New Testingstan

Questor wrote:What're everyone's thought on Obama's decision to ask congress for support?

A small victory for the American as well as the Syrian people, but still bullshit, as he insists he doesn't need their permission and might proceed anyway, at any time.

Smart politics though: if he wants an out, he can get it, whereas if he really wants to go ahead, he's keeping that door open too.

EDIT: Also, Pats cut Tebow. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Now that's a big story!!!! seriously i kinda love me some tim tebow and hope he finds a way to play

evilsoup wrote:Isn't that one of those funny colonial dictionaries with loads of miss-spellings, things like 'color' and 'harbor' and so on..?

the british have tainted our beloved language with their proximity to france

Syria is a topic where my official position is : I have no official position.

The situation there is so intricately complex that anything we ("The West") could do would most likely result in a negative result for us AND the local population. But on the other hand, not doing anything would probably have the same probabilities of resulting in a negative outcome for us and the locals.

So really, it's one case where I'll be happy to let those who get paid for it decide of the course of action to take.

adr wrote:Now that's a big story!!!! seriously i kinda love me some tim tebow and hope he finds a way to play

Canadian League.

RyanThunder wrote:This is why I keep a hardcover merriam-webster from 1995

Because fuck shit like that, no matter how widely used it becomes

Hey man I heard "selfies" has made it into the Oxford dictionary.

is it wrong that whenever i see a bug report that says "i'm on a mac" i just want to reply "that's your problem"

and what's with them asking for a dmg? they already chose a mac, and now want even more damage? i pity those fools

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJnKm6ftPu0

why have i never actually seen those movies??????

adr wrote:

Questor wrote:What're everyone's thought on Obama's decision to ask congress for support?

A small victory for the American as well as the Syrian people, but still bullshit, as he insists he doesn't need their permission and might proceed anyway, at any time.

If congress doesn't like that, they're welcome to change the law back... They won't but they can. The thing is that he's technically right, he doesn't need their permission outside of certain limits, and thats the way congress has wanted it since (I think) the 50s and 60s. I hope that he's just saying he doesn't need their permission to preserve options in other cases in the future. The way a lot of people (including me) seem to want it to work is that for the Commander in Chief to deploy any forces anywhere, he has to seek congressional approval. That's fine, as long as congress and the american people are willing to accept the obvious consequences of that policy.

Unfortunately, they aren't so we're left with this kind of stupidity.

Smart politics though: if he wants an out, he can get it, whereas if he really wants to go ahead, he's keeping that door open too.

I think he has to, on the off chance Assad starts gassing his neighbors.

EDIT: Also, Pats cut Tebow. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Now that's a big story!!!! seriously i kinda love me some tim tebow and hope he finds a way to play

I know he's been offered jobs at running back and particularly as an option half-back. He just wants to play QB when he's fundamentally unsuited for that role in the pro game as it exists right now. In 5 years, thanks largely to him and his generation of QBs it might be different. Manziel - if he can control himself (I still wonder if Sumlin's screwing with him on purpose to prevent the draft option from being practical) - will be in a very similar position.

So I just logged in to my Yahoo groups for the first time in a long time.

AUGH what happened to the format.

It seems more ... complicated and sterile-looking now.

They changed it now it sucks.

Questor wrote:If congress doesn't like that, they're welcome to change the law back... They won't but they can.

Or impeach him. But I don't think he is right: the war powers resolution from the 70's, put in place as a response of Nixon bombing Cambodia, not a boots-on-the-ground event either, said the president can act without approval, but only if it is in response to an attack on the US, and then he only has 60 days to do whatever without congressional authorization.

Obama has been spending a lot of time in interviews spinning this as an imminent threat to US national security, so I think that's how he reads the law too and is trying to get his ducks in a row. But, I don't agree with his argument. It is basically, we don't bomb him after setting a "red line", it weakens the credibility of our deterrent and therefore may but the country at risk at some later time. (As we know with the drone strikes, "maybe attack if they want to at some unspecified point later" is how the Obama Justice [sic] Department has redefined 'imminent', so at least they are being consistent lol.)

But that's a far cry from saying the attack is a necessary measure of self defense. I think the white house themselves have shot themselves in the foot by saying the attack isn't time sensitive - how can there be a genuine imminent threat to the US which can wait until Congress gets back from vacation to respond to?

I know he's been offered jobs at running back and particularly as an option half-back.

He'd be good at it, no doubt there.

ADR, while I think the precedent going back much farther than the war powers act disagrees with you, you also know quite well what my stance is on "should we intervene" and I am not really in the mood to do a devil's advocate debate.

I really don't understand Tebow's refusal to be one of the best (if not the best) half-backs they NFL's ever seen.

EDIT: Actually, Irony of ironies, don't the Jets need a semi-decent QB? At least one that doesn't give up safeties?

yeah.

I don't know what's going through Tebow's mind either, but I can tell you I'd watch him play at HB - if nothing else, it'd be interesting to see him shake things up.

The 'red-line' as originally intended was about preventing the soviets from using their tactical chemical arsenal to wipe out NATO military assets before they could even get out of the depot.

