tvashtarkatena

There's nothing about Iraq that isn't painfully familiar from the 60s and 70s. Since WWII, the executive branch has learned that the less the citizenry have to sacrifice for war, the less they'll give a shit about it. Rapid mobilization requires lots of civilian sacrifice, so the politicos figured out that if we just up the military budget permanently so that we're always mobilized for war, the citizenry hardly notices. Hell, they even support the war because it breaks up the monotony of dull suburban life. This gives the President a free hand to do whatever the fuck he wants militarily, and, lo and behold, he does. The formula kind of failed in Vietnam, but the White House figured out that an all volunteer military would solve that problem, and it did. Now, we really don't give a shit whether or not we're at war. No real difference at home, hell, who even notices? The result is that we're at war pretty much all the time somewhere, and have been since the 50s. 59% of our federal discresionary tax dollars go to this military corporate welfare system now. No politico even hints about cutting back on this cocaine party anymore. REDUCE THE MILITARY?!!! ARE YOU CRAZY???!!!! Billions of jihadist are mobilized along the Canadian and Mexican borders and you want to REDUCE THE MILITARY???? Per our own National Security Estimate, our military, the largest in our history, and, by many times, the largest in the world, is an offensive one designed to secure global domination for the U.S. It has little to do with actual national defense, which, after all, can mostly be taken care of by proper border security. After all, our geographic position provides most of our security for free. So, considering what we actually need for national defense, our military is bloated beyond belief; it's many times larger than it needs to be to perform that function. If there is a conflict somewhere that matters requiring our attention, another Hitler threatening all of Europe, say, what's wrong with mobilizing for that particular conflict rather than always bearing this enormous burden so that we can fuck ourselves with it in places like Iraq and Afhanistan? What, we can't mobilize as quickly as we did during WWII during the INFORMATION AGE????

You apparently know little about war, either historically or in its present incarnation. From your postings, you know particularly little about the Vietnam War; which means you know even less about our present wars, as the philosophies that caused them were spawned by our defeat in Vietnam. War is a tool of foreign policy; to 'win' one you must achieve a desired political goal. "Killing enough people", even if that were remotely possible during the Vietnam War, which it was not for a variety of reasons (although we certainly killed plenty), is not a political end and therefore does not constitute winning unless it is a war of extermination. Now, you may be in favor of the U.S. committing genocide; most of the rest of us are not. Nearly all serious historians agree that we could not have 'won' the war in Vietnam under any military circumstances. The war was politically unpopular from early on and became more so as it dragged on. It probably could have been conducted differently had we not been a democracy, but then again giant spaceships could have landed and taken us all to the Forbidden Planet, too. Furthermore, the U.S. fundamentally misunderstood the situation from the beginning, mistaking a civil and anti-colonial war for a communist incursion, so it's mission was unclear at best and non-existent during the worst phases. The U.S. also purposefully redefined this war as a front in the war against communism (sound familiar?) for domestic political purposes; Kennedy needed to appear to the electorate to be tough on Communism. The only way the U.S. could have 'won' in Vietnam would have been to heed Ho Chi Min's plea for independence in 1946 (communicated through several letters to Truman) and help them negotiate it with the French at that time. Instead we actually forced the French to hand their failed colonial war over to us (by threatening to cut off all foreign aid to France, which was quite a lot so soon after WWII) so that we could re-shape it into a struggle against communism. At the time, less than 20% of Ho Chi Min's movement was communist, but that % grew, of course, as America's Cold War rivals began to support the Viet Min. It just got worse from there. By the time the 60s rolled around, Vietnam was already an unsolveable clusterfuck for the U.S. That we did not recognize and act to end our folly until the mid 70's was a human tragedy of immense scale. Not only did millions of Vietnamese die during that period, but millions of Cambodians died under Pol Pot's regime afterward as a direct result of the war's aftermath. Millions of people isn't enough death for you?

