Aileron

SeVeR, I'd have to say that the treatment of Obama as 'clueless' right now is very similar to the treatment of President Bush when he was running in 2000 against Bill Clinton's heir. Veg, that's pretty violent. You should be ashamed of yourself. I for one don't want to see Hillary Clinton roasted on an open flame. The resulting smoke would poison the air and cause sickness and death to any nearby, kind of like how stabbing the king of the Nine Riders poisoned Eowyn and Merry in The Lord of the Rings. Then Al Gore would want to make another movie based upon the environmental impact of the event. It would be much safer if there was a black hole nearby which would conveniently dispose of any ill side effects. Too bad the nearest one is lightyears away.

Complaining about muggings are though. Back to SeVeR's point, if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, its a duck. Hamas and Hezbollah are fundamentalist, fanatic, irrational, violent, and carry out attacks on a civilian population which happens to be primarily Jewish. Those adjectives can all be applied to any historical racist organization you can name. Obviously neither of us have the telepathic powers necessary to read their minds and prove the argument one way or another. We can only make inferences based upon observed behavior and previous examples. Based upon those observations, organizations like Hamas and particularly Hezbollah* fit the pattern of a racist movement such as the KKK. *Hamas has the excuse of being Palestinian. Hezbollah does not. They are based in Lebanon, and thus are meddling in the affairs of a distinctly foreign conflict that does not directly concern their country, adding the 'imperialistic' adjective as well.

Hey, all I'm saying is that if we have a fair media, it would have to state facts as-is. Obama's list of previous jobs is factual. 'Inexperienced' is relative, and 'too inexperienced' is an opinion. However, the media would have to post Obama's resume factually, and most viewers would come to the 'inexperienced' conclusion because relative to most presidents he is.

Okay, how would suicide bombing a movie theater prevent imperialistic expansion?

It's actually quite worse than that actually. Islamic culture can't change to fit with a western culture because it would collapse if it bent that far. It would be like trying to jury-rig feudalism into being compatible to a modern three body federal republic. To be honest it can barely hold up to the pressures of modern science and technology. There was no Islamic equivalent to Thomas Aquinas. They don't have a concept of separation between church and state. Additionally, their religion has had no historical impetus to mature the same way most others have, and thus it hasn't taken steps to root out supers!@#$%^&*ion and promote charity. The result is a group of secular/religious/tribal leaders who have absolute authority over small groups of people by hereditary rights. Over history, larger leaders were simply tribal leaders who won the support of the other tribes, tribes that could on a whim change their allegiance. Thus, their history is full of 'empires' that could grow and fall as the result of a single battle, because many of the supporting tribes would change allegiance upon news of their leader's defeat. (These were considered religious leaders, so losing a battle was considered a sign of loss of Allah's support.) Their idea of democracy is an extension to how they have operated historically. The members of the tribes vote for whoever their leader tells them to, and whoever has the most tribal support wins. To be sure, the very concept of rigid nations with fixed borders is a Western one. Islamic empires grew as far as the caliph's supporters, and the edges of his empire would wax and wane with every daily event. This caused a great slowdown in their advancement. The foundation of European advancement started when kings started taking power away from the nobles. This was only possible because the nobles were bound to loyalty to their king, and thus a noble didn't have the authority to order his subordinates to oppose his king. In the first case the monarchs caused rapid advancement in the socioeconomic and scientific capacity of their nation directly, and after that they caused the possibility of national scale revolutionaries to eventually take over. However, with the more fluid Islamic feudalistic structure, the monarchs could not consolidate power without alienating their base of support. Without nationally consolidated power, all disagreements could only result in local tribal revolutions which could only replace one tribal leader with another. Thus any movement to advance socioeconomic status could not reach the critical m!@#$%^&* necessary to employ any changes on a large enough scale to make those changes permanent. If I had to do a root cause analysis on the problem, I'd say it was caused by Asia and the desert. There was simply too much inhabitable land to make the strict land ownership and feudal loyalty which occurred in Europe and east Asia possible. With modern technology and larger population levels, controlling the desert is now possible, leading to a slow collapse of the traditional Islamic hierarchy.

