WIP

And don't forget to get your kids the hot new toy for Christmas: G.I. Joe: Drone Operator

I just came across this story that the CIA wants more drones....while refusing to acknowledge that they have and have used drones so far......hilarious! All I can say on this issue is once again that the most important point about drone warfare is that it is one more technology that makes killing easier, more remote and free from direct consequences....a guy sitting behind a computer console in Arizona is not going to get shot down and either killed or taken prisoner. The era of manned warplanes at least put some skin in the game and made indiscriminate use of force less likely. The problem with this kind of remote warfare is that the blowback from it....and there will be blowback....you can bet that for damn sure -- is going to come in the form of asymmetrical warfare from the places being bombed....in other words more terrorism! So, the CIA and Airforce can order more drones because there will be more terrorists and terrorist training camps to bomb! The only winners are those who profit financially from making them!

Save The Children is a registered charity who have relief workers on the ground in Gaza and know the situation first hand. You would know that if you were familiar with the concept of making charitable donations!

If you want to know who really won the debate, you won't find it on that scripted, tightly managed show that the Duopoly puts on every four years since they took control of managing the debates from the League of Women Voters. The real debate was between four third party candidates, who have all been shut out by major media, even though their parties are on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the election.....which used to be the benchmark for including a third party candidate under the old debate rules.

Why should I start a new thread? Surely you can follow the link to your own thread that supposedly provides the litmus test for being a true Christian. You can post your rebuttal about how everyone else is misinterpreting Matthew 25 on the one you already started.

It's not hard to see how the Vatican chooses these saints out of political motives, rather than anything resembling religious devotion! Back in the 70's.....when it seemed that they made fewer saints, they canonized an American woman just prior to the Pope's cross country tour; is this any different? Over the last 40 years, aboriginals have mostly walked away from the churches - both Protestant and Catholic, and many have tried to rekindle their original spiritual beliefs....which is difficult, since spiritual beliefs were connected with their way of life. Is the creation of an Iroquois saint supposed to be an effort to win back the Indians?.....sorry about the buggery and taking away your children and beating them for speaking the native languages, we'll give you your own saint if you come back.

Since Donald Trump is a millionaire (not a billionaire btw) trust fund baby who has lost as much as he has gained from inherited family fortune, and surrounds himself with lackies who don't have the guts to tell him how stupid he actually is, I don't think anything that Trump says on any subject should be listened to....let alone addressed with a rebuttal. But, since the right wing....including the religious right keeps going to FoxNoise and clowns like Trump for political inspiration, I would like to know how a degenerate like Trump fits with your other compartmentalized theme found here: What Is A Christian? Specifically, if you care to go back there, I'd like to know how right wing Christians get away with making the litmus test for identifying Christians all about opposition to gays and abortion, and not about the social gospel of Jesus, as found in Matthew 25 ............. Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42. for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44. Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' 45. Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' 46. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." So, if Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan are at the pearly gates, what do they say? We gave you a tax cut to provide you an incentive to buy new clothes, a health care plan....and maybe afford a good lawyer to buy your way out of prison! I wonder how that would fly! Over the last 100 years in America, while Americans were getting rich and feeling confident that they could conquer a continent....and then the world, their religion shifted from the traditional suspicion of wealth and the accumulators of wealth to a full open embrace of wealth as the sign of blessings from above. Fine and dandy if Republicans want to call themselves fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist objectivists at the same time; but the two philosophies are diametrically opposed to one another, and it's time to call out every right wing Christian who claims to follow the bible 100% on their about face in dealing with both the wealthy and the poor, instead of letting the right get away with keeping the discussion restricted to social issues that border on their religious values......and I have nothing more to say about Trump, or the real Republican billionaires like the Koch brothers, Foster Friese, Sheldon Adelson etc.

Yes, if I wanted to read through 50 different threads on the same issue I guess I would have noticed that! But, that official propaganda doesn't address the on-the-ground analysis from international relief groups like Save The Children that were on the Juan Cole story that I posted. If 10% of Gaza children show signs of malnutrition and over two thirds of infants and one third of pregnant women are anemic, what should that tell you about how flimsy the Israeli Government's claims are?

