Aileron

Unlikely, doc. The costs of such a program would exceed the benefit after you adjust for the probability of the legalization of drugs actually occurring. I actually do support a limited program to legalize drugs similar enough to what SeVeR suggested. Still, right now health insurance is bad enough. We need to fix that program up first before the legalization of drugs is possible.

Companies don't create wealth. They merely distribute it. One has to be careful taxing corporations, because when you tax a corporation all they do is increase the price of their product and you end up taxing the customers.

They could win by cultural takeover. There are plenty in the United States seem to hate our own culture and love everyone else's. Couple that with the fact that our generation is one that loves to have others tell us how to think. We've been brought up in the lap of luxury with parents running our every move to keep us safe. Freedom always comes with some discomfort. The difference between a dog and a wolf is that the wolf is free and the dog isn't. The catch is that the wolf needs to hunt food on his own and seek shelter on his own facing the very real possibility of death if it isn't strong enough to provide for itself, while the dog does not know of the cold of winter nor the pain of starvation because the dog has a master which provides. Our generation is so caught up avoiding discomfort that we are practically holding applications as to who is going to be our new master, whether its college professors, activists, lawyers, or the government. When one of them fails to protect us from scraping our knee, we turn to another. Radical Islam is one of the contenders.

Its sad what this forum has come to. All the liberal nuts in one topic and all the moderates in another. We can't even discuss this type of thing together. The truth of the matter is that Russia probably thinks they can get away with hostile takeover because the US' leadership is too preoccupied with political fallout, and the sad truth of the matter is that they are probably right. Currently, we need to prioritize. The odds of Al Queda taking over the United States are too high for comfort. The odds of Islamofascism taking over part of Europe is nearly certain if we don't do something about it. Overall, Russia isn't much of a threat and Georgia isn't much of a priority. Should we defend Georgia? No Will we if Russia continues to invade? No Is Russia trying to expand its borders? Yes Also, if I had any authority I'd advise citizens of Latvia and Estonia to migrate west now, because they are probably next.

But the stronger a corporation becomes, the more of a rallying cry international calls to limit them would be. You did cite some African nations, but those are like the coal mining towns. They are relatively small, isolated areas in which the population as limited access to transportation and economic means to leave.

Okay, so you are !@#$%^&*uming an alliance between Iran and Egypt but not an alliance between the US and Israel? Why not say that if the entire rest of the world declared war on Israel, Israel would lose? !@#$%^&*, while you are at it, lets assume the Mediterranean Sea itself declares war on Israel, and the Israeli infantry has to bilge out their country with buckets in order to prevent Israel from being swallowed by rising water. I'm sure if you can come up with a sufficiently implausible force, you could make your point handily. Heck, Egypt doesn't even like Hamas right now. Last I heard they now need to fortify that border because too many Hamas nuts are threatening Egypt's interests. Hamas and Hezbollah hardly fight like an organized unit, Syria's contribution to the cause would be minimal, and Iran would need to support a fairly long supply chain.

Lynx, like any organization, the military has its brown-nosers, but that is rarely used as cause for promotion. Your at!@#$%^&*ude isn't realistic. It isn't pessimistic. It's down-right jaded. Duh, US law doesn't apply to the UK. We've got an international genius here. I know there are a few people who decided to put on soldier's uniforms and march in Veteran's Day parades who get caught and fined for it. Finland, okay, so you admit that you are being rude, offensive, and demeaning (oh, I'm sorry - 'making fun'...rewording it makes it so much better.). Why do I have to elaborate how that is a maturity issue of yours when it should be obvious? Hey, don't worry about me, I've been offended by people who were actually good at it. I just know that making fun of other people for taking pride in accomplishments is a sign of being someone who has accomplished nothing and needs to do bring others down to separate themselves from their own feelings of inadequacy. To elaborate, I'm not big on !@#$%^&*les, but on the other hand I do think they need to be acknowledged.