Wait, 'Obama is inexperienced' is propaganda? He is a Freshman Senator from Arkansas, and has never held an executive office. It's a fair criticism for his opponents to make. A perfectly unbiased media would be bound to stick to the facts, and in this case the list of Obama's previously held offices is purely factual.

This forum isn't a country.

Israel is in the Middle East and has a larger Jewish population than Iran. If you notice the details of the statements, the accusation isn't that Iran itself is racist; it is that they are promoting racism by their policies. I'd still bet the idiot suicide-bomber blowing himself up on Israel's streets is anti-semitic, but I'd say the big-shots in Iran are more worldly and a more fair label for them would be 'anti-democratic'. By their anti-Israel policies, Iran is funding Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two organizations are racist, as they have repeatedly carried out attacks which would only serve the purpose of killing as many Jews as possible. Though not necessarily anti-semitic themselves, Iran is promoting racism because they are funding racist organizations. As a conservative, I'd say that at most this is a taste of what Republicans have been putting up with for the past 20 years. Republican politicians are routinely being branded as "racists" and "fascists" for every strong conservative stance they make. Take a strong stance against Affirmative Action of Inner City Crime and you hate black people. Take a strong stance against Abortion and you are a sexist. It seems to be far easier to brand somebody as a racist than it is to actually beat their arguments in a logical manner. Additionally Republicans are not given kudos for advancing racial rights either. For instance, President Bush appointed the first female African American Secretary of State. Because he is Republican, that isn't considered a 'big deal', but if it were a Democrat doing that, they would milk that for all it is worth. To be sure I am not surprised to see these statements come out of Washington. It seems to be a popular label for the muckrakers to sling on to each other nowadays.

Absolutely not. The exact problem is that neither of us has the time to do PHP development any more. Polix has a zone to run, and I have life that needs sorted out. We can't support any more half-baked buggy mods nor "cores which can be built upon". I did suggest that Polix put IBProBattle in and leave it. It might be simple, but it is stable.

Actually that at!@#$%^&*ude is the cause of the initial failure in Iraq. If it was just locals defending their country, we would have won by now. In actuality the enemy is a collection of all sorts of Muslim countries. According to them, they are defending their 'Muslim brothers'. In reality they are invading Iraq to use it as a battleground. As for funding, the terrorists aren't exactly poor either. They are getting lots of funding from all sorts of places such as organized crime, civilian organizations such as the Muslim brotherhood, and radical fundamentalist regimes. It is impossible to determine how much funding they are getting, but its probably comparable. Also, their casualties have been high. This isn't really a guerrilla war. The reason we haven't won so far is that the Al Queda fanatics have a large population base and no problem sending more and more people into the meat grinder. Additionally, our forces have to problem of needing to secure entire civilian populations rather than securing a base.

I meant "need" in the practical sense, not a literal need. They could hand the Colombians their encryption codes and send it by email if they wanted to, but in reality they almost certainly don't do things that way. The point is that the situation almost certainly isn't set up where Colombians are getting all the information off of US satellites automatically no questions asked. A US analyst would get the photos, and his superiors would have a meeting where they would decide if they wanted to give the photos to the Colombians and what they wanted the Colombians to do about it. Whatever the process is, people are involved with it, and it is human nature to meddle. If the CIA had photos of this camp and wanted the Colombians to take it out, they would want the operation done their way. They would also send a couple of agents with the photos to observe and make sure it was done their way. They wouldn't need to literally, but it is a practical need. (Kind of like how people "need" a driver's license. I mean, one could carve out an existence if they quit their job and lived off the land stealing food from their neighbors and such, but such a lifestyle is infeasible and thus driving becomes a practical need.) Overall, nothing can get done without some level of human involvement, and where there is human involvement there is human influence.

