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    Posted by Mamaemma 10 years, 10 months ago
    I didn't think it was chilling; I thought it was great. Simple, truthful presentation. No one can say the world wasn't told.
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    • Posted by SaltyDog 10 years, 10 months ago
      True, but I can't imagine for the life of me what the world needed to be 'told' about! If the countries of the world couldn't see that for themselves, do we really want to be forming alliances with them?

      +1
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    • Posted by scojohnson 10 years, 10 months ago
      We now have the Russians actively-engaged in Syria, the Chinese hinting they are sending warships and warplanes... the US is already there, led by our Clueless Leader that thought hugging a Muslim would solve the world's problems... And Israel is pretty much ready to go it alone against Iran (and they didn't sign any treaty, so they are not bound by it).

      It's starting to smell like Armageddon... or the start of WWIII - which we always knew would spark in the Middle East... and our Clueless Leader would like nothing better than to grab all the guns in the US to ease the transition to Communism/Socialism or whatever he and his Chomsky / Ayers pals would like.

      I've been consistent in saying for a long time, I switched pretty much entirely off fossil fuels, I'm down to about 10 gallons a week for my pickup and otherwise completely solar + an EV for my wife... but I can't yet tow the travel trailer to my hunting trips w/ an EV... But not because of some freaky global warming "we must do something now!" syndrome, rather, it's because the only way to stop the terrorists is to cut off their money supply... gut the gas & oil commodity prices, and they go back to living in tents pretty quickly... It's the only way to defeat them once and for all. It's 140 degrees in the shade there, it tends to make people pretty cooky.
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 10 years, 10 months ago
    Vladimir Putin is 10K times the leader than O. Those of us that realized he was totally incompetent during the last two elections just got called racists for our troubles. To add insult to injury, there is talk of Kerry getting the Nobel prize.....would be like giving it to Neville Chamberlain for "Giving us peace in our time"!
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    • Posted by ycandrea 10 years, 10 months ago
      It would be like giving it to Obama. The Nobel prize means nothing anymore.
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      • Posted by evlwhtguy 10 years, 10 months ago
        If we were going to think it an achievement that America "overcame" racism by electing Obama, all the libs and the guilty young white folks that voted for him should have gotten it....not Obama!
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        • Posted by $ jdg 10 years, 10 months ago
          Racism was dead and buried until 0 revived it. Now his asinine "disparate impact" laws are imposing it on everybody, even while Common Core lies and says blacks can never be racist.
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          • Posted by evlwhtguy 10 years, 10 months ago
            Racism was definatly close to being healed before he came along, we are now right back in the 1960's Disparate impact was along long before Obama, we have the "Guilty white folks" to thank for that, the African Americans among us have these same "Guilty white folks"to thank for the soft racism of lowered expectations inherent in "Disparate impact" and "Quotas". But why shouldn't they....most of the "guilty" are Democrats....that is the party of Racism, Jim Crow and the KKK! That right...thare warn't no Republicans in the south during the Jim Crow era...or much after the Civil War for that matter!
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  • Posted by $ dballing 10 years, 10 months ago
    Help me walk through some logic. And this is going to be a potentially unpopular question, but I want to understand how to get "from A to B".

    We are all here, ostensibly, because we prefer small government that doesn't interfere with the rights of its citizens to engage in commerce, etc., etc.

    How are sanctions consistent with that philosophy, and so why do we (seemingly, from the comments) lament their having been eliminated?

    Is this a case where we dislike/distrust/etc. a nation-state so much that we carve out little exemptions to our philosophy so we can still have a gov't preventing commerce?

    I'm not saying necessarily I want Iran to engage in commerce and grow big and strong and become a pain in our ass, but how do we reconcile our desires to not have that happen with our philosophy that says the gov't shouldn't be able to prevent it from happening?
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
      Unfortunately its just not that simple. A nuclear weapon isn't something you gamble with to sate one's principals, not everything aligns neatly - nor should they. The dire finality of such a weapon in sane and responsible hands is reason enough to cringe. Placing such a weapon, helping to facilitate having such a weapon, in the hands of a vocally hostile nation calling for your own and all of western civilizations demise is, and should be, terrifying. You can't un-ring a bell. In this case, if principals fail, millions of people cannot be brought back with "sorry about that."

      Why sanctions? Because sanctions are better than the alternatives.
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      • Posted by $ dballing 10 years, 10 months ago
        {devil's advocate mode for the moment}

        But why do "you" think "you" have the right to determine to what extent other nation-states are able to defend themselves?

