Moonlight Graham

This is the society that produced Osama bin Laden (and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers), stones people to death as legal punishment, and pretty much treats women like chattle. Doesn't sounds like a nice vacation spot to escape the chilly winter weather!

Obviously some of the Fathers were deists (including a few of the most influential ones like Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams), but most of them were Protestants. However, from what I gather most simply believed in the importance of the separation of church and state. As August1991 says, the Founding Fathers lived in the time of the Enlightenment where superstitious religious dogma was turned away from in favour science and reason. Many of the Fathers were well-read intellectuals and greatly influenced by Enlightenment political philosophers such as John Locke, Voltaire (also a deist) etc. They were also not far removed from the Protestant Reformation and the wars that came from it, so they knew the danger that the fusion of church and state could have, and that the tyranny and corruption of church leadership can be just as dangerous as that of a monarch. Sometimes I feel we need a 2nd Age of Enlightenment.

Cheney was so powerful because Bush Jr was incompetent in knowledge of how everything worked, so Bush had to rely so much on Cheney because he knew the game. Obama doesn't have to rely on Biden because he has some understanding of how the system & the world works. If someone like Palin got in it would be a similar situation as Bush/Cheney. I don't see any conspiracy. The people who pull the strings are the ones who have power, and a lot of power rests in lobby/interest groups who pour the $$$ into the parties and campaigns or otherwise lobby the gov.

If true, then wow. Maybe living as he did for 10 years post-9/11 wasn't exactly what he wanted for his kids/grandkids. Unlike most state leaders, he was on the ground witnessing his war first-hand, and saw a lot of crazy things and a lot of people he may have known die. I hope this is true, it would be an interesting footnote to his life. ie: war sucks.

Exactly. What TSS says isn't the problem with the ad. The problem is that the ad uses embarrassingly stereotypical elements to portray the Chinese, ie: the "Chinese" music, the woman with the bad accent and broken engrish.

But you can't do that 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are fun activities in winter for sure, but after a month or 2 the novelty of change wears off and standing out in the freezing cold waiting for a bus or sitting in a freezing car when I first get in waiting for it to warm up really busts by balls! Winter seemed a lot more fun as a kid. When it snowed it was "hurray!!! Fun!", but now snow means "dang now I gotta go shovel some snow..."

Would you rather go back to the days pre-WWII, with entangling alliances that led to much war (including a big reason for WWI)? Collective security seems to work pretty good, though not perfect, and since WWII many of the most moronic wars involving the great powers haven't been sanctioned by the UNSC. Also, one of the most important benefits of the UN is that at least it gets everyone to the table. Incl. rival states that would otherwise barely if ever talk to each other. A history of the UN shows it has A LOT of useful purpose, and its flaws can't take that away.

Winter is fun until a week after Xmas, then it's time for summer again.

Crazy is as crazy does.

This is about crazy people. The US just happens to have an unusually sizeable portion of their population, including a good # of politicians, that are freaking crazy. It's not about "superiority". We have our crazies too. Stockwell Day believes the world is 6000 years old or whatever and humans walked with dinos. He's crazy, and missing some logic receptors in his brain. The US just happens to have a higher % of this population than most other western countries. My many American friends (part of the nice, non-crazy majority in the US) readily admit the disturbing # of crazies in their country. To compare, Canada and much of western Europe has, over the past several decades, had a higher number of naive utopian politicians instituting many policies that sound nice but just don't work properly. Politically, we/they rank high in naivety, US ranks high in crazy. I'm not anti-American, I'm anti-crazy.

I actually wished more people here were like the Texas girl. She was outgoing, friendly, and not very self-conscious. I live in a government town (Ottawa), and people in my city are like zombies (My theory is that working for the gov literally sucks the life & joy out of people). People in my city are polite (except when driving lol) but very reserved. Even the young people. I went to a Metallica concert in Ottawa a couple of years ago, and there were people in the first section sitting down (which is really hard to do at a Metallica concert lol). I went to a Bon Jovi concert here too and half the people were sitting down also. Meanwhile, the concerts I go to in Montreal and Quebec City have people going flippin' crazy. Those cities are known to have the loudest, best crowds in North America. It's known here that the French like to have a good time. Point of my rant: I like fun people (except the loud-mouth neighbours at my cottage, I go there to relax to please keep it down! lol)

A sizable proportion of American politicians are, quite frankly, insane. We got some too, a lot of them live in Alberta. But you have more of them & they're crazier and make more ads like this. You'll joke with your family/friends &/or mumble to yourself how nuts these ads and these people are, yet if a non-American mentions it on here you get your back up like porcupine.