The point with that is for all the aid the US is sending out and all the support we are giving the UN, our reward seems to be people who take it for granted. I mean, without the US and Japan, the UN practically wouldn't have a budget. I know members of the Non-Aligned nations wish to replace the UN with something with less "US domination". You know what? They can go right ahead. If they want to s!@#$%^&* out the money to support the new UN, they would deserve to have more of a say in how it is run. Military resources are often used for aide anyway. I recall a carrier group was dispatched to help the big tsunami a few years back. The point about the parking tickets is that it is extremely rude. I don't know the figure but last I heard between all of them, their total unpaid parking tickets is in the millions. Considering that they are guests, they should at least do their part to be a gracious as possible.

They are in agreement that they don't like what Colombia has done. They aren't all 'preparing for invasion' though. Offensive/Defensive doesn't matter. This isn't baseball where offense and defense are independent of each other. On some level, defending yourself physically means destroying your attacker. The point I'm trying to make is that Chavez is being paranoid. He sees Colombia take a small action to secure its border from what should be internal rebels, and now he is acting like Colombia, as part of the 'US Empire', is planning to invade and colonize his entire country. You can also couple this with some of his past statements, like how he claimed that US !@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*ins have been trying to kill him, and the 'paranoid' label seems to stick. The comparison to the Maginot line and the Rio Grande fails this check. Those things were in response to large scale, empirically observed actions. Granted taking out a FARC camp is empirical action, but its small scale. The 'mounting Colombian aggression' isn't empirical, but would be of proper scale if it was. Nothing Colombia has done made both checks. There's no difference between defensive and offensive styles of paranoia. Yes, in Chavez' mind he might be defending himself, but at this rate he might very well decide that the only way Venezuela will be safe is if he takes out Colombia. The pattern of paranoid behavior is to lash out at the perceived threat. And generally, it is scary to think of an army being commanded in a manner consistent with mental illness.

Look, the Aileron/Bak agreement percentage for this politics forum is about 2%. This is one of those times. Additionally I find it ironic that muslims are making such an effort to prove that Geert Wilder is correct in many of his statements.

Satellite. I'm having a decent time with Dish Network. If you live in a rural area cable is simply infeasible. I don't know about everybody else, but my service only conks out in storms so severe that its prudent to turn of the electronics anyway. My package comes with high speed internet too, except that it's satellite internet, which is good in terms of volume but not in terms of ping, so no Continuum. Still, in a rural area you simply don't have a choice of cable.

swap sides? Last time I checked all of the candidates were on the 'American' side. The purpose of the parties is to serve the nation, not vice versa. Now that I think of it, there's a rant I need to go on here. I've noticed news articles stating that black women don't know who to vote for here, since Hillary is a woman (?) and Obama is black. If you happen to be in this sort of quandary, here's my advice: If reproductive organs or skin color is your primary decision maker in who to vote for, I suggest you don't vote. Please leave the voting to less shallow individuals. It scares me to think how many women voted for Hillary and how many blacks voted for Obama for just that reason, and it angers me that somehow it is politically incorrect to call those people 'sexists' and 'racists', because that's what they are.

