrity... if that's all you need to justify killing people, the arguement can QUICKLY/EASILY be made about ANYONE
the ONLY real, understandable reason I can contemplate would be putting these individuals to trial and making the proceedings available to the public would reveal many skeletons the US has in it's closet... but the validity and morality of this are another debate
as a religious text I don't believe in says (paraphrased)... how you treat the lowest of me, is how you treat all of me... this doesn't just equate to the poor/downtrodden... but to the most vile and unrepentant
holding your morality/standards to be so high compared to someone else means very little when you sacrifice them (irrespective of whether or not it is convenient or easy to do so)

You misunderstand.
It isn't war because America, or NATO or the west has declared war against the terrorists. That's not where this started. Your naive belief in that is what's tainting your understanding of this.
The Islamic Jihadists have openly declared and been waging war on us since long before the events of 9/11. The 'us' I refer to in this is not merely America, or the west, but anyone and everyone who is not themselves an Islamic fundamentalist as well.
You can fumble around all you want over reasons and 'proofs' that America is not really at war with the jihadists, but the reality is that THEY are at war with America. It is the very identity they have taken for themselves for pity sake. We've only been able to ignore it for so long because 90% of the casualties in this war have been middle eastern moderate muslims. Your ilk seem to want to claim sympathy for religious differences by allowing the status quo to continue were muslims get to continue to bear the full brunt of the jihadist war against us both. It's twisted and I detest it.


I never mentioned anything to the beginnings of hostilities.. you are making assumptions there. And with the government (multiple administrations) labelling these actions as the "WAR ON TERROR", by definition, they declared it war (even if they choose to not adhere to the rules of war)... the fact that they then went through the trouble (primarily for interrogation purposes) declared terrorists not covered by the Geneva Convention, and thus having no rights as war participants is what I was pointing out.

It's nitpicking, and childish to resort to a "who declared war on who" because if you want to get down to it, you are plainly ignoring western powers foreign diplomacy/intervention over the last 50+ years. There is many reasons why these fundamentalists are hostile... if "your way of life" actually makes the list, its not your love of fast food, miniskirts and women's rights... its how your way of life is subsidized through intervention in terms of their leadership, whether it be through installation of puppet/friendly regimes (no matter how oppressive/brutal) or through regime change or through economic hardships placed on nations who's leaders don't fall in line... let alone other issues such as Israel.

It's this police state mentality which garnered the West such a lovely reputation in the middle east... and as much as you'd love to point out it's for stability in the region, or so democracy can make inroads, or whatever other propaganda you happen to believe in... the truth is it has ALWAYS been about oil and oil money... not even in the interests of the western power's citizenry as much as for the oil lobbies.

Democracy and freedom are only ok as long as they fall in line with Western (particularly American) interest. If they were being honest it would be outfront there, plain as day the MAJOR issue there is ENERGY (and the money to be made from it).

So as much as you believe it is WESTERN nation's responsibility to solve problems (forcebly and usually without consent of those involved) in this manner, its EXACTLY this type of thinking that got us here. And if you honestly think we've only started meddling in the Middle East, you are naive (perhaps blind is a better word).

Extremism will only be defeated by the environment in the Middle East being such that it can't take root and grow. This will never be accomplished by force or political buggery.

You should stop playing cowboy's and indians, come back to reality, and start detesting the real issues at play here... not FOX TV political rhetoric.

All of the above doesn't even touch on the original point I made that if you are a US Citizen, you should be viewing the assasination of a US Citizen, at your government's sayso, without their providing ample reason (or any really) as to why he could not have been captured, with some foreboding... let alone the US government's denile of his family trying to get him legal representation etc...

If you want to hold yourself up as a shining beacon for the world to follow... when the going gets tough, better not falter or backup and do a complete 180, or all the preening and puffing you did early... it shines in a different light

What do they call that when 1 person (or entity) gets to decide what the laws are, at any given point in time, irrelevant as to what they may have been just a few moments earlier?

>> ^packo:

>> ^NetRunner:
There are two key questions that I think we should try to keep distinct here.
First, was this legal? Well, yes. This isn't a criminal matter, this is war. You don't put enemy forces on trial before you shoot them, you just shoot them. There are still limits on what you're allowed to do in war, but simply killing people is generally considered legal. Even targeting specific people providing aid and comfort to the enemy is not forbidden under the rules of war.
The other question is...should this be legal?
Well, I think the fact that declaring war on non-state organizations gives government latitude so wide that it becomes legal to engage in targeted killing of one of its own citizens is a pretty powerful reason to believe that it shouldn't be legal. An easy way to change the law to make it illegal would be to pass a resolution delcaring that AUMF against Al Qaeda null and void. Then this whole thing would revert to a matter of law enforcement, and not "national security".
The thing is, to prevent future Congresses from being able to declare war on non-state entities would require an amendment to the Constitution -- right now it just says Congress has the power to declare war, full stop. It doesn't say that they can't declare war on whatever entity they choose.
But I think people out there wanting to claim that it already is illegal simply haven't been paying attention.
politics

