I figured if the political left can make headway using a steady drum beat of asinine cliches, bumper stickers, and imagery, then it might be worth a shot if it means rebuking the most authoritarian presidential candidate that has ever made it to relevance in this country of ours.
Besides, Hitlary is funny. Don't you have a sense of humor? 
Go go gadget RON PAUL!
Non-interventionism really is naive and stupid, but for totally different reasons. Never the less, he's perceived as an anti-war candidate and so has less than zero percent chance of winning the republican nomination.
Non-interventionism didn't stop me from voting for Badnarik, but this time around I think I'm saving my vote for Giuliani. Rudy is a bit less ambitious than Ron, but in the past few months he's come out as a guy that I really think is pretty awesome. He's clarified any positions he once held that were foggy, and most of his ideas line right up with Ron Paul's.
One notable exception is that Ron Paul is generally pro-life, Giuliani is generally pro-choice. No, I didn't get that backwards.
Also, Giuliani actually has a pretty solid chance to win both the nomination and the presidency. Especially now that Hillary and Obama have begun dismantling each other.
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Alaan was listening to Cher while typing:
America is much improved in its prejudices, but I'm not sure we're quite to president level yet.
Problem is, I think we've "improved" a bit too much in our prejudices. Even to the point that we might elect someone who really shouldn't be elected just to prove how improved our prejudices are.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Blindy. booooze lime pole over bench lick:
The fact of the matter is we need a new congress to make any progress what-so-ever. While I don't agree with, well, anything bush is doing, at least he's working around the retards.
This is extremely true. Congress's approval ratings make Bush look like Regan. Last time Pugh ran them, congress only had a 13% approval rating.
Maybe next time folks will listen to me when I tell them they're voting for a pack of complete goddamn assholes.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Alaan booooze lime pole over bench lick:
My bet is on a third big(and white male) Dem snaking up after the White Woman and the Black Guy tear each other apart. America is much improved in its prejudices, but I'm not sure we're quite to president level yet.
This is true because the Democrats have a long standing history of springing surprise presidential candidates at the last second. Tragically, it just might be Edwards, the "Class Strife" candidate, the looniest (and most openly marxist [take a drink]) motherfucker in politics right now.
However, I honestly don't think race or gender has much of an impact on the presidential election at all. Not a negative one, at any rate. America is the least bigoted country in the world.
In addition, a great deal of the voting body is fairly strongly polarized along party lines anyway. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 08-06-2007 at 07:44 PM.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Asha'man who doth quote:
The beautiful irony of this thread is I didn't even know that was Hilary when I made the thread. Goes to show how much I've been following on the presidential race.
Do you really need to be following the 2008 race to recognize hillary clinton?
Even with a hitler moustache?
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Maradon! had this to say about John Romero:
Do you really need to be following the 2008 race to recognize hillary clinton?
She doesn't really make the news around here so apart from forum discussions, I don't hear about her, and even when I do, I don't see her.
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x--KaioteO-('-'Q) :
So.. who is running this time around? Not that I'm going to go vote or anything, I'm just curious, and haven't been watching TV enough to know.
We won't even know who the presidential candidates are until Feb 5th, maybe as late as Feb 12th for the democrats and May 27th for the republicans. Primaries are FUCKED up and are done on a state-by-state basis. It is pretty rare that candidates for the presidential race are not finalized by Feb 5th for both parties, though.
The most prominent hopefuls for the nominations are;
Barack Obama (D)
Hillary Clinton (D)
Some other people who all think exactly alike, with varying degrees of competency at acting like they don't think the way they do (D)
Newt Gingrich (?, probably independent)
Rudy Giuliani (R) Maradon! fucked around with this message on 08-06-2007 at 09:41 PM.
Sam Brownback (asshole)
Ron Paul (R)
John McCain (limp dick)
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Kaiote got all f'ed up on Angel Dust and wrote:
So.. who is running this time around? Not that I'm going to go vote or anything, I'm just curious, and haven't been watching TV enough to know.
