Moonlight Graham

Also: My link

I would bet $500 easy right now that Romney is the nominee. It's over.

We use pounds and feet/inches for a person's weight/height. Everything else is basically metric, except maybe American sports like baseball/football. It's done fine, and metric is far easier to use and makes more logical sense. 12 inches in a foot, who was the brainiac who thought that up lol?

Do you realize that it costs much more to execute someone than to imprison them for life? The legal costs of killing someone, appeals etc., are insane. According to that AP article, one jurist said it costs 10x more to execute than to imprison for life. I've heard this many times before. Beyond the cost, what about wrongly convicted being killed? Also, what exactly does killing someone accomplish? I think it's better to force a convict to work their fingers to the bone every day for the state to pay back their debt to society, or to work for pay in prison and give most of the salary to the victims' family. Execution accomplishes nothing, & I believe the state should have no power to kill its own citizens. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." - Gandhi

From the OP article link on the story: That tells the story right there. The poll is kind of meaningless to gauge anything about the policy.

Ding-Ding! We have a winner. Agreed.

Yes. Hyper-reactionary. I can see some concern, but I wouldn't get on the phone and call the cops. Maybe there's more to this story, who knows. Even if the dad walked around the house with a gun, is that against the law?

Crazy story, despite that kid resigning they still need to do a full investigation as to who set it all up and punish them.

No my position is that the west tortures and kills, so in that regard we aren't saints compared to middle-eastern states, though most and probably all of them suck way more.

So do we. We're the "good guys" apparently.

Ya, insane. He could have just been playing Star Wars with his kids or something. So stupid. When I was in grade 2 we had to write/draw our own book. I still have mine and it was horrifically violence and gory (shocked me when I found it a few years ago). It was about some guy exploring a vampire mansion, he sliced vampires with swords (lots of blood), pushed them into pits with huge spikes on the bottom to kill them (more blood and gore), and got bitten on the neck (more blood). Nowadays I would have been taken away for psychological testing lol, but my teacher saw it back then correctly as boys being boys since nothing came of it & she didn't notify anyone, she even helped me name a few characters lol.

That seems like part of her motivation I think. I agree, it was a matter of time basically. She was brave and a great journalist it seemed though.

Of course it can. What do you think laws do? I can't smoke in elevators? What of my freedom!

Then Iranians die via MAD. Most evidence points to me being right. What if I'm right? We avoid how many dead people?

Is this mosque build on top of oil reservoirs? We should buy their oil and ignore their wacky practices & extremism.

And if I were Iran all this sabre-rattling would make me want it 50x more. If there's any country in the freaking world right now that could use a bomb to secure itself from foreign attack, it's Iran. I disagree with you & your wife. If Iran tries to close the Strait of Hormuz, or blockade Saudi oil ships, the Saudis and the US almost certainly get involved, as may other regional and NATO players. There's a lot of interests happening in the region. Look what happened in Libya, do you think the US and others will stand by if there's a war in the region of MUCH greater stakes? Israel & Iran don't live in some little bubble.

The experts in the OP of the Iran thread are right. Iran is a rational actor. Sometimes a bit wingy in its speech, but in its actions it is rational, and as stated by US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, works on a "cost-benefits" approach as any rational actor does. The Iranian regime is not Iraq under Hussein. Iraq invaded Iran and Kuwait and gassed the Kurds. Who has Iran invaded since 1979? Yet here we are again, faced with the same rhetoric before the invasion of Iraq: Iran is developing WMD's/nukes (where's the proof?), and Iran will use them themselves or give them to terrorists. Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it! Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Iran? Plucking them all off in a row on a map, how convenient. Another war ready to go as Afghanistan and Iraq wind down, how convenient.

Fareed Zakaria wrote this commentary last week, then repeated it about word for word on his GPS show. Watch the short video here, or read the excerpts below from his commentary found at the same link.

I watched just about all of the GOP Arizona debate last night. Santorum is done, the race is over, just give to Romney right now. Romney & Rick went at it, and the other guys were making some solid accusations towards Rick, and his answers to them just weren't good at all, not to mention his facial expressions (aww shucks ya got me). Romney did very well last night, made himself look sharply conservative, and fended off most attacks well. Paul did well as usual but nobody seems to care. Gingrich didn't come out fighting very hard for some reason, just seemed happy to be there. Again, all 3 but Paul wanted to look tough-guy vs Iran, and Santorum sounded like a freak who would scare me in the White House with his horrible (or lack of) analysis. If Romney hammers home his business & fiscal governing cred he will give Obama a run for his (tons of) money.

LOL, why, because he would want war with Iran? Yes I'm sure he would drive oil prices right down.

Thanks, I didn't even know this feature existed!

Because they're a bunch of grumpy white guys who figure themselves tough hard-asses. Unfortunately, they don't seem analyze the situation logically, and, also unfortunately, they occupy positions of power. Most of the GOP candidates are either grumpy hard-asses themselves (Gingrich), or face pressure to talk hawkish because those voting for them are grumpy white hard-asses who, despite many not knowing butt-all about the situation or have the ability to look at it rationally, put pressure on these GOP'ers (and even Obama) to appear hawkish and tough on foreign policy/Iran.

I'd say you're just human. I'm the same, as are most IMO. It's useful to simplify things I suppose, but the left-right spectrum is flawed since many peoples thinking can't be fit into some neat box. I also think the left-right thing is divisive. It's always right vs left. Things should be taken issue for issue, you're either right or wrong based on the evidence, or you either agree or disagree with a person's opinion on a moral issue.

I think they're both insulting. Seen Hitchens on Bill Maher?