Good point on divorce, but I used the source for American law. Well, I think for starters, the Judiciary shouldn't be allowed to stay in term for life. Our current system is such that once a President appoints a Supreme Court Justice, that person is untouchable from then on. They could get as crazy as they want and there would be no mechanism to remove them from office. When the Cons!@#$%^&*ution was written, the concept of someone living to 70 was unfathomable. While technically the term was life, the life expectancy made that period of time short, so judges would be cycled on a regular basis. Now, we can have judges who stick around for 20-30 years and are accountable to no one. My humble proposal is that the Cons!@#$%^&*ution should be changed so that they get 10 year terms, after which time they may be re-appointed by the President. As for Cons!@#$%^&*utional overrides of legislation, the current system works. Congress can overrule the Supreme Court by 2/3rds majority. The problem, as I said, is that the Court Justices are accountable to no one. He was correct in that Habeas Corpus was never granted to internationals before this writ. All previous cases were rights granted by treaty with a power which in turn would grant similar rights to our citizens. It is an act of diplomacy, not law. What the writ essentially states is that the Cons!@#$%^&*ution applies to persons who are not citizens of it, have no allegiance to it, and have done nothing to support it. Miranda rights follow from the Fifth Amendment handily. If somebody has Fifth Amendment rights, they have Miranda rights (that is the right to know about their Fifth Amendment rights). Suppose this writ came out in WWII. Then Nazi and Japanese soldiers would have rights under the Cons!@#$%^&*ution. Every enemy soldier captured would require an attorney, a trial to prove they were an enemy soldier, and the right to be released if that trial found them innocent. They would need a jury of their peers for each trial, which would be twelve persons with citizenship of a hostile country, and we would hope those twelve persons would put facts above politics. All this comes from due process. To help the trial, soldiers would need to gather evidence in the field for each enemy prisoner. They would need to collect every enemy weapon while wearing gloves, so that fingerprints could be matched to the enemy soldiers, as well as eye-witness accounts clearly identifying which enemy soldier was shooting at which friendly soldiers. They would have to stop and give each one the Miranda speech, in German, Italian, or Japanese. They would also have to do this in the middle of a battle while they were being shot at. All this would be required to prove them guilty by a due process trial. Furthermore, the enemy would have search and seizure rights, so after our code-breakers broke the enemy communications code, our intelligence services would need a warrant from a judge to monitor German transmissions. If soldier came upon an enemy headquarters, were enemy intelligence officers are burning vital do!@#$%^&*ents before their approach, they'd have to stop and wait for a judge to grant a warrant to search the enemy headquarters. Furthermore, German and Japanese citizens could travel in an out of the US without being singled out as possible spies. This comes from Search and Seizure rights. That's just the basic start of things. We haven't even started to interpret additional rights out of the Cons!@#$%^&*ution. Point being, its ridiculous.

Well, for those too lazy to click on the link, my avatar is up because I joined the Army and that's my rank. Finland has it up because while he'd probably move to Russia rather than accept being drafted to the Army, he's an !@#$%^&*. Parasite is kinda on track with this topic. The reason corporations can't take over is that at the end of the day, they can't get the physical military power to run things. Boeing maybe, but even then its a stretch, because in order to get military power, they would need the support of an army of people who would want something in return. That being said, in the case of the topic, there is precedent. Coal mining towns for instance could be run by a company, where employees wouldn't even work for money, but for scrip which they could use to buy goods from the company store. The reason it worked is because the towns were isolated and employees couldn't readily move to a different town. Right now, our society is extremely nomadic, and people move from place to place daily. We just don't have the environment for it to work again. Transportation technology makes it impossible. Oh, and when Sam Walton founded Walmart, he did have a policy of only selling American goods. Some bean-counters changed that. Walton's probably rolling over in his grave.