Clinton and Obama are the leaders for the Dems with Rudy and Mitt leading the Republicans.
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x--KaioteO-('-'Q) :
So what are the negative issues with Sir Rudy? Never done any research into politicians, but he always seemed like a pretty good guy, even if he's a republican.
He's a pro-choice republican who's pretty amiable toward the topic of gay marriage, which may drive away the values crowd in the primaries.
For the most part, though, he's awesome.
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Kaiote says ta-ma-to, I say to-ma-to:
So what are the negative issues with Sir Rudy? Never done any research into politicians, but he always seemed like a pretty good guy, even if he's a republican.
While I don't necessarily care about any of this stuff, this is why I don't think Rudy will win the primary.
1) He's gotten divorced about a billion times.
2) He's pro-choice.
3) He's been acting like a moron in the debates. I.E. When Ron Paul offered the suggestion that we are getting attacked by terrorists because we intervene in the middle east all the damn time, he completely dismissed it.
4) A lot of fire fighters and such are coming out dismissing the claims he was a great leader during/around 9/11. Since this is pretty much the only thing he's got going that makes the mainstream republicans like him, it's a death bell.
Read more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
"I will kill an infinite amount of people."
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3) He's been acting like a moron in the debates. I.E. When Ron Paul offered the suggestion that we are getting attacked by terrorists because we intervene in the middle east all the damn time, he completely dismissed it.
The event that you're talking here about is regarded as a huge ideological victory for Giulani among republicans. Yeah, he basically called Paul a dickhead, but he said exactly what most registered republicans want to say when presented with that argument.
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4) A lot of fire fighters and such are coming out dismissing the claims he was a great leader during/around 9/11. Since this is pretty much the only thing he's got going that makes the mainstream republicans like him, it's a death bell.
Yeah, that didn't work so well for the swiftboat vets. Even if Kerry did lose, most people didn't give a shit about what they had to say. People who like giuliani will ignore it for the paid advertising that it probably is, and people who didn't like him weren't going to vote for him anyway.
Giulani is still the strongest of the republican candidates in the polls, too.
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Kaiote had this to say about Pirotess:
So.. who is running this time around? Not that I'm going to go vote or anything, I'm just curious, and haven't been watching TV enough to know.
A giant douche and a turd sandwich.
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Vorbis stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
Problem is, I think we've "improved" a bit too much in our prejudices. Even to the point that we might elect someone who really shouldn't be elected just to prove how improved our prejudices are.
This is what scares me...
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At least I'm not Faelynn LeAndris
This is what scares me...
Ha ha. Your whole personality is based off the fact that you think women should control you and your life, which is the same reason you masturbate furiously to Robert Jordan.
Get the hell out.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
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I gotta give it to Maradon! with:
The event that you're talking here about is regarded as a huge ideological victory for Giulani among republicans. Yeah, he basically called Paul a dickhead, but he said exactly what most registered republicans want to say when presented with that argument.
Yeah but it's also out of touch with the centrists. Whatever candidate wins this time, they will do it by stretching out beyond their base. The republican base has been disillusioned and they've lost a lot of their religious followers (and will lose more if Rudy goes for it, mark my words), and the democratic base isn't large enough to get someone elected if they tried.
What could possibly be worse than allowing terrorists to dictate policy?
The standard Republican idea is that the reason that the terrorists are attacking us is because they hate freedom, or are jealous of our awesome country (awesome!) or some other nonsense. It's refusing to admit being at fault, it's refusing to take responsibility for our part in the global fuckup that is the middle east, and it's ridiculously naive.
Yes, we need to do something about terrorism.
No, we should not let them dictate foreign policy.
But neither of these tenants are in question. The question is what the root causes of terrorism are- The way I see it, they are (in no particular order)
I could go on but that's just the short-short list.
We've been fucking around there for too long, we've rattled up the hornets nest, and now all we can do is try to stabilize what we can while removing our need for foreign oil though research and technological progress and attempting to modernize and westernize the region as much as possible. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 08-07-2007 at 01:41 PM.
