moderateamericain

You must be joking. For the record, I have never seen nor heard a liberal "musing" "Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?" but I heard plenty of that and worse from right wingers during the Clinton years. Remember all the right winger talk that Bill and Hillary personally authorized a hit on Vince Foster? Does that qualify as civilzed parlour chat to you? Maybe in Republican households it is, but I actually try to elevate conversations around my kids. When you consider the 24/7 demonization of Hillary while she was first lady into the mix, it's clear that today's Bush Haters are minor league compared to the professional attack machine right wingers can and did mobilize from 1992 through 2005 (when Bush's post-Katrina debacle finally caused so many GOP and Bush apologists to recognize the hollowness of all their blather). I actually did not mind Clinton so much. If you look at what he passed it to law he was fairly moderate as Liberals go. He was most assuredly fiscally conservative. I just didn't agree with his International policies so much, but domestically he did a fairly decent job.

I see what your saying here but we have to be careful to rush to judgment on legal matters. Because she wont testify doesn't mean she's guilty or whoever she "should" testify against is guilty either. In the United States are code says "Innocent till proven guilty" You cannot be guilty but simply saying nothing at all. It takes a lot more to prove that.

I will take that as gospel and from what I know I agree. But I think the issue the family has is the "commercialization" of his death. They should have just told the truth from the outset yeah i agree on the commercialization part.

I actually got a chance to see a hearing on this. Eyewitness testimony by the rangers that were there and by investigators who went back on the exact day and time. Tillman and one other ranger were with an Afghan national on the slope of a rocky outcrop facing down on the road where the 2nd part of his unit was passing by in vehicles. The staff seargent in vehicle one fired on them because he saw the Afghanistan man first. the following trucks followed suit shooting in the same area. Also two other Rangers were hit in a different spot about 50 yards down the road. However, they were wounded and not killed. They went through the whole thing from start to finish. I had a great deal of sympathy for the Tillman family, but i believe this was truly an accident. I believe this is there way of coping with the death of there son.

What power does "Yo, Tony" wield? We should just go straight to his American masters. But then again, you'll just get thrown in Gitmo and tortured until you confess to killing JFK and then get tried and jailed for the rest of your life in some out of the way prison. Went back to the CIA and the defense department companies that made and supplied the nerve agents in the first place? *Shrug* We may never know. Its my understanding after seeing an interview with the Admiral of the british navy, that the HMS Cornwall, which was the mother ship of the taken British soldiers operates on a GPS system called Xeres. According to the British government, the GPS trackers at the time of the incident put them in Iraqi waters. I guess at this point it is all about who you believe. Iran or Britian

Perhaps your 21 year old brother should've thought twice before he signed away his life in exchange for the benefits that army provides. I dont normally do this, and ill take the ban i get for it, but go fuck yourself. Don't you ever presume to know why my brother joined the military. That boy needed the Military for more reasons then a paycheck. If someone were to say that to my face I would knock you the fuck out. I dont care if you were 6ft 8.

Ever hear of a dictionary? No thank's, my definition was correct, according to my dictionary and encyclopedia. So now you can slink back and think about how much of a man you are because you watched a move and imagined you were King Leonidas. It takes an exceptionally small person to be shown to be wrong and refuse to admit it. Toodles...I was right about you all along. You'll never be able to understand what real manhood is about. Im gonna go ahead and tap out, its kind of descended into a snide comment war, even im guilty of it at this point. Anyways, I have my opinion you have yours.

The Onion is always delicious satire. The US could brush aside Iran's ability to defend itself in about 2 weeks. And thats conservative. Are airpower is incredible. I think we could afford to blow the country apart, just not put it back together. Thats why I think we should hit there Nuclear development facilities. (if we can find them)

And you people are just revelling in it aren't you? WAR WAR WAR! Kill em ALL! Nuke the SOBs! No -- Let ISRAEL do it!! (*wink wink nudge nuge -- who'd yah think us warmongers meant!?) It is currently NOT known by ANYONE on this board whether or not the British were in Iranian waters. Iran is currently under threat by the very same countries who said they were part of "the axis of evil". Iran has EVERY RIGHT to be suspicious of a British military vessel sniffing around. Friggin warmongers want a world war. They FRIGGIN' WANT it. Take a sedative and calm down, nobody is saying they want a world war, what id like to see is the Nuclear facilities bombed into rubble and the flow of goods and money into Iraq to stop. Call me bias, but I got a personal stake in the matter. My 21 year old brother is there right now. If he is killed by Iranian supplied goods, then yeah fuck them.

