LastPommerFan

Only used as an example of the mindset, not the actions. My grandfathers brothers and their sons honestly believed that the entire Island would suffer until the Orange Parades stopped.

just flipping through that book i linked to, it appears that there are a fair amount of club makers from that time period (the tees put you in 1930s if they're legit) that made irons worth hundreds of dollars now. might be worth a shot.

Watch TPegs buy the team and build a new stadium, mostly with his own money, adjacent to the Habor Center. because they're democrats and its not possible that they can squeeze any more votes out of the City. They can, however, pick up a couple seats in congress between Lake Erie and I-81

Can you get the clubs out? Are the maker markings on the back?

If the tees are legit, they may be worth something

I only know these from anecdotes and stories related through the media by people who study depression. I know a woman extremely well who started planning her suicide during severe postpartum depression. She never overcame the thoughts on her own, but a loved one reached out to her, forced her to open up about it, convince her to get help, and medicine was able to bring her out of the depression. It's one of those tough things to study, because we haven't figured out how to review thoughts during an autopsy. There is a lot of energy around the brain and it's malfunctions in the science world right now. Hopefully we're on the cusp of really understanding how it works/doesn't work. I would point to this. Overcoming self preservation has to be incredibly difficult. There's a reason we can't just hold our breath until we suffocate. I'll fall back on my final recommendation from the previous post, judging people who take their own lives is completely understandable, but we'll be able to help the living far more as the stigma of mental illness begins to fade and we feel comfortable learning and talking about it with the people that we love.

I think it's understandable to judge him, but, typically in the cases of depression related suicide, he would have been completely incapable of recognizing anything other than he was ending his pain and everyone else would be better off. In his mind, he was not capable of recognizing any of the negatives you've listed. They are real though, the whole world is worse off, especially his family, because of the actions he took that night. So, I think judging him is understandable, his family has to live with the pain. But thinking he could have made a different choice that night might be a little too far. It may be better if we all learn a little bit about suicide, about the signs, about the things we can do to reach out to people who are hurting, because they physically can't, oftentimes, reach out to us.

:D I knew you couldn't quit us! I should have guessed it'd be this thread that brought you back :)

Just about the only one I'm not worried about is Jeff Bridges. The Dude abides.

We need to get David Letterman and Bill Murray into protective custody...like immediately.

I agree on the timeline, I think it took hundreds of years to change the course of Christendom, starting sometime after the religious wars in Europe and the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, and effectively ending during the Enlightenment and French Revolution when Secularism took over. After that point, most of the fighting was political battles where the belligerents may have simply been more easily identified by their religion (Northern Ireland, for example). What we are (mostly) seeing in the Middle East today are truly religious battles being fought, they can't really be political battles, as there are no real political systems there to speak of. I would contend that ANY belief system that causes it's adherents to forfeit their own free will in favor of some ideal, especially if that ideal is eternal life, is very easily manipulated into violence. The vast majority of humans don't want to kill other humans. It's not natural for us, we are social animals. I mean that in a zoologic sense. We literally evolved to help each other out, rather than fight each other for resources. The battles for land and resources came much much later in our development. So, by genetic default, we are not programmed to want to kill. There is evidence of this all over the place, but a more perfect example might be suicide bombers. We certainly are not instinctually driven to sacrifice our own lives for the purpose of harming others. It takes fanatical belief, specifically in a special afterlife, to get a person to crash their plane into an American Ship (Pacific Theater WWII) or Building (9/11). It was the rise of the middle class. That's what changed in Christendom that does not exist in the Islamic world today. 1600-1800 saw the first real middle class appear in Human Society. Middle class people are a shitload harder to reprogram in general. People who have created their own lives, who have something significant to lose are far less likely to follow a charismatic lunatic to certain destruction (mental illness aside, there will always be small bands of crazy, but that's not what we're talking about here. So what to do. I think you're absolutely right about the current power structures needing to be destroyed. The society can't change as long as the small groups that wield all the power continue to rule. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain. It didn't work in Europe and it won't work here. The British Crown was destroyed by debt, much like the Soviets. The French Crown by the Guillotine. The Fascists by the Allies. The Emperor in Japan by the Bomb. In each case the space was made for a new power system. And that is exactly what is needed in each of these countries in the ME. But the Power brokers don't sit in Damascus, nor Baghdad, nor Gaza. They sit in Riyadh and Tehran. In the case of Tehran, we have no chance of unseating the power on our own, without great loss of life. We will have to wait for them to be weakened by their own people. I think that's happening, but it is painfully slow. Riyadh we could destroy this evening. It would take less than a week. I'm not talking instilling the government we want, just knocking the powers that be out of their position. I don't think we want to do that, it could launch WWIII, I'm just saying we could. But killing the leaders of Saudi or the Revolutionary Guard won't get us where we want to go. The people need to have something to lose by allowing a new fanaticism to replace them. IMO, the growth of the middle class, the development of strong secular political institutions, and the spread of education must PRECEDE the use of force. That force will be absolutely needed. And afterwords, we cannot punish the people like we did the Germans a century ago, or the Russians two decades ago. We must not allow their economies to fail. It will be incredibly expensive. It will make the wars look like kid stuff, but if we truly want to reduce the potential for violence from this region, I believe, it is the only possible course. [eesh...wow that was rambling....sorry]

You are correct. It is completely revisionist to claim that the Democratic members of the US Government didn't, in general, support the invasion of Iraq. There are elements of both parties (Pacifist and Anti-Violence Liberal Democrats, and Libertarian anti-interventionist Republicans) but that war was the result of an entire nation that was hurt and scared and looking for a fight. Saddam was more than happy to provide one. Also, I'm not sure if you saw these questions earlier, but I am interested in your thoughts: Why do you propose Christianity became less violent a century ago? How would you accelerate that process in the Islamic parts of the world? I agree with you that we would act similarly in similar situations, that it is a common human reaction when backed into a corner. We did not, however, go to war in Iraq for the same reason ISIS did. They are both problems of violence, but they need to be addressed differently because they have different root causes.

