If Music Could Talk

Hagel's response to the transcripts question is unnerving:
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Jesus Christ, that Hagel.

Also, on the extremely small potatoes side, LOL at Jezebel for snarking on Asma al-Assad being used as a prop or whatever: http://jezebel.com/dude-katie-wtf-do-yo ... 1257607476

You know, Jezebel, home of regular features of "The Total Bestest Awesomeness of Michelle Obama And OMG Do You See What Our Totally Great And Awesome First Lady Is WEARING Now She Is Such a Totally Cool Fashionista And It's So Badass How The White House Is Always Releasing Information of All The Cool Stuff She Does."

Do as we say, not as we do: as in warfare, so in first lady cults of personality, I guess.

I have an obsession with chemical and biological warfare--read many books on the subject--so this whole crisis has been a boon to my conversations as people actually want to hear what I have to say about horrible weapons.

You know, tests that confirmed sarin use were done at Porton Down, the facility that developed VX, the most potent nerve agent ever invented, a nerve agent with an LD50 (median lethal dose, kills half of those exposed) of 10mg. Syria is alleged to possess VX as well.

These monsters are of our own design.

God, this is like a slow-motion replay of the '04 "slam-dunk" case against Iraq. With Kerry playing the Colin Powell patsy role.


As for "limited" bombing...how many wedding parties that look like terrorist camps have we wiped out by drone remote-controlled by some XBox-playing 22-year-old doofus in a control room in North Carolina this week? We are really, really BAD at this bombing target picking thing.

Rat Patrol wrote:As for "limited" bombing...how many wedding parties that look like terrorist camps have we wiped out by drone remote-controlled by some XBox-playing 22-year-old doofus in a control room in North Carolina this week?

I was thinking earlier, we'd have fewer wars if the King or leader still had to be upfront, leading the charge into the oncoming arrows.

A handy guide to when chemical weapons are Just and Glorious: http://www.policymic.com/articles/62023 ... talk-about

I'd love to vote for a guy like Alan Grayson- a true, old school populist Democrat- but none of those other Republicans in Demo drag. I sure as hell am not going to vote for Cory Booker. I might as well just vote for Lloyd Blankfein. I'm not falling for the media scare stories, from now I vote my conscience. With this Syria con, Obama has officially done everything I was afraid Romney was going to do. I am truly ashamed of voting for Obama this past year when my gut told me to vote for an independent candidate.

IkarisOne wrote:I'd love to vote for a guy like Alan Grayson- a true, old school populist Democrat- but none of those other Republicans in Demo drag. I sure as hell am not going to vote for Cory Booker. I might as well just vote for Lloyd Blankfein. I'm not falling for the media scare stories, from now I vote my conscience. With this Syria con, Obama has officially done everything I was afraid Romney was going to do. I am truly ashamed of voting for Obama this past year when my gut told me to vote for an independent candidate.

Grayson's more of an agitator. As in, he knows he's kind of a jerk and iconoclast of limited appeal so he focuses it to the hilt where the acid tongue works best at shining the light on roaches. Which the scraps of true progressive wing in Congress hasn't really had in any form since Dennis Kucinich developed the truly misguided notion that he had national popularity to tap.


There's only one person I'd vote for with genuine uncompromised enthusiasm: Bernie Sanders. For one reason only: "Independent-Socialist". He's totally unbound by party politics, and pretty much flat-out advocates Scandanavian-style socialist solutions. And doesn't care if you agree or disagree, but would be happy to cite all the hard evidence about how that shit works well somewhere while our shit works at all nowhere. And because Vermont is the very very last enclave of Old Yankee conservatism as plurality of the GOP he routinely gets elected by outright majorities of registered Republicans (including last Nov.) so he is not dependent on any party's voting bloc to get and retain power. Other than his first bloodbath of a Senate campaign against some self-funded billionaire he barely needed to fundraise at all for his 2012 reelection or his 8 terms in the House...also owing to Vermont's size and now-alien outlier status on political ID. So he is the only guy in Congress who doesn't need to accept any money from special interests or spend one hour of his day making fundraising calls...he funds with room to spare strictly individual donations. There is no other member of either chamber so unencumbered by moneyed influence that he can voluntarily thrive outside the system. It's structurally impossible to elect somebody like that in any other seat in the nation, including any other northeast liberal. Or, unfortunately, whoever would succeed Sanders after he retires. Even Grayson has to choose his battles because he's in a perpetually vulnerable district and has to count on party financing.


And Sanders is devastatingly blunt. Something about that heavy Brooklyn accent and using very few words to say very obvious things gives him gravitas that pretty much nobody fucks with. You almost never hear Fox or the nutball noise machine in and out of Congress taking any shots at him. Which...admittedly...has to a lot to do with the fact that it's structurally impossible to get anyone like-minded elected so the effort is a little bit wasted. But still, they shut the hell up and give him a wide berth on general "wrong person to fuck with" grounds. Whereas the Graysons of the world pretty much have to develop a perverse enjoyment of getting covered by buckets of thrown feces every single day (including from his own party) to stay sane while doing their job. That filibuster Sanders mounted last year telling the whole story of how we landed in this morass of income inequality might've been the most succinct and rewatchable 8-hour speech anyone's ever given.

http://gawker.com/u-s-military-is-losin ... 1269082461

Fuck you, Gawker.

"[A]bsolutely the draft should be reinstated, and for everyone up to at least age 50. No college deferments."

I hate these piece of shit liberals who argue about citizens armies and shit. Fuck the draft.

eumaas wrote:http://gawker.com/u-s-military-is-losin ... 1269082461

Fuck you, Gawker.

"[A]bsolutely the draft should be reinstated, and for everyone up to at least age 50. No college deferments."

I hate these piece of shit liberals who argue about citizens armies and shit. Fuck the draft.

Just to springboard off this, are there any prominent military people calling for a return to the draft? I suspect they don't even want non-volunteers. The cost of training and equipping a bunch of people who don't want to be there would seem to be counter to their goal of creating a disciplined force. This isn't WWII or Vietnam when the degree of training and tech level was fairly basic compared to now.

Grayson's been as good as one could expect from a national Elected, but I don't really agree with him when he goes Isolationist. I just think we can find ways to help people that don't involve dropping bombs on them. Crazy, I know.

Also, fuck that Gawker guy.

Flex wrote:Grayson's been as good as one could expect from a national Elected, but I don't really agree with him when he goes Isolationist. I just think we can find ways to help people that don't involve dropping bombs on them. Crazy, I know.

Also, fuck that Gawker guy.

I agree with this post.

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I didn't watch the speech. So somebody tell me...is the "Get Your War On" comic strip returning to daily circulation or not? I loved that thing.

over Hoy Francisco, 9/22/2014:

[img]http://www.thctalk.com/cannabis-forum/customavatars/avatar8394_2.gif[/img] wrote:
"GoodYear?"

"No...the worst."