Atheism isn't a religion. It's not like a religion. One practices a religion; one does not 'practice' atheism, any more than one practices not being Sri Lankan (if you're not actually Sri Lankan, that is). Atheism isn't a lack of beliefs. It's simply not believing in something specific, in this case, God. I suppose you could be an a-UFOist, too. It's not agnosticism, which is not being sure whether or not you believe in something. Atheism is not being sure that there is no God, which is the assumption of an objective truth; it's being sure that you don't believe there is a God. When believers ask an atheist to 'prove' there is no God, as they so often do, the answer is simple. It can't be done, and it doesn't need to be, because it's the wrong question. An atheist can prove, however, that they don't believe in God simply by saying so. Death is a dismantling and recycling process; it can be complex in a physical sense (or simple, if you happen to step in front of a blast furnace at the wrong moment) but not complex otherwise. Take any system in the universe and start removing or breaking parts and eventually it stops working altogether. Makes sense to me. All these life after death schemes, from reincarnation to the Silver Cloud Casino in the Sky, seem desperate, fantastic, and overly complicated to me as compared to "Hey, this thing is dead. Let's get rid of it before it smells up the place." I prefer the Zen outlook; worry about life after death after you die. Consiousness is mysterious and complex. The lack of it isn't. You're gone; what used to be you is just a lump of composting stuff. Belief in God is an effort to make the universe simpler than it is, not a recognition of its mystery and complexity. "Oh, THAT's who made that weird thing." A true acceptance of the universe's mysteries means accepting that some things are not known and will never be. After all, our observable universe is only so large, and the percentage of the total universe we can observe is rapidly shrinking. As for other verses, fuggedaboutit. I'm really not sure I personally need anything more strange or mysterious than that, thanks.

According to a storm of media reports, Palin's first interview has already fired a torpedo amidships into McCain's campaign. It's energized the Dems, and conservatives who have half a brain are seriously questioning his judgement, and rightfully so. The woman's a joke. I predict, as I have for quite some time now, that McCain will go down in a landslide. Palin's the boat anchor that will ensure his place in Davey Jones' Locker.

No God discussion would be complete without....

I know something about that. No, I was just responding to something Godskid said earlier. Have a great weekend!

I try to lie, cheat, steal, or fornicate at least once a day, to stay in practice.

BTW, I didn't turn away from Christianity. I found the truth. For me. And I'm very, very glad I did. And I didn't drop God from my daytimer because of anything some big bad Christian had done to me. THAT, my friend, is a complete myth. No one stops believing God, a very big step, because some believer was a big meanie. I stopped believing because, the more I thought about it, and I thought about it quite a lot, the less I bought it. The process was pretty much a more adult version of my cessation in waiting for Santa to come down the chimney. That's not a joke, actually. It's pretty much the same process. Just like I used to believe that America was the Good Guys. Nope. We're a bunch of grubbing, greedy fucks, just like the rest of the world. We're not the freest country in the world, we're not the greatest country in the world, hell, we're not even the richest country in the world anymore. God's not on our side and never was. We're just who we are. Another weird fucking place that does things it's own weird fucking way. So, please, save yourself some noodle power and just stop pretending like you know what's going on inside the heads and hearts of those who don't believe. It's not a tragedy. It's what we want. It's what's right for us. We're OK with dying and rotting and not sitting on a cloud forever looking lovingly at God. This is a great planet and a great life. It makes up for it. Really. Besides, if I was gonna be a believer, I'd be a Mormon. Their women stay beautiful a lot longer than Evangelicals, and WAY longer than Catholics.

The model for what I'm talking about was Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who, although he personally believed the gay lifestyle was immoral per his strongly held religious believes, nonetheless instituted a massive AIDS prevention program because it was his professional duty. I'm all for everyone being involved in politics, religious and otherwise, as long as they respect the Constitution in doing so and support policies that recognize a separation of church and state. Live and let live. Unfortunately, this just isn't happening these days. This 'take our country back' bullshit from the Evangelicals is just a bit too much. Look, I've had friends who believe magic mushrooms have a collective alien intelligence. Whut.fuckin.ever, dude. I can 'tolerate' a wide variety of ideas and beliefs, although I reserve the right to think some of them are really stupid. What gets me is the political thing.

