FMBI

amirite? Sam, don't try to be a knight in shining armor unless there's a lady at the other end of the tunnel. <_<

I just gave you an in-depth explanation of why it's not worth the effort to answer highly simplistic questions on behalf of people that we aren't personally in contact with. At best, this was an opinion poll, in which case my pessimism pwnt you - at worst, it was a useless trick so you could find a reason to post what you just did. If you really want to know their stance on these issues, go to their sites - they're often [over]informative. Heck, John McCain and Hillary Clinton have virtually hung themselves on their sites.

I didn't crave anything earlier, but all of a sudden I'm craving chili dogs, a fudge-and-peanut butter sundae, and a cake with lemon icing. <_< AND BTW, BEFORE AUDRY SAYS ANYTHING, SHE CAN'T SPELL BECAUSE SHE'S FRENCH CANADIAN AND SHE DOESN'T HAVE THE TIME TO LEARN ENGLISH, AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN CARE ANYWAY, SO STOP INSULTING HER AND MAKING FUN OF HER, OK GUYS? LEAVE BRITNEY AUDRY ALONE!

Nonsense. I'm glad that I can go to Korea, Germany, Japan, or England and get the same great food I delight in at home. Mmm mmm, the Colonel's chicken! 11 herbs and spices (salt, pepper, and MSG ) - it's like heaven! And don't even get me started on McDonald's.. Who needs haggis when you have their burgers? On a more serious note, I hate Sheetz now. Where I live, all the main restaurants and businesses are on a road 5 miles outside of town, but our Sheetz is right in the middle of town, by a 5-way intersection - it's almost impossible to get anywhere between noon and 2 PM.

Indeed Lynx, but just because you will never find the perfect girl doesn't mean you should stop looking. Tis nobler to look forever for something which may not be found, than to live forever with the imperfect. See? I just justified your addiction to porn. $$

Anyone supporting the SP USA? And as for why your topic rules are misleading : 1. How will they solve the oil/gas crisis and continuing inflation? Can't solve the oil/gas crisis without shifting into hydrogen (or methanol), solar power, and transition-phase fission nuclear. As for continuing inflation, I don't see any hope of it ending. The US has !@#$%^&*ed itself up too badly with massive debts which it never had any intention of paying off. 2. What is their answer for Iraq? None of the candidates have an "answer", even the ones favoring "gradual withdrawal" take a racist and/or neocolonialist approach to it and assume that nobody will be able to form a government without us there - and that, even if it happens, it has to be controlled by one of our puppets. 3. How will they affect and strengthen the US Dollar? Honey, the only way to strengthen your currency is to have something backing it. First the US had strong exports, then we had strong support from Europe, then we had the biggest market in the world, then we had the oil-to-dollar link, and over the last few years we've been backing it with military power - but after military power, there's nothing left. When the military finishes its ignominious collapse, we'll see the dollar crash even further. 4. What will they do to lower the cost of healthcare? The US currently has the cost of government healthcare and the quality of corporate health care. Either way would be good, in theory. The problem is that none of the candidates are willing to make a break in one direction or the other. This has been sitting on the "Major issues" list for roughly 3 decades, and it's gone nowhere. If Hillary or Barack get in, they'll find a way to make it universal without lowering cost - if McCain gets in, he'll find a way to reduce healthcare coverage even further without providing meaningful compe!@#$%^&*ion (huge investments + oligopoly = free market? gimme a break). 5. What is the craziest idea you have heard from your candidate? None of them have offered crazy ideas, because if they say anything revolutionary the press will go nuts and the 90% of the population who are uneducated but consider themselves educated will panic and demand a "stay-the-course" pattern.

