Information Age

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
If there’s one thing I can thank the Republicans for, or at least that version of it, it’s doing what needed to be done and making the South howl for its sins.

You’ll find no pity here amigo.[/quote]

Yes, yes, I am also sure you have no problem patting your self on the back and giving yourself praise for not being racist too.

Slavery is wrong, for sure, but so is killing non-slave owners over it. If self determination is a right of all peoples then they should have been free to secede and no war would have been necessary. We try to spread freedom all over the world with bullets and bombs but neglect this glaring fact about our past.

If that is not the definition of irony then I don’t know the meaning of the word at all.

62

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Slavery is wrong, for sure, but so is killing non-slave owners over it. If self determination is a right of all peoples then they should have been free to secede and no war would have been necessary. We try to spread freedom all over the world with bullets and bombs but neglect this glaring fact about our past.
[/quote]

The only glaring fact is that once, there was slavery here. It is our Holocaust, our Spanish Inqusition. It is America’s great burden, the great shame that should have never happened.

There is a big difference between trying to change another country’s form of government, and trying, literally, to strip the chains from slaves in the field.

[quote]
If that is not the definition of irony then I don’t know the meaning of the word at all.[/quote]

Then I guess you don’t.

63

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Slavery is wrong, for sure, but so is killing non-slave owners over it. If self determination is a right of all peoples then they should have been free to secede and no war would have been necessary. We try to spread freedom all over the world with bullets and bombs but neglect this glaring fact about our past.

The only glaring fact is that once, there was slavery here. It is our Holocaust, our Spanish Inqusition. It is America’s great burden, the great shame that should have never happened.

There is a big difference between trying to change another country’s form of government, and trying, literally, to strip the chains from slaves in the field.
[/quote]
How was slavery ended in Europe without war?

We could have saved money by not fighting a violent war and then purchased slaves and set them free. Many philanthropic people were doing this already.

Northerners gave slaves their freedom and replaced it with institutionalized racism…isn’t freedom grand.

64

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Slavery is wrong, for sure, but so is killing non-slave owners over it. If self determination is a right of all peoples then they should have been free to secede and no war would have been necessary. We try to spread freedom all over the world with bullets and bombs but neglect this glaring fact about our past.

The only glaring fact is that once, there was slavery here. It is our Holocaust, our Spanish Inqusition. It is America’s great burden, the great shame that should have never happened.

There is a big difference between trying to change another country’s form of government, and trying, literally, to strip the chains from slaves in the field.

How was slavery ended in Europe without war?
[/quote]

It was banned by the governments of said nations.

The South seceded before Lincoln could shake his dick at them- how could we do it peacefully when they got pissed off, seceded, and then bombed a Federal fort?

Nowadays, they call that shit terrorism I think…

Why? We could have just banned slavery on the grounds that its a crime against humanity. But no, South Carolina couldn’t wait to get their hands on the cannon lanyards.

[quote]
Northerners gave slaves their freedom and replaced it with institutionalized racism…isn’t freedom grand.[/quote]

That’s completely baseless.

Besides that, I’m sure that blacks would much rather still be slaves. Oh yes, that makes a whole shitload of sense.

65

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
How exactly did we provoke the Japanese bombing?

We blocked trade using military ships long before the Perl Harbor attack. That is considered an act of war to many countries.

Do not mistake my analysis for apologizing for the Japanese attack on Perl Harbor. I am just saying there are two sides to the story and for convenience purposes it is often ignored.[/quote]

Those trade routes sorta doubled as naval supply routes transporting dubiously acquired goods, oil if I remember right, might’ve been steel, but you’re right, we did do that, establishing an earlier instance of a failed undeclared war.

66

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Besides that, I’m sure that blacks would much rather still be slaves. [/quote]

Not to defend slavery but at least a person that is seen as property has value. Freed slaves were seen as valueless which is a wholly different and not much better predicament than slavery.

67

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Besides that, I’m sure that blacks would much rather still be slaves.

Not to defend slavery but at least a person that is seen as property has value. Freed slaves were seen as valueless which is a wholly different and not much better predicament than slavery.[/quote]

They weren’t seen as “valueless” to their wives, who now couldn’t be sold away from them, or their children, who they now got to watch grow up.

Your statement is one of delusional ignorance. Makes sense though coming from you.

68

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Besides that, I’m sure that blacks would much rather still be slaves.

Not to defend slavery but at least a person that is seen as property has value. Freed slaves were seen as valueless which is a wholly different and not much better predicament than slavery.

They weren’t seen as “valueless” to their wives, who now couldn’t be sold away from them, or their children, who they now got to watch grow up.

[/quote]
All true but don’t mistake those as my own feelings on the matter. I am just pointing out finding a white business owner to pay a black man for work he used to do for “free” was difficult for freed slaves. Lincoln may have “ended slavery” but he did not end the ignorance used to justify it.

