smjjames

Aren't they there in part (or wholly) because South Korea wants them there? I suppose drawing them off of the DMZ but keeping them in South Korea would be more politically palatable while still being symbolic, not to mention lowering down the tensions related to the DMZ. Though it'd have to be paired with an equal drawdown by NK. The difficulty here isn't logistical since as you say, troops could be deployed from nearby pretty much immediately, the difficulty is mainly political. Though I'm not sure how much of a strategic loss removing troops from SK would be since having them there has a deterrent effect, and you would have troops already there in case of an attack vs however many hours delay it would take to fast deploy troops.

Didn’t they recently take troop withdrawal off the table? Or maybe that was the military drills.

The current 'deal' (both with the US and SK) is also moving incredibly fast, these kinds of things usually take years to get to this kind of point. Instead of a train cruising into the station, you've got a train going at max speed towards the station. I presume that should be 'the agreements made by the US should --not-- be binding only so long as the next election'? They haven't changed their heart, I don't think there's any chance of a genuine Road to Damascus moment. They have changed their behaviour because they've achieved what they wanted/ needed- they have nukes, and missiles able to hit basically anywhere in the world. That was their one strategic aim as it gives them security no matter what. All the stuff they're rolling back so far is cosmetic, or would have to happen anyway. The nuclear test facility they are shutting is by most reports either fundamentally ruined or nearly so already, for example, so there's no real concession in shutting it down when it cannot be used even if they wanted to. It does make a nice gesture though. Yeah, it only really makes sense for them to willingly close a nuclear testing site if they can't physically use it anymore. It seems to have been their primary testing site, which is a big blow on it's own. "For all that Trump is patting himself on the back for his approach 'working' all he's done is make sure that North Korea relies more on China (and Russia) to selectively apply sanctions. While neither has any desire to see fighting in Korea, quite the opposite, neither has any desire to help the US and weaken North Korea either. If anything Trump's approach got the DPRK to full nuclear power status faster even if the underlying reasons date back to previous administrations, and his unpopularity overseas and tendency towards unreliability and intemperateness makes Kim's attempts to look reasonable far, far easier." His chronic tendency to shoot himself and anybody else around him in the foot is also going to be a problem.

Yeah, similar things have been tried before and fell through, a few of those were due to things on the US's part and others were on NK's part. So, it's up to both the US and NK to follow through on things and the real wildcard is going to be Trump. Also, if Trump withdraws from the Iran deal, it'll make things harder for him in trying to negotiate with NK.

Or maybe the butter would just be green in color, hopefully not a moldy green though, lol. Invade, probably not. Bomb, yes. What is China going to do, take down U.S. planes that are not bombing it's territory? It would also seriously piss off South Korea if North Korea really is being genuine in their moves. I can't help but wonder what sort of epiphany Kim Jong-Un had that led to the sudden turnabout. Likely it's a whole host of factors and unless he writes a memoir in his old age, we probably will never know. Besides, we wouldn't attack them for the same reason that we didn't attack them before they had nukes, they're still backed by a powerful ally that could easily strike back militarily, if not economically.

Except that the socialist one isn't applied equally, unless you're gonna put the second waffle on top. I get that it's supposed to be joking though, what with the overboard on liberal (applying the dictionary definition) and what with 'conservatively' seemingly way too close to anarchic. I'm probably overanalyzing the joke though, heh. I think a funnier way for anarchic is for it to be applied chaotically, all over the waffle, plate, knife, even the camera lens. At least by one definition of anarchy anyways. Also, if it's going to use libertarians and constitutionalists, it's missing the green party, though I'm not sure how those would be represented on the waffles with butter.

