Guard Dog

There are different taxes Wals. The Federal Government does not have a sales tax. They tax income, capital gains, estates, tariffs, etc. They do not tax goods, services, real estate, that kind of thing. The states do. But if you ask about state taxes (like your orginal post would be a sales tax) you will get fifty different answers. Wayyyy too many taxes actually. In the US, 47% on average of every dollar you earn goes to taxes. That is insideous. But that is what you get when people vote for democrats. They will tax you to death.... then tax your corpse and take 50% of everything you leave behind.

I could never get used to drinking the warm beer.

If YOu chaps had pitched in earlier it could have been over by Chrsitmas, and the rage engendered by the years of slaughter would have been lessened, probably avoiding the treaty. Heh, balme America eh? How PC of you! But seriously, that is exactly the kind of thing I would have argued the US needed to stay out of. And to tell the truth, if not for the Zimmerman incident, the US would never have gotten involved. The Lusitania did not piss anyone off. The Zimmerman Telegram did.

Ohhh speculative historical revision is my FAVORITE intellectual game. If WWI had ended in a stalemate there would have been no treaty of Versilles. Without that there would have been no opportunity for Hitler to be elected chancellor. History would have turned out VERY different.

Walter G22 bullpup: $429.99 Flame resistant balaclava: $39.99 Smith & Wesson combat knife: $69.99 Eddo staking his reputation on hordes of Shakespearean vampire zombies: Priceless There some things money can't buy. For everything else there's JaguarCard now with only 86.5% APR! This thread is over! Nobody is going to top that post!

That conflict is taken out of context if you look at it by itself. It was part of a larger war with Spain.

Good point. Then I'll say it is very very uncommon.

When has the US ever treated a defeated nation with brutality? Never. And I seriously doubt anyone in the US govenment, "neocons" or not want to return to the days of Rome where defeated nations were sacked and enslaved. It's more than a little unreasonable to view people who have a different political viewpoint than you have as some kind of barbarians.

Yea Japan is so awesome its PM tries to cover up past atrocities by pretending they never happened: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1595375,00.html Sound like someone we in the US have dealt with? *ahem* Ahmadinejad *ahem* *shakes head and wonders when people will stop associating the geek culture in Japan with the nation in general* Anyways, besides the obvious problem with this topic (if people could be united simply by a few individuals willing it national borders would've long ceased to exist by now), one issue you have with uniting any number of countries into a greater entity for the sake of becoming more powerful is the not-so-ironic fact that the bigger you become the weaker each constituent actually is. If the US were to unite with Mexico, we'd have to give at least 1/3rd of the votes TO Mexico. The same is probably true for Canada. That means the average American politician, citizien, decision-maker, et. all becomes less influential as he has to deal with the desires of Mexicans and Canadians in addition to his own. The loss of such decision-making power means that all that extra clout you gain by virtue of being bigger is in turn lost by vice of internal divisions. It'd work temporarily in response to a great threat, but over time all empires - especially the big ones - disintegrate simply because people fail to see why they should listen to each other. And of course, the geopolitical solution to a united NA, on the part of our rival nations, is a united Asia, a new Soviet Union, a enlarged EU, a coalition of Muslim countries, and what-have-you. No one wants to return to a world divided between mega-powers where the sovereign rights of smaller states are automatically compromised vis-a-vis their size, yet that's exactly what will happen if people feel threatened by the rise of a new pan-American bloc. You band together, others band together to counter you. You think Russia and China are polite to each other now, watch how close they become if a pan-American bloc emerges to challenge their mastery of Asia (as for your beloved Japan, I fear it shall become only a satellite state of the pan-Asian empire it once dreamed of leading). Your points are well taken. But not to pick salt out of snoflakes here, an alliance between Russia and China will never, ever happen. That emnity is too great.

Certainly. But you also have to recognize the world for what it is. You are a smart guy Gorgon, but you see the world through a prisim of idealisim. I am not saying that you are an idealist but it would not suprise me to find out that is the case. There is nothing wrong with that at all. I am a pragamtist. I see things for how they are and do not give much thought to how they could be better.

You are beginning to worry me Eddo.

There are some nations that would immediately surrender to the aliens then begin collaborating with and aiding them in their war against the rest of the world. Not mentioning any names here.

