Aileron

[OOC- Slight inaccuracy there - In space, no one can hear a pimpmobile coming.]

[OOC-no - STOLEN bionanobots BTW, they aren't programed yet, so if they get loose, nothing will happen. Really though, you could have put whatever you want in the box, because I didn't specify before.] The Marathon exited Z - space to a grim suprise. The ship before them was indeed the Kanatis Fury, but it was hard to recognize as even a starship as the bionanobots made huge modifications to the hull. There was a lot of commotion on the bridge of the Marathon. "Holy, what is that thing?" "Sir, scan reveal it as the Kanatis Fury." "Are you sure?" "Several of her systems have gone under severe transformation for an unknown reason, but she IS the Kanatis Fury." "Okay, set up a comm link...Kanatis Fury, this is the Marathon, what is your status?" The Kanatis Fury answered by deploying her fighter fleet. The Marathon answered by firing all of her conventional weapons. The infested fighter fleet was obliterated, and only got a chance to get a handfull of shots at the Marathon. Now, the Marathon was alert of the Kanatis Fury's intent. She brought about her secret weapon. [OOC- I dunno what it is, but I assume it can destroy the Kanatis Fury in a single shot at a great consumption of power.] The generators strained under the massive power output. A massive light shot out of the Marathon, and blasted the Kanatis Fury to dust. However, victory eluded the Marathon. As the Kanatis Fury was destroyed, her cloaking field went down, revealing that the cargo freighter was only about a thousand feet away and closing fast, preparing to ram the Marathon. All remaining power aboard the Marathon was diverted to the shields, but that wouldn't be enough. Her crew braced for impact. The freighter powered through her shields, but broke apart, spreading itself in a million pieces all over the Marathon's hull, but causing no real damage. The Marathon's Captain sent a nueral link out to everyone. "This is the Marathon calling Defcon 2. We have just been attacked by the Kanatis Fury and the freighter she was protecting! Both ships appear to have been commodored and modified in means unknown to us. What the -*BAD WORD*-? Arrggh!!!" The bionanobot infested pieces of the freighter has seeped their way through the hull, and had begun infesting the ship and her crew. The gas was not enough, and the fight had to carried from compartment to compartment between the crew and bionanobot-spawned creatures. However, the Marathon eventually did fall. The infested AI gave one last message over the nueral link. "All humans must die! Glory to the Gehenna!!!" With that, the Marathon activated her Z-space drive, destination unknown.

Well, I attended one of a group of rallies done that week. I !@#$%^&*umed he used the same speech at each one, he COULD have listened to a different speech, though it is extremely unlikely. I'm 90% sure he is reporting on the same speech I heard, and if not, he should have gone to more than one rally. The Washington Post is only considered right wing relative to the New York Times, who TRIES to put a left wing slant and in some cases admits it. Nothing can be more liberal than that! However, the Washington Post is probably up ther. After all, it serves Washington DC, probably the most liberal city in the western hemisphere. I mean...I knew the media had a big left wing bias, but I had no comprehension of how big it was. For starters, I now have much more faith in both candidates. Guess what people, BOTH of these guys would make good presidents! The problem is the media, being so negative, has attacked both candidates to it being ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with either one of these guys, and both will likely take steps to solve the few problems this country actually has. The second revelation I had is that Fox News may actually be as fair and balanced as they say they are. I've seen people from both sides of the political spectrum on their programs. However, I'm still rather skeptical at this point. There was a time when the media merely reported the facts and let people come up with their own opinions. They would occ!@#$%^&*ionally put their opinions in, but would view the occ!@#$%^&*ional opinionated statement as a mistake. Now, they use the fact that they cannot completely eliminate their opinion as an excuse to go all-out editorial. It obvious they don't care about the facts any more - that guy probably didn't even attend the speech. If the facts don't coincide with their opinion, they make things up. Seriously, somebody should organise some kind of boycott against news sources. I'm sure the advertisers who pay these guys would pay attention. Anyone know a good website to start such a thing?

