LastPommerFan

24 hours on waivers first, right?

$7.3M. 2/3 of the $11M he's still owed (last 2 years are $3.5M/yr) What if they wait? :devil:

If Turkey builds the giant east-west pipeline and completes the expansion of the Bosphorus Strait they are intending, and Iran moves toward moderation as they are in the process of doing, Russia loses it's oil and gas monopoly in Europe. When the history of this is all written decades from now, I have no doubt that the protection of that vital Russian economic interest will prove to be the source of much of the agitation for and funding of the destabilizing groups in the region.

I just hope the hawks have more success killing this idea than they did in their wars attempting to destroy the ideas of Gay Marriage, Legalized Pot, Abortion, Socialized Medicine, and Civil Rights.

I'm not advocating doing nothing. I'm advocating letting a fight that needs to happen happen. And supporting all the moderates (Turks #1 among those) all the way along. Iraqi government can be supported too. But bombing Mosul will only make more Mosuli fanatics.

We went 20 years without their oil. We can go another 10 (thanks Fracking!!) I'm ok with turning it over to civil war if that's what it takes to get the people there to start fighting for themselves.

Independently Wealthy

From an international relations standpoint, I really think it's more about learning that we can't control the world, and we probably don't want to anyway. Both options suck because we want to be able to impose our will across the globe instantaneously.

None of these guys are going to retire early. They are all going to Chris Pronger their way to the end of their contracts. This is absolutely an unwritten agreement between the Owners and the NHLPA.

All of this. This is not a wartime international relations whiz president. He's not Wilson or FDR or Nixon. He's a social liberal swept into power by a disaster of an administration and an angry public. This is what we wanted. Exactly what we voted for (twice). We'll have to live with the consequences, but I don't think anyone can guarantee that a McCain/Palin administration would have made it any better. If Obama doesn't win the White House in 2008, Pelosi is still the Speaker and the Tea Party doesn't exist. The landscape would be hugely different, but I'm not sure it would be better. I think the answer in Iraq, now that we have what we have, has to be, "Let it go." There is going to be some serious sectarian violence in the next 5-10 years across the developing world, from Sudan to Iraq to Pakistan to Thailand. I really think we need to monitor for systematic genocide and humanitarian crises, and reserve our forces to react to those situations. Diplomatically and financially, we can support moderate regimes when they appear and ostracize fanatical or tyrannical ones. The people in these parts of the world are just emerging into the modern information age, without any of the social institutions a westerner would take for granted. Money can't buy social institutions, armies can't build them, it takes time and education. We need to protect from the atrocities I listed, and help educate the moderate local and regional leaders about social institutions like a justice, electoral, political, and education systems. And we need to be patient. And that is the thing Americans are most terrible at.

Why the hell would the Refs be giving the game to Brazil?? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2357453/Brazilian-referee-beheaded-Angry-fans-head-stake-stabbing-player.html ...oh. :ph34r:

But she's not from Buffalo, She's form Fairport. The Rochester Bills? The Batavia Bills? ;)

Reactionary extremists vowing the creation of their own state, who were initially included in compromises when the original state was formed, but have slowly been pushed to the margins by a unsympathetic majority? Iraq went from 1789 to 1861 in record time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/us/legislative-handcuffs-limit-atfs-ability-to-fight-gun-crime.html

Fair enough. And if you happen to also purchase weapons and ammo at dealer X, and the government starts keeping records of your comings and goings, the NRA is going to help you file a suit for a violation of your 2nd amendment rights, and they are going to initiate legislation barring the justice department from utilizing this tactic. Or do you think the NRA is going to sit idly buy while Eric Holderer pays ATF agents to follow legal gun owners home from Walmart?

The fact that these guns can move above ground in unlimited ways while the drugs have to move underground through restricted channels is a huge difference. It's apples and motorcycles. It's the difference between Iraq being able to procure Botulism Toxin (used legally throughout the world to make TV Floating Heads lose the ability to control their facial muscles) and their ability to procure Weapons Grade Plutonium (whose trade is banned and is tracked religiously by multiple actors).

you can't compare it to coke and pot. These things can't move legally around the country. you have to compare it to something that people have a legal right to possess and distributed. Opiates are a perfect example of this. Even with the tracking, they are a ton harder to interdict than illegal drugs, because legal pills are everywhere. With guns, as soon as a single legal person-person transfer is made, the chain of custody is lost, and the person who sold the gun to the gang leader who he never met and doesn't know any information about is completely free and clear of any possible liability so that supply source remains as open and lucrative as it ever was. With drugs, if a batch of illegal pills is found, and traced back to a pharmacy that had no record of the sale, that pharmacy is going to lose it's license and they supply source is shut down. They really are not comparable. I'd like them to be, but they're not.

Come on Weave, the tracking for firearms is nothing even remotely close to the tracking for narcotics. I can sell you a gun in Wyoming out of the trunk of my car with no record of the transfer and it would be totally legal. Every person who is legally allowed to be involved in the distribution of narcotics is licensed and tracked. Every batch and every pill is tracked along the entire chain of custody with names, locations, and identifying information from the manufacturing plant to the end user, and that end user is not allowed to transfer those pills, even to their spouse. If you want the same or similar interdiction tools for law enforcement for guns as narcotics, that's the system. and the NRA fights every effort to initiate even a fraction of that system. That's not speculation, that's their stated policy.

Somewhere either here or in the all about gun control thread, I made a similar suggestion. I made an allowance for guns reported lost or stolen so long as the report was made prior to the crime. I also held is a a civil liability rather than a criminal one.

I can get behind that.

Should we stop it with more sacrifices?

Because there is no lobby (at least there wasn't, there is one growing now in Colorado and Washington) attempting to shut down every effort society collectively takes to interdict narcotics. Why not have a registry of all legal guns and ammunition, tight regulations on documentation for distribution and transfer, and strong oversight audits of the maintenance of these documents? That's how we treat legal narcotics. Why not do that with legal guns? Because NRA.

I get the vengeance thing, I wanted to carpet bomb from Libya to Indonesia on 9/12. I think we are not living up to our greatness when we make those decisions based on those emotions.

And here's the rub. I can't get behind the denial of basic human rights in an effort to save one American. Even 1,000 Americans. This takes an ability to dehumanize 6.8 Billion people on the planet that are not US citizens. These people, even the ones setting up road side bombs, are still human, and they deserve a certain level of rights just for that. I think permanent detention without charge is a flagrant violation of that principle.

I agree, they are POWs under the geneva convention. But Geneva does not allow for an ideology to be a party in a war. So the end of hostilities as outlined in article 118 must be when we cease to have active military operations in the theatre. Alternatively, if you insist on the ideology as the enemy, I challenge you to define the enemy under anything in Geneva. Failing that we are out in unwritten law, where our own ideology and ethics must prevail. If you were writing the laws on how to handle this situation, would unlimited generational detention be acceptable. Can there be justice without any due process?