technically it isn't war because terrorists are not afforded the same rights as active participants in war... via the Geneva Convention for example
the burden of proof, and right to trial... are paramount in these times... when things are at their darkest, that's when upholding these value is MOST important (to point the finger at your opponent and say they aren't playing by the rules is quite CHILDISH, especially when you've went through such lengths to formalize the opinion in your citizens that the reason the enemy attacks is because they hate your freedoms/way of life
the problem with classifying people as terrorists and then assassinating them without any due process is that the "arguement" is made in the court of public opinion... usually by the media networks who are biased and lacking of journalistic integrity... if that's all you need to justify killing people, the arguement can QUICKLY/EASILY be made about ANYONE
the ONLY real, understandable reason I can contemplate would be putting these individuals to trial and making the proceedings available to the public would reveal many skeletons the US has in it's closet... but the validity and morality of this are another debate
as a religious text I don't believe in says (paraphrased)... how you treat the lowest of me, is how you treat all of me... this doesn't just equate to the poor/downtrodden... but to the most vile and unrepentant
holding your morality/standards to be so high compared to someone else means very little when you sacrifice them (irrespective of whether or not it is convenient or easy to do so)


You misunderstand.

It isn't war because America, or NATO or the west has declared war against the terrorists. That's not where this started. Your naive belief in that is what's tainting your understanding of this.

The Islamic Jihadists have openly declared and been waging war on us since long before the events of 9/11. The 'us' I refer to in this is not merely America, or the west, but anyone and everyone who is not themselves an Islamic fundamentalist as well.

You can fumble around all you want over reasons and 'proofs' that America is not really at war with the jihadists, but the reality is that THEY are at war with America. It is the very identity they have taken for themselves for pity sake. We've only been able to ignore it for so long because 90% of the casualties in this war have been middle eastern moderate muslims. Your ilk seem to want to claim sympathy for religious differences by allowing the status quo to continue were muslims get to continue to bear the full brunt of the jihadist war against us both. It's twisted and I detest it.

@marbles:

First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is. When two or more people agree to commit a crime, fraud, or some other wrongful act, it is a conspiracy. Not in theory, but in reality. Grow up, it happens.

Thanks for the vocabulary lesson, but I used the term conspiracy theory, not conspiracy. Conspiracy theory has a separate and more strongly suggestive definition (this one from Merriam-Webster): "a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators."

I openly acknowledge that the government of the United States has and does commit conspiracies, as you define the word. (You mentioned Operation Northwoods in a separate comment; a post on Letters of Note from few weeks ago may be of interest to you, too, if you haven't already seen it: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/08/possible-actions-to-provoke-harrass-or.html.) The actions described therein, and other such actions, I would aptly describe as conspiracies (were they to be enacted).

Definitions aside, my problem with posts like that of @blastido_factor is that most of their so-called conspiracies are easily debunked. They're old chestnuts. A few minutes' worth of Google searches can disprove them.

It may be helpful to distinguish between what I see as the two main "conspiracies" surrounding 9/11: (1) that 9/11 was, to put it briefly, an "inside job," and (2) that certain members of the government of the United States conspired to use the events of 9/11 as justification for a series of military actions (many of which are ongoing) against people and countries that were, in fact, uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks. The first I find no credible evidence for. The second I consider a more tenable position.


The Pentagon is the most heavily guarded building in the world and somehow over an hour after 4 planes go off course/stop responding to FAA and start slamming into buildings, that somehow one is going to be able to fly into a no-fly zone unimpeded and crash into the Pentagon without help on the inside?

Once again, much of what you mention can be attributed to poor communication between the FAA and the government agencies responsible for responding to the attacks (and, for that matter, between the various levels of government agencies). And again, this is one of the major criticism levied by the various 9/11 investigations. From page forty-five of the 9/11 Commission: "The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are complex, but they play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet."

Furthermore, it seems to me that one of the biggest mistakes made by a lot of the conspiracy theorists who fall into the first cateory (see above) is that they judge the events of 9/11 in the context of post-9/11 security. National security, on every level, was entirely different before 9/11 than it is now. That's not to say that the possibility of this kind of attack wasn't considered within the intelligence community pre-9/11. We know that it was (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance-knowledge_debate). But was anyone adequately prepared to handle it? No.

In any event, when's the last time you looked at a map of Washington, DC? If you look at a satellite photo, you'll notice that the runways at Ronald Reagan airport are, literally, only a few thousand feet away from the Pentagon. Was a no-fly zone in place over Washington by 9:37 AM? I honestly don't know. But it's misleading to suggest that planes don't routinely fly near the Pentagon. They do.