I think you're all missing the point here.. The US infrastructure is dated, decaying, and underequipped, and the citizens of the US are the most wasteful in the developed world (besides Australians; however, there's a population difference of 280 million people) - we dodged the bullet for 30 years, but now the same experience we're having with gas is finally going to extend to other parts of our lives. I'm personally very much against this sort of thing, because I'm a conscientious person (I don't use air conditioning, keep heater at 56-60 in winter, etc), but think about something for a minute. Confess and darkhosis basically said "I don't give a !@#$%^&*, just charge me more" - which is exactly why they do need to do this in the first place. When you have enough electricity and people waste it, you can overcome the deficit and boost prices - when you actually experience shortfalls and fewer people have enough, it isn't possible to just "charge more", you have to actually take action. It's finally time for the paradigm shift people have been talking about for 30 years, and basically you can either shift yourself, or else you can be shifted by the government, and throw away some of your civil liberties at the same time. I know which way I'm going.

Ace, the problem with that quote is that the US has historically faked diplomatic attempts before doing whatever it was planning to do anyway. Note GW1, in which Bush kept upping the pressure, and ultimately made it impossible to draw down; take a look at the "diplomacy" before GW2 which has been proven to be pure BS; look at the "relations" with almost any of the left-leaning states who we overthrew in favor of right-wing dictatorships. Besides, Petraeus, contrary to what the heel-licking candidates would have you believe, isn't exactly Mr. Perfect - if I had to make any statement on that, I'd say that he's just been someone they could stick in there to help hold it together and make the war more popular until the elections are over. As Astro said, one of the main requirements of negotiation would be that Sadr would disarm. Now while that's nice to dream about, it isn't going to happen. And it shouldn't happen. For all the talk about how the armed groups "threaten the stability and freedom of the Iraqis", perhaps we should remember that the #1 killer of civilians has been the US armed forces, not the people who (true or not) claim to represent those people. If he did indeed disarm, then the only popular, Iran-resistant m!@#$%^&* movement in the country would collapse and the US would carry out a nice little purge of anyone related to it. It's insane to think that that would be "good" in any way, shape, or form. I'm personally in favor of Sadr eventually becoming a civilian leader, but in the meantime, his disarming would be somewhat akin to the FRG disbanding their military in 1950. And finally : He's riding on a popularity wave right now, he knows the US military is severely weakened, and he knows that whether the US elects a gradual-withdrawal candidate, or a stay-the-course candidate, he still wins. Give me one reason that a sane human being would switch 4 Aces for a couple of a couple of 3s. The US has everything to gain by negotiating a peace which weakens Sadr, and he has everything to gain by continuing low-level warfare, expanding and consolidating his power base, and waiting for increased pressure on the US to GTFO. In essence, he'll make a tactical unofficial ceasefire (as he did before), but strategically do everything he can to expel us. Meanwhile we'll try to wipe out a movement which encomp!@#$%^&*es millions of Iraqis, is well armed, and which doesn't have the disadvantage of being dependent on Iran's good will for survival (unlike our proud ARVN government), all the while asking for peace and then breaking it as soon as possible. It's pointless and self-defeating, but who cares?

The US also tried to !@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*inate him while pretending to hold peace talks. The US is currently attacking "Sadr city" and setting up huge concrete barricades, while purposely employing "massive force" to make a point. Now, this is just my opinion, but when you have a history of trying to kill someone, and when you're taking measures which say "Haha, you puny rebels can't do anything, keep on shooting", that doesn't really imply you have a desire for peace, it just implies that you're willing to play very dirty. And before you say "Well, maybe the US has to play dirty in this war", consider that the war still isn't doing anything for us except speeding up an economic collapse.