Jebus, quit with the "why are you so angry?" drama queen shit. I don't get angry on this forum; I rant and rave. It's good clean fun, really. I guess you'd have to be an Irishman to understand. Look, it's like this: when we get angry, we blow shit up, OK? Do you see anything blowing up here? OK then. I couldn't care less that Shitbird didn't give me the Wordworking Merit Badge because I was five minutes late for the first session. Through years of counseling, I've been able to get over that. As I've stated repeatedly, here's what frosts me: If you're trying to push your Christian agenda through our supposedly secular legislature, and I'm not saying YOU are, you're my enemy. Period. You're the enemy of American freedom, because the Constitution says American freedom has nothing to do with any particular religious belief. Practice all you want, don't force it through legislation. That means people not like yourself are not forced to have children they don't want, can marry who they want, don't have to pray in schools, and don't have to waste their kid's precious education time listening to why bananas and Right Hands prove the existence of a Divine Engineer. If you're not down for the live and let live thing, it's jihad time, baby. In that case, I couldn't care less about how nice you are to puppies and small children. Hitler was a dog lover, and he was very nice to his secretary. Grosse fuckin' deal. (Obvious over the top reference for humorous purposes only, in case you're taking this too seriously).

http://mattsteinglass.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/vietnam-war-killed-38-million-vietnamese-not-21-million/ if you mean vietnam the u.s. lost approximately 58,000. check out how many vietnam lost. i'd say the u.s. kicked their ass. Yeah, as English is apparently not your first language, we have these things called tenses. Present tense means it's happening right now. Over 1 million Vietnamese died during Vietnam; the vast majority of them were unarmed civilians. It's pretty easy to kick the ass of a rice farmer when he's got a spade and you've got a B 52 full of 500 pound bombs. Hardly something to celebrate; it was a human tragedy on both sides. And we lost. Completely. Totally. Unambiguously. The North Vietnamese were Saigon as our last choppers were leaving, as you may recall (or not). The country is still under the very same government they established shortly after we were gone.

Yeah, too bad it's losing two wars to poorly equipped third world foes simultaneously. Here's another one: the US buys 40% of the worlds' military hardware; more than the next 10 countries combined. Fuck yeah!

I grew up a Catholic and went to Catholic school for my first 8 years. We were taught about the evolution of Christianity from it's Jewish roots in a fairly historical way. As I'm sure most of you know, priests must study a considerable amount of philosophy and theology from around the world during their training. I really didn't have much of a problem with the Catholic church, my parish was a good one, it's views were liberal (in the historical sense) and it helped the community a lot. There was no real focus on punishment or the 'threat of non-believers'. There was no fear of outside ideas, and discussions in class were pretty open, although we did try to stump the teachers as often as we could. Mainly, you were suppose to strive to be Christ-like, because, apparently, he was a pretty good guy in the eyes of my church. Sure, we had the May Procession with the BVM and all that, but, as kids, we were into the pageantry. Communion was 'a mystery', so there was little point in devlving into the mechanics of eating Jesus' body, which was really a little unleavened wafer embossed with the Catholic cross, the origin of which was its own mystery, but it was just something you did and didn't think about a whole lot. Jesus was the thing; he was the example. As long as showed God's love by loving your fellows, you were pretty much good to go. God hung way back. You could pray to him, sure, but you'd never be so conceited as to expect him to do anything for you. He was a busy guy. This mega church contractual idea of Be Pious, Get Rich disgusts Catholics. I met my first Evangelical at boy scout camp in 6th grade. When he told me about his literal belief in the bible, my reaction was, and still is "You've really got to be kidding." He was a counselor and a complete intolerant, pious prick. We immediately began to immitate the guy, which wasn't hard to do, because he stuck his butt out when he walked like he had a life-sized cross stuck up his ass. He called me Buckey Beaver, because I had this big front teeth at the time. I just called him Shitbird. I didn't meet too many in high school, although I had a bunch of Mormon friends, but they're pretty different. The Mormons always wanted to lure you into going to Temple, but it wasn't a really hard sell, and they were OK folks. They did absorb a few fucked up kids and straighten them out a bit, which was fine. I just flashed my 'get out of Temple free/Catholic card' and that was that. I didn't meet any more evangelicals until college, and at that point I realized that this wasn't just a few kooks with insane parents. There were a lot of them. Every one I met was like the first: real dicks, and a lot of them were obviously crazy, too. We used to have one guy, who was training to be a nuke submarine officer, walk around the halls yelling "Hallelujah, Armaggedon's comin'! I can feel it, Lord!" I shit you not. They prayed before everything, probably even before they took a dump, but mostly they prayed ostentatiously and loudly in public, which seemed pretty show-boat to my more low key Catholic eyes. During my adult life I've met more and befriended some. I used to run with one guy every day, and we'd have heated discussions about the nature of truth every day, but he was unlike the others because he was intellectually inquisitive and engaging. He prayed for my salvation, of course, but didn't tell me until I was just about to leave the company. Pretty class act. Unfortunately, he flew his plane in to a mountain with his son aboard shortly after that. Although the Evangelicals I've met have mostly been complete douchebags to a man, I can deal with that. They generally don't know shit about science, a love of mine, and they don't care. That's their problem, not mine. It's their totalitarian legislative agenda and disregard for our Constitution that really frosts my ass. I consider that crowd the enemy of American freedom, so I do whatever I can to keep their agenda out of our public life. If they want to brainwash their kids, that's their business, of course, but I do not want these kooks having anything to do with governance in a secular country. Unfortunately, that has not been the case of late.