Okay, SeVeR, so I might have been exaggerating slightly. Clearly this is some sort of diplomatic game on Chavez' part, but "Venezuela masses up troops on the Colombian border in order to intimidate the Colombian government into being sorry for taking out FARC" is too long and boring to be a good topic !@#$%^&*le. Though an exaggeration, the truth still stands that Venezuela is currently mobilized to wage war on Colombia in a moment's notice. Brinkmanship is almost a form of art to be used in certain cir!@#$%^&*stances and in a certain fashion. I mean, sure the US has done our fair share of Brinkmanship, and we've certainly used our military to intimidate other nations into doing something, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. If the US, UK, Soviet Union, and China had carried out brinkmanship in this matter during the Cold War, the world would have gone up in smoke. Mistakes Venezuela is making with the process: 1) They want nothing. Yes, they don't like what Colombia did Sunday night, but the point is they don't want anything out of Colombia now. The best way to describe this action is as a 'protest'. The problem is that brinkmanship risks wars, and the risks are simply to great to use military buildups as a response to a past action one doesn't like. If there is a present or future action you want them to do, that's different, but in this case all Chavez wants to do is apparently state that he doesn't like Colombia's recent action. Tanks are not an appropriate subs!@#$%^&*ution for exclamation points. 2) The cut off diplomacy. If they actually wanted something, they would need diplomats to tell the Colombians what they want. Even still, its best to keep both parties talking. 3) They didn't keep scale in mind. You don't need to mobilize your entire military over a small action. Only mobilize enough forces as the situation warrants. When you over-commit, you increase the odds of some accident happening leading to a war, and actually give yourself a less intimidating posture as you convince your opponent that you will make the same mistake on the battlefield. 4) They are creating a Mexican Stand-off which they aren't the winners of. Suppose things do go south. Colombia shoots Ecuador. Venezuela shoots Colombia. The UN shoots Venezuela. Colombia knows that Venezuela only stands to lose here. I mean, you compare it to the Cuba Missile Crisis, and the differences are apparent. In the Cuba Missile Crisis, the US and USSR kept diplomatic ties working, rattled the sabers a little bit, and came up with a solution in which the US got something they wanted the and USSR got something they wanted, and overall the world became a safer place. Bak, the US would still need an agent present to deliver the photos. As I pointed out though, the Colombian government fully has the motivation and resources. Also the action seems to be the brainchild of a military. It was quick, efficient, brutal, and put more attention to the mission than the political consequences. Its much more consistent with what you would expect out of the Colombian military rather than a civilian organization like the CIA, which would try to finesse things up to make the outcome more politically palatable. The bigger issue is that it would be rational to surmise that because there is no evidence of US involvement, that there was no US involvement. Chavez shouldn't go around !@#$%^&*uming everything is a result of some US conspiracy just because he hates the US and he can concoct a scenario in which US involvement 'fits'. There is a medical name for that behavior. It's called "Paranoia". Oh, and if Chavez does ANYTHING to affect the exportation of Colombian coffee, I'll drive down there deal with him myself. Nobody gets between a geek and his coffee.

Dumb too. Much of the SS community is already planning on getting a 3d version of the game, though that project never seems to get anywhere...

Christianity states that only the Father knows when the end of things is going to be. Any Christian of faith would know the futility of trying to predict what God is going to do next. Furthermore the passage describing it implies that God will deliberately set the time to be a moment where mankind isn't expecting it. It goes back to what I said in about the second post of this topic. Some religions are set up to set up 'inner access' to the working of the universe, and some are set up to teach morality. For instance, during a drought, some religions teach that farmers can cause it to rain by performing a ritualistic dance, while other religions teach that the community could survive the drought if everyone shared their food and limited their intake. True Christianity is of the latter kind, stating that God has the inner access to the workings of the universe but also stating His ways are mysterious. Basically, He's not in the business of offering Earthly fortune to those who please him and Earthly suffering to those who don't. Those who call themselves 'Christians' who believe that God will provide the inner workings of the universe for them are sorely mistaken about two things. First off, they are mistaken about the God they are worshiping, and they are mistaken about being Christians. The official Christian prediction to the end of time is: No one knows except God. No one else is ever going to figure it out until it happens. Stop trying to predict the end of days and go help your neighbor.