TJ, you're right that it doesn't necessarily have a cause-and-effect relationship, and, as I mentioned, it might even be left-over from the Russo-Afghan war (they did use chemical weapons, why not tactical nukes?) - however, your !@#$%^&*ertion that elevated levels of uranium in urine could be due to tribal warfare which mainly utilises AK-47s, RPGs, and stripped Soviet equipment is worse than ridiculous. Additionally, while some health problems could be due to the war at large, that still doesn't exactly absolve us of responsibility, does it? And finally - Due to DU's pyrophoric and highly explosive properties, it could quickly be released into the environment in the form of particulates and shrapnel, thus making for a one-two punch - first, you get it into your skin early, then the rest of it settles into the environment and poisons the area for quite a while into the future. Note that this is all "speculation", as there have been a lot of studies going both ways. One thing I've noted, though, is that most of the studies done which say that DU is harmless have been !@#$%^&*ociated with military contractors, right-wing think tanks, and the like. In any case, the DU issue will be resolved by 2018 or so. If it isn't toxic, then we'll just have vets with PTSD, lost limbs, mental illnesses, and minor wounds - if it is toxic, then we'll see a massive health problem increase among vets, we'll see cancer epidemics in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we'll gain [even more] international condemnation.

Link The left denounces it, the right laughs at it, the economists joke about it, bloggers mock it. And yet here we are. What makes this even more pathetic is that she's trying to pull out the "elite" card.. one more time.. God, I hate her. It wouldn't be bad if she did it intelligently, but she has !@#$%^&*ed up again and again. Need something to make a younger, more attractive, (slightly) more moderate person look bad? First, spread one quote around for 2 weeks (and, by the way, I'm from small-town PA, and it was true), then pull out his pastor, then keep throwing up questions about his patriotism every week or so. Why can't she just find a smart policy and stick with it, instead of throwing out random gimmicks and covering it up by launching ceaseless attacks on her opponents?

Yeah, just reread my post. I knew what I meant to put, but I got messed up somewhere along the line. But still, even with tabs, there's no way you could enjoy it at that rate.

A period walks into a bar. Eh... That's it. The whole joke. Period. AHA AHHAHAHHA AHHAHA. Oh well... beats * and Dot dot dot, right?

Skunks, because they create urban legends about removing odd smells. You don't hear any legends about "making racASSS sing" or something like that, do you? No. But when it comes to skunks, everything from tomato juice to Rid-X is supposed to get rid of the smell. o_O Live to be 120 with joint pain and gradual memory loss, or die at 50 in marathon-runner condition?

Link I don't see how he could possibly do that unless he wrote a program for it.. 20 pages a minute? Even if he did that himself, you'd think it was because of a mental illness, not actual desire. Edit - I put second instead of minute in the original. Silly me.

I don't even know why the US bothers in Somalia, we don't have the reserve capability to actually pull anything off. We also recently bombed / launched a cruise missile at Somalia recently (depends on who you ask), but that was never looked into, so I doubt this will be either. The only way this could even be useful to US foreign policy is if it were made into a navy-only campaign to support the Ethiopian occupation, combined with a small-scale occupation of Yemen - that would allow control of the southern Arabia / east Africa area (widely believed to have significant oil reserves) - but I just don't think Bush is smart enough to do that. (Oh, I forgot, Bush is a really smart president, except when most people think he's lying.. then he "doesn't have the ability")

Link I've been wondering about this for a few years, because I couldn't think of a reason to use DU in Afghanistan, but it seemed logical enough that if there was an opportunity, we'd take it. I doubt this will ever become too controversial, as, even !@#$%^&*uming it can be 100% proven, it will still be easily dodged, no matter who's holding the reins in the next 4-8 years. Additionally, since a relatively small number of international troops have been stationed in Afghanistan, and because the country isn't as centralised as some of the other central asian states, I'd guess that there's less risk of DU contamination to the average Afghan. Finally, this could just be left-over contamination from the Soviet invasion, as they used it for ammo in the T-62, T-72, T-, and T-90. In that case, we just get a chance to bash Russia. On the other hand, this brings back into public awareness the far more worrying side of the coin - the use of DU in Iraq during GW1 and GW2. If the effects seen in Afghanistan are really linked to DU, then consider the fact that currently hundreds of thousands of US military personnel and millions of Iraqis have been exposed for between 5 and 15 years (and, it seems likely, will be there for 25 or so total) to very high (thousands of tons IIRC) of DU dust in the air and water. What the !@#$%^&* will we do if we find out we've got bigger problems than post traumatic stress?