        From whence cometh our superior authority to possess nuclear-weapons such that we can morally deny that right to other nations?

        EDIT: (to be clear, I understand your argument, but our moral position -- or at least my own personal moral position -- needs to be consistent, something that I can rationalize rather than just emotionally say "but I think they're dangerous and so they have less rights", because I know that the left, say, might say I'm dangerous and deny me rights .... objective criteria are key for me).
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        • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
          I don't...I do think we have the right to defend ourselves. This particular matter isn't a next door, or an across town neighbor, tinkering with a meth lab, its a hostile country with nuke capability and the tech to send it across the sea. Even intercepting it an air burst would do tremendous damage to the atmosphere, entire planet.

          Keeping a weapon out of the hands of a madman who is ready and willing to use it isn't depriving him of defense anymore than keeping matches and a gas can from a known pyromaniac.
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          • Posted by $ dballing 10 years, 10 months ago
            "I don't...I do think we have the right to defend ourselves."

            This is not self-defense. This is pre-emptive.

            "Defending ourselves" would be responding to an attack, or reacting to a credible threat. This is neither of those things. It's rantings and ravings of a crazy person in the middle east with no current capacity to deliver on those ravings, and predictions for years down the road of what might happen. (Likely even, but that's not a current credible threat until that happens).

            So again - it fails the litmus test.

            EDIT: [Clarified my rantings and ravings phrase]
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            • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
              Frankly, I don't care about consistency or a philosophical litmus test when it comes to nuclear weapons. You don't hand an enemy the tools needed to kill you or help him to acquire it.

              You couldn't apologize enough, or take comfort in the consistency of your ideological alignment, should hundreds, thousand, or millions of people die because your principles defied reality.

              Iran has medium and long range missiles and are being assisted by N. Korea, Russia, and (I believe) Pakistan. As of last week their enriched uranium cache miraculously got larger.

              When it comes to nukes any American leader should selfishly err on the side of caution.
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              • Posted by $ dballing 10 years, 10 months ago
                If we arbitrarily carve out exceptions to our "moral code", is it really a moral code any more, or more like a "ehhhhhh, things I think are neat"?

                And that's what this is, right? An arbitrary carve-out. "This" (whatever this is) skeeves us out and so we casually disregard our principles without even (really) giving it a whole lot of thought or examination.

                Even your responses (and I don't fault you, and please don't take this as an attack because it's not intended that way) basically come to down a tone of "why are we even discussing this, of COURSE we have to ignore the principles here".
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                • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
                  It this very line of thinking that will forever prevent an Objectivist from becoming POTUS. We, as a people, in this world, with these concerns, cannot afford to be lead this way. The consequence of being wrong is too great. The reward for begin perfectly aligned too eager.

                  I've said before, I'm a Constitutional Conservative who admires Rand as a visionary.
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                  • Posted by $ dballing 10 years, 10 months ago
                    I don't consider myself an objectivist in any way, really. I consider myself an anarcho-capitalist who admires Rand for having committed to paper some (but not all) of the concepts that make up my moral compass (some by coincidence, some because things were clarified by the reading of her work).

                    I'd settle for obeying the Constitution (oh my would that be a step in the right direction), but the chances of that happening died in 1803 with Marbury, so I might as well wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which gets filled first.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 10 months ago
    A people as a whole, Israel has the great leader it deserves.
    A people as a whole, the USA has . . .
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
      "A people as a whole, Israel has the great leader it deserves.
      A people as a whole, the USA has . . ."

      ...the asshole it deserves.
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 10 months ago
        I got a call from a dentist close to my home whose aide said my broken partial was fixed and to come pick it up.
        So I stared at my reply in progress and decided to leave it open for someone else to finish.
        Asshole works.
        So does my fixed partial. Arby onion rings can get really tough when heated up in a microwave.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 10 years, 10 months ago
    Yep...pretty quiet there.

    That's right, sir. You are going to be blown up. Now...what are you going to do about it?

    I wonder if mankind will completely destroy itself in my lifetime? Could happen, I think.
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  • Posted by Texaswildfire 10 years, 10 months ago
    The loudest statement he made, was 44 seconds of silence.

    And what did America say about that ? Oh wait, they were not there, they had to take a phone call.