WTH was that reporter smoking? I attended one of those rallies he talked about, and Bush came down to a few fairly specific points. Its obvious Mr. Balz is either extremely biased or didn't attend the rallies. Bush DID specifically discuss Tort law reform, and made the point of giving a few local doctors VIP seats. He discussed more traditional republican issues such as abortion, gun control, and gay marriage. He discussed how his tax cuts helped small businesses and proposed bigger cuts. Bush spoke for about an hour and a half, and discussed an appropriate number of issues, and set a good many stances. That article only proves the sad state of the American media. If a reporter can write that in a national newspaper and still keep is job, it is pathetic. Maybe I'm putting a rightist slant on things, but that is definitely a leftist slant, if infact it is even a slant at all, rather that flat-out misinformation. I mean, how could he possibly miss all the things Bush discussed? Bush did not deviate from his usual campaign strategy, he DID lay out his stances and it looks like he is going to stick to them. Sorry Vile, but that article is incorrect. A similar thing happened with our local town paper. As I was leaving I noticed a handful of pro-Kerry protesters (I guess they were protesting the democratic process of campaigning) outside the York Fairgrounds (were the convention was held). There were about fifteen of them, compared to several thousand people inside who attended the rallies. There easily could have been 100 rally attenders per every one protester. Sure enough, the next day, the protesters made the front page - complete with a nice picture that really made it seem that there were a few hundred of them. These people probably deserved an article on the second or third page. However, there were simply too few of them to compare to the number of people who came to the rally and they shouldn't have been given a front page article with a picture.

:wtfwtf: :wtfwtf: :wtfwtf: :wtfwtf: :wtfwtf: The last relevent political post I have seen was Dr. Worthless, who way back when, said that neither candidate is going to stop frivolous lawsuits. That is incorrect, caps on lawsuits is a centerpiece of Bush's program.

[OOC-Don't need X-Radar. BTW, there aren't many people in this topic. Perhaps we should advertise in the Lounge Section of the general forums - might bring players to 17th parallel besides.] Ailius lurked just outside the Carrier's radar range patiently. Soon, his patience paid off. A single Javelin was running a scouting patrol from the carrier. Ail stalked the Javelin, following it on its patrol route until it turned back to the carrier. Then he struck. He started with an EMP bomb, which disabled the ship's communications. The Jav started turning around, but Ail quickly fired the nanobot deployment system, solidly striking the Jav on the port side. Nanobots swarmed over the hull of the ship, and in a few moments, the ship, pilot and all was infested by the nanobots. Ail fed a few commands to the ship, and then flew away. The Jav then continued back to the Kanatis Fury. It was a routine docking run, until the docked jav opened its hatch and released bionanobot gas inside the docking bay. The nanobots continued to infest the crew, then the bay itself, then the computer, then the life support, until the entire ship finally fell to their influence. The freighter soon realised that something was wrong with the carrier, and began to flee. It was however to late. The carrier temporarily deactivated her stealth field, and deployed infested weasels which caught up to the freighter as if she were standing still. By this time, the bots already knew how to infest a ship, so this attempt was a lot easier. After the freighter fell, the Kanatis Fury reactiveated her stealth field. The two ships then resumed usual communcations with the Kanatis fleet - and waited in ambush for the incoming Marathon.

The problem is that atheism is a religion too. By removing God from all monuments and all public speech, they are effectively forcing atheism on everyone. The first amendment grants freedom to practice religion not freedom from religion. But, Bacchus is right for once, this topic is way off track. How comes nobody replied to the Tort Law reform post I made a short while ago?