Long post alert. Spoiler! --Click here to view-- Human Events.. that's the same group that sends me !@#$%^&*ing re!@#$%^&*ed e-mails every day (don't ask me where they got my address from). Pat's articles are the only ones I can even stand, though they still smell rabid. As far as this goes - F him. Is it just me, or do I hear the white man's burden in here? 600,000 black people "reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known"? You know, he just might be forgetting that Africa under the Romans was prosperous, Nubia was prosperous, many regions of southern Africa (especially the Great Lakes region) were prosperous, and right now several African countries which were forced to endure competent leadership (where were our !@#$%^&* puppets when we needed them?), most obviously Botswana, enjoy very generous benefits - I'm sure, given the choice, many inner-city, mom-was-a-!@#$%^&*-dad-was-a-druggy kids would rather be there than here. Except for those !@#$%^&* Africans themselves. And perhaps we're forgetting that race was a non-issue in Europe as early as the mid-1800s in many regions - 100 years before we officially broke the white man's superiority? I don't care how many food stamps you shove down their throat, if the nationwide policy is to encourage a very deep-running unconscious racism (@ Ail - it does, in fact exist. For example, my father claims he isn't racist at all, yet he jumps on the anti-arab, anti-mexican, wagon every time he can. Go figure.), to encourage them to "live somewhere else" (inner-cities cause just about everyone to go bad, but if you ensure that they're stuck there, what do you expect?), and to all the while claim that because we (admittedly) have thrown massive amounts of money in a pointless, business-as-usual manner, everything's fixed. I'm guessing that he's never heard of racial profiling? Let's do the math. You have police officers who are several (exact figure depends on area) times more likely to pick up a black than a white for the same crime. That slims it to, let's say, 2-1 odds. Now consider that whites in America are likely to live anywhere, and most try to get out of big cities. However, in the north, blacks live almost exclusively in cities, which are basically breeding tanks of violence and anti-social behavior. In other words, you're stacking the odds at every stage of the game. I'd say blacks are doing quite well considering all the factors. As far as illegitimacy and dropouts - illegitimacy is a major problem because of the crime culture that, forgive me for saying this another time, is natural in inner cities - dropouts are likely because of low expectations and the illegitimacy factor, not to mention the fact that teachers are less likely to put effort into students if they have a pre-expectation of the student not doing as well. Normally Buchanan at least represents the logical side of conservatism, much as I disagree with him, but this article is one of the self-righteous, skip 90% of the facts, things that really annoys me.

Why not go to Africa, if you stop at the right places (Sudan iirc), they stick you in the ground up to your neck, pour honey over you, and let the ants eat your head. <_< But I'd go with being eaten. It'd hurt like !@#$%^&*, but it'd be less psychologically oppressive. Would you rather jump off a 300 foot cliff, or swim as deep as possible without using pressure-protection? (!@#$%^&*ume you would die either way... just pick the one you think would be cooler)

A week or so ago, I stumbled onto the political simulation game genre (which makes everyone I talk to on SS very unhappy), and I've currently got about 20 of 'em, but they're all from -95, not modern. If anyone has some ideas on modern ones I can try, I'll be deeply indebted to you. <_<

Uh, that was sort of on-topic, because Vegita said that he might support McCain, and I felt compelled to say that Obama, while he wouldn't be that great, is pretty much the only choice. <_< I can turn that into spoilers if you want, but IIRC that's !@#$%^&*y and annoying. Anyway, to summarize : Obama will not be perfect, in fact, he'll probably bring on even more disasters, but he will be better than McCain because he won't be more of Bush (regardless of what "the real McCain" thinks, as I pointed out, he is definitely bowing to the far right nowadays), and he won't carry the vindictiveness, viciousness, and evil of Hillary.

