Bob_Roberts

#GOPDildo

I guess it's a thing.

I think that's a much more likely scenario than some secret plot to pit Muslims against one another. They're going after each other across wide swaths of the world and they have been for centuries.

I basically believe that our best strategists in the West do understand the Middle East and have adopted the "divide and conquer" strategy.  That doesn't mean that there are many more who have various ignorant justifications for supporting Saudi Arabia and giving arms to the "moderate" Sunnis among other things.  In the end the rationale doesn't matter because the end result is the same: unending conflict that enriches the military industrial congressional complex while allowing the West a say in the oil politics of the region.

The period from 1919 to 1970 saw much Sunni Shiite unity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations#1919.E2.80.931970

That would be nice, especially since their primary victims are fellow Muslims. Blame America for all the world's problems, but it's much more an internal problem for people in in the Middle East region than it is an external one. 

That's such an a-historical view.  The United States and the West have not been passive observers in the disintegration of the Middle East but, rather, very willing and active participants.  As such, the external and internal dichotomy breaks down.

It's hard for me to say this, but sometimes I wonder if what we're seeing played out in the Middle East right now is the old British strategy of "divide and conquer."  After all, by pitting Sunni against Shiite and by funding the most retrograde sectors in the Middle East, it allows us to control the resources more easily than if the the Middle East had some form of political unity.  The strategy is cynical.  Then again, maybe our foreign policy gurus are indeed just idiots.

It's amazing that Trump could get 41%.  There's an old guy in my apartment complex who's going to vote for Trump because "Trump's got balls."

I really hope Donald Trump takes the GOP nomination. 

 

LouieB

If Trump gets the nomination, he'll probably beat Clinton as crazy as that sounds.  If any Republican becomes president, we're bombing Iran.  If Trump does, we'll probably use tactical nukes.  Dude's a total fascist.

Latest Trump quote:

"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."

Not much in this thread makes me laugh, but this did. Thanks, Bob_Roberts.

Thanks Inside.

When I lived in NYC in the 1980s I frequented the Tower on 4th Street.  I remember walking in once and Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians were just starting an in store performance that included a great a cappella version of Uncorrected Personality Traits. 

Wow.  Uncorrected Personality Traits...  great song

Used to go to the Tower Records and the Tower Books in Sacramento when I was a kid with my grandparents.  I remember that the number of magazines in Tower Books was amazing; I bought some sci-fi / horror magazine there: Fangoria?  I frequented Rasputin's in Berkeley, Ca. growing up.  I used to go to a bowling alley on Haight Street in San Francisco next to a biker bar that I used to get drunk at as a teenager:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKfMlQ7KWFE

It became an Amoeba record store that was/is pretty great.

Let's say that Donald Trump prepared a statement saying the he loved Mexican citizens. Would you discount his numerous statements previously given where he promised to deport Mexicans if elected president?

 

Enough about your

 

Before they try to ban it!

http://www.newsweek.com/obamas-proposed-ban-green-tip-bullets-misfires-313453

Thanks for the heads up - I'll definitely be stocking up on the green tip armor piercing bullets before Obama gets them!  I've only had occasion to use them a few times in the past - once, when I was out hunting, there was a bunch of deer wearing full body armor.  Thankfully, I had my green tips on me and nailed a buck!  

I guess I misinterpreted this. I should have known what the president is or was thinking at the time and not just read his words. I'm not so goodly with my understandin of words as others are.

So Obama's gonna take my guns because some transgendered leftist activist tried to rob a bank?

Oh crap!  Time to stock up on the ammo!!!

She was not murdered, she was killed. There is a big difference between the two.

I think that it may be first degree murder, but the homeowner may have strong case for self defense.  The old law considered human life to be more valuable than property, and therefore a person was not justified to shoot someone just because he was on their property or even committing a burglary.  The force used needed to be proportional.  Many states have enacted statutes now that allow people to blow away others much easier than it used to be.

Bob Hope or Englebert Humperdinck.  Either one would be death blow for the Trumpster.

As for the NSA, their programs are vetted by an army of lawyers. They don't just sit down with Verizon and say, "Hey, we want to spy on millions of Americans and we expect you to go along with it." They bring a team of lawyers to meet with a team of Verizon's lawyers and then they hash out a deal where they pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a little metadata. The NSA's programs aren't directed at Americans.

I wish that I could be as peaceful with the program as you are.

