ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Talk about whatever you wish.
Darth_Wayne
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Darth_Wayne »

I wish I was as smart as Caesar. He did take an engineering class in high school after all.
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Magyk
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Magyk »

FWIW, I read this a few weeks back and thought it was a really good article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html
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Darth_Wayne
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Darth_Wayne »

Oh man, there are some gems in that comment section.

It's a tough spot. If you don't bow to the UN, there are other teams of countries (arab, communist, etc) that will try to overpower you. If you do bow to the UN, you're forced to live under the rule of a larger Democratic Socialist state - which isn't desirable either. Mitt's answer is perfect. America needs to take the lead and to have the most powerful military in the world - not just to keep the most power, but to ensure our sovereignty from a Socialist world government, and to guard the sovereignty of all of the other nations that will join with us in the cause of freedom.

Rest assured, our enemies will not simply stop their pursuit of eliminating the US. When you have other nations trying to take over the world, leaving them alone will not work. Letting them gain a stronghold by killing and by force throughout the world until they're too powerful to defeat on our own turf isn't an answer either. World peace will only happen if America stays militarily strong and independent in its decision-making.


Apparently McCarthyism is alive and well in the comments section of the Washington Post.

The president asserts that we must move to “a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity.” The old order, he is saying, where America’s disproportionate strength holds tyrants in check and preserves the sovereignty of nations, is to be replaced.

Based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a common sense really? Such as what?

1. Obama is not LEGAL to hold the office in the white-house according to the law and the Constitution.

2. Obama and the socialist new world order of idiotic maroon of the Democratic Party is full of hog wash crap and totally NO COMMON SENSE in their brain dead way of thinking. It will get people killed without any protection from them or this foul rotting government administration of Obama’s.

3. Based on a different set of principles which are gays/lesbians/black mobs in riots and the demo-crap socialist party of drug-heads/drunks and just plain idiotic maroons with more money that any brain in the head of a snail.

4. This administration wants to be rid of the Constitution for it serves no purpose since Obama claims it is too far out dated for America today.

5. This administration wants to be rid of the United States Anthem for it is full of violence according to Obama (lick busting in air) and replace it with “I like to teach the world to sing” instead. Obama has stated that if it was not for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights he could do more his way of controlling the people aka “his slaves”.


This one's a troll, right?

If there's any doubt in anyone's mind who should have been elected President in 2012, they're simply out of touch with reality. What we have now is truly the "enemy within", in one Barack Hussein Obama. Barack Hussein Obama...really?

A young man named Barry Soetoro, chose to change his name to Barack Hussein Obama who now claims to be a Christian. I know of NOone of the Christian faith who would EVER change their name to Barack Hussein Obama withOUT changing their faith entirely to Muslim.

It is stunning how the American people have become so indifferent to who they choose to elect to lead and PROTECT their country and freedoms. And those who somehow think Barack Hussein Obama has their best interest at heart are not worthy of being called Americans. He is NOT America's leader, he is America's enemies' leader.

"OBAMA IS ISLAM'S TROJAN HORSE"
www.zazzle.com/mrunpc
ANTI-Obama/Democrat/Commie/Union stickers, etc.


I want what this guy's smoking.

We should have boots on the ground in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Libya right now, and we should be INCREASING, rather than decreasing, our presence in Afghanistan. Simpletons like Obama don't understand that constant wide-spread war is the only way to guarantee peace.


I'm seriously having trouble identifying who's a troll and who's not.
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Ramshi
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Ramshi »

GUARD!AN wrote:We are relatively prosperous economically and can sustain the large military budget (which can be argued fuels our economy even more).


$17.7 trillion in debt UR???
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Magyk
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Magyk »

The total figure of 17 trillion is very misleading. We can hold a lot more debt that other countries BECAUSE we are relatively prosperous, as Guard says. When you look at debt per capita and by percentage of GDP, we're in the middle of the pack world wide. In fact, we're practically equal with your own Australia.

heat map for external debt by % of gdp:
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by MajorMajor »

Magyk I never said Obama was any good at being a mediator. I was referring to his style of governance.In fact, I have said he fails at solving things because he wanted to mediate between groups that don't want to agree to anything.

Take the republican for example. He tried to mediate a solution between them and the democrats on Obamacare among other things. I know not a single republican voted for Obamacare but stay with me on this as I explain. Before he tried doing this he was already a declared enemy of the republican party. It is damn near impossible to mediate from that position. Which is one of the reasons he failed to get a single republican on board. When someone hates your guts you'll never be able to find common ground. A mediator has to be seen as neutral too which he wasn't. He's to blame for not recognizing this.