Click to read why you should not support McCain, even if you don't like Obama. Spoiler! --Click here to view--The problem with being a "moderate" is that the center has been moved so far towards the right. If you look at a "centrist" european candidate, you'll see that they're quite a bit different from ours. I am very skeptical on what the democrat's performance will be, but they'll at least accomplish one or two things. I would support McCain if he kept logical stances on issues, but he's changed positions on some things to pander to the far right. Here are some examples of things that make him a bad candidate IMO : Ok, so we have a gas-tax holiday, which means that the oil companies will get a chance to sneak in a 5-10 cent boost and no one will notice. Stop filling the SPR? The SPR is less than a billion barrels, and the US consumes close to 30 million barrels a day. If we were to go to war with an OPEC member and they tried to cut off oil, the SPR is either just enough or actually short of actual requirements to maintain the war machine and keep supplies flowing at home. And think about this - if we had filled up the SPR 10 years ago, when oil was 1/6 of the price it is now, we'd be in a much better situation globally. He'll end subsidies, tariffs, and quotas? Sounds good and all, but globalisation has consistently hurt the american economy by replacing the broad, low-education, middle class jobs with lower class and higher class ones (far more of the former) - I'm no fan of protectionism, but at a time when the US is already dependent on 5 or 6 countries to keep our economy afloat, it's not the right time to open up our borders and rack up a few more trillion in debt. He'll keep tax rates low? Last I heard, we have to raise taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars per year just to take off the cutting edge of the social security / medicare disaster several decades from now. I don't want to see the middle class taxed even more, but we don't necessarily have to do that - end capital gains tax loopholes, inheritance tax loopholes, and raise max brackets and you'll take care of a lot of that. Not all of it, but a lot. Oh, but wait.. he also wants to cut the estate tax to 15 percent? Sounds good to me. He'll make it harder to raise taxes? Right now the democrats in congress have admittedly earned a boot-out, so that means that when republicans (maybe?) get in next time, it'll be virtually impossible to raise taxes. He'll reward saving (good), investment (bad), and risk taking (horrible). We desperately need to hike our savings rates, and we also need to promote internal investment, but with the US having a far lower rate of return than other countries (except for US companies that work in other countries, of course), very few people will opt for the home front - especially in the economic meltdown precipitated by Supply Side Economics Round 2 under Bush. Corporations know what they're getting into when they try to run a company - it has long been an accepted fact that he who starts a business is he who pays for the operating costs. Removing the tax on this, in the first place, will cut tax revenue, and in the second place, reward corporations who go on purchasing sprees to avoid taxes - very likely to lead to major overinvestment and wasteful expansion - and why would corporations create jobs if they could get tax breaks for purchasing robots instead? He doesn't mention that most businesses already dodge taxes and end up paying ~20% rates. If he's going under the logic that they'll stop trying to avoid taxes if he drops them, he's sadly mistaken - after all, Reagan cried about 70%, and he kept dropping them until they were down to 27%. Additionally, the 35% rate = higher than major trading partners claim is somewhat misleading. Many smaller companies (the ones that he wants to promote.. right?) already pay far below 35% - and the most successful european economies actually pay close to, or (in the case of Germany, the world's largest exporter) more than our rates. Look, Johnny, I'm all for a simpler tax system, but "two tax rates and generous standard deductions"? Sounds like the flat tax to me - the same system that !@#$%^&* Armey advocated because it "was fair for everyone", even those who made enough to achieve vastly higher rates of wealth ac!@#$%^&*ulation. OK, maybe you didn't support earmarks. But there are two issues here. Number one, earmarks will never disappear in America because every !