I put the Specialist rank there because that is the rank listed on my ID card, the rank the recruiting Sergeants said I am now, and the salary rate I am getting paid at. I may be ahead of myself, but I have fact to back it up. Finland, while you may think you are being cute, but first realize that you are not being that clever. I'm actually surprised there aren't a few 'Five Star Generals' subscribing to the forum now. In real life, to wear a symbol of rank one hasn't earned is a Federal crime punishable by fines or even imprisonment. Obviously an internet avatar is different than wearing a uniform in public, but nevertheless it is rude, offensive, and demeaning because you are belittling a bunch of people's hard work, not just mine. Please be a mature person and take it down on your own. I realize this comes a week after I called you a sig-Nazi, but the difference is that while I took something out of context, you are doing a bold faced lie. You call yourself a Specialist when you aren't even in the Army, (and from what I can guess, probably have no family or friends who went in any branch of the Armed Forces except maybe a grandfather you aren't close to.)

Spoiler! --Click here to view--I like the portrayal of Two-Face in this movie compared to "Batman and Robin". They did a much better job of showing the dichotomy of the character than Tommy Lee Jones, who merely played a flat villain who happened to have a theme.

To update this topic, I swore in yesterday. Yes, I've got the rank insignia as my avatar now. Call me an egoist if you want. The old one was getting old anyway.

I disagree somewhat. The report was written by professors, very book smart individuals who tend to be so smart, they become stupid. While they are right in that the war will be won or lost on the intelligence end, its a lot easier to gather intelligence over territory we control. Its also a lot easier to work with foreign powers if they are not hostile to us. I mean, take a before and after shot of Afghanistan. Before Al Queda had free reign of the country, if we wanted intelligence we needed to sneak a spy in, and if we asked for cooperation for local law enforcement we'd have gotten nothing. Now, our agents are the ones free to move around, Al Queda agents are the ones who need to sneak, and we can get law enforcement's cooperation much of the time. What the military provided was a change in environment which makes it much easier for intelligence to do their job.

There have been a lot of doom and gloom future predictions throughout the ages. I believe the first was predicted by H. G. Wells the "Time Traveler", which predicts cannibalism if the world does not accept Communism. All are absurd.

Sorry, its been a while. Parasite, Medieval times don't count as a 'threat towards democracy' because democracy didn't exist at the time and couldn't be threatened. Yes, under monarchy a lot of crazy things happened...on both sides, but because people have an agenda people never mention that the nuts on the secular side were a lot worse than the religious ones at that age in history. Divorce was first legalized by King Henry VIII. The decision had nothing to do with democracy and actually solidified Henry VIII's power as the first leader of both Church and State in England since the time of the pagans. I'm not going to defend the imaginary movement you dreamed up of a religious movement to make divorce illegal. It doesn't exist, and I'm not going to start an argument in your imaginary universe. The real religious movement is that couples should try to avoid divorce on their own, hopefully getting the divorce rate below 50%. Its a cultural movement, not a legal one. Finland, you cite a large number of political opinions which though you me not agree with them, do not cons!@#$%^&*ute a threat towards democracy itself. For instance, 'taking the nation back for God' means to convince people to be more open about religion in public. Clearly we can't create a monarchy with God in charge at the moment; He's incommunicado. The closest thing to rule of God we can get on Earth is democracy, since everyone in God's heirs. What 'taking the nation back for God' functions as is a standard political campaign to persuade people to vote a certain way, not a campaign to disenfranchise people of their power. Such movements are within the bounds of democracy. I'd also like to challenge the claim that the founding fathers were agnostic. Thomas Jefferson included a mention of God in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. The inspiration for much of his work was the concept of 'Natural Law' developed by Thomas Aquinas, who was a career theologian and is a Saint in the Catholic Church. They were a lot more religious than the modern definition of 'agnostic' to be sure. They generally were the type of people to go to church every Sunday. Labor Unions have as much an iron-clad alliance with the Democratic party as evangelicals do. I never once heard mention of international politics in Church, except international charity. The Pope has criticized Islam for being too radical, but that criticism is actually promoting democracy because it stands to advance free speech. I'll admit that racists don't like to admit they are racist, and the first thing they do is try to pretend to be religious. Its a lie when they do. Jesus did ask for water from the Samaritan woman at the well, so a religious person would understand that and not be racist.