It is absolutely impossible to negotiate with anyone who just says NO too. For this part, the republicans are to blame. No one votes 36+ times for repeal of Obamacare, knowing it'd fail to pass the senate, without simply being oppositional. Time and tax dollars was wasted that could have been better spent by republicans to make changes to Obamacare that'd pass the senate rather than a failed effort to repeal the whole law.

It takes 2 to compromise which is why Obama fails at it.

In other topics:

The majority of the military doesn't matter for defense. It is only there to go around the world doing airstrikes and ground actions. The real defense is nuclear weapons. We only need enough to blow up the world once anything more is overkill. So yes we are over funding when we can blow up 1.2 - 1.4 earths. In fact enough to blow up 1 continent would probably kill the rest of the planet anyway.

We are SO not the last or only super power. Russia is still there with nukes and China is too. Just because they don't go around the world doing things doesn't mean they aren't damn powerful. China plays smart conserving its resources and trying to crush us economically. Russia just went on hiatus for a decade. Super power is really just a term made up to make us feel big and important compared to everyone else anyway. So its horse shit.

Magyk is sort of right. The debt doesn't matter even at 17. whatever trillion. Its the DEFICIT that matters i.e. the continual growing of the debt and us not balancing the check book and paying our bills. We need to actually pay for our wars and our services with TAXES. Why? Because taxes are the government's only source of revenue. Debt isn't the government taking in money and paying the bills its the government owing money to someone else who is paying our bills for us. When are we going to grow up and stop having our bills payed for us like entitled teenagers?

Here is my question for conservatives what should be our lowest tax rate?
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Magyk
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Magyk »

For the top 0.1% right now, I believe it is close to 40% (38.something?) and that is where it should stay. The top 15 percent of the richest people in this country already pay close to 70% of all our Federal taxes. Anyone who thinks it should be higher than 40% should go take a look in their bank account and imagine giving $40 for every $100 they have to a complete stranger who may or may not spend it in a useful/constructive way.

On a related note though, our tax system is ridiculously convoluted and needs an overhaul to a flat tax system where you are taxed based purely on income.
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by Blackout »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributi ... ,_2007.jpg

In an ideal world taxes would be paid so that top 1% pay 34.6% of taxes and so on therefore the aim should be to get as close to that ideal level as possible which is why differing levels of taxation are a good thing.
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GUARD!AN
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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by GUARD!AN »

MajorMajor wrote:The majority of the military doesn't matter for defense. It is only there to go around the world doing airstrikes and ground actions. The real defense is nuclear weapons. We only need enough to blow up the world once anything more is overkill. So yes we are over funding when we can blow up 1.2 - 1.4 earths. In fact enough to blow up 1 continent would probably kill the rest of the planet anyway.

We are SO not the last or only super power. Russia is still there with nukes and China is too. Just because they don't go around the world doing things doesn't mean they aren't damn powerful. China plays smart conserving its resources and trying to crush us economically. Russia just went on hiatus for a decade. Super power is really just a term made up to make us feel big and important compared to everyone else anyway. So its horse shit.


That school of thought might have applied 40 years ago, but the reality is that if you yews nukes to win a war then no one wins. As you said, they are primarily for defense (and a last resort at that).

Since our military budget is not all spent on building more nukes (and since wars aren't really fought with them, not since Hiroshima anyways), you can't really yews the argument of our destructive power measured by "earths" as reasoning for why our spending is overkill. We can always create better military jan that more effectively eliminates enemies faster than they can even sneeze, which not only deters others from starting wars with us due to how advanced the capabilities are, but more importantly it enables us to spare more and more civilian lives on both sides as well as US soldiers in the process.

If we had stopped developing our military back when we could defeat "1 earths", what would we be saying right now to IS? "Oh let's dust off those Sherman tanks, guys we are gonna start the draft again!" and it would be Vietnam all over again. Instead we have remote control drones now that can take out enemies from a million miles away. (this is a sensational example I know, but still highlights my point)

How do you consider Russia or China superpowers? It isn't just about nukes or economy. At it's core It's about having a dominant position in international relations, having unrivaled power to exert influence on a global scale. Even if you want to include economy as a primary argument, Russia only has like 2 trillion GDP, compared to the US GDP of 16-17 trillion. Even France beats Russia (though to be fair I do acknowledge GDP isn't the end-all metric of economy).