Ailius was only a few moments in the command room of the hidden SE base, when a technician called to him. "Sir, we just intercepted a Kanatis neural link transmission. It seems our target is moving to the Tau Ceti system." "-*BAD WORD*-!" This movement was way too soon. Here the target was coming within his grasp, and Ailius hadn't the weapon he needed yet. Fortunately, his scientists had completed the research and programming aspect. Ailius went down to the laboratory. The centerpiece of the room consisted of a large sealed gl!@#$%^&* container. Inside was a small group of Ithkul captives from various sources. "Sir, we have finished the programming of the bionanobots that we have. Take a look at this." One of the prisoners was seperated from the others by a 3 inch thick steel wall. The demented SE scientist proceeded to pump a small sample of bionanobots in a valve near him. The prisoner panicked and screamed as his flesh melted off his bones, until it formed a yellow pile of dust on the floor. "When the bionanobots come in contact with living cells, they reconfigure the proteins to form more copies of themselves. Now that there is no living matter in the first container, they will eat away the steel wall untill the get to the others." As he said this, the SE onlookers could see the wall corroding in seconds. It did not take long for a sizeable whole to appear. Soon, the bionanobots melted the other prisoners in the same way, though one prisoner seemed immune to the effect. "We could not get the bots to be better than 90% effective. Some subjects seem to be immune to the effect. Fortunately, we came up with an alternative approach." The yellow dust that filled the container then condensed into a large liquid mass which soon took the shape of a large squidlike creature, which quickly straggled to poor screaming prisoner. "The size and shape of the creature formed varies on the situation. Now, the only way to stop these things is with ultrasonic vibrations. They are also programmed to follow any commands we send them, and to become more subservant as they evolve. We also programmed them to highjack computer systems, including AIs for starships. If we get enough of them, we might even be able to take over the Marathon like you want." "There's no time, the Marathon is moving here now, and I have only just arranged the transport of more bots." "Well, we only have whats in this container. This is only enough to take over a small cargo freighter." "Then that's what we will do. The bots create more of their kind with every object they infest. If we infest a small ship, we will get enough bots to infest the Marathon." Soon afterwards, Ailius departed the base in a specially made Spider. The burst and portal systems were scrapped to put in the bionanobot deployment system. He headed for the Kanatis Fury.

There is a big difference between an EXTREMIST Muslim and a normal Christian. There isn't much between a NORMAL Muslim and a normal Christian, but hey, you typed "extremist". BTW, when we refer to God, we don't mean an old guy in the clouds. If you knew what we mean by God, you would be more certain of His existence than your own. I don't expect you to imeadiately convert, but I do expect you to atleast be respectfull of our beliefs. The biggest problem with Kerry is that he seems to be a blank slate at this point, with no definitive policy. This could be because its early in the election season. Still Kerry has his work cut out for him, and needs to come up with a stance soon.

Its because the entire Catholic Church is pro-life. We view abortion as wrong. Now we have a candidate for the most powerfull position on earth, and he won't even support us that far. Does he really share our beliefs? He is for everything we are against and against everything we are for! To us Catholics, Kerry is like a guy pushing on a tug o' war team. And don't give me that "Presidency is influenced by the pope" bull. Religions are sovereign too, just like nations. The Pope doesn't have to follow the first amendment, and there is no reason why he should. Did I ONCE use a religiously founded arguement in these forums? If I recall, I have used entirely secular arguements. I don't know why I am giving you that advantage by fighting on your territory, but don't be complaining about religious arguements. Okay, now I've defended Bush's position, now you defend Kerry's. Could somebody please name ONE of Kerry's definitive policies? I must have missed them. I know he is an "anybody but Bush" candidate, but Hitler got elected on more than that. I know he is pro Gay-Marriage and pro-abortion. He also seems to be against Tort Law reform, judging by his running mate. Tort Law Reform, as you probably know, is the idea of putting caps on "pain and suffering" in medical lawsuits. I support this. These lawsuits aren't paid by the doctor who made the mistake, they are payed by you and me. The proposal doesn't include an overall cap, just a cap on "pain and suffering". It just kinda reminds me of when that lady got a million dollars because she spilled coffee on herself.

There is such a thing as secular morality, which is a joke. And having a religion doesn't make you a right-wing whacko. Anyone who is well-travelled should have met many people who a both religious and leftist. Most religious people are centralist. If I am wrong, you can't make an arguement saying that we shouldn't wipe out all muslims. After all, if all religious people are right-wing whackos, and muslims follow their relgion (by definition), we must conclude that all muslims are right wing whackos and thus, we have a need to wipe them out, because living beside whackos is impossible. Since that conclusion is obviously wrong, one must conclude logically that not all religious people are right wing whackos. Are you so arrogant that you think that you are the only one who knows what the word "moral" means? I've taken a whole course on the subject! Your post is little more than a childish insult!