Your armed forces and you do not appreciate the military aspect that the director used to display there tactics in battle? To me that is like an analogy of how well trained and equipped soldiers will win out every single time over numerically superior foes. yes i realize they all die in the end. But thats not the point. Every soldier that ever saw combat and had his friend's die wants there deaths to mean something. That's why you see Military soldiers from the US saying stay and support the war. they dont want those 3k deaths to mean nothing. I see those Spartans fight and know that for there time they were the greatest fighting force in the world. Much like the United States is now. I cannot think of anything that would give me more pride then to have served in the "Spartan" Army of our era. (sans the homosexuality) Every single person that I know who has served in the Military in the USA that has seen that movie, loved it. If you have never been in a fist fight before I highly encourage to do it at least once in your life. Even if you lose. You will never feel more alive I can promise you that.

Instead of braying like a Grand Canyon beast of burden, maybe you'd like to answer the point I've raised -- How do YOU know Iran is wrong about where the British sailors were found? Don't you think that's relevant information or something? Duh. Figleaf the Fallacy in argument you are displaying here is called appeal to ignorance. And its irrelevant to kidnapping soldiers. And BTW kidnapping soldiers is an act of war.

For all the posters who are saying that 300 is not a masculine movie, have you ever served in the military, or been in a knock down drag out fist flying fight. I'm just curious as to what the responses are gonna be. also if you guys wanna continue the thread you have going there you should do it my thread about Appeasment. It sort of follows what yall are getting into, were talking about 300 here.

Ah see, that time I wasn't calling 300 misogynistic. That was directed at you. Foolish and unsubstantiated allegations? How about some evidence to support any of your assertions that such a version of masculinity was out of fashion or is making a comeback? Shit, the anti-feminist backlash reared its head ages ago in the '80s. Rush had his feminazis in the 90s. As much as you'd like to flatter yourself, you're not really breaking any new ground. So, let's say 300, with its depictions of half-nude musclemen thrusting spears at each other is not drenched in homoeroticism, but is simply a celebration of masculinity. If that's the case, how sad. For it's a trite, ridiculous version of masculinity that you would appear to embrace as something meaningful and admirable. That a cliche-ridden, utterly brainless and banal film like this would be worthy of your praise and regarded as a hallmark of manliness says all that needs to be said about the concept itself. ModAm That doesn't sound like someone particularily secure in their masculinity. It seems masculinity is like the elusive "cool". Those who have it don't run worrying about it: those who don't think of little else. Ahh Blackdog you are cunning at taking a discussion and turning it into an insult. The only issue i have with what you say is what makes you think I sit around thinking about it. It was the direction the thread took and i stayed with it. Besides I have nothing to prove by lashing out at your gentle insults. Its like a mosquito buzzing around my ears. The issue lies with you my friend. You obviously have an issue with Masculinity, were you the kid who got beat up in school? Also since were using danger as a barometer for courage or Masculinity, I passed that test twice over and I was scared every time. But i still dont prance around in pink shirts with forced lisp, man tits, and more hair products then a fashion show.

That's so gay I thinkit was the Pride Toronto slogan for 1998 Yep, back in the last millenium the feminization crowd pretty much had everyone convinced that prancing about in pink tutus was what real men did and that acting like men traditionally do was an acknowledgement of latent homosexuality. Silly, but thank God that was 1998 and not this millenium. I guess the REAL question is how did men get duped by this.

