AstroProdigy

coming from the guy who said

I don't know he came in for a bit to spread his Christian greaterthanthouness the way he does in his zone. Everyone has a tendency to lump issues together to make more sense out of it/have someone to follow. I'd say most people here have some set of predetermined beliefs (not necessarily religious ones) that they can't escape from. It might be everyone actually.

You're wrong. In fact Palin read all of them. It's a vast variety of sources where she gets the news. Alaska isn't a foreign country where she can't keep in touch with what the rest of Washington DC may be thinking and doing because Alaska is like a microcosm of America. The Proof

There isn't an overwhelming liberal bias on this forum; it's just that Aileron, Picard, and Brain prove the opposite of what they believe every time they speak. Also, from FactCheck.org that you linked us to if you scroll a little more than halfway down Palin clearly referred to McClellan as the general in Afghanistan Anyway I think this debate should be turned into a 2pac sig debate in which he posts similar alternatives to his current sig and we debate which one is best.

Umm no. A budget shortage is debt. If you can't pay for something it goes into your debt. Fancy accounting practices under Bush (and unfortunately Clinton too) don't change that.

NBV as a fence sitter is like McCain as a maverick.

Biden would need to completely humiliate her to win and even that might cause a backlash among some of the psycho McCain voting feminists as "sexism" the way Obama was accused of "sexism" for making Hillary look dumb. There's no beating her there's only losing or getting a tie. Obama can humiliate McCain though as McCain's illusion of being a maverick has disappeared to the gullible media after so much abuse of it.

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We also took on the 6 trillion dollars of debt from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae but won't report it.

Don't criticize her or else you're a sexist.

If I don't know what the Vice President does then I shouldn't be the Vice President. We've got infrastructure in shambles on all levels and in all ways and a useless VP doesn't help. If anyone thinks Obama's inexperienced then think how inexperienced Palin is and with a very real possibility of taking over from 72 year old McCain. She was mayor of a town of 6000 followed by the luck of getting to run a sparsely populated, oil rich state with automatic budget surpluses. By the way has anyone heard that her Downs baby might be her daughters illegitimate child?

If you call yourself a maverick enough times eventually people will believe you. That's especially easy when 95% of your party votes identically on every single issue. Republicans should just cut the !@#$%^&* and push for a parliamentary democracy because that's how they act. If Democrats in Congress voted down the line like drones the way Republicans due then Republicans would be completely screwed.

New Orleans is shaped like a bowl. The poorest areas are of course in the middle of the bowl and are prone to flooding. Frankly there really shouldn't be settlements in the middle and that part would be better off turned into a little forest. You'd also need to turn land around New Orleans back to the wetlands to be able to prevent sop up more of the flooding. Katrina showed the disastrous response on all levels of government, but Gustav and future hurricanes will show that New Orleans as it exists today is both unsustainable and moronic.

Oh snap say it again. faster I came.

Well considering Democrats in general vote with Bush a lot of the time I think we can safely say that the only representation America has is far right and center right. I'd choose center right over far right any day although we're still basically screwed any way. Britain has the same problem except instead of their far right in power their center right has a monopoly on power. It's why two party representation is naturally doomed to screw you over. The only way I'd not vote for Obama, though, would be if I voted for Nader anyway. I choose center right American imperialism over bat!@#$%^&* psycopath evil empire any day. As for Hoch's "McCain is a maverick" crap that was a short period of time between McCain's rejection in 2000 and his renewed search for the white house later on. He's done a full 180 on all those issues you've stated. McCain has gone right and then right again. It's amazing how little his "maverick" bull!@#$%^&* matters considering he has proven himself to be a reliable far right neo con bat!@#$%^&* crazy hawk on foreign policy, will be unable to reverse the drumbeat of rhetoric on economic issues that he's used without committing political suicide, and no social or cons!@#$%^&*utional "moderation" matters if you are going to push through extreme right supreme court justices. I'm sure you'd work for the Democrats if they paid you enough money. I bet you'd have no problems giving the low blows on Republicans then since you have some experience there. McCain has a gold mine of personal attacks that can be leveled against him if Democrats fought like Republicans and the media would end its !@#$%^&* love affair with McCain. Here's a hint he abandoned his crippled wife and kids for a rich younger woman. Now go do the dirty work.