I don't normally pay attention to the Middle East, since there are so many issues going on closer to home, but since the Israelis seized the latest attempt to get aid through the Blockade to the people of Gaza, I want to go back to the issue that I first learned about when they seized the flotilla two years ago -- that being that Israeli Government is deliberately trying to starve the population of Gaza...or as one Israeli official put it -- putting Gazans on a diet! Israeli Government Consciously Planned to Keep Palestinians "on a Diet", Controlling Their Food Supply, Damning Document Reveals Israeli military forced to reveal that Israel calculated the amount of calories Palestinians would need to avoid malnutrition. The document, produced by the Israeli army, appears to be a calculation of how to make sure, despite the Israeli blockade, that Palestinians got an average of 2279 calories a day, the basic need. But by planning on limiting the calories in that way, the Israeli military was actually plotting to keep Palestinians in Gaza (half of them children) permanently on the brink of malnutrition, what health professionals call “food insecurity”. And, it was foreseeable that sometimes they would slip into malnutrition, since not as many trucks were always let in every day as the Israeli army recommended (106 were recommended, but it was often less in the period 2007-2010)............................................................... The food blockade had real effects. About ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition. A recent report [pdf] by Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians found that, in addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant mothers. I mean, don’t those figures make you want to do something for those mothers and children? Wouldn’t they melt anyone’s heart? Although, under international pressure, the Israeli government eased its blockade slightly in 2010, and foodstuffs are no longer interdicted, it still limits imports into Gaza, and its wide-ranging ban on exports has thrown Palestinians into unemployment at Depression levels, imperiling their ability to afford food even when it is available. A UN Report out last month predicts that if Israel does not change its policies toward Gaza, the strip will be uninhabitable by 2020, when the population will likely be 2.1 million (think Houston). The deterioration of the water, and the sharp downward mobility of the Palestinians, are only some of the problems the territory will face. Regarding that last point about Gaza becoming uninhabitable in about 7 or 8 years. This is a big international story that has only been reported in the West on sites dealing with environmental issues. What's happening is that a few deep wells that provide Gaza's water supply, are coming from a deep fossil aquifer that does not recharge and only has a few years left at present rates of pumping. And if Gaza's population continues to increase as that UN report predicts, there is little chance of extending the life of that aquifer. So, what happens in 2020? For whatever reasons or excuses are offered up, Israel has turned Gaza into a giant concentration camp over the last 10 years. There are many examples in history of the conquered becoming conquerers and persecuting others when they have the opportunity. What does that slogan: NEVER AGAIN mean besides we will never allow Jews to be subject to genocide. Do modern day Israelis and their supporters feel that it's time for a Palestinian genocide? I've been wondering if this time would come ever since the rise of the Likud Party back in the 70's, and Israel embarked on a course of permanent occupation. Israel cannot be....or even pretend to be a modern, western democracy when it has to disenfranchise over half of its population. If Arab populations continue to grow faster than Israel can bring new Jews in from the Aliyah, will it be time for ethnic cleansing or worse to keep Israel a Jewish state?

All I need to see is that your kind of environmental science link doesn't mention fugitive gas from fracking operations, nor the fact that the drilling companies are not required to inform the public about what's mixed in with the water pumped down into the rock layers, to know that this is another industry hack getting payed to regurgitate propaganda for public consumption. On a related note, since you keep moving goalposts and changing issues every time one of your so called "proofs" that rising greenhouse gas levels don't cause global warming goes poof, and it's on to the next so called proof, I want to backtrack to that story that you and the official oil and gas-funded lobbyists were presenting last month...the one about ice increasing in the Antarctic and balancing out the Arctic sea ice melt that you guys can longer deny any more. We already covered the fact that ice loss in the Arctic is far greater than any increases in the Antarctic, but now we know what has been suspected for at least 10 years now -- that the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than the increase in ice in the East Antarctic. So, even the Antarctic itself is melting: 190m tonnes of ice a day has sea rising 1mm a year Antarctica is shedding an average of 190 million tonnes of ice every day, according to a landmark study that used satellites to ''weigh'' the vast landmass. Although parts of East Antarctica are growing, glaciers in West Antarctica are melting faster, leading to a net loss of ice across the continent, according to the study published in the journal Nature. ''We're confident that the ice cover is shrinking, and the rate along the Amundsen Sea coast is accelerating,'' said the lead researcher Professor Matt King, of the University of Tasmania. Rapid melting in some parts of the continent is partially offset by heavy snowfalls elsewhere, meaning that the net loss of ice per year is about 69 billion tonnes.Previous studies had struggled to accurately map the land mass under most of Antarctica's huge ice shelves, and this knowledge is crucial to measuring the thickness of the ice. Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/190m-tonnes-of-ice-a-day-has-sea-rising-1mm-a-year-20121022-2817w.html#ixzz2A9IVMgQZ

The human race will continue marching towards extinction no matter who wins! Has anyone mentioned the environment, especially global warming in the debates yet? I don't watch this crap, so I'll just sift through the analysis.