Not exactly. Invading Iraq set a chain of events in motion that led to this. There were other factors along the way. You can't solve a problem by compounding the errors that created it. Fight fire with fire is popular saying but it's not logically sound reasoning. The middle east is brimming full with religious and ethnic factions that hate each each other for reasons the west will never comprehend. Left to their own devices they will do exactly what they are doing. Iraq, an artificial country from the get-go, was only held together at gunpoint. First the British, then Sidiqi, then a never-ending series of coups and revolutions until Hussien and the Baathists. George W Bush got it in his head that inside every Iraqi is a little American just waiting to get out and form an egalitarian republic in the heart of old Babylon. He was dead wrong. In the heart of every Iraqi is a Sunni, Shia, Kurd, etc. Who could be loyal to a country that has brutalized them for a half century? How could the Sunnis accept being a minority in a country controlled by people they helped brutalize? The invasion broke the ties that bound all this together. Bound in misery no doubt, bound all the same. If the Bush admin had any sense they would have broken up Iraq in three autonomous territories. But once again they failed to understand history and the region. Actually if they had any sense they would have left well enough alone. So now Iraq, Syria, parts of Jordan, are all in civil war. No matter what side the US "helps" they are aiding and abetting enemies. Help Assad you help the Russians. Help the Shia in Iraq you help Iran. Help the various Syrian factions and you are helping either ISIS or Al Qaeda. As far as the humanitarian crisis goes, no matter which side "wins" there will be a mass killing at the end of all this. There is no favorable outcome. Even if there is an armed intervention just to force a peace that peace ends they day the intervening force leaves. Just look at Afghanistan. Next year children who were born while parents were serving in Afghanistan will begin to deploy to the same war their parents fought. None of them were alive to see 9/11 and they are going to fight a war that has gone on their whole lives. It's Orwellian. And the moment we leave, the government there will collapse and all of it will have been for nothing. Once the Taliban was outed we should have let the local warlords reestablish their fiefdoms and left them to it. I know only one truth, it's time for all this to end. I'm all for trying to get out of those places, but the problem is that when terrorists from those places start attacking the West, what are we supposed to do, stand by and do nothing? As for the borders, yeah, blame the British and French for that, but erasing those borders and letting them redraw them themselves is more likely to result in a bloodbath attempting to establish their own borders than a peaceful orderly proccess. You said it yourself, theres too many groups that would rather slit each others throats than agree to a compromise. The fact that Turkey has neo-Ottoman ambitions (so I've heard), and Iran and Saudi Arabia are competing regional great powers wouldn't help any redrawing of borders either. Course, maybe someone will convene a grand pan-arabic group/summit/UN/whateveryouwanttocallit that brings in all of the factions and groups to peacefully redraw borders. You seem to be a little bit of a military historian yourself, certainly you know that most of the worlds borders didn't come about through purely peaceful means (not counting where a stronger power forced a weaker one to do what the stronger one wants without bloodshed).

The 69% hit rate is what they claim anyway, and besides, if you saturate the area with missiles (100+ total from US, UK, and France), you're bound to hit some. Yep, if they claim that the old system was so effective, then why are they replacing it?

That concept seems to be based upon a chemical propulsion model. Perhaps an air-breathing, beam-powered propulsion system may still work, if the lasers are applied with sufficient strength and duration? IIRC beam powered propulsion in atmosphere is subject to other limitations and is only marginally better than chemical.With gravity this strong you'd have to resort to nuclear with all the problems that entails. Yeah, the article is talking about conventional chemical propulsion and we already have to throw a lot of propulsion here on Earth. Assuming that aliens are at least as clever and creative as we are, they could hit on initial solutions that seem outlandish and unworkable here on Earth. A baloon lifted platform for example, which would be impractical here on Earth, could actually work better due to the denser atmosphere. Or perhaps a hybrid plane type thing.

Theres this amazing trick, browsers hate it!, it's called 'open in private window'. sorry, felt like being snarky about paywall.

I guess make inflation a function of UBI? That way it moves up and down with inflation. I suppose there could be problems when you get runaway inflation (like Venezuela) or massive deflation, but those are problems in and of themselves.

That sounds pretty self explainatory, if the government isn't interested in experiments such as basic income, then of course it won't go well if they don't take it seriously.

I think I've heard of that woman statue, I forget who it was of, but it was so terribly done that the residents nearby called it an eyesore and wanted it gone.

I wonder why it didn't work. Just because that failed doesn't mean that the concept is a fail, we'd need to know why they pulled out of it before making any judgement. As with anything, there are ways to do it that work and ways to do it that simply don't, or it could be factors completely unrelated to the concept of basic income.

Might want to put quotation marks around that big paragraph there Chilloutman. It's not apparent at first that it's a quote and not your own words.

I've seen that image used for other things so many times. Well, not 'so many', but it's far from new.

Your issues with others? He explained it in his next post, the only one on that list who was even a major figure, or Brass, was Gen. Longstreet. Also, while looking at wikipedia, John Mosby (actual spelling) did own a slave in NYC who he sent money to, but he personally didn't like it. Pretty much comes off as conflicted about the whole thing. Also have to remember that this was in an era where being loyal to your state was a much bigger deal than being loyal to your country.

I think I've heard of James Longstreet somewhere, seems familiar for some reason.... *looks at wiki* Oh yeah, he was one of the more prominent Confederate generals. Wiki doesn't say anything about his stance on slavery though. Haven't heard of the rest and the last two aren't even in wikipedia.

If you're talking about statues of people with questionable morals, then yeah, otherwises completely different time, place, and circumstance.

What does that have to do with the American Civil War? Completely different time, place, and circumstance. Exactly. That is the problem. When you look at Forest's place in history I would not have picked him for a statue. I can name four, maybe five Confederate figures that were worthy of being memorialized. I unless you've been reading Shelby Foote's work there a good chance you've never heard of most of them. Out of curiosity, which ones would you name?

And 'the time he lived in' is often the context that such statues are placed in, plus the fact that a great many of them were erected many decades, almost a hundred years in some cases, after the Civil War ended. Statues of confederate soldiers are always going to be controversial, especially when white supremacists keep latching onto them and ignoring the real historical context.

Battle site memorials are fine with me, and Tennessee was host to some of the bloodiest.

Ouch....

Not too many politicians in this thread though, but anyways, former first lady Barbara Bush just passed away.

Nope, its the Dunning-Kruger effect. That's definetly what I was thinking of but got the name switched around.