McCain is no Bush. His voting record shows he's 5% different hooray!

Is there any evidence of this !@#$%^&*ertion that Russia invaded Georgia because of the Kosovo issue? Ace if the US seceded from Britain today then legally Britain would have every right to invade and the US would have no rights to form a new country unless Britain agreed to it. That's just how international law is today. It's obsessed with protecting the sanc!@#$%^&*y of borders even if that requires a genocide and genocidal actions have been taken with the consent or lack of opposition from the west many times in the past several decades. I can recall the example of Biafra which paid for its fight for independence with the blood of a million dead and got nothing anyway. Even Sudan's many genocidal acts were only possible because of western obsession for the sanc!@#$%^&*y of borders that couldn't allow for groups that needed to be independent from being so. Russia didn't invade Georgia because of Kosovo. They did it because Georgia started it, but part of the justification was related to Kosovo. The Serbian attack on Albanian rebels in Kosovo has so many parallels to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia as does Russia and the United State's response, respectively. That's the perfect excuse to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia's right to self determination as more important than the sanc!@#$%^&*y of international borders and the sovereignty of pre defined states. It looks like Russia responded to Georgian ethnic cleansing with its own ethnic cleansing. Georgia's invasion made reintegrating South Ossetia even more unlikely.

Legally so did Serbia in Kosovo in 1999 and our actions were the illegal ones.

I find trying to legalize all drugs a problem. Some drugs can't be "limited" by regulation as they're extremely addictive. Just look at cigarettes. It's legal and extremely addictive. The government only taxes it for free money and really doesn't care about what it actually does. If anything I'd say legalize marijuana as it doesn't cause withdrawal and can be used casually like alcohol. As for tobacco, we should at least prevent companies from putting the slew of other chemicals they put in cigarettes to make them less addictive/safer. Other drugs that don't cause withdrawal should be or stay legalized (salvia for example) as long as they aren't particularly dangerous and should just be regulated. The really bad drugs like cocaine should still be banned because, frankly, there's no considerably good way to regulate it that's worth making them easier to get. We should be lenient on the users and provide them help while focusing on sellers and traffickers instead. Following these policies alone would be drastically cheaper, reduce overcrowding in jail sells considerably, and help our overwhelmed judicial and law enforcement systems. Don't forget there's also the problem of where drugs are made. Afghanistan has a lions share of production of poppy plants even though its seemingly "under our control". We also fund paramilitaries in Colombia that are heavily involved in the drug trade.

All of this won't change unless you 1) Put a heavy limit on how big media outlets can be and 2) Make it illegal for congressmen and senators to work for corporations and lobbying firms after their terms. Instead you can put them on the government payroll which is a small price to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been thrown away because they're looking to their years after public service. If this discourages lots of people from looking for public office then who cares? There are lots and lots of people eager to take their place.

2034 is probably the most extreme date that can be made here. It probably !@#$%^&*umes continuing high levels of immigration, continually big gaps in birth rates, and probably includes all people of Hispanic origin as non white. Any way who cares? African Americans are only part black and part white on average and the same goes for Mexican Americans. If this is a race war white people won a long time ago and otherwise Mexicans integrate just as fast if not faster than the former large scale immigration groups (Italians, Irish, Germans, etc). It's really a non problem that people panic about because they like to ignore history and it makes life more interesting.

Something Hoch forgot to mention in his sovereignty loving argument is that the west doesn't care about national sovereignty if it suits them. Serbia quelled an Albanian revolt and then killed more people than was appropriate and caused a refugee crisis in exactly the same way as Georgia. The land was Serbian land under Serbian sovereignty and the West had no right in terms of international law to invade. It was inappropriate in exactly the same way as Russia invading South Ossetia. The west also didn't limit its actions to Kosovo as they bombed Serbian areas outside Kosovo mainly in the same way as Russia (infrastructure and military targets). Then we supported Kosovo's declaration of independence despite the clear fact that under international law that declaration is clearly illegal in the same way as South Ossetia will after Georgia's invasion. We can support the abstract concept of national sovereignty with borders that are usually arbitrary in ethnic terms or we can support self determination, but to only support those that are allied with the west against those who aren't will only encourage further conflict. No one likes hypocrites and when you're a hypocrite you have no moral right to criticize someone else for doing likewise. Is Russia being hypocritical? Absolutely. Is the US and just about every other country in the West being hypocritical? Absolutely. Even the countries like Spain and Romania that support the independence of neither only do it because the precedent threatens their own countries. There are no good sides to this and the victims are the people of South Ossetia who have to suffer from western hypocrisy. Does South Ossetia have the right to declare independence from Georgia and join Russia on moral grounds? Yes it does and Kosovo Albanians have the moral right to secede from Serbia as do Serbians in Kosovo from an Albanian dominated Kosovo. In terms of international law none of them do and then countries support one or the other based on their own selfish interests. If you can show me a country that supports self determination regardless of their own interests or supports international law regardless of their own interests then that's the country you should pay most attention to with regard to these issues. Again its the hypocrisy that's a threat to the world most of all.