Okay, I'm just taking a quick scan through this thread, and it appears that you are obfuscating and deliberately missing the point! As you apparently are well aware...whether or not you admit it, is that secular, non-church affiliated charities are audited and have more restrictions regarding tax-exempt property and employees, whereas churches are only subject to investigation when they start showing obvious signs of abuse: building brand new buildings like schools, auditoriums and their own recreation facilities; and pastors and other top church officials buying mansions. As long as they keep below the radar, no one knows what they are doing with all the money coming in! And it's not just nondenominational megachurches who are the offenders either! Earlier this year in Hamilton, our local newspaper featured a scandal when it was discovered after a slum tenement burned down that the owner was a Catholic priest who owned a number of slum, substandard dwellings that were unkept and charging obscene rents from desperate tenants with no credit. If I turn down my irony meter and set the moral issues aside, how does a Catholic priest, whom the hierarchy informs us only earn modest salaries to pay for a few luxuries and incidental expenses, afford to buy tracts of real estate in the first place? I would say it's time to do an audit of the whole Catholic Church....right up to the Vatican, and especially the Vatican Bank! And that's just one, what about the rest of them? This is why churches and religious institutions have to be reigned in on what they are able to hide from the taxman, just like everyone else in this era of austerity where public services are cut, and taxes are likely to be raised.

No doubt; but as I recall from when I used to post here regularly, I always had a hard time figuring out what your conclusions are. And I have taken the fact that the climate models underestimate changes like melting Arctic sea ice and the time scales for when they were predicted to occur, as a sign that any leeway has to occur on the side that actual changes are likely worse than climate model predictions. I'm a skeptic of Big Green solutions also. But that doesn't mean climate change doesn't exist or won't continue, likely at an accelerating rate, if we consider the time lag between ocean warming and air temperatures. The windmills and solar panels are fine in my view, as long as it is taken into account that we are already consuming too much energy, and replacing the consumption with windmills and solar panel sources won't do much to solve the problem...because building windmills in particular, has a significant carbon footprint, and with the increased prices acting as a leading indicator of non-renewable resource scarcities, it's not even going to be possible to build enough high-tech windmills requiring some of the most exotic rare earths to match conventional power generation.

Arrgghh! Here comes the bs about geoengineering our way out of a jam from the other side of the world this time. The first issue I have with the effectiveness of their plans is that trees do not automatically = carbon reduction. Trees can respirate and give off CO2 when the sun isn't shining and photosynthesis isn't occurring. As a result, it's been determined previously, that planting trees above 30 degrees latitude would have negligible benefits for reducing carbon, while going too far north...I forget the estimated latitude...could actually be counter-productive. Fixing environmental problems invariably become more difficult than planners originally envision, because climate is a complex, chaotic system that we barely understand, while engineers think almost exclusively in linear progressions with few variables. Don't know if anyone's started a thread on this story yet, but this idiot - Russ George, has been at it again with another geoengineering scheme. This time he was dumping iron oxide off the B.C. coast, where he convinced the Haida that it would spur an increase in salmon. In reality, algal blooms are volatile and unpredictable -- it's just as likely that the effects may be to kill off salmon and other fish. As for carbon sequestration - it's also possible that the algae will consume oxygen from deeper depths and totally backfire. The fact that our Government apparently knew about his plans and allowed it to proceed, should be investigated!

How much is your life worth? Probably a lot more than the lives of future generations that should come after us! This is the conclusion that can clearly be drawn from the way you and other deniers, and the mushy, middle-of-the-road greenies give us through their words and deeds. Because environmentalism was the cause...even combating global warming, until the evidence started to trickle in that the problem goes deeper than electric cars, windmills and changing lightbulbs. If there is any consensus among liberals and conservatives, it's the decision to live in denial of the obvious and act like today's economic problems and increasing weather disturbances are mere glitches on the road to a better and brighter future. For example, where is the opposition today to tar sands development and the exploitation of Arctic gas and oil that is only possible because of global warming that's already occurred! It appears to have shrunk, because a lot of people are willing to trade longterm survival for short term comfort, and that turns a lot of people who claim to be concerned about climate change into acting like deniers also. Conservatives were also for the environment back in 1970 when Earth Day started, and it looked like solutions would be cheap and easy. And since conservatives are more focused on their personal advantages, they turned against environmentalism first. But, liberals have also turned...in their actions if not in their ideological claims; because they just want a few minor adjustments to our present economic system, they aren't willing to face the implications that an economic system based on consumption and continuous growth cannot be environmentally friendly, or deal with the rarely mentioned crisis in nonrenewable natural resources, which are becoming scarce, rising in price, every time consumption starts to increase. So, conservatives will declare global warming a hoax, while liberals will invent nonsense terms like "sustainable growth," and pretend that all that's needed are a few tweaks and adjustments of the present system. And, an "alarmist" is anyone who says how serious the crisis will be, and that the system itself has to change before any real impact on global warming and other environmental crises actually occurs.