And how did two giant titanium engines from a 757 disintegrate after hitting the Pentagon's wall? They were able to find the remains of all but one of the 64 passengers on board the flight, but only small amounts of debris from the plane?

In truth, I don't know enough about ballistics to speak for how well a titanium engine would withstand an impact with a reinforced wall at hundreds of miles an hour. But, if you're suggesting that a plane never hit the building, here's a short list of what you're wilfully ignoring: the clipped light poles, the damage to the power generator, the smoke trails, the hundreds of witnesses, the deaths of everyone aboard Flight 77, and the DNA evidence confirming the identities of 184 of the Pentagon's 189 fatalities (64 of which were the passengers on Flight 77).

Regarding the debris: It's misleading to claim that only small amounts of debris were recovered. This from Allyn E. Kilsheimer, the first structural engineer on the scene: "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box ... I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts." In addition, there are countless photos of plane wreckage both inside and outside the building (http://www.google.com/search?q=pentagon+wreckage).


Black boxes are almost always located after crashes, even if not in useable condition. Each jet had 2 recorders and none were found?

You help prove my point with this one: "almost always located." Again, I'm no expert on the recovery of black boxes, but here's a point to consider: if the black boxes were within the rubble at the WTC site, you're looking to find four containers that (undamaged, nonetheless) are roughly the size of two-liter soda bottles amidst the rubble of two buildings, each with a footprint of 43,000 square feet and a height of 1,300 feet (for a combined volume of 111,000,000 cubic feet, or 3,100,000,000 liters). (You might want to check my math. And granted, that material was enormously compacted when the towers collapsed. But still, it's a large number. And it doesn't include any of the space below ground level or any of the other buildings that collapsed.) Add to that the fact that they could have been damaged beyond recognition by the collapse of the buildings and the subsequent fires. To me, that hardly seems worthy of conspiracy.


Instead we invaded Afghanistan and started waging war against the same people we trained and armed in the 80s, the same people Reagan called freedom fighters. Now we call them terrorists for defending their own sovereignty.

Here, finally, we find some common ground. I couldn't agree more. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more ardent critic of America's foreign policy.

>> ^marbles:
First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is ...

>> ^aurens:

There's an old Jewish proverb that runs something like this:

"A fool can throw a stone into the water that ten wise men cannot recover."

Your stones, fortunately, aren't irrecoverable. I'll offer some counterpoints to a few of your claims, and I'll leave it up to you to fish for the truth about the others.
Kinda like a jet plane's black boxes aren't irrecoverable... no wait, they were. FBI: "None of the recording devices from the two planes that hit the World Trade Center were ever recovered." But this defies reason. Black boxes are almost always located after crashes, even if not in useable condition. Each jet had 2 recorders and none were found? Anonymous source at the NTSB: "Off the record, we had the boxes,"
Conspiracy? I think so.

>> ^aurens:

I don't know what you mean by "produced,"He means if you have evidence that implicates a suspect of a crime, then you indict that person. You then find and arrest that person, charge them, and follow the rule of law. The FBI admits they have no "hard evidence" that OBL was behind the 9/11 attacks, yet he was immediately blamed for it. The Taliban offered extradition if we provided evidence and we refused. Instead we invaded Afghanistan and started waging war against the same people we trained and armed in the 80s, the same people Reagan called freedom fighters. Now we call them terrorists for defending their own sovereignty.
Conspiracy? I think so.

>> ^aurens:

The North Tower was struck at 8:46 AM, the South Tower at 9:03 AM, and the Pentagon at 9:37 AM. By my math, the Pentagon was hit fifty-one minutes after the first plane hit the WTC and thirty-four minutes after the second plane hit. The 9/11 Commission estimated that the hijacking of Flight 11, the first plane to hit the WTC, began at 8:14 AM. It's misleading, in this context...
You're talking about the Department of Defense. The Pentagon is the most heavily guarded building in the world and somehow over an hour after 4 planes go off course/stop responding to FAA and start slamming into buildings, that somehow one is going to be able to fly into a no-fly zone unimpeded and crash into the Pentagon without help on the inside? Never mind the approach the pilot took makes no sense. If your target is the Pentagon, you can cause the most damage and most causalities by doing a nose down crash in the top. Instead the amateur pilot does a high precision 360 degree turn, descending 7,000 feet in the last 2 minutes to impact the Pentagon in the front, the only spot with reinforced steel. He spends an extra 2 and half minutes in the air exposed and ends up hitting the exact spot that has been reinforced and also where the bookkeeping and accountants were. Day before 9/11: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announces that the Pentagon has lost track of $2.3 TRILLION DOLLARS of military spending.
Conspiracy? I think so. (Bonus: WeAreChange confronts Rumsfeld)
>> ^aurens:

Three videos, not one, were released.
And at least 84 remain classified. Why?
And how did two giant titanium engines from a 757 disintegrate after hitting the Pentagon's wall? They were able to find the remains of all but one of the 64 passengers on board the flight, but only small amounts of debris from the plane?
Conspiracy? I think so.