Wow that's interesting, I didn't know that.

IMO, full-day kindergarten basically comes down to the state raising your kids so they can get more parents in the workforce to increase tax revenue. Parents also like it because in the last few decades they've become more focused on their careers & wanting to buy crap they don't need (nor afford) and less focused on actually raising their kids. I think it's BS on both ends.

To add to that, anyone who things that ECE's are "baby-sitting" has no idea was an ECE does. I have to say though, that with all-day kindergarten, there will be more daycare-like activities (play, naps) and less traditional kindergarten learning done by these teachers because kids that age can't keep the attention and energy up all day that goes into half-day kindergarten.

China has the US by the balls (in many ways actually), and vice versa I suppose. Now, what if China decided to stop buying these treasury securities or started selling them. Cash in time who totally eff US finances. Though as I said, the US also has China by the balls. They could decide to move their business elsewhere, thus damaging the Chinese economy greatly. It's nice that instead of relying on nukes as deterrence of war as during the Cold War, instead close economic interdependence assures a much lower risk of conflict between these 2 powers.

I think maybe the most powerful group lobbying for war, seemingly always, are the large % of grumpy old war hawk citizenry that pressure, say, the US President into aggressive actions...and this works because this is such a large % of the voting pop and the President doesn't want to be seen as "soft" to these people. We're seeing it now in the GOP primaries and rhetoric vs Iran. Quite frankly I think these people have massive logic holes in their brains much of the time, as they do not properly weigh the consequences of preventative/preemptive military actions. Vietnam and Iraq are obvious examples. It's mostly just "rah rah we gotta be tough cuz i'm so tough" chest-thumping nonsense based on faulty reasoning. Sometimes a country is all but forced into military action in defense of a REAL attack (ie: 1991 Gulf War), but these preventative and preemptive adventures seem to usually cause more harm than the perceived threat. Not saying a strike isn't necessary vs Iran in this instance, but the costs nee to be weighed, but for some reason the same people are always quick to jump on the war train.

Ya, me thinks just about all middle-east nations don't want to see a rival get nukes.

That ad is so hilariously horrible, it's just sooo perfect it's almost not real lol. It probably wouldn't have been so bad had the "actress" not been so awful.

You gotta admit though that little ditty is pretty catchy lol It kind of reminds me of this:

Iraq attacked/invaded Iran. Would you not "engage" a country that's invading your borders? Maybe not, but that isn't certain. It depends on how Israel goes about it. Any attack will have huge consequences for the rest of the world re: oil, and destabilizing the region. Striking Iran is not an easy decision. There are strong pros and cons for striking or not striking, and these must be weighed extremely carefully. I don't envy world leaders on this call.

Springbok of some sort, 20 years old-ish. 90 hp outboard. Use it on the lake for swimming/tubing, fishing, and general pleasure-crafting.

China should just zip it when it comes to defending the veto. They're selfish boobs who care more about their own interests than human lives, we get it, no explanation needed. And Canada and whoever else wants to criticize them are a giant bunch of hypocrites because they do similar things, be it in the UN, the WTO, or a myriad of other conduits. States are self-interested and act as such. Realism got that part bang-on. Why care about other humans or the rest of the natural world if it doesn't benefit you, right?

10% of the population owns 80% of the wealth (in US). Got that from a Rage Against The Machine video. We are the 90%!

I'd theorize it's partly due to people not liking change, and we are creatures of habit/routine. What is known is safe, and requires less mental effort. In a business sense, things like movie sequels are safe bets. Studios know people like these films. As an investment it's better to take a 100 million dollar risk on a former success than a complete question mark. ie: Transformers 3 vs Green Lantern. Both mediocre films critically, but one did vastly better at box office.