Russia versus Georgia worries European countries from an economic standpoint, but there is a much bigger issue here. The split in support for Kosovo independence shows the countries that are really in trouble if this "ethnic determinism" becomes the norm. A rush of nationalist wars of independence would not only threaten to cause major genocide (Africa is one horribly messed up colonially drawn up continent), but also threatens the heart of Europe. That's why no one wants to let Serbs in Kosovo and the same thing for a small minority of Albanians not in Kosovo, but adjacent to it in Serbia not join Kosovo. It's perfectly logical they be allowed to join their respective states since the argument that Albanians can't live in a Serbian state applies to contiguous Albanian dominated areas and likewise Serbs should not be forced to live in an Albanian state. However, the problem is Kosovo had pre defined non ethnically contiguous borders as did every other Yugoslav Republic other than Slovenia. Instead of letting groups join with their ethnic brethren we supported the pre defined Yugoslav borders and let the ethnic cleansing ensue for the sake of not disturbing the order of things. As for Georgia versus Russia, the Georgian president called for a ceasefire, then launched a surprise attack to demolish the South Ossetian capital and make sure Ossetians were too afraid to return to South Ossetia and then started a massive propaganda campaign amongst westerners because he knew Russia wouldn't let it stand. It did work as Russia has now been pained as the aggressor by western media even though Georgia started it and now are pressuring Russia to give up any and all gains while Georgia has the gain of scaring off thousands of South Ossetians who will probably never return home and thus the slow ethnic cleansing game continues. The only way for Georgia not to win this one is for Russia to completely take over South Ossetia and Abkhazia which would hurt its standing in the west that never trusted it anyway. If you look at a map of the Caucasus with all its ethnic groups drawn you'll see we really should not be messing with that a big, mountainous mess considering we can't even handle a much smaller diversity in its flat area.

It seems Georgia is victorious even in defeat. By being particularly brutal and purposefully targeting civilians they are trying to depopulation South Ossetia of Ossetians in the resulting refugee crisis. Only a massive retaliation would undo this and they're counting on Russia to show restraint using western media puppets to ignore what they do and call any Russian action "genocide". Luckily Russia is no fool so they forbid western journalists from going to South Ossetia to twist events there and are waiting for Georgia to renounce any future use of force before they stop.

I doubt groups of 10-20 would have much effect in a full scale war, especially if civilian Israelis were fighting back as they would be. I just looked up wikipedia like you suggested Long Range Battle Field Rockets * FROG-7 (18) * SS-21 (18) * SCUD-B/C/D (26) Hardly the armada you tried to portray. Even this !@#$%^&*umes they can m!@#$%^&* produce chemical weapons and put them on the missiles. Well if you don't want to believe the casualty rates that's your choice. I got my numbers from wikipedia by the way. Leaders don't want to risk their careers on opposing saving Israel in the US. The uproar on it would automatically end that politician's career. Egypt's air force had an effect on a surprise attack where Israel didn't have the opportunity to immediately bomb their air bases as they would otherwise. If Egypt could create a complete surprise attack on an inconvenient time for Israel then it would hold its own on its own territory, but otherwise I doubt it would defeat Israel. Israel doesn't want to be in a state of war with Egypt for decades. Some day the military capabilities of the countries outside Israel will be much better than that of Israel based on sheer size of population difference. Rather than wait for that time refusing to negotiate Israel got peace with the country that's by far the largest Arab country in the world and broke the conventional resistance against Israel for decades. This is still a benefit in the present day. Sounds like a very smart move by intelligent leadership and not a desperation move to me.