@#$%^&*ing congress(wo)man supports them. That isn't to say there aren't a few who minimize them - but often, people who don't support them are shunned and their opponents are given plenty of cash in election bids. For the average person to refuse them is political suicide. And number two - John McCain might not support earmarks, but he also "100% supports" something which was slipped into a bill and which has gathered nearly universal resentment - Real ID, a program which will do very little to help, which will extend the "slippery slope" base for privacy removal, and which will have massive costs. So he'll cut government services (ha ha, ha ha.. even if he does, it'll be an epic Bush-scale cut - Wow, I'm spending one hundred billion on Iraq, but I'll cut your 20 billion in domestic spending! I'm a financial genius!), he'll reform civil service (my father works in civil service.. there's no way to reform it without firing 8/10 employees), he'll eliminate earmarks (See above), he'll reform procurement programs (that's impossible unless we fire all the useless colonels and generals we're currently employing and go back to an under-officered setup - in other words, you get done what needs to get done, because you don't have time to waste.. Right now you have thousands of people who would lose their jobs unless they kept passing R&D and procurement back and forth, which both slows down procurement and drives spending through the roof).. I don't see any of this happening, no matter who's elected. One thing that I very much agree with him on, however, the democrats (yes, the democrats) will stop this from happening. For all their populist rhetoric, they tend to support the elites as well. And besides, the republicans would have a fit if their wealthy donors suddenly found themselves paying a fair share for drugs. And, anyway.. In a free market (which is !@#$%^&*, but it's the republican bible), wouldn't we go the way of poor countries that break international law and make generics to control diseases and AIDS? In theory, we could have medication just as cheap as Uganda or Brazil. 95% of the world's customers are outside our borders, but we have a far higher amount of the world market than would be suggested by that figure, both through our affluence and through our links to the chief exporting countries. Not very many of that 95% would be helped by increased trade and economic colonialism, and the poor and middle class in the US will certainly suffer. And who really believes we can raise the dollar through globalisation? That only works if you've actually got something to back it up with, and the US is the largest debtor in history, with no signs of reversing the trend. Why have they done that? Simple. The US has put pressure on Syria for 60 years, often on Israel's behalf (we won't go into whether that's correct or not), and Iran for 30 years, even though it's arguable that had we reacted differently, we could have restored relations and put ourselves in a much better global position. Today both of them see a major chance to get back at us by using the classic tactic of supporting proxy warriors - if we and the Soviets had so much fun using the trick, back in the days when war was a bit cheaper, then why shouldn't two small and unpopular countries take advantage of this perfect chance to wear down what was the world's most powerful military, with little cost to themselves? To quote John McCain - "I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I hardly know where to begin." The war is already lost because we are neither using tried and true strategies that were used for thousands of years, or fully adapted to the super-high-tech-macho-volunteer strategies that have emerged in recent years. Additionally, many of the troops on the ground are cynical and depressed about the war, and we have managed to consistently employ inept bids for supremacy without taking a look at the long term issues. To actually win the war, we would need to do precisely what Johnny's saying we shouldn't - engage with the "terrorist states" which have been undermining our attempt to take over. Also, this isn't "the region that produced the terrorists who attacked America" - that was Saudi Arabia, which has historically been wary and somewhat hostile with Iraq. I'll give him the energy supplies part. Also, as so many people have pointed out - if we "fail" in Iraq by withdrawing, and it becomes an anarchic state chock-full of terrorists, well, who's fault was it? I'm not saying we should just give up on this, I'm personally in favor of a limited troop presence - but I do not support the idea that we have to remain so that Iraq can be a permanent military base for us in the middle east. True enough in some cases, but considering that he's running for president as a republican, this is nothing more than pandering to the paranoid religious right - the same people who say "we need to win this country back for God", the same people that oppose abortion, homosexual rights (even civil union), and quite a few freedoms that we take for granted nowadays. There are a lot of centrist religious people, but they're steadily being drowned out by the sort of people that he's appealing to. We require a larger and more capable military to protect our country's never-ending vital interests - there are certain allies we need to keep, and certain places we need to protect, but each one should be carefully analyzed and weighed on its merits. Additionally, I love the part about "Africa and Southeast Asia" - that guarantees that we'll be turning the already-suspicious Africom into yet another huge and wasteful branch of the military, while, a few thousand miles away, we're extending our commitments to a region that has grown in friendliness towards China and India in recent years. Finally, all this !