And there are a few specific posters here that clearly are deniers! Because they go beyond 'questioning' the science to extrapolating all the way to the conclusion that if any climate model, temperature readings, or predictions based on data are wrong, that means that global warming doesn't exist and we can burn all the goddamned oil we want till hell freezes over. That's the denier -- the one who uses any shards that are/or may just appear to be contrary evidence (like the reported modest increases in Antarctic ice in some regions) to get to the conclusion that there is not, and never will be global warming regardless of all of the sequestered carbon in the earth that we've unleashed since the start of the industrial revolution. So, where does your questioning of science lead to?

Thanks, I forgot to check Townhall. I didn't know Breitbart still was going....I guess that's proof that zombies do exist! And Daily Caller and Glenn Beck's site both started up after I lost interest and left the rightwing reservation. Glenn Beck is out of his tree, but it's because of his volatility and unpredictable tendency to hammer Republicans that he got removed from the FoxNews lineup. Most of the right wing bloggers that I still have links to are attention-whores always waiting in the wings to get to talk on FN or Sean Hannity's show etc., so I guess it's no surprise that they would not discuss any story that would be damaging to a Republican.

I watched a few episodes of Boardwalk Empire, and I usually like historical series' if they're relatively faithful to historical accuracy; but for some reason I couldn't get excited enough about this series to keep watching. On the other hand, I watched some of the first season episodes of Walking Dead and was hooked....for awhile. After I quit subscribing to Netflix (mostly because of limited content and technical glitches) I forgot about the series until I recently started getting AMC. I'm still catching up on season 2, so I haven't looked at the new third season episodes yet.

I'm guessing that he's working for the same people that Obama is working for....and the Euro leaders are working for...and just about every minor regime around the world playing the free trade game. The multinational conglomerates that keep swallowing up smaller companies and growing larger by the day, seem to have a loose agreement among club members....that's what GATT, the World Bank and the IMF are all about. The only international cooperation that exists to any degree in the world is corporate cooperation.

Very few things surprise me about the seemy underworld a.k.a. - politics, but McGuinty's resignation was one of them. When someone at work told me "did you hear, Dalton resigned?" I first thought he was talking about someone at work and was trying to do a quick mental rolodex search for who has the first name "Dalton." In retrospect, it's hard to believe he was Premier for so long, but, then again, it's hard to get excited about bland Liberal government. Up till now, McGuinty never seem to do enough to make most voters either inspired by him, or hate him enough to work against him. Not many people seem to have ever been enthusiastic supporters, it was always a matter of things are slowly going down the crapper in Ontario, but that's mostly because of forces beyond provincial government control: Harper: putting tar sands development on full throttle, and turning Canada into a petrostate with a petrodollar that goes up and up and makes imports from third world countries like the U.S. cheaper and cheaper. TRADE DEALS and more secret trade deals like TransPacific Partnership, which Harper, Obama and kleptocrats across Asia are secretly working out the arrangements to completely seal corporate control of our lives. The things that really affect the economy in Ontario are beyond the control of Queens Park, and any politician who claims they are going to fix the economy and bring back prosperity, is a liar, whether they're Liberal, Conservative or NDP! So, what Ontario voters end up with is the choice of selecting the next bland, middle-of-the-road Liberal leader, giving the NDP a try again....after the previous experiment with the NDP ended in disaster....it didn't help that the leader was a secret Liberal, who had no enthusiasm for the objectives that he was presenting as leader, and it was a cast of amateurs to pick for cabinet posts. A bunch of teachers and a few lawyers....Floyd Laughren got Finance because he was once the manager of a K-Mart store....not exactly a stellar cast! And the Tories -- Harris seemed to create more enemies than supporters during his two terms....and he didn't run for a third because the polls were going south on him, just like McGuinty. But this time around, a vote for the Conservatives would carry much more baggage than it did when Mike Harris was the leader; because Harris stuck to libertarian economic policies for the most part: cutting taxes, looking for ways to bust the teachers unions etc.. Harris had no interest in social policies, as demonstrated when he refused to invoke the notwithstanding clause to stop a Supreme Court decision demanding employers extend group benefits to same-sex couples. You can bet for damn sure that Hudak will be all over that sort of issue, even though he's downplaying it now. For that matter, Hudak is trying to downplay his social policy ideals and objectives because he got burned the last time around, as did John Tory, when he tried to extend education funding to private religious schools. But, once in office, then we will see the real Tim Hudak! And aside from American-style union-busting of public service unions, I think every thing else he will go for will be social issues once he's in government. In the U.S., when the House Republicans were on the campaign trail, they said nothing about abortion and claimed they would be all about dealing with unemployment (just like Romney/Ryan now); but once they got their majority back, there was virtually nothing else they did in the last session of Congress besides attacking Planned Parenthood and trying to foist "personhood" amendments, and other policies related to access to birth control and abortion. Once they were in, all they cared about was getting in women's vaginas and making them have more babies! And if you know anything about Hudak's background and who his core supporters were in his run for Party leadership, it will be the same thing if he is in charge. He may claim he's not going to re-open the abortion debate now, because he is a savvy enough politician to know the difference between Mississippi and Ontario. But if he forms a government, it will be a completely different story!