For those who haven't heard the story, on Sunday night, Colombia made a cross-border raid into Ecuador to take out a FARC camp. This group has made a pattern of attacking people in Colombia and hiding out accrossed the border in Ecuador. Then, this morning Hugo Chavez closed the Venezuelan Emb!@#$%^&*y in Colombia, ordered virtually Venezuela's entire military to gather on the Colombian border. If you want more details, do a google. A quote from Chavez translates "We don't want war, but aren't going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia)...to divide us." A quote from Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, who also vohemently opposed Colombia's action, said the FARC was "bombed and massacred as they slept, using precision technology." Okay, now for my two cents. First off, Chavez should get a grip. This matter is between Colombia and Ecuador. There probably wasn't as much as two US tourists drinking tequila within 100 miles of wherever this decision took place. (And the counter in advance the accusation that the US was there in some sort of ultra-top secret fashion, based upon past behavior if the CIA were involved, half of the FARC camp would have gotten away and the world would know not only of their involvement but also would know the first names of every CIA agent involved.) Also, Chavez made criticism of Israel during his address. I think he needs to check his globe to find the relative locations of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Israel. My geography may be rusty but if I recall Israel is nowhere near the location of the other three nations. I know Chavez hates the US and Israel, and loves Iran and North Korea, but not every action in the world is US related. I also sincerely doubt that "We don't want war" quote. I think he was waiting for an excuse to pull this crap. A peace-loving nation would have probably talked about it, and wouldn't have taken such drastic action so quickly. Ofcourse you can't talk about it if you close your emb!@#$%^&*y mere hours after the offense, and the offense wasn't against Venezuela anyway. As for Ecuador, yes, they have a right to be offended. Wars have started this way. However, they also need to apologize. They have allowed their country to become a safe haven for Colombian criminals, and they can't expect Colombia to take blow after blow indefinitely. To analyze Correa's quote, its wasn't the FARC that was sleeping. It was Ecuador's military that was sleeping. Their inability to keep those people out of their country created the situation where Colombia had to decide between respecting Ecuador's sovereignty and protecting their citizens. Colombia has repeatedly requested that Ecuador do something about this situation and they didn't. You reap what you sow, and when your country harbors criminals, you shouldn't be surprised when others need to invade your sovereignty to deal with them.

You can find information on Coal to Oil production on Wikipedia, but as I pointed out it CAN produce oil in large enough quan!@#$%^&*ies to run a nation. (Hence why I pointed out that it fueled 20% of the Nazi war machine in WW II...if they could produce that much oil under Allied bombings, we can actually fill our entire needs.) It should also be feasible if you think about it. All you are doing is burning fossil fuels. The one and ONLY catch with it is carbon dioxide. I guess the number of Apocalypse date predictions proves that there are people who call themselves Christians but are unfaithful about it.

I actually happen to know my share of physics already. Last I checked I was mostly shooting down ideas, though I will also note that we don't know what causes gravity yet, and there might be possibilities for interstellar travel there depending upon the outcome of that. I'd like to be able to do something with my college education other than argue with idiots over the internet, but unfortunately nobody wants entry level scientists nowadays. There is the possibility of making oil out of coal. The technology to do that has been around for a while and is capable of producing gasoline in large quan!@#$%^&*ies. In WW II a technique was used by the Nazi war machine to supplement a large portion of their fuel, something around 20% of Germany's oil production. The technology was researched by American companies in the 70s, but abandoned because it costs about $45 to make a barrel of oil out of coal, and at the time that was expensive. However, today that would be cheap oil, and coal is something the US has in abundance. There is also plenty of coal left. While our coal reserves certainly are not infinite in supply, they would last quite a while. Probably a century or two even !@#$%^&*uming fuel consumption continues to grow exponentially. This buys time for researchers to come up with viable alternative energies, probably even enough time for scientists to get Fusion to work. The catch is that no matter the method, the process produces a lot of carbon dioxide. The gas would produce as much as current gasoline, and the process to get the oil out of the coal would also produce carbon dioxide. Now I will point out a bit of a conspiracy theory, so be warned. I remember that in the 90s carbon dioxide wasn't really considered a problem. When I was in school it was carbon monoxide that was the evil gas. It took approximately until Al Gore's movie when carbon dioxide was given the main focus, and coincidentally, this shift in the opinion of the primary gas responsible for global warming occurred right around the time when it became cost-effective to make oil from coal. My thought is that environmentalists made this shift and made a big hush-hush out of coal from oil just to prevent a large scale drive to switch to coal, because it seems about perfect given the economic situation. People would want to do it, but environmentalists hate coal. I say we build coal to oil refineries, and then plant a few trees to soak up the excess carbon dioxide.