Hey lookee: he tapped out. I tapped out because you've resorted to snide flaming. You have in no way shown how 300 is anything other than a celebration of masculinity, and in fact have been shown that there is no mysogyny (the heroine was portrayed as heroic), there was no homoeroticism (your point that the Spartans were portrayed as masculine is in some way "homoerotic" is foolish and unsubstantiated), and you generally resorted to the streetcorner psychology of the last century to try to say that masculinity is really latent homosexuality). It was silly in the 80s and 90s and it's no less silly today. Opinions aside, I'd rather feel like a man, then a female. What works for me might not work for others. Guess im just secure in my sexuality and have no desire to be the opposite sex.

I find that most people that I have talked to about this movie, and the only thing they have to comment about was the half naked men, either A missed the boat on the warrior code or the pride a man feels as a soldier, or B are insecure about there masculinity and make fun of things like wrestling (not wwf wrestling, i mean real wrestling). Wrestling is a grueling tough sport and to keep competitively in it you have to be in very good shape. But this just goes to show that the de-masculization of men has taken such a strong hold in North America. I can't tell the women apart from the Men half the time anymore. Since when has it been okay for a guy to wear pink or drive a yellow car. Some of the fellas i see put more time into getting ready then some of the girls. I dunno, i guess I'm the last of a dieing breed who would rather dive in the mud then get a manicure. And if you intellectual types view macho ism as homosexual, I'd hate to tell you what we think of the weaker more girlish physiques. I'd rather go have a drink with a bunch of buddies then go shopping or anywhere with mixed company. Makes for a better time. And yes I have a lady.

I cannot explain this nearly as well as AYN RAND, therefore i give you this excerpt from Atlas Shrugged. "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? "When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil? "Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth. "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.' "To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil? "But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind. "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil? "Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil? "Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money? "Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? "Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. "Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. "Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun. "But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves. "Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. "Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. "Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.' "When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are. "You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists. "To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist. "If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality. "Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will. "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

Your blinded by reason Canadian blue, god forbid it!

The Iranians are on a crash course to see there country bombed back into the third century...hey wait! maybe the will be able to bring back that enlightened age they had before Islam slammed the door on Tolerance, education, and reason.

It might be time to teach Iran a gentle lesson by eliminating its navy. This isn't the first time they have caused trouble, and I believe if the Brits put their mind to it Iran's navy will be, to coin a phrase "an underwater navy" within a matter of days. I think that would be a fair solution if they did not turn over the troops.

I'm gonna see if i can contact the demo party here and see if they have a copy of it. So i can write down exactly what was on that sheet.

'Tis better to have been a Superpower and lost than never to have been one at all. Canada is part of a fallen empire that still lingers in slow death (The Commonwealth). You will never get your empire back. See how silly that sounds? God Save the Queen. Heres my plan, I'm gonna use my life long connections in Michigan to take control of it militarily by brokering a deal to give Canada the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in exchange for arms. Once I've established control of Michigan I'll erect a large border along the Souther border. Thus Isolating myself off. Canada, great full for my donation of huge chunks of land, will recognize my independence from the former USA. Thus the country of Michigan will be formed. We can sign are own NAFTA and Defense agreements. Ill even join the UN! So what yall think.

my point is proved! keep taking the truth of the matter and spinning it to your desire. It doesn't matter whats happening, just as long as it can be spun into something to be used like a weapon. And BTW THE USA WAS NOT THE ONLY COUNTRY THAT PUT SANCTIONS ON IRAQ.

The fact that these people use children to add horror to their bombings is completely lost on some. Because in the opinions of a few that we should not be there negates the horror of the situation. It doesn't matter that it happens because the end justifies the means. I do not understand why people don't look at the situation for it is.

If by new world order you mean China, then yeah they are the future superpower of the world. If you mean America is gonna descend into 3rd world poverty your off your crocker. America will go the way of Europe. Not a Super power but healthy enough to inflict some damage if it needed too. Another thing we have going for us is 2 huge oceans keeping us away from invaders. We also still have the most advanced military in the world. China for all its might could not take this country if it wanted to, not to mention it would be suicide, and why would they? How much money have they invested into this country in the last 30 years.