Ergo it was clearly about state v state use of chemical weapons.

Thus Syria using chemical weapons domesticity is a sovereign matter and none of our business.

When Syria use chemical weapons against another sovereign nation then it becomes our business.

Why? Why is it the business of a country that Syria couldn't possibly directly threaten?

If Canada starts gassing the First Nations, or the Mexicans use them on cartels, I might be willing to consider US intervention, but why should we waste money and lives in Syria where we are clearly unwanted, and can't do any good?

The USSR was a threat (In the theoretical sense, I don't want to argue politics) to the entire world, ICBMs, intercontinental bombers, and a half decent navy are like that. Syria is at worst a regional problem, like Iran (assuming Iran actually is a problem) and North Korea (again, making the same assumption). If France wants to invoke the NATO treaty (they can't) then let them try.

Thats what I said?

The only situation sovereign nation 1 has the right to interfere militarily in the business of sovereign nation 2 is when SN2 is directly attacking SN1, or another SN3

So zak do you think that precludes intervention in a Rwandan style scenario?

Military intervention? Yes

zhaktronz wrote:The only situation sovereign nation 1 has the right to interfere militarily in the business of sovereign nation 2 is when SN2 is directly attacking SN1, or another SN3

The bolded is where I take issue. I am realist enough to acknowledge that it happens, but from an absolute theoretical standpoint, why is SN1 allowed to intervene? How do you determine who attacked who? Just about everyone in modern times constructs a case of some sort for war, heck, even BUSH presented his arguments to the UN.

I brought up the canada and mexico examples because in both of those cases, it become at least theoretically possible that the sam government might use the weapons on the us. Syria has no weapons with the range, and whining about terrorists is pointless.

Sn3 is pretty much gulf war 1

zhaktronz wrote:Sn3 is pretty much gulf war 1

And I disagree with unilateral intervention* there, (I only have a voice in the US, if Saudi Arabia wants to intervene in that fight, they're welcome to). As an outside observer, I'm not qualified to know if the attack was provoked or not, so how do I know I'm supporting the attackee and not an attacker who lost? As I said in the other thread, I'm pretty close to a military isolationist.

* The exceptions being the preexistence of a sensible mutual defense treaty of some sort, I don't think we should sign them, but if we have for some reason, we should honor them. The request has to come froma an existing government, too. None of this, lose a fight, run away, and ask for the rabid wolfpack to come fight your battle for you.

The first gulf war is pretty much as close to an unprovoked attack by a big bad man picking on a smaller weaker country for no solid reason as you can get

zhaktronz wrote:The first gulf war is pretty much as close to an unprovoked attack by a big bad man picking on a smaller weaker country for no solid reason as you can get

I actually don't disagree with you on that, but the problem is that 9999 times out of 10000, it's not anywhere near that clear.

Also, as I said in my previous post, the culturally western european nations of the world are rather an exception to the rule, in my mind. There's a lot less of the so called "cultural" agenda. Or more accurately, the cultural agenda is one that we as western europeans generally understand and can predict. If you want an example of how bad things can go between even two relatively similar (culturally, not governmentally) nations, look at the cold war. In hindsight, particularly if you read primary sources, its very clear that NO ONE wanted the cold war, but both countries relied on cultural baggage causing the USSR and the USA to be almost fundamentally incompatible on a communications standpoint.

The closest analogy I can think of is that the USSR was a PTSD sufferer and the USA was an adrenaline addict (think Hurt Locker, not X-Games). Throw in different (and in many was opposite) cultural reactions to perceived threat, and you have a real communications problem.

And that's with a country that we have a heck of a lot more cultural referents in common with than Africa, the Middle East, or the rest of Asia.

Flagg wrote:

RogueIce wrote:

Phantasee wrote:i'm flying to vancouver tonight to get a visa from the consulate on monday morning, then flying out to the old country tomorrow evening

~30 hours in transit

fuck, where my hypersonic jets at

better have a fucking plug in and/or wifi on the plane, i'll probably kill somebody being disconnected for 36+ hours (until I can get a SIM and back online)

gotta replace this handset at the apple store this afternoon too, lock button is broken

thank god i found my passport tho, shit was stressing me out last two days

Being disconnected is liberating not something to go into withdrawal induced madness about.

This is Phant we are talking about here. He loses 30 IQ points without access to wikipedia.

I got 650 MB of data for the week I'm here and I'm halfway thru and go home on Friday. I burned through that on 2G. I am one with the grid, man.

Anyway y'all should check my Instagram and twitter for what I've been up to. And Facebook. idesofjulius on the first two.

RogueIce wrote:

adr wrote:Now that's a big story!!!! seriously i kinda love me some tim tebow and hope he finds a way to play

Canadian League.

RyanThunder wrote:This is why I keep a hardcover merriam-webster from 1995

Because fuck shit like that, no matter how widely used it becomes

Hey man I heard "selfies" has made it into the Oxford dictionary.

How appropriate that Ryan clutches a Webster dictionary out of fear of linguist evolution.