The fact is that the terrorists really do hate freedom. Not as such, but rather because they are stuck espousing a way of life inherently incapable of providing their peoples a standard of living anywhere near what the West enjoys. Contrary to far left dogma, there really isn't any sort of moral superiority or inherent happiness in being impoverished and backwards, so the only real way to keep their population in control when globalization pokes its nose into the tent and shows them that life doesn't really have to suck is to create a siege mentality and an external enemy by demonizing everything Western, starting with presence in the "holy lands" and support for Israel. How else would they prevent their dark ages mindset from vanishing as people looked around and decided that freedom and education and Coke and Levis and cellphones are much more fun than crushing poverty and a rigid social system?
So let's just put to rest the myth that terrorism is in any way caused by Western policies or actions. It's not. It's a deliberate choice by people faced with either fighting progress or accepting it. They've chosen to fight to stay in the dark ages.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
I like the following quote from Matt Damon in Syriana, about :40 into the video. I think it sums up fairly well the options of the oil-producing economies: live in extravagant wealth until the bottom falls out(at which point you're fucked), or invest now and build a modern economy and infrastructure.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
What the non-interventionist glibly refuses to accept is that the mere existence of a powerful country built on an incompatible ideology is more than sufficient excuse for acts of war. See: Germany invading Russia in WW2.
If we fail to militarily foster and preserve allies in conflicted areas of the world, we will very quickly find ourselves surrounded by enemies that are not only beyond diplomacy, not only capable of fielding vast resources, but in the specific case of the middle east, religiously bound to kill every last man woman and child in our nation.
Saddam was a dictator. Hugo Chavez is a dictator. Ahmadinejad is a dictator and a theocrat. Make no mistake, their ideologies are fundamentally incompatible with freedom.
All this aside, though, where are the bleeding hearts for the people living under these brutal theocracies that legitimize immense violations of human rights on a daily basis?
Isn't it a little blind and selfish to allow warlords and dictators to grind people under their boot heel while we have the power to put a stop to it? Don't we have a responsibility to try our best to make life better, not only for ourselves, but for all people of the world?
Of course, this argument falls on deaf ears when presented to a leftist zealot, as they believe that the only oppression in the world is capitalism and openly loathe the human race as a whole, all while playing the compassion card for political gain. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 08-07-2007 at 06:47 PM.
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If Maradon! was a glacier, they'd be a fast one:
As indicated, the problem with non-interventionism is that it's hopelessly naive and akin to appeasement.What the non-interventionist glibly refuses to accept is that the mere existence of a powerful country built on an incompatible ideology is more than sufficient excuse for acts of war. See: Germany invading Russia in WW2.
If we fail to militarily foster and preserve allies in conflicted areas of the world, we will very quickly find ourselves surrounded by enemies that are not only beyond diplomacy, not only capable of fielding vast resources, but in the specific case of the middle east, religiously bound to kill every last man woman and child in our nation.
Saddam was a dictator. Hugo Chavez is a dictator. Ahmadinejad is a dictator and a theocrat. Make no mistake, their ideologies are fundamentally incompatible with freedom.
All this aside, though, where are the bleeding hearts for the people living under these brutal theocracies that legitimize immense violations of human rights on a daily basis?
Isn't it a little blind and selfish to allow warlords and dictators to grind people under their boot heel while we have the power to put a stop to it? Don't we have a responsibility to try our best to make life better, not only for ourselves, but for all people of the world?
Of course, this argument falls on deaf ears when presented to a leftist zealot, as they believe that the only oppression in the world is capitalism and openly loathe the human race as a whole, all while playing the compassion card for political gain.
I agree that our past actions were, in many cases, a necessity and the best, most plausible course of action, both in the interest of worldwide prosperity and the well-being of our country.
However, that does not give us the ability to completely ignore the fact that our actions were part of the cause and effect that lead us to the situation we are in today. If anything, we should more closely examine how things got here so that we can avoid making the same decisions again.