And China will never crush us economically, they said the same shit about Japan 20-30 years ago, and look where they are now. All it takes is another less developed country one day becoming industrialized to undercut China's exports. That all being said, I'll agree with you that the term superpower is less applicable in this day and age, (if it ever was, a fair point you raised). If anything you can more convincingly argue there are no superpowers, but calling Russia or China a superpower is a complete stretch IMO.
GUARD!AN

–noun
1. guarding; protecting: a guardian deity.
2. a violent, tropical, cyclonic storm of the western North Atlantic, having wind
speeds of or in excess of 72 mph (32 m/sec).
3. (in Gnosticism) one of a class of powers or beings conceived as emanating
from the Supreme Being and performing various functions in the operations of
the universe.
4. a terrifying dream in which the dreamer experiences feelings of helplessness,
extreme anxiety, sorrow, etc.
5. The sensation and muscular spasm caused by an electric current passing
through the body or a body part.

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Re: ISIL, ISIS, Murderers, or whatever you want to call them

Post by MajorMajor »

Guard is WAY over reading what I wrote. I didn't even address military spending in general. Just our nuclear spending. I think its perfectly reasonable to say we don't need more than enough nukes to kill the planet once. I wouldn't necessarily advocate reducing it below that amount but over is just a stupid waste of money.

Guard seems to think I advocate cutting everything else military to pre WWII levels. I say, not unless you want an isolationist foreign policy. Then we wouldn't need more than that for a while (until the next Hitler). However, those policies DON'T tend to work very well in the long term. Much as I hate trapsing around the world trying to solve other people's problems some amount of that NEEDS to be done. It SHOULD always be done with our own interests at heart though. Not the interests of anyone in those other countries i.e. our army should be fighting for us to be secure not for the security of the Iraqis. It just seems to me we forget that sometimes.

Ignoring mission creep for the moment. I unequivocally support the development of advanced military technology. (I want my droid army :D ) Technology and size are two different things though. You seem to forget that when you talk about "dusting off the shermans".

A technologicaly superior force can still be defeated by numbers. Ideally, you have a reasonable balance of both and exceptional strategists and tacticians. We need not match the size of China's army for example if we balance it out with some jan and good planning. Not that we are ever going to fight China. Forgetting the nukes, no one fights their major trade partners.

How much we spend on the military isn't a real problem for me so long as its actually paid for with taxes and not deficit spending. I do have a HUGE problem with contracting out weapons development. It should be more in-house within our government and military not in the hands of corporate interests. At the least, it needs better regulation and SECURITY procedures to prevent stupid things like putting weapons plans on network servers.

Guard, on the super power thing Russia/USSR has always trailed us economically. Even with that difference they WERE considered by many as a super power at one time, if not now. You do bring up a good point about what does it take to BE a super power? Also what do I mean by it?

1. Nukes have to be a prerequisite. I doubt anyone can imagine a country without them threatening one that has a decent stockpile.

2. Economy matters. But only insofar as it allows the country to buy influence with other countries or build the necessary weaponry and recruit a large enough military to threaten them.

3. You mention having diplomatic/political influence with other nations. I'll agree this is necessary but it can take many forms. We always do this through diplomacy and trade. The soviets tended to just annex things and move the troops in. They didn't try to make friends is my point. Yet they still qualified as a super power. Influence can consist of many different things.

I propose that China is a super power now, even if we don't recognize it as such. They already exert influence over more of the pacific with their growing navy. They are slowly but surely extending that influence to "disputed" islands. What is more, they have been and are expanding their trade ties to countries in Africa and around the world securing strategic resources. They pump money into these poor countries developing political support within them for the aid. At the same time they gain control of resources we could yews. Keep in mind their companies are not merely companies but agents of their government. This is a concerted plan. Huawei offering to build US a communications network is hardly a friendly offer when viewed in that context. I prefer not being wiretapped thank you.

Russia is also in an upswing. Don't forget that they annexed part of Georgia(the country not the state) before they ever thought of doing it to Crimea. They also exert trade influence over eastern europe. This is mainly as a result of leftover soviet pipelines and other infrastructure but it still results in influence. Lack of our huge economy doesnt seem to hurt their military size either. They may not be making very many friends but they are certainly a force in their "sphere of influence". If they weren't we'd already be sending a lot more arms to Ukraine.

The one thing both don't do is exert power far from their borders. If this is your definition of a super power then only we qualify (China is getting their though with the expansion of their companies and that navy) but I personally don't consider it necessary that they do, only that they could if they wanted to. So this is why I think both China and Russian can qualify as Super powers. I still think its a silly term anyway. I prefer just to consider both countries threats to our interests and not play games like who is the most powerful or who has be biggest nuclear missile.
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