A light transport landed at the station. A woman wearing a pink scarf exited the ship and went into the bar. Just afterwards, a professional high-speed repair crew helped themselves to Harpers ship. With militaristic discipline, they quickly repaired all non-cosmetic componants of the ship, filled it up with the most effective fuel, and even added heated and vibrating leather seats in the -*BAD WORD*-pit. OOC- These people are all npcs, so you can roleplay them a little to make it easier for yourself. You can make up the pickup and dropoff points, just the first must be in Ithkul territory and the dropoff in Kanatis. Back at the warehouse, suddenly alarms started buzzing. The voice monitering the Wyvern's radar spoke over the overhead. "Sir, long range scans pick up a Kanatis patrol coming near here." "Alright everyone, move out!" The SE were used to this routine, and it took only a couple minutes to load everything onto their ship. The corvette screamed out of the warehouse, escorted by the three weasels. They were long gone before the Kanatis got close. However, they did not go far. On the other side of the gravity well, 17th Parallel had a sister station, albeit an abandoned one. In the very core of this station was an SE base, hidden from the galaxy by a shield of garbage. Using a secret tunnel, they travelled to the center, and reset up their operation. Here, they were close to the center of the galaxy, yet hidden from even the most powerfull scans.

So, gay sex being legal automatically makes it moral? Sure, morallity is always dependant upon what is legal, as well as the defignition of what is a mental disorder and what isn't. Reread the first amendment, carefully. Politicians are not allowed to make direct laws on the matter. Other than that, they are allowed to be as religious as the want. I didn't say supporting one's party was right; I said it was politics. Its something that happens that you cannot avoid. You preech to me about Presidential powers, yet you turn around and say something stupid. The President has power over the budget and the military, but only very indirect control over the economy.

Ailius and his goons traveled back to his warehouse. He felt discomfort leaveing a part of an SE operation to a freelancer, particularly an Ithkul one. However, his own forces would bring all sorts of attention. He got out of the -*BAD WORD*-pit and morphed into his natural form. On the table was another small sample of nanobots. In some computers in the corner, SE programmers were busy creating programs that would eventually be fed into the bots. They were almost complete with that leg of the project. "Alright, sir, what will be our primary target?" "I'm thinking the KAS Marathon." "Why them? This weapon could destroy an entire Ithkul planet. Why waste them on a Kanatis cruiser?" "Because if we play our cards right, we can destroy the entire Ithkul empire." "Well, we are going to need a way to realease the bots on board. With their Neutrino Fusion Reactors, their security should be looking out for spies." "Would I suggest going after the Marathon if I didn't have one?"

Well, TV shows are definitely not a proper way to view the american public's opinion. When you think about it, producers don't even need to get the populace to like the show, just the ratings censors. BTW, half those shows are not technically gay, and "Will and Grace" is ironically doing good by a playing a rather unususal Male-Female relationship. The "Marrying one's dog" arguement does point out a moral question. How can somebody say one is right and the other wrong? The only difference between the two is that there are more homosexuals than bestials, and you can't play it by numbers, because then heterosexuals would be better than homosexuals. However, I got an even better one. See, in order for gays to marry, they have to force their defignition of marriage on everyone else. My should the clear minority get dictation rights over the majority? Monte, you don't understand his post. The point is that Kerry does not have a civil right to the Church, and if he is not following our beliefs, he doesn't belong here. Its really the Church's call and athiests such as yourself should just stay out of it.