Finland, fine, I'll change my !@#$%^&* sig, Sig-nazi. (For reference, the motivating force for not changing my sig was 'laziness'.) Ace, Hoch already countered your last post before you made it. SeVeR, the 'cling to their guns' showed lack of common sense. Another thing that showed a lack of common sense was when commenting upon why we don't have enough translators in Afghanistan, rather than give an honest 'I don't know', he concocted a story of how all of our English-Farsi translators are translating English-Arabic in Iraq. He was able to come up with a problem, a cause for that problem, and a solution for the problem, and would have acted on the solution to that problem all when in reality his problem doesn't exist outside of academic theory and the real problem is that Afghanistan speaks Farsi and very few other nations do.

I'd like to challenge that claim. Could you name an instance where the religious elite has threatened democracy? (Not counting Islamic terrorism.) My opinion is that our country is being converted into a legal oligarchy, where no one else is allowed to make a real decision without appeasing some policy written by lawyers and insurance companies. The reason religious figures are coming under fire is because they are actually resisting the rulings of the lawyers and the insurance people. A good example is divorce. Lawyers like divorce because divorce makes lawyers money. The religious say divorce is wrong. This belief offends lawyers because it threatens their profits. It is lawyers who are on the offensive on that front, because it used to be wrong to get a divorce, but now it is commonplace.

This is a long article, but a good read if you have the time. I also read the book at the end, which is a good read too.

You know SeVeR, in a socialist world, everyone would live in one common building, would feel free to take whatever they want from their neighbors, wouldn't work a day in their lives, would never educate themselves, would never make themselves smarter, stronger, or tougher, and probably would die around age 30 at weight 700 lbs. The reason we have guns is because someone mined steel, gathered wood, and crafted it into a firearm. The reason we have supermarkets is because farmers have sowed, grown, reaped, and sold crops to the supermarket. The reason we have flags is because someone somewhere sewed them. Society wouldn't exist without people working for it, and those people need to be rewarded, and since people are not immortal, it helps to reward those people's progeny. I'll admit a problem with anything goes capitalism is that it is a lot like anarchy; Companies can become powerful enough to take the free market out of the free market, much like how in anarchy people could oppress their neighbors to make it effectively a different form of government. However, socialism has the problem in that it encourages people to form neat communal relationships which are dependent upon a handful of people to function, ripe pickings for that handful to take over. I think we should get rid of welfare almost entirely. Franklin Roosevelt had a better idea. Instead of putting the people on welfare, create some agency of marginal usefulness and give the people jobs. What happens is you give those people work ethic and job experience, and they suddenly have means and desire to get better jobs. If we're going to give them money anyway, why don't we get something out of it?

Look, Astro, I never fell into the crowd that thinks Obama is a Islamic terrorist in disguise. I think Obama is an inexperienced idealist straight out of elitist academia. The thing is while he has good intentions, he still can do a lot of damage. Yes, I do believe that Obama could sell out our country in favor of ideology. In the context of the rest of the paragraph, it isn't to much of a stretch to say that in a person like Obama's mind, the detention of honest-to-God terrorists could look to him like racial discrimination, and he might be liable to create a revolving door system where terrorists are caught and released. I mean, the paragraph is addressing an academic problem. I mean, that problem certainly could happen, but its not occurring right now. It takes an elitist academic to spend time solving purely academic problems. In a more extreme example, the 'cling to their guns and religion' speech implies that if Obama could concoct an academic scenario in which removing the First Amendment would help create more jobs, and he'd act upon that scenario. (Actually the speech implies that he already has made the concoction.) I mean, I don't want to imply a specific threat out of Obama. What I mean to say is that Obama is an academic, and he thinks about problems in an academic way; a way which can often lead to disastrous outcomes when applied to the real world. This doesn't make him an antagonist nor a bad person. It is a sign that while Obama was at Harvard, he was fed a lot of academic thinking in debating theory. As top of their class, Obama really soaked the stuff in. Most people outgrow that stuff with time and experience, particularly executive experience where one has to actually make decisions and finds first hand that the academic solution often doesn't work. Obama simply doesn't have enough real-life experience to overcome the academic training, and it shows with his gaffs. And the annoying thing is that people think that because he's black, he has street-smarts. He doesn't. No one can argue he doesn't have book-smarts, but he lacks common sense.