I did not say the Hague was corrupt, I said the UN was corrupt. And it is. If you like I can fill out this page with linked articles detailing it. Most prevalent would be the billions in bribes taken by Kofi Annan's son and his ilk during the Oil for Food scam. I have never hid my disdain for the UN and would as soon as see the US wash it's hand of it. The disposal of the vanquished is the right of the conqueror. That is just how the world works. It sucks sometimes but the whining and hand wringing of old men in Belgium will not change that. It seems to me the world is usually perfectly happy to accept or turn a blind eye to whatever atrocities come so long as they are done to someone else. If any nations is moved to act and bring justice, then let them do so. It will need to be done at gunpoint. If they are successful the perpetrators can have the same trial as Saddam and get the same justice at the end of a rope. The only thing is, if a country wants to bring them to justice they need to go in and get them. When the US had had enough of Noriega's drug smuggling we did not humbly ask the UN to go down there and talk to him, or arrest and try him. Reagan sent in the Marines and overthrew his government and hauled him back in chains to stand trial.

Internation law. I laugh everytime I hear that. Just what exactly is that? And who the heck enforces it? There is NO law higher in ANY nation than the law of that sovreign nation. I bitterly opposed the Hauge and I'm glad the US did not join or recognize that absurdity. The UN may serve some international purpose (I can't imagine what it would be other than to make it's administrators filthy rich through rampant corruption), but the have NO authority to compel any one to do anything.

No way to really know just how good Maelstrom was until we see how it fits into the context of the whole season. But RJM has to be careful here. He can really screw up the show going from this point. let's hope he does not.

To get us back On Topic here. As I pointed out, the EU is largely an economic institution. There are no barriers to free trade in North America so no need for such an economic alliance. Because of NAFTA the tariffs btween Canada, Mexico and the US are nearly nonexistant. The next step would be a common currency but I really do not see it happening. I keep telling you guys this, but North America it NOT Europe. I think everyone forgets there are more differences than similarities. In Europe, the national govenments excercise more regulatory control over business than even Canada does. Much, much more than the US does. Europe as a whole turned away from laissez-faire capitalism long ago. In the US and Mexico, and even Canada to a lesser extent it is still embraced. Once a system like that is set into motion, it takes a radical (meaning economy destroying) event or many long years of slow process to change it. Europe needed it. North America does not.

Samm and Eddo, here is an example of what I meant about condescension and baiting. And yes mkreku, guns are inanimate objects and are not dangerous. People are dangerous. No gun ever killed anyone while it was sitting in a case in the closet. More people die from car accidents per year that from firearms. But a car never killed anyone. It is ALWAYS the mistake of a human in the drivers seat. No car ever killed anyone sitting in a driveway.

He thought I was attacking him, but I replied and assured him I was not. Thats just how I am I guess. He also wanted to point out that his post would have made more sense if taken in context with the first one that Fionavar pruned. And thats fine too.

They have so far. This goes back to my argument against gun control. If you are will armed and everyone knows it, nobody will mess with you!

I believe that is the answer. Also, when I first tried it I had an ATI video card and was having a lot of trouble with it. I remember reading that there was problem with the ATI driver that cause res and FR issues in open GL games. Don't remember exactly because I upgraded to an NVIDIA shortly after.

Didn't hear about that one but if they did it was foolish. But it would be equally foolish to expect them to conform to a political ideal they do not believe in. Europe is not and will never be culturally, politically, religiously or ethnically homogeneous. The worst wars fought on that continent were started by an attempt to make it so. If the EU is to survive then social politics like that MUST stop at the borders of each member nation and each must understand that the other members might be different culturally and politically.

Probably not. Someone told me once, if you put a Sunni and a Shia in a room together and told each the other was the last of his kind in the world they would fight to the death. Personally, I think 9-11 shows the wisdom of the Monroe/Roosevelt Doctrine. I would rather see the US concern itself ONLY with the Western Hemisphere. If it were up to me I would immediately close all bases east of Puerto Rico and west of Guam, redeploy those units within that zone and IMMEDIATELY terminate all foreign aid to any country not in North or South America. MFN trade status for China would be revoked and granted to someone close to home. As for the rest of world, they can get by on their own. Wars, tsunamis, whatever, they hate us, they have never helped us, why should our money help them. As for Europe, I doubt they need or want our help these days.

Yeah, but they are talking about USING them. Edit: Forget that last comment, it was hypothetical and pointless.

Taks is right about that. Plus very little of Iran's terrain can be reached with power lines. One reactor could probably run the entire country's existing infrastructure. They are enriching far too much material (based on the number of facilities they have) for it to be anything other than weapons. Personally, I would have handled US foreign policy very differently since 9-11 had I been in the White House and the Iraq war to date has been an utter abortion. That said, were are in it and cannot back out without creating more and far worse problems down the road. When we were packing up to leave in '91 everyone was saying we would have to come back because the job was not finished. That turned out to be true. I don't want to see US Troops fighting there again ten years from now. So as wrong headed as it has been done, better to finish it now.

Heh, technically a right or left winger comes from what side of the assembly chamber you sit on. Since I could not seem to win an election, I couldn't be either!