I love the D

The care about the distinction about as much as those killed by the Ebola virus. The distinction is important to the living when attempting to address the causes of violence. We don't act violently out of desperation or religious fanaticism in general.

Obviously Samueli hasn't learned his lesson about buying people off.

you guys kill me. :lol: Nice work PA.

direct result of darcy's moves. I'm confident none of it was intentional on his part. He's a buffoon.

To be crystal clear: Violence in the name of religion is a much larger problem in the Predominantly Muslim Middle East than it is in the Predominantly Christian Europe or North America. I am not attempting to argue that they are the same.

Ah. I understand now. My point is that the religion is an irrelevant factor. It does not matter, that these people happen to practice that particular faith is meaningless. They are violent because they they are poor and powerless. Your century segment happens to coincide with the Industrial Revolution in Christendom. I believe the two are solidly related. In fact, even the positive influences of religion have diminished in that same time period. Why do you propose Christianity became less violent a century ago? How would you accelerate that process in the Islamic parts of the world?

You still may be projecting, not one of those posts insinuates that any of those groups are anything but wrong. Unless by moral equivalence you are implying that my statements are that murderous radical factions of any religion or nation are equivalently wrong. And I agree with the ability to project power. I don't believe our Marines or Infantry are capable of projecting that power. Our Navy, Air Force, and Special Ops are much better suited. All of this can be done from the Gulf, Qatar, and Kuwait. I would have been in favor of a long military occupation if we were spending 10x more building factories, infrastructure, and schools using local labor rather than American contractors. But that didn't happen between 2003 and October of 2008, and it certainly wasn't going to happen during the recession. it was a huge missed opportunity, and a defiant repeat of historical mistakes. I also believe there should have been absolutely no real power given to the Iraqi government until they had proven they had the institutional infrastructure and respect for minority rights that are required to have that power. Without that, sectarian violence and the loss of all your gains are essentially guaranteed.

I think there is an important difference between a military action taken in the name of Christianity and military action taken by Christians. There may be elements and isolated incidences, and there certainly is relative bias, but I don't think our military takes action "in the name of" Christianity.

I'm gonna have to break this down. I just read through the last few pages, and I'm not seeing posts at all saying that ISIS is right or just or anything other than genocidal thugs that need to be stopped. I'm actually fairly certain that zero people here feel any ambivalence or moral equivalence toward these nutjobs. Is it possible that your brain hurts as a result of the moral equivalence you expected to see being projected onto the traditionally liberal leaning posters? Again, I'm not seeing any parallels being drawn between the current magnitude of violence. I'm seeing the historical comparisons, and the recognition that the phenomenon exists in isolated elements even today, but I'm not seeing any claims of "a parallel between violence committed in the name of Christianity in the past 100 years and violence committed in the name of Islam in the past 100 years". A big part of that is that Christianity is essentially synonymous with the developed world, and there isn't a huge disenfranchised, poverty stricken base for the isolated radical elements to draw strength form. In fact, if you take into consideration some of the poor central African Nations with large christian populations, you'll see much of the same violence as you see in the middle east being committed by Christian Militias. Evil exists everywhere, the religion or sect is irrelevant, it's the poverty and powerlessness that drive the magnitude of destruction. I agree with you here. Sitting back and doing nothing will almost certainly lead to the two outcomes you propose. I disagree on what actions are most likely to prevent these occurrences. I agree to an extent, but it wasn't the military strength or projection of power that were successful in Germany and Japan in the 1950s, it was the all-in on rebuilding their economies. These were homogeneous countries without colonial baggage and warring factions, so the process was significantly easier than it would have been in Iraq, but the idea is the same. If you want (most of) the people in the country to marginalize the violent factions, you need to give them something to lose. A job, a home, economic security, etc. Germany is an exceptional example. Failing to listen to the liberal ideas of Woodrow Wilson, failing rebuild that economy and punitively taking action directly resulted in the rise of Nazism. 30 years later we took a different approach, with massively successful results. Bulls-eye on this one.

Imagine, if you will, if our centers wind up being: McDavid (via Islanders) - Reinhart - Girgenson - Grigorenko (if he develops like he could) Those pivots are all a direct result of Darcy's moves: Trading Vanek - Creating the ###### Roster we had last year and hiring Rolston - Trading Goose, then trading up - and taking the risk on the Russian Essentially all Murray will have to do is find a goalie and start sizing rings.

IF we end up with half of McEichel as a result of that trade, it would be enough to get my vote for his inductance into the HHoF as a builder.

I knew I really liked the man's work, but I'm not certain I understood how much he meant to me until now. I'm honestly heartbroken by this news. Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji, The Birdcage, Good Will Hunting, What Dreams May Come, Patch Adams, Insomnia... These are all movies I watched more than twice. We are losing great actors at a troubling pace this year.