>> ^aurens:

I don't fault you, or others like you, for wanting to "think twice" about the explanations given for certain of the events surrounding 9/11. I do fault you, though, for spending so little time on your second round of thinking, and for so carelessly tossing conspiracy theories to the wind.
First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is. When two or more people agree to commit a crime, fraud, or some other wrongful act, it is a conspiracy. Not in theory, but in reality. Grow up, it happens. If you spent anytime at all "thinking" or looking at the evidence, then you would recognize government lies for what they are. You don't have to know the truth to recognize a lie.

Considering the universe is a whole lotta nothin, I'd probably pay a whole lotta nothin. Everything we've seen and explored is a depressing, barren wasteland of nothingness. How about we go find a suitable planet to live on and wipe out all the dinosaurs on it so we can make a new home and build stargates between the two worlds so we can send nukes back and forth and wage war trying to control sections of that new world and destroy it just like we have this one?

I mean come on, people! Let's push up!

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

@Lawdeedaw - Individual members of the legislative branch don't have anything approximating the power of a president. It is true that idealists such as Kucinich, Wellstone, Weiner, Paul and Obama have managed to find a place in the legislative branch, but never have these idealists held the numbers to ever be a credible threat against corporate domination. (What's even more disheartening is the current epidemic of moronic idealists like Santorum, Bachman and Palin, who have been empowered by a decade of Republican campaigning that targets the lowest common denominator.)
Once the idealists enter the Presidential ring, all bets are off. McCain is a great example of a highly principled republican who was basically forced to renounce everything he ever believed in (most prominently campaign finance reform) to get a shot at the golden ring. Obama also broke his promise to only except public funding because he realized it would put him at a severe disadvantage. As long as our current system is in place, no presidential candidate (not even Saint Paul) has a chance of subverting it. This is not an insult against this man, whom I respect despite the fact that he holds some extremely naive economic views. This is just a frank assessment of how fucked up our campaign finance system is.
If you don't think Ron Paul plays the game too, then ask him about Texas pork barrel spending. There is a video on the sift where he freely admits to playing the pork barrel game. I don't blame him for it - you do what you have to do in a fucked up system.
I'm not here to bash Paul. My point is that our current system will not allow him to be what you want him to be, just as the system won't allow Obama to be the President I want him to be.
Speaking as someone who has already suffered through hopey-changey delusions, I'm just trying to save you some grief. Been there. Done that. I guess maybe you have to experience it first hand before you can truly accept this cruel reality on your own terms.
Until this system works for the voters rather than the funders, we are all destined for disappointment. I'd love to see a conservative-liberal truce until we can throw these money changers out of the temple.


You think Keynesian economics got us out of the Great Depression yet Paul's the naive one? Paul's been saying to get rid of the money changers his whole political career. If we had actually been following the Austrian school of economics, none of this would've happen. You can't give a select group of people total control of your economy and then not expect them to take advantage of it.

And Paul always voted against pork spending. That's hardly playing the game.

Obama hasn't been neutered, he was a fraud from the beginning. He's not bombing civilians and waging wars to secure campaign donations. He's been a puppet and PR salesman for Wall Street and their war machine from day one. He's not prosecuting white-collar fraud, he's prosecuting government whistleblowers. He's arming drug cartels in Mexico. He's using flying robots to rain down hellfire missiles in sovereign countries on the other side of the world. He's a neocolonialist. Not because someone is twisting his arm, but because that's what he signed up to be.
Obama can't be the President you want him to be because he's not that guy and never was.

>> ^chilaxe:

The video doesn't really explain itself, and neither does the videosift description, so this is my understanding of the video's argument:
1. Muslims use this peaceful quote as a defense of the Koran.
2. The Koran does indeed contain that quote, ch. 5 verse 32, but the next verse, 33, doesn't extend that niceness to people 'who wage war against Allah and make mischief in the land,' calling for their execution.
That seems like a fair point, and Muslims should definitely be forthcoming about it instead of getting defensive, but verse 33 doesn't actually seem to me to be bad at all if you interpret it the right way.

(The full verses can be read in multiple translations at the link provided in the videosift description: http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement
/resources/texts/muslim/quran/005.qmt.html )


No, verse 33 is terrible in and of itself. What is "spreading corruption"? Being of the wrong religion (or, worse, of none), for example? Being gay, or an "adulteress" woman? The list goes on.