    But SofS Kerry and the ambassador were both there for the Hamas representative speech.
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  • Posted by $ splumb 10 years, 10 months ago
    Every time I read about the Iran deal, I think of a movie called "Seven Days In May". It involved a nuclear disarmament treaty with Soviet Russia, and had some very appropriate quotes:
    “I think the signing of a nuclear disarmament pact with the Soviet Union is at best an act of naivete, and at worst an unsupportable negligence. We've stayed alive because we've built up an arsenal, and we've kept the peace because we've dealt with an enemy who knew we would use that arsenal. And now we're asked to believe that a piece of paper will take the place of missile sites and Polaris submarines, and that an enemy who hasn't honored one solemn treaty in the history of its existence will now, for our convenience, do precisely that. I have strong doubts, gentlemen."
    "I'm suggesting, Senator, there hasn't been a single piece of paper written in the history of mankind that could serve as a deterrent to a Pearl Harbor. I sometimes wonder why we haven't learned that lesson by now. Every twenty years or so we have to pick ourselves up off the floor bleeding, and have to pay for that mistake. And I might add, Senator, those mistakes are delivered to us C.O.D. by peace-loving men. And bought and paid for with the lives of other men. Men in uniform.”
    “Your course of action in the past year has bordered on criminal negligence. This treaty with the Russians is a violation of any concept of security. You're not a weak sister, Mister President, you're a criminally weak sister. And if you want to talk about your oath of office, I'm here to tell you face-to-face, President Lyman, that you violated that oath when you stripped this country of its muscles, when you deliberately played upon the fear and fatigue of the people, and told them they could remove that fear by the stroke of a pen. A year and nine months from now, I don't think there will be an electorate, let alone an election. I think we'll be sitting in our own rubble, a minimum of one hundred million dead. And on the gravestone we can carve, “They Died For President Lyman's Concept Of Peace”.”
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  • Posted by term2 10 years, 10 months ago
    The problem here is that it was the UN who carved up the so-called "holy lands" and gave half to the Jews, who were so hated after WW2 that no one wanted them. Who know WHY they were hated, but it fed the whole auschwitz fiasco as well as much other anti-semitism. The issue was that the UN tossed out the arabs in the area and put in the jews. Now, what would you expect to happen- the arabs would want the jews OUT. That was over 60 years ago, and that hatred isnt abating.

    What the UN put in place helped the Jews. If the UN allows Iran to have nuclear weapons, maybe that doesnt help them, although I really doubt Iran is going to nuke Israel and poison the whole of the middle east for many, many years like chernobyl.
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
      Not even sure where to begin on this one.
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      • Posted by term2 10 years, 10 months ago
        I never realized that it was the UN that created the state of Israel. Before that it was England who ran Palestine. It was a really fu%$ed up thing, where there were a LOT of jewish refugees leaving Europe because no country wanted to let them stay. So England went to the UN and got them to bless carving up Palestine to allow for the Jewish State Israel. It was a decision that really was never to work unless the jews and arabs could find a way to co-exist (not likely to happen).

        Imagine if Obama carved up your house and moved in some syrian refugees into half of it. How would you feel about that. I suspect you would want them to leave ASAP, and you would hate Obama for what he did.
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        • Posted by $ 10 years, 10 months ago
          I read up on this subject heavily before I ever began writing commentary. The UN may have had an hand in the formation of Israel but the land was repeatedly surveyed even before the League of Nations. The British called the geographic area palestine - there never was a country called palestine nor a people called palestinians. Mark Twain in 1867 surveyed the land before writing Innocents Abroad.

          Below is a link on the subject..It should be noted (before you say its pro-israeli) that Bernard Lewis, an acclaimed and noted Historian, speaks of some of these facts in the books I've read from him.
          http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/d...
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          • Posted by term2 10 years, 10 months ago
            Its a very complicated subject to be sure, and I sure am not an expert on it, nor really have the time to be. But I do think there is a lot that was hidden from us that resulted in this intense hatred thats developed in the middle east, which is a GOOD reason for the USA to stay out of the regional religious skirmished there.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 10 months ago
    That's the way to tell them about deafening silence. I saw that.

    Only why does he still look as if he's begging? He should annex Judea and Samaria and have done with it. Enough fooling around.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years, 10 months ago
      I must have missed that photo. But
      Greater Judea along with Greater Kurdistan.
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      • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 10 months ago
        Here's a wild idea--a desperate measure, for the most desperate times imaginable.

        What if Ragnar Danneskjöld, instead of contenting himself with capturing a decommissioned aircraft carrier (or whatever that ship was that he had), he had recruited a much larger mercenary force to invade and conquer Gaza, then signed a friendship treaty with the State of Israel?
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