To answer some questions/comments made so far: The bodyfat requirement is rather complicated and varies by age and gender. They literally have a chart for it. First, there is a height/weight check, but if you are like me and fail that check due to massive muscles which weigh something but don't make you taller (okay, a heavy build), there's a neck/waist measurement check. There are also physical fitness requirements, also by chart. Generally 40 Pushups, 50 Situps, and running two miles within 15 minutes. While enlisted soldiers can get slack in terms of entrance requirements, officer candidates can't. Also, the requirements are a lot higher: College Degree, 3 letters of recommendation, 50 or higher on the ASVAB, a one page essay, both typed and handwritten*, and everything required of the enlisted soldiers, and then I have to interview three officers of rank Captain or higher. (*Sounds easy, but I had to re-handwrite the !@#$%^&* thing like ten times because I needed to get the one page typed essay to fit on on page handwritten, neat and legible. The pen I was using at first wasn't up to the task, because the width of the mark was too wide to write legibly at the font size needed.) Anyone 30 or higher can get in by age waiver. Also, those requirements are also what needs to be maintained to remain in the military, so those are directed to the people 40 years old who've been there for 10-20 years. I've already had to lose 40 lbs. just to make weight. I considered the Marines, but ultimately I have to consider my background. My education is in Math, and while my ASVAB score was nearly perfect in all categories, I'd probably be best suited for Military Intelligence. The Marines don't have a Military Intelligence division; they have infantry, infantry, infantry, some aviation, and infantry. All of the vital support functions for the Marines are done by the Navy. Simply put, if I signed up for Marine OCS, most likely I'd come out a Navy officer. Also, if I change my mind and want to be a elite special forces type, there's always the Rangers and Airborne. I also considered the NCO, but I'm not funny enough to be a Sergeant. Ofcourse, I could end up as an NCO if I wash out of OCS, but I'm not planning on failing. As for why I'm joining the Army, hey I just want to do something with my life. You only live once. Play it safe or play it dangerous, the outcome is death either way.

Just to let you guys know, I plan on joining the Army next week. I'm planning on going the OCS route to become a commissioned officer, so its a lot of responsibility. (For those of you unfamiliar will the military, commissioned officers start at 2nd Lieutenant and work their way up to General. At first day I'd be responsible for making command decisions.) All that's left in terms of paperwork is an Officer Board next week, which is pretty much a job interview. After that I can ship out. Its been months since I actually played Continuum, but this is probably goodbye altogether. I'll certainly have means to access the internet and free time to do so (for a while), but it will probably be too irresponsible to do so. I'm going to have to be the inspiring upstanding role model. I also certainly won't be able to discuss politics as much as I would want to.