What is clear is that we can't just pull out now and expect the region to fix itself. We've pulled out way too early from countries we've pulled out of the shit before, and it's gotten us nothing but trouble.
In my uneducated opinion, what worked with Japan and Germany will work with Iraq. Eventually. Keep troops there for 40 years, give them all sorts of money, make sure they set up an actual democracy instead of a shell of one designed to keep one rule in power, and eventually, it will catch on.
The price is astronomical, but it's worth it- it's the only way out from here that won't continue the cycle. This is one of the few things I absolutely agree with Bush on. Maybe it is time to pull a few troops out and lower our visibility there, if nothing else, just to send the message that we do intend to leave eventually- but we can't just pull out.
However, if this was 2002, I'd be advocating that we just don't get involved. The trillions of dollars this rebuilding will cost us would have bought us a hell of a lot of alternate energy research, and the sooner we stop relying on oil, the sooner the primary funding for terrorism largely goes bye-bye... and we'd be best served to strike quick before the people over there realize that and diversify the fuck out of their economies with the almost limitless funding they are currently getting.
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However, that does not give us the ability to completely ignore the fact that our actions were part of the cause and effect that lead us to the situation we are in today.
What situation are we in today, exactly?
I don't buy into the popular notion that the war isn't going well. For a time it was going pretty slowly, but now Petraeus is saying that the troop surge is working fantastically. A strategy wasn't working, so we switched strategies. Meanwhile, we've had fewer casualties than any American war in recent memory, and there still hasn't been a single successful terrorist attack in the united states. Even half the Democrats are now changing to a more optimistic tune.
Ever hear of Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack? Probably not, because the NY Times is only good for wiping your ass these days, but they were two activist journalists extremely critical of the war and wrote numerous articles bashing bush.
Then, they visited Iraq post-surge and did a complete 180.
So where is there significant room for improvement exactly? I suppose it would have been nice if we'd pegged the perfect strategy for a completely new type of conflict right off the bat, but that really wouldn't be very realistic. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 08-07-2007 at 10:07 PM.
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However, if this was 2002, I'd be advocating that we just don't get involved. The trillions of dollars this rebuilding will cost us would have bought us a hell of a lot of alternate energy research, and the sooner we stop relying on oil, the sooner the primary funding for terrorism largely goes bye-bye... and we'd be best served to strike quick before the people over there realize that and diversify the fuck out of their economies with the almost limitless funding they are currently getting.
I know you'll just deny that Iraq, the military epicenter of jihadist islam, ever posed any threat to us at all, but spending a trillion rebuilding in Iraq would be a great deal better than spending a trillion rebuilding in America, and the latter wouldn't even buy us a democratic ally in the middle east.
By the way, google "Salman Pak" when you feel like reading a bit.
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Maradon! had this to say about Optimus Prime:
I know you'll just deny that Iraq, the military epicenter of jihadist islam, ever posed any threat to us at all, but spending a trillion rebuilding in Iraq would be a great deal better than spending a trillion rebuilding in America, and the latter wouldn't even buy us a democratic ally in the middle east.By the way, google "Salman Pak" when you feel like reading a bit.
Why do you think having Iraq as an ally is worth a trillion dollars? We could do a lot more good over here helping our current allies and citizens instead.
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From the book of Reynar, chapter 3, verse 16:
Why do you think having Iraq as an ally is worth a trillion dollars? We could do a lot more good over here helping our current allies and citizens instead.
Because he has no comprehension of what amount of resources that represents. Really, none of us do; it's just a big number. And the total cost would likely be far greater than a trillion dollars, considering we're already at half a trillion.
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Maradon! obviously shouldn't have said:
Iraq, the military epicenter of jihadist islam
Well it is now that we completely destabilized the country and handed this war on a platter for "jihadists" to use. But surely you're not suggesting it was a base for militant islam before.
Maradon, someone who always decries taxation, you certainly seem willing to take $3300 from every man, woman and child in the United States to fund this little escapade. It seems like a far better idea to spend that money rebuilding crumbling infrastructure in the United States than in Iraq.