The man who called himself Sanders shook Harper's hand in reply. "Well, met. To say it again, I am Vaxmillion Sanders, though I must ask for both our sakes that you 'forget' you met me. I have a bit of a problem. I have a little 'shipment' travelling from Ithkul to Terran space. Unfortunately, authorities do not like shipment of this product, and my last pilot on the Ithkul/Kanatis leg met a very bad end. I will not tell you the nature of the shipment. Its probably better off for you - if you do get caught, you can honestly say that you didn't know. I will tell you that you would get in a lot of trouble if you got caught by both the Ithkul and Kanatis police. We do not have a proper storage facility for our product on the pickup planet. After you finish your current job, contact Sythe (no, that's not her real name) in 17th parallel bar. You can identify her by her pick scarf. The codeword is "wild zebra". When she hears that from you, she will tell you where to pick the shipment up, and get our agents to prepare it for you. It will be one large metal crate and two guards (just in case). Upon pickup, you will be given the coords for the dropoff, as well as 500,000 credits. Upon dropping it off, you will receive the other 500,000. Do you have any questions?"

Oh, and as a Catholic, I support the Pope not backing Kerry. We are making ONE major political stance, of which we can make many. We could make an official fuss about gay marriage, but we don't. Heck, the Catholic Church could make a religious stance against Muslims if we wanted to (although that would definetly be extremist and backwards.) The point is, that the Catholic Church is making only one political stance on abortion. If Kerry can't support that one stance, he really has no business in our religion. In this world, one hand washes the other. If Bush makes effort to help the Church, and Kerry does all he can to destroy the Church, why should the Church support Kerry?

*laughs at Vile because he either can't read the only topic rule, or thinks Somalia is a US State* *smacks Vile with electric trout* The CIA if anything deserves to be weakened. They have a history of incompetency since they were created. Admittingly, when they do things right, no one ever knows about it. However, the CIA has a history of screwing things up and funding would be better spent on the NSA. -Bush is against gay marriage on partisan lines - so what? That's politics - you support your party. Besides cons!@#$%^&*utional amendments are decided by Congress. The President has little to do with it. -"No Child Left Behind" was a bill proposed by Bush, but legislated by Congress. Since one doesn't need to be President to propose a bill, it shouldn't really affect the decision in question. -Medicare will be fixed by Congress, not the executive branch. -Foreign politics, but since its not Iraq, I'll spare you the electric trout torture, for now. Look, this situations prove what I know to be true. Governments are both incapable and unwilling to be charity organizations. Bush knows this, and has made it so that the federal government helps even faith-based charity organizations. Face it, governments are too buerocratic to be truly charitable, so Bush is giving the money to other charity organizations. Atheists won't like this, but at this point, we really can't be picky with which charity organization to support. -The CIA has a history of incompetence, ever since its inception. Their money should be diverted to the NSA, or probably the secret organizations we don't know about. -Clinton shrinked the military. -The Patriot Act was ultimately done by Congress. -The deficit was caused by the tech bubble burst, which is a problem Bush really inherited rather than caused. -Social Security won't get fixed until the economy gets fixed, which Bush is doing. -They are trying to strike against the 90 some year old Supreme Court justices who won't retire. Its another example of partisan politics which will neither be solved by Bush nor Kerry. -Yeah, and when Bush finds the leak, whoever it is will likely be shot. -First of let me point out the you don't KNOW that those companies are there. Secondly, Bush is the only President who is pro-Nuclear in a long time. In my opinion Nuclear is the most practical and safe of evironmental choices. -He gave the CIA intelligence reports. Its not Bush's fault that the CIA is incompetent. -You got one there, although I agree with his opinion on Kyoto. -So? -First, I'm smacking you with the electrically charged trout for that. Secondly, this is all conjecture. Third, let me point out that Bush doesn't make money from oil any more. Fourth, there are THREE grounds in morality - right, wrong, and nuetral. The only thing for sure is that not attacking a country is always nuetral, and attacking can be any one of the three. Fifth, if Clinton did his job, Bush wouldn't have to worry about either Iraq or Somolia, and would be able to properly focus on the War on Terror. Please, nobody reply to that last comment. We don't need another pointless discussion about Iraq.

Manus, that really isn't that good of a reason, Bush is probably the 50 billionth person in history to use the english language incorrectly. On the other hand, I like Bush because he refers to "the tragedy that befell on September 11th, 2001." Kerry, usually just likes to say "nineeleven". I think that event should be held in a more solomn way than two numbers. Thats also a stupid reason for voting, but...