You have two mommies.

You just gotta know your audience, PP, and I know libtards.

Other way around: Like a few other climbers I know, my wife wants me around more than I want to be around, at least during weather like this.

You are "basically" overly self absorbed. Which resembles one of Satan's attributes but does not make you Satan. Try harder. Well, you've only met me 3 times for less than 5 minutes, so I'm not sure how much of an authority you are on my copious psychological issues. Still, you did give me a pair of Rivas, once. Did that constitute providing material support to Satan? Doesn't that violate the PATRIOT ACT somewhere? Shouldn't we stop pussy footing around with this War on Terrorism crap and step it up to a WAR ON EVIL?

It's true that a certain part of me has been likened to an Anaconda....

It's funny to see folks like PP, who admits he doesn't unnerstan numbers too good, gloat about fairly meaningless or even contradctory poll numbers. Aside the fact that the Congressional and Presidential numbers are trending in opposite directions (???), and that the congressional only budged as a short term effect of the convention, the deeper question is what these polls are actually capable of predicting? If you look at Gallup's prez polling since Kennedy, for example, you'll find their predictions have a standard deviation from the actual election outcome that averages 1.4%. For a 93% predictive accuracy, that gives us an error bar of 3 sigma, or 4.1%. Although the average gallup figures from the past two weeks from the graph posted (in itself not enough data for much relevancy) still puts Obama ahead by 1.3%, and Obama is trending upward while McCain is flat (again, not very statistically relevant give the short period of time), McCain's most recent 48 to Obama's 45 in the graph given is well within the this predictive error bar. As the GOP convention effect fades, and it always does very quickly, and Palin is exposed and humiliated, an outcome almost certain given her performace to date and her gross shortcomings, we'll likely see these numbers converge even further. In other words, the polls will be so close as to have no predictive value whatsoever. The bottom line is that PP, although we know its a troll, at least appears to gloat over numbers that really aren't that compelling for his side at all. Which is to say, Peter is a moron.

As an atheist, I'm basically Satan. Is Satan a righty or a lefty?

Well, they're not the same. They are two completely different constituencies with different leadership, different values, different issues of concern, and different belief systems, and they are courted very differently by the two parties.

really? Catholics are not Evangelicals, dumbshit. Evangelicals are a protestant movement. That whole born again thing, remember? Not Catholic. At all.

Brain teaser time!!! How would you negate non-belief? Non-belief in one thing does not preclude strong belief in something else. Additionally, excepting that some things are either not known or unknowable, a condition that comes along with a universe that is not completely observable, also doesn't constitute a 'lack of beliefs'.

Well, if Al Qaeda ever strikes in Italy or Japan, we'll be ready for 'em!

Didn't think you had the noodle power, even though it doesn't take much.