EDIT: accidentally pressed submit – damn laptop…

Slavery is cruel and inhumane enough as it is without providing future generations of people the misinformation of supremacy of skin color, etc.

69

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
<<< The US provoked an attack from the Japanese so that we could experiment on them with our bombs. >>>[/quote]

This would be one of those undiluted bullshit moments.

Truman agonized over that decision and operation downfall was on the table until hours before takeoff of the Enola Gay.

Casualties on both sides would have been astronomical even by conservative estimates. The absolutely correct decision was made and while many Japanese civilians died and languished it was far fewer than would have been the case in a land invasion and most importantly we suffered zeeroh casualties. It was war, it blows.

In addition to all that you are partially correct again. We, meaning the world, did get to see a production run of what atomic weaponry could do. Yes, I’m well aware that Hiroshima and Nagasake (among other potentials) were chosen because they were previously unscathed by conventional bombing. However, to say that we manufactured an excuse for field testing Little Boy on a live population is patently false and unfounded defamatory bluster.

70

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
In addition to all that you are partially correct again. We, meaning the world, did get to see a production run of what atomic weaponry could do. Yes, I’m well aware that Hiroshima and Nagasake (among other potentials) were chosen because they were previously unscathed by conventional bombing. However, to say that we manufactured an excuse for field testing Little Boy on a live population is patently false and unfounded defamatory bluster.[/quote]

I disagree. I honestly believe pretty much everyone in the country at the time had no issue with blowing little, yellow skinned, slanty-eyed people to smithereens. We even locked up their kin living here in the name of justice.

I firmly believe the military needed a live target experiment to gage its future use in war. This was not just convenience that we were engaged in conflict with Japan.

Killing innocent, non-aggressive people is never justified. In the history of war killing innocent people was never so easy to do.

71

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
<<< I honestly believe >>>[/quote]

I honestly believe you, but you are wrong according to all available evidence. War elicits behavior from people and nations that would not normally be the case.

When you are at WAR with a nation, especially one like Japan who demonstrated ferocious unwavering resolve accompanied by things like Bataan, it is not outrageous to be curious about people with that heritage inside your own borders. In fact it would be outrageously irresponsible not to do just what was done as painful as it was. Again, it was war, it blows.

72

[quote]Loose Tool wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
What bothers me more than that is the fact that there is an entire government that is absolutely clueless about computer technology period.

Pick any innovation - machine guns, LSD, internet, accounting - and you can bet that the government was behind the curve, yet still clueless when they got around to legislating it.
…

[/quote]

Not Abe Lincoln I am reading a book about Gatling and it says Lincoln was so into the development of new weapons that he was practically the Army’s lead ordnance engineer.

73

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
War of Northern Aggression huh?

It is more apt than calling it a “Civil War”. Maybe to remind people how virtuous this war was maybe we can rename it the “Ultimate Just War For All Humanity,” and then it would be true because we named it so.

Aggression is exactly what this war was. It also was directed at Southerners by Northerners; hence it was “The War of Northern Aggression.” Need I remind you that countless thousands of non-slave owners were killed? Also, slavery was not what this war was fought over. Slavery was ended in every country except the US without war.

The South seceded over slavery. It wasn’t any of the states’ rights bullshit that the revisionists and southern apologists try to make it about- it was about slavery. Every compromise, every Act, that Congress made to avert wars years before, was about slavery.

It is well known that the South feared Lincoln because they thought, somewhat irrationally because he never said he would, free the slaves immediately.

The thousand of non slave owners took up arms against the United States government in order to preserve a system of oppression against a race of people. It’s not my fault if the poor were duped by the slave owning aristocracy into fighting for them- blame Jefferson Davis and his scum compatriots for that.

As I recall, the South fired on Fort Sumter first. That was the South’s fault for picking a fight with an industrial giant with two and a half times the population.

If there’s one thing I can thank the Republicans for, or at least that version of it, it’s doing what needed to be done and making the South howl for its sins.

You’ll find no pity here amigo.[/quote]

Exactly true. The only states rights that were in jeopardy was the right to own slaves and we all know that isn’t a right at all, that was an abomination.

74

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Loose Tool wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
What bothers me more than that is the fact that there is an entire government that is absolutely clueless about computer technology period.

Pick any innovation - machine guns, LSD, internet, accounting - and you can bet that the government was behind the curve, yet still clueless when they got around to legislating it.
…

Not Abe Lincoln I am reading a book about Gatling and it says Lincoln was so into the development of new weapons that he was practically the Army’s lead ordnance engineer. [/quote]

As outstanding an individual as Lincoln was, he alone was not the government. The government employs some fine folks. As a deliberative body, however, charged with legislating and regulating behavior it sucks.

What’s the name of the book on Gatling?