They do make a point about saying that Bush's tax cuts only went to the wealthy. However, even if that were true, Kerry is planning on raising taxes. A cross-the board tax hike hurts the lower classes than a tax break for the wealthy.

sorry for the spam, but...

OOC - actually that was pretty short. For the previous few hours, Ailius and the SE discussed their newest plot. Suddenly, the walls of the warehouse were rattling. The SE commandoes scattered around the room began to get nervous. "INCOMING" "How did they find us so quickly?" "Calm down" said Ailius, "anyone got radar equipment on you?" "Hold on, sir." The voice come from a loudspeaker from the Wyvern-class corvette that was with them. "Scans reveal a single Leviathon, a beat up one too. 200 degrees 700 ticks." "Whew, can you get the transponder?" "Yeah, the ship is registered to a Alexander Harper, an Ithkul merchant with a bad history." "Hmm...this could work to our advantage, but I'll need a good disguise." "Sir, the bionanobots should enable you to take the shapes of other humans, altough they will never fool a med scan." Ailius then changed shape into a middle aged scared individual. Two commandoes also hid their SE uniforms under trenchcoats. Each got in a Warbird and followed the Leviathon. Ailius pmed Harper. "Alexander Harper? My name is Vaxmillion Sanders. I need to make a -shipment- in the near future. If you would do this favor for me, I would pay you 1,000,000 galactic credits plus expenses. If you are interested, I will be landing on the mese 1000 ticks to our southeast." With that, Ail and his lackeys landed on the mesa, awaiting Harper's answer.

I think this forum is missing a whole side of the Bush vs. Kerry issue. Every discussion quickly gets turned into something covering Iraq and the War on Terror. However, this is one small part of the whole issue. If you must discuss politics, please do it elseware, because we have been running two or three topics on the US' foreign politics constantly for a year now. Those who discuss foreign politics here will be beaten with an electrically charged trout.

I doubt it too. The point is that terrorists survive by using our virtues against us. We don't like killing civilans, so they use civilians as human shields. We don't find it acceptable to torture those captured. We could easily kill Bin Laden tomorrow. All we would have to do is torture his location out of a captured terrorist leader today, and launch a massive cruise missile strike tomorrow. The question isn't whether we can or cannot win the War on Terror, its whether we can win it in a humanitarian fashion. I guess those who are absolutely sure we can't are pessimests and those who are absolutely sure we have are overly optimist. Maybe I went a little strong in that last post, but US does need different allies to win the War on Terror in a humantarian fashion. Our European allies have little in stake for themselves and can only offer the conventional armies that we have in abundance. We need allies that have a huge stake in the war on terror. More importantly, we need allies that can influence Muslim populations. We need terrorists to be viewed in their homeland as bringers of uneccessary wars rather than national heros. We have a few good allies already. Russia and Turkey have large stakes in this conflict and have experience when dealing with terrorists. Saudi Arabia also has a large stake, although their political system creates more problems than they solve. Iraq could turn out to be our ultimate ally if things play out right. They currently have a huge stake in the War on Terror, and if they can manage a stable government, that government will have a huge influence on muslim populations. Going into Iraq was a positively brilliant move. If the new government survives, which it likely will at this point, it will grow into a counter-terrorism powerhouse, as effective against terrorists as the US is against conventional armies.

The US did support the UN! We supported the UN for twelve years, and in that time we could not get proof the weapons were dismantled. BTW, we DID find some samples of gas in Iraq, so Hussein hadn't got rid of all of it. Before we went in, Blitz was frequently given the run-around and Iraqis frequently threatened the lives of the UN inspectors. We had good reason to think Hussein had WMDs. This wasn't some idea cooked up by Bush - most foreign leaders as well as the US Congress was convinced Iraq had WMDs. This list apparently included Kerry. When Kerry was presented the same intelligence that Bush saw - KERRY VOTED FOR ACTION IN IRAQ. The US is seen as dangerous and utilateral because the world media wants the US to seem dangerous and unilateral. If you disagree with me, tell me what the current situation is between France and Chirac? You can't - Chirac never makes the news. If he did, one could easily see why the US had to go around the UN.