@#$%^&*umes that we keep a 100% ready military, which is one of the biggest faults any country can possess. The USSR had a powerful ready military, but its real strength lay in the reserves, which were (if I recall) roughly twice the size of the normal military. The US has rejected the conventional wisdom that you don't need everything in tiptop shape, and you don't need to go chasing after every potential terrorist in the world, and statements like these basically say that we're going to go even more along that path. And note the clause about "best manned" - Russia, China, and India all have militaries that rival ours in size (though they're a lot cheaper), and thus we would have to majorly expand our hyper-expensive military just to keep pace. Sounds like a good way to hit the economic breaking point to me. Further confirmation. The sad thing is, that Bush also brags about our freedom, even though he has put in the PATRIOT act, Real ID, and tried to force through TIA - along with a "raft" of other, unnoticed, changes. I don't put much faith in McCain, as he's pretty much already made up his mind - this is going to be a presidency which focuses on military strength (cough, cough, dying hegemon) and preserves human rights to roughly the extent that the Byzantines did - sure, you were protected from the Turks and the barbarians, but you also lived in a totalitarian state. God!@#$%^&*, Iran is an outlaw state? We always say that Israel can't make peace with Hamas because it "does not recognize Israel's right to exist", just think what would happen if we carried that principle over. Also, aside from China and Russia (which don't have to start a war with the US, because they have the potential to economically outlast us, even with all the problems and disasters they've gone through), there's no reason to bring back star wars yet again. Against actual terrorists, as has been noted endlessly, it's useless - all they have to do is smuggle in a dirty bomb or launch a short-range, low-yield nuclear missile from a boat. This is nothing but hype. First of all, I already commented on this above. But note that he "does not want to roll back our overseas commitments", even though it can easily be demonstrated that most of them, especially ones dealing with Russia, are not necessary any more. As I said, some are vital, but a lot can be let go - that would give us the double benefit of reducing costs by shutting down bases and reducing the army, and not expanding the military. Think about it - increased cost and useless commitments, or reduced size, shedding useless commitments, and giving our "loyal american men and women in the armed forces" a reason to be proud of the organization they work in, instead of being ashamed. I also, along with most everyone I've talked to, find it laughable that he says he won't send them into harm's way lightly. We're already grinding the armed forces to a pulp in Iraq, but apparently some more deaths, injuries, and mental illnesses are worth it, just to maintain control of the world's last huge oil reserves? I salute you, men and women.. I just hope you don't suffer from the effects of DU. He's forgetting that assault weapons, while they are used only in a minority of cases, are far more likely to be deadly? Again, pandering to the paranoid right. As someone who grew up in a very active hunting community, I can tell you that nobody gives a !@#$%^&*. They don't use AP bullets because they won't kill the deer. Anyone who tries to use AP in hunting is re!@#$%^&*ed. That's taking a page straight from the NRA's book. Rather than propose meaningful social solutions and encouragement for "law abiding citizens", you just go with a strategy to punish anyone who makes a mistake, doesn't know better, or is just plain innocent (which, while it doesn't occur as often as organizations like the ACLU would have you believe, is surprisingly frequent.. just look at all the people on death row who it later turned out were innocent). There are some other policies of his as well, but I thought these were the most convenient ones to poke holes in.

Never have sex - it's a simple matter, similar to the "love or riches" thing - one can (almost) give you the other, along with some side benefits. In this case, you can get lots of non-sex stuff (news, etc), as well as porn, tips on how to masturbate, and a convenient place to chat with other losers who are going through the same experience. Would you rather live in Western Europe or the US?

I went with option #3 - An eternity of torture by sadistic lawn gnomes whacking me with those oh-so-cute gardening rakes. Would you rather be born rich or poor?