Yes, and maybe you should read the links you post from your searches, instead of just assuming that they match your ideology: Scientists contend, however, that the skeptics are actually misinterpreting what is happening and why. Experts have said that shifts in wind patterns, along with the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year, are most likely behind the increase in ice. The subtle growth in winter sea ice since 1979 was initially surprising, but now it makes sense to them the more it is studied. Researcher Ted Maksym spoke this week from an Australian research vessel in the middle of Antarctic sea ice. He stated, “A warming world can have complex and sometimes surprising consequences.”.............. sea ice is constantly melting near one pole while it grows around the other, but the overall trend from year to year is dramatically less ice in the Arctic, but slightly more in the Antarctic. The difference is more noticeable in September when northern sea ice is the lowest, but southern ice is at its highest. While loss of sea ice in the Arctic has affected people in the Northern Hemisphere with higher risk of extreme weather in the US, Antarctica’s weather peculiarities, on the other hand, don’t have a big effect on civilization. While that Arctic ice responds more directly to warmth, the Antarctic’s ice is affected by the ozone hole, as well as the wind, which is tied in a complicated way to climate change from greenhouse gases. In essence, climate change has created a wall of wind that is keeping cool weather bottled up in Antarctic. Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/361308/antarctic-ice-expanding-from-global-warming-scientists-say/#YuBCE6LzfXwXsHFS.99 Any casual glance at a globe of the world reveals that our Arctic is a sea, surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is the opposite - a continent surrounded by oceans. In retrospect, it shouldn't come as a surprise that topography should have an impact on how the poles are affected by warming oceans. It's been a fact ever since the first explorers ventured to the poles and took measurements, that the Antarctic is far colder and more inhospitable than the Arctic. And since the Antarctic contains almost 10 times as much ice as the Arctic, it will take many years before the Antarctic become ice-free, even as average global temperatures rise above 6 Celsius and beyond. Takeaway: 1. Growth in Antarctic ice is slight in comparison to the Arctic sea ice melt, which, thanks to positive feedback effects, could start experiencing completely ice-free Arctic Ocean by the end of this decade. 2.The growth of ice in the Antarctic is marginal, and doesn't help us where we are regardless, because the southern and northern hemispheres have separate weather systems.

All I know is that I can't be bothered reading someone's posts if they put a lying, self-promoting chickenhawk (and someone who made lousy records in the 70's...does anyone listen to this shit today?) for an avatar! What does this tell us about rightwingers, that they hold up a guy who shit his pants before his draft board physical as a hero today? He was no good in his best days, and had to kept churning out album after album that was the same as the last one, by acting dangerous and crazy back then. That was supposed to make him badass back when I was in high school. But when it's a 70 year old acting like a nut, it's time to take off to the home.

Thanks! I guess you guys just want to make everyone do a little extra work.

There used to be a recent posts tab at the bottom. That's where I usually looked for new stuff to read and post comments if I was interested. Without that, I can see a lot of the subforums turning into community silos, like on some large discussion forums where there are almost completely separate communities who never post outside their favourite forums.