Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[bluetick]

No argument, aTm. There were positives aplenty for dropping the big ones on Japan. It did save GI lives (not 500k or a mil, but several thousand). It staved off the Soviets coming to join the fight and setting up shop in SE Asia. And we got a bunch of cool data from it.

Still. They're our buddy; we're good people - what's the harm in a little "sorry for your loss" after so many years?

[hedge]

" Isn't it a shame all of those hundreds of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, were incinerated or died a grizzly death?"

Grizzly death??!

[sardis]

No argument, aTm. There were positives aplenty for dropping the big ones on Japan. It did save GI lives (not 500k or a mil, but several thousand). It staved off the Soviets coming to join the fight and setting up shop in SE Asia. And we got a bunch of cool data from it.

Still. They're our buddy; we're good people - what's the harm in a little "sorry for your loss" after so many years?

I am not saying he shouldn't go over there and mourn with them. What I am saying that he shouldn't apologize on the USA's behalf. We don't know if he's going to do that, that's why I asked if anyone wanted to place bets on yea or nay.

[sardis]

Oh, I forgot to wish tick a Happy Earth Day

[bluetick]

I am not saying he shouldn't go over there and mourn with them. What I am saying that he shouldn't apologize on the USA's behalf. We don't know if he's going to do that, that's why I asked if anyone wanted to place bets on yea or nay.

Hey don't worry, if oprama apologizes then merely add "take back apology to Nips" to the list of things of things your President Trump will set right.

[Professor Tiger]

Japan once held to a fierce bushier warrior code. One of the reasons Japan is one of our closest allies now is the nukes burned out that bushido code. They understood that they had been defeated. They've been pussycats ever since.

Similar for Germany. They had a deep military tradition going back the the Roman Empire. But the firebombings of all their major cities made them understand they'd been defeated. They're all tree huggers since.

Sherman's rampage through Georgia, Savannah and Richmond convinced the South they were defeated. Ever since, Southerners have been the most pro-American military region in the country.

Total defeat can make one's enemies your best friends and bravest allies. But our Middle East enemies have never been made to feel defeated by us. They live in a brutal world of their own making. They are used to beheading each other for arriving late to mosque or flashing a little ankle in the market. They laugh at our silly attempts to Americanize them. Unless that dynamic changes, they will all ways be our enemies.

[Johnette's Daddy]

Sherman's rampage through Georgia, Savannah and Richmond convinced the South they were defeated. Ever since, Southerners have been the most pro-American military region in the country.

Horse crap. Shoot, the South is STILL fighting the Civil War, they're just using non-lethal weapons.

I don’t agree with the theories that say the South lost because it lost its will to win. There’s nothing more willful or stubborn than a groundhog, but whenever one of them runs into a Ford pickup on the highway, it’s the groundhog that always loses, no matter how much willpower it has. - William C. Davis, Civil War Times Illustrated

That’s when you get into the whole truly tragic sense of the Lost Cause, because those men knew their cause was lost, they knew there was really no way they could possibly win, and yet they fought on with tremendous bravery and dedication. And that’s, I think, one of the reasons why the Civil War was such a poignant and even heart-wrenching time. Whether or not you agree with the Confederacy or with the justness of its cause, there’s no way that you can question the idealism and the courage, the bravery, the dedication, the devotion of its soldiers–that they believed what they were fighting for was right. Even while it was happening, men like Union officer Joshua Chamberlain–who did all that he could to defeat the Confederacy–could not help but admire the dedication of those soldiers. - Brian Pohanka, Civil War Journal

http://www.historynet.com/why-the-south ... eature.htm

WRT to the South being the most pro American military region, that is largely a function of two things - the economy and exposure to military bases. Florida, Georgia & Maine are the top 3 providers of military recruits. They are also 37th, 33rd and 32nd in per capita income. No state in the top 10 of military recruiting is in the top 24 of per capita income (Texas is 25th).

Meanwhile, southern states rely on military installations to bolster their economies way more than northern & western states.

[Professor Tiger]

I joined the Army out of Georgia. I didn't make the decision because of the existence of Ft. Benning three hours way, Ft. Gordon four hours away, or Ft. Stewart four hours away. I had never visited those bases. Nobody I know ever worked at those bases. My decision had more to do with good old fashioned patriotism (to the USA, not the CSA) and wanting to be part of a noble profession. My family had plenty of money too, so economics was not a factor.

I think my story is MUCH more common than the case of Southerners joining the military as the only alternative to food stamps, or wanting a cushy PX job like Mom's.