75

I know that my punctuation is not the best, I know there is a lot I do not know, but I am not the point of this thread. The point is that the Republican nominee is a defective nominee, which I would equate to not being able to read. He does not know how to use the tool that best gives him information today, Of course he can delegate and we all know you can not get good judgment from the internet. But we can acquire all the info required to make sound decisions.

76

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I know that my punctuation is not the best, I know there is a lot I do not know, but I am not the point of this thread. The point is that the Republican nominee is a defective nominee, which I would equate to not being able to read. He does not know how to use the tool that best gives him information today, Of course he can delegate and we all know you can not get good judgment from the internet. But we can acquire all the info required to make sound decisions.

[/quote]

Even my rabidly pro-Obama roommate has not made this argument, because even he knows it is a false one. The information on google, vast as it is, has next to no effect when compared against all the confidential, secure info and analysis that the POTUS gets from his staff and security agencies. You cannot access that info on google unless it was previously leaked from a secure agency. In addition, he has something like, what, 10-20 staffers to send his emails for him along with running messages and fetching whatever he wants?

In other words, for anything that matters, google is worthless because it is superseded by the information gathering instruments he has at hand. If he wants to know something that you can find on google he can a) learn to type a few words and hit a mouse button (pretty easy) b) tell his staffers to find it on wikipedia or wherever. But really, why would he ever do that when he could just tell them to go get a library of books on the subject and then read them, or when he gets top level analysis by agencies whose job it is to analyze threats and trends the world over.

77

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I have to say that I don’t think Lixy’s a moron though. He’s just a horribly jaded chap blinded by his envy of not being born somewhere that will be remembered for much other than damn fine hockey players, one of which is in my avatar.[/quote]

Don’t think ice hockey is big in Morocco.

78

[quote]Aragorn wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I know that my punctuation is not the best, I know there is a lot I do not know, but I am not the point of this thread. The point is that the Republican nominee is a defective nominee, which I would equate to not being able to read. He does not know how to use the tool that best gives him information today, Of course he can delegate and we all know you can not get good judgment from the internet. But we can acquire all the info required to make sound decisions.

Even my rabidly pro-Obama roommate has not made this argument, because even he knows it is a false one. The information on google, vast as it is, has next to no effect when compared against all the confidential, secure info and analysis that the POTUS gets from his staff and security agencies. You cannot access that info on google unless it was previously leaked from a secure agency. In addition, he has something like, what, 10-20 staffers to send his emails for him along with running messages and fetching whatever he wants?

In other words, for anything that matters, google is worthless because it is superseded by the information gathering instruments he has at hand. If he wants to know something that you can find on google he can a) learn to type a few words and hit a mouse button (pretty easy) b) tell his staffers to find it on wikipedia or wherever. But really, why would he ever do that when he could just tell them to go get a library of books on the subject and then read them, or when he gets top level analysis by agencies whose job it is to analyze threats and trends the world over.[/quote]

This is exactly correct.

The day whoever the president is starts making policy decisions based on a google search or wikipedia is the day we are really REALLY in trouble.

79

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I know that my punctuation is not the best, I know there is a lot I do not know, but I am not the point of this thread. The point is that the Republican nominee is a defective nominee, which I would equate to not being able to read. He does not know how to use the tool that best gives him information today, Of course he can delegate and we all know you can not get good judgment from the internet. But we can acquire all the info required to make sound decisions.

Even my rabidly pro-Obama roommate has not made this argument, because even he knows it is a false one. The information on google, vast as it is, has next to no effect when compared against all the confidential, secure info and analysis that the POTUS gets from his staff and security agencies. You cannot access that info on google unless it was previously leaked from a secure agency. In addition, he has something like, what, 10-20 staffers to send his emails for him along with running messages and fetching whatever he wants?

In other words, for anything that matters, google is worthless because it is superseded by the information gathering instruments he has at hand. If he wants to know something that you can find on google he can a) learn to type a few words and hit a mouse button (pretty easy) b) tell his staffers to find it on wikipedia or wherever. But really, why would he ever do that when he could just tell them to go get a library of books on the subject and then read them, or when he gets top level analysis by agencies whose job it is to analyze threats and trends the world over.

This is exactly correct.

The day whoever the president is starts making policy decisions based on a google search or wikipedia is the day we are really REALLY in trouble.

[/quote]

Or the day that google becomes a credible source for citation. As it will.

80

Most of the bills, before the President are the same bills before the Senate, and most of those are not classified, Most of them you and I could find out all about them through Google. Most require accurate info to make good judgments about. So this B.S. about everything the president does is classified is untrue

Where do you think the info John McCain�??s info comes from? He has a question, he delegates the search of this question to a staffer who in turn turns on his computer and searches on (presidents r us .com) I can not believe you think the Senate or the president would use anything better than the internet. What other resource would be better than the internet? Seriously?