Ace, Finland, if one is a man, one shouldn't have fears about joining the military. This topic is rapidly coming close to home because I plan on signing up for the Army next week, hopefully as a commissioned officer. The optimistic plan is that next week I go into Basic, three months from now I go into OCS, six months from now I go to Afghanistan, and six months and a week from now I come back home after the tattered remnants of Al Queda signs an unconditional surrender to spare themselves from the continuing !@#$%^&*-kicking I'm going to do to them. It'll be so bad that they are going to wish they had been lucky enough to be sent to Gitmo. !@#$%^&*, that sucks. I think I'll leave being funny to the NCOs. To sum it up: I am annoyed how you people feel perfectly fine telling the Army how to run the Army when its the Army's !@#$%^&* on the line and not yours. Women certainly don't belong in the Special Forces, as most men aren't strong enough for it. As for the non-elite combat branches, our military is still of the small numbers/high quality style, so the men in the combat divisions still need to be in tip-top shape. Women biologically can't make the bar. If you feel like changing something, the only thing critically wrong with the Army is that Lieutenant Generals outrank Major Generals. Those !@#$%^&*les are confusing.

Um, Astro, Obama didn't lose Pennsylvania out of racism. Obama lost Pennsylvania because he insulted Pennsylvanians on what became national television. I mean, that was the dumbest political move seen from anyone so far in this race, and it is nothing short of a miracle that he survived that statement. Generally when you insult someone, that person doesn't like you for it and when you insult a group of people, those people are disinclined to vote for you. If I were running McCain's campaign, I'd run an ad campaign based upon that video clip. You know, Ann Coulter defines "racist" as "Anyone who disagrees with a liberal". That's the second time I've seen you use that definition this week Astro. (Edit) Too long, sorry. Read the long version in blue if you want to, but here's the short one: Ace, you are wrong because the standards for men in the combat branches are so high that women can't reach them. If women could reach the standards, it would be because the standards were lax and need to be raised more. For reference, the military also has minimum weight requirements that discriminates against small men, as well as requirements against virtually any condition which places somebody less than perfect health. There just is too much at stake if the other guy happens to be bigger, stronger, and faster than our guy. Ace, your beliefs about women in the military are very PC, but they fall short of reality. The standards for men in the military are so high that women cannot within health reach them. For instance, the body fat requirement for a man in his early 20s for the Army is 22%. Women can't reach that level because their bodies store more fat for childbirth, and their limit for the same age I think is 36%. Any woman who manages to make the man's level is anorexic, and any man who has more body fat than 22% is too out of shape for combat. Its an unavoidable fact. A stronger soldier can carry heavier weapons, thicker armor, and more equipment than a weaker one. If you match up a soldier with better weapons and armor against a soldier with inferior weapons and armor, probability favors the one with better equipment. Technology can make equipment more weight efficient, but between two technologically equivalent foes the arms cycle will eventually put weapons and armor as heavy as the infantryman whose using them can handle. If a woman can outperform a man, that means the man can be further conditioned. If the man can be further conditioned, then there is a chance that a man on the enemy side will be further conditioned himself, and when faced off the poorly conditioned man will have a disadvantage. Generally for infantry you want men in 100% good condition trained to the absolute physical limit. Anything less is a potential problem. The only exception is when you want to win by numbers, in which case you want everyone including the slop. But, in the age of fully automatic machine guns numbers aren't that helpful. I'll admit at the moment we have a technological edge. Hence some basic equipment is light enough to be used by a woman and still effective. However, if we let women into the infantry now, we won't be able to kick them out if we face a technological opponent who has good enough body armor to stop a carbine round, because then we'll need a bigger weapon and the women won't be able to carry it. I'd be careful about the Navy too. For instance, women can't be on submarines, because in combat a sub is subject to a lot of explosions from depth charges and torpedoes which could cause pipes to leak, and in those cases the nearest crew member is required to place a brace on that leak. Thus, the lives of everyone on the ship are dependent upon the crew member's beefy biceps to overcome the pressure of the ocean. Not a woman's forte. For other reasons, ask somebody who actually served on a submarine rather than assume straight out that they are clinging to some tradition. As for discrimination in the rest of the military? Hey, the military is an organization devoted to combat. They will discriminate against people who aren't in the combat branches and don't have to apologize for it. Its actually worse for able bodied men who are in the military and have never been in a combat branch than it is for women.

Because he was in the back. If they took out the people up front, the protesters behind them could run them over and cause actually significant injury.