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying

Yes, I'm ok with the government possessing a massive surveillance system. That's the NSA's whole purpose. Several other acronyms', too. Every government does it. It's important for a nation's safety.

 

I'm also ok with the government regulating guns, but knee-jerk reactions to mass murders that infringe on our constitutional rights are another story entirely. Don't let bad guys have guns. Don't let drug abusers have guns. Don't let crazy people have guns. Murder is already illegal, so that about covers it. Restrictions on magazine size, so-called "assault weapons" and handguns are just blatant attempts at slowly chipping away at our right to bear arms.

Understood.  What I don't understand is why you are so focused on the government using a terrorist incident to erode our right to bear arms but not concerned with its efforts to use the same incident to erode our right to privacy and the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.  They both seem like expansion of government power to me.

It wasn't.

Ok, let's remove it.  You're ok with big government possessing a massive surveillance system but not ok with big government regulating guns?

Gun sales aren't fueled by fear of terrorists, they're fueled by fear of the government and what it might do concerning guns in the future. That's it in a nutshell.

This is funny.  On one thread you see no problem with big government having a massive surveillance programs aimed at its citizens, and yet on this thread you are afraid of that same big government taking away your guns.  On one you argue that we should trust our brave leaders, on this one that we shouldn't.  Cognitive dissonance?

 

That's true. I agree with you.

 

You had made a point about a Wilco message board and Wilco recording Woody Guthrie songs and irony and fascists (it went: "(ironic that we're on a Wilco message board - Wilco having recorded songs by Woody Guthrie - Woody wasn't a big friend of fascists.)"), and I was making a whole new, somewhat parallel point about a Wilco message board and Wilco recording Woody Guthrie songs and irony and censorship (it would have gone something like this if I had phrased it differently: "(ironic that we're on a Wilco message board - Wilco having recorded songs by Woody Guthrie - Woody wasn't a big fan of censorship.)")

 

I'm sorry for causing any confusion. I will bow out now.

That you were so misunderstood - on a Wilco message board - it's all somehow - ironic

As my notice stated, my comment was not a judgment on the moderation of this site. I thought it was an interesting point in juxtaposition to the citation to Guthrie, who had some strong feelings about censorship.

No one mentioned censorship until you brought it up.  I think it's great that Hixter has a forum to expound his right-wing ideology and desire to see all traitors executed.  Hopefully, Wilco fans who take the other side of the issue will be also allowed to post and call things as they see them.

I simply don't like seeing a tragedy like what just occurred used to score cheap points for someone's pet issue.  It's disgusting.

Hey Bob, I support what Snowden did too. You are not alone.

Thanks NOJ.

 It's ridiculous to suggest that terrorists already knew everything that Snowden leaked. If they had, it wouldn't have been worth leaking.

Snowden didn't leak it to help the terrorists.  He felt the citizens of the United States and the citizens of all countries had a right to know of the massive surveillance technologies that are currently aimed at them.  I think his conduct was justified and that he is a whistleblower.

Of course, I'm probably in the minority.  So, who knows, maybe one day Special Forces will catch him and you'll see him swinging from a rope in the town plaza.  You can take the wife and kids and take photographs for the scrapbook.

I read it carefully and still stand by my statement. Terrorists have had a vague, unfounded idea of our spying capabilities for a long time, but now they have definitive proof and know about our billion-dollar operations in exquisite detail. It's ridiculous to suggest that terrorists already knew everything that Snowden leaked. If they had, it wouldn't have been worth leaking.

 

Snowden ran the biggest, most damaging espionage operation in our nation's history. He severely damaged the security of our nation and many of our allied nations. He and anyone who helped him to distribute untold thousands of Top Secret documents to anyone -- including our enemies -- should be tried and sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Personally, I'd be quite pleased to see them executed for the grave damage they've done to our nation. Their actions have caused, and will continue to cause, great loss of life.

Of course you'd like to see Snowden and Greenwald executed.  It's because you're a fascist.  I'm not using the term as a pejorative but as a descriptive.  I just can't see any other explanation for your calls for execution of whistleblowers and journalists.  (ironic that we're on a Wilco message board - Wilco having recorded songs by Woody Guthrie - Woody wasn't a big friend of fascists.)

I guess I'm just very conservative when it comes to accepting the claims of any government as true simply because they came out of an official's mouth.  That's the conservative position.

It most certainly is true.

I'd recommend reading the article.  It offers clear evidence that the terrorists have been aware of an our spying capabilities for a very long time.  Snowden's revelations were no surprise to them.