For all practicality Communism didn't exist until WW II. Before and during WW II it was isolated to the USSR, which the US supported during that time to combat the Nazis. After WW II there was the Cold War. Obviously when a country is at war with communism, they aren't going to be supporting communist governments. England wasn't propping up any French colonies during the 100 years war either. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communism was only present in China and Cuba, and the US has trade agreements with China. Your statement may be true, but only because 2/3rds of the history of Communism is the Cold War. With exception to that, the US has been relatively balanced in its choices regarding the radical liberal verses fundamentalism.

So, your predictions for the future are based upon "V for Vendetta"...Um, if your opinion was based upon a movie, couldn't you at least pick a good movie? There have been a lot of Orwellian novels out there. Truth be told they never happen because the basis of said novels require several decades of unchecked extremism. Last time I checked, they can only tap your phone if you're having weekly chats with Osama Bin Laden or something like that. What the heck are you talking about with "North American Union"? Last time I checked, the US has been running the entire Western Hemisphere, North, Central, and South Americas included, due to the Monroe Doctrine. And the EU is destined to become European, so those who know history will know what to expect from the EU. I actually will have to part with conservatism here, because I do actually think there should be government-supported health care as a healthy population is conducive to the public interest, particularly in the case of communicable diseases. The catch is that I think it should suck, and those who want better service should have to pay for it. Generally I don't like it when politicians want to do more for the "lower class". Our country was not built upon the "lower class". Dictatorships are built up the "lower class". What made our country great was a strong "middle class", and that's what the government should be supporting. To that end, what the government should be doing for lower class families is to make it easier for them to move up into the middle class. For example, I think it is more important to lower college tuition costs rather than raise the minimum wage. That way, more people go to college and minimum wage becomes less of an issue.

!@#$%^&*, I was just about to play devil's advocate for Vista. I have only 1 GB RAM on my Desktop, and Vista is running alright for me. There are some tricks you need to know in order to get Vista to work: 1) The first thing you should do is turn off all the visual crap that comes with it. You probably should also turn off the stupid sidebar, as all of the options there seem nice, but have an evil twist. (A 'performance' gauge which drastically decreases your computer's performance, a weather program that only gives the local weather at present and thus is just as good as looking out the window, and news feeds which actually are evil propaganda from MSNBC.) 2) When running games which aren't specifically formatted for Vista, 9 times out of 10 it won't work unless the option "Run this program as an Administrator" in the properties menu is on. The good news is that if your program isn't working, 9 times out of 10 this is all you need to do to solve the problem. For the remaining 1 time out of 10, you probably should turn it on anyway, as having it on Vista's safe mode has other detrimental effects. For instance, feeling oldskool I went back to play Baldur's Gate and Fallout on my computer. It works fine, except it doesn't save files in the proper locations if Admin mode is off, and that games saved with admin mode on cannot be loaded with admin mode off and vice versa. 3) I haven't figured how to do this out yet, but you want to turn off the program diagnostics too. One of the less stable games on Vista I have is Oblivion, which tends to 'crash' as I'm exiting, which wouldn't be frustrating except Vista spends the next half hour trying to 'diagnose' the 'crash', if I let it. When that happens clicking 'cancel' doesn't work, you have to bring up the task manager. Games I've gotten to work on Vista with 1 GB RAM: Oblivion Resident Evil 4 Company of Heroes Halo 2 (Vista version, so wasn't difficult) Neverwinter Nights 1 Star Wars KotOR (otherwise known as Neverwinter Nights 1 1/2) Freelancer (hate to say it, but this game is probably better than CTM) Halo 1 Dungeon Seige II ...Several older !@#$%^&*les. (As if some of those weren't old enough) I am experiencing occasional frame rate issues with Oblivion and Halo 2 at times, but I'd expect with a rather low-end RAM card I'd probably be experiencing that if I had XP. Everything else is running great. To me, Vista is annoying, not crippling.