[Toemeesleather]

Since Will is so popular here....



Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism's determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states' attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly "settled" conclusions of climate science.

Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to "the right side of history.") Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history's progressive unfolding.

Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, aka Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science.

"The debate is settled," says Obama. "Climate change is a fact." Indeed. The epithet "climate change deniers," obviously coined to stigmatize skeptics as akin to Holocaust deniers, is designed to obscure something obvious: Of course the climate is changing; it never is not changing -- neither before nor after the Medieval Warm Period (end of the 9th century to the 13th) and the Little Ice Age (1640s to 1690s), neither of which was caused by fossil fuels.

Today, debatable questions include: To what extent is human activity contributing to climate change? Are climate change models, many of which have generated projections refuted by events, suddenly reliable enough to predict the trajectory of change? Is change necessarily ominous because today's climate is necessarily optimum? Are the costs, in money expended and freedom curtailed, of combating climate change less than the cost of adapting to it?

But these questions may not forever be debatable. The initial target of Democratic "scientific" silencers is ExxonMobil, which they hope to demonstrate misled investors and the public about climate change. There is, however, no limiting principle to restrain unprincipled people from punishing research entities, advocacy groups and individuals.

But it is difficult to establish what constitutes culpable "misleading" about climate science, of which a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report says: "Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)." Did Al Gore "mislead" when he said seven years ago that computer modeling projected the Arctic to be ice-free during the summer in as few as five years?

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands accuses ExxonMobil with criminal misrepresentation regarding climate change. This, even though before the U.S. government in 2009 first issued an endangerment finding regarding greenhouse gases, ExxonMobil favored a carbon tax to mitigate climate consequences of those gases. This grandstanding attorney general's contribution to today's gangster government is the use of law enforcement tools to pursue political goals -- wielding prosecutorial weapons to chill debate, including subpoenaing private donor information from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

[Professor Tiger]

Ahhhhh, George Will. Peace be upon him.

He knocks another one out of the park with this one.

When Italians do what the global warming inquisitors are doing, they go to jail for extortion and racketeering.

[bluetick]

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands accuses ExxonMobil with criminal misrepresentation regarding climate change. This, even though before the U.S. government in 2009 first issued an endangerment finding regarding greenhouse gases, ExxonMobil favored a carbon tax to mitigate climate consequences of those gases. This grandstanding attorney general's contribution to today's gangster government is the use of law enforcement tools to pursue political goals -- wielding prosecutorial weapons to chill debate, including subpoenaing private donor information from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

Funny, it's perfectly normal to conduct NINE separate hearings on Benghazi...but some state AG subpoenas a libertarian think tank and it's Will's poster child for "gangster governance" run amok. Naturally Exxon Mobile is probably going to prevail in getting the subpoena quashed - basicially it's damnable info about XO working with the "Institute" to hide or reshape evidence of AGW, whilst the oil giant fed their shareholders the "all is well" line of bullshit. Seriously George.."wielding prosecutorial weapons to chill debate"? - revealing those documents ADDS to the debate, quashing the documents detracts/chills the debate. Hello..

[Toemeesleather]

Nefarious as they are, faulty climate models have killed no one.

[hedge]

I wish that were not true in your case...

[Professor Tiger]

If reshaping evidence of global warming deserves a subpeona, several climate change hysterics should get subpeona'd too.

Start with Al Gore. Ten years ago he said the Arctic Sea would be melted by 2016.

The University of East Anglia was caught fudging data that didn't support their gospel.

I don't expect them to get harassed by the global warming government gangsters.

[Professor Tiger]

ABC news should be indicted for these wildly inaccurate "settled science facts" in 2008:

[youtube]9_WHQkPrhjg[/youtube]

I wonder if that little ninny who was "scared shitless" about $9 a gallon of gasoline and milk feels embarrassed now.

[hedge]

Indicted for reporting inaccurate facts? LMAO, the entire industry of journalism would cease to exist if they did that...

[10ac]

Too easy...

[Toemeesleather]

Inaccuracy in name of killing jobs is no vice komrade.

[hedge]

Why did you spell comrade with a k?

[Professor Tiger]

It's Russian, hedge. I prefer "t'varich." Since Soviet tactics are back in style, might as well bring back the lingo, da?

According to that group of liberal DA's, Exxon has no right to resist being destroyed like the coal industry. And if there's a think tank out there that agrees with them, Exxon can't give them money or even communicate with them. That's a criminal conspiracy. In this new America, communication and commerce between a think tank and a private business must be authorized by the Kommittee of Free Speech, or risk time in the gulag.