Originally Posted by salsabob

Consider stepping outside the box that everyone seems to want to deem reality, and consider the possibility that sectarian strife that engulfs much of the region is not only an inevitable, but possibly good, thing. Remove the American barrier of our kids and treasury from the road to peril and see if the regional power brokers decide to step back from the abyss. If they decide to stumble in, we probable won't hear from them for a few decades. Yes, the rest of us will all have to get real serious about alternatives to ME oil dependency -- a 4T perhaps, but a lot less substantial than the previous three or the one that we now seem headed toward if we stay as fully engaged as we are now.

What is our responsibility in Iraq? I ask, because, frankly, I'm baffled. We obviously broke the china, and Pottery Barn Rules should apply, shouldn't they? But Pottery Barn says not to worry, it's on them. So is this one on the Iraqis?

We meddled; we screwed-up. Now we're probably going to find that, best intentions aside, what we've broken is beyond our ability to repair. Do we quietly say, "Sorry", and head for the exit? If not, what's better?

We have to accept guilt for this, but I doubt we'll ever admit it. Bush is already on to other things, like opening our markets to sweat-shop goods from the Far East. I guess the Middle East will have to fend for itself.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

... When Clinton considered sending a peacekeeping mission into the Third World, he would try to negotiate a treaty for the ultimate solution first. He'd generally wait until the situation is clearly untenable, force the opposing factions to partition, and only then send in troops to enforce a scheme already agreed upon by the rival factions.

I don't know. While we are there, the situation might not get so untenable that the rival factions will agree on partition of territory and power. My cockeyed vision of the future suggests we may have to leave, to enable chaos, before the situation will be ripe for us to go back in.

More likely, the Iranians will be the nation that goes in.

This sounds plausible. Perhaps we can ally with the Kurds, create a safe haven in the north, and let the Iranians and al Qaeda fight over the rest. This is just the kind of cynical realpolitick HopefulCynic loves. Perhaps he'll voluteer to participate.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

I agree! I don't know if you're old enough to recall Jimmy Carter's
lame assed "MEW" = moral equivalent of war ,on I think the "energy crisis".
I was in "High" school, which at that time had a dual meanining ...

On drugs, I support legalizing them.

As a 1961 cohort, I must agree that high school did have a double meaning late in the awakening. Back then, I actually thought that pot would be legal by the end of the 1980's. The "moral equivalant of war" phraise was not one of Carter's better moments, but then again, most of his best momnets have come from when he wasn't president.

I don't have a ready answer to povery. I think the terrorism thing could be sort of mitigated by autarcky.
I'd suggest using the nuclear option which I guess could be used to make hydorgen, but the main source would be the current uranium reactors and a fairly new option of using thorium. If we used uranium/thorium, no more meddling aound in the Mideast, which I think would reduce their antagonism. I'm not sure how we'd make enough hydrogen to replace fossil fuels right now, but thorium technology would suffice as a replacement. Perhaps genetic research into how plants capture photons and how they split water into H2 and O2 may work, but it would take some time to get something scaled up to do this on the needed scale.

I really can't argue with any of the above. I doubt that many who are not bought by interested parties would. BTW, Welcome to the forum. It's good to correspond with new people who are willing to jump right in. It's a hard thing for many to do, I'm glad that some of us can. :

=Marx & Lennon;184735]I was a married adult with a child in '73, when the Saudis turned-off the oil tap, and I was married adult with two children in '79 when it happened again (only the players changed: Saudi Arabia => Iran). The moral equivalent of war was a good metaphor, and Ronald Reagan could have made it work.

Perhaps, but IIRC (and yes, I was only 11 in 1973), Saudi Arabia used oil as a weapon to smite folks who supported Israel during the Yom Kippur ? war.It's their oil after all, so I won't really fault them for using it in that manner.

Those were lean times, and good experience for what comes next.

OK.

I do recall "stagflation", if that's what you refer to. I'd also agree that the 1970's were a slum of a decade in an economic and general sense. In Elliot wave circles, the 1970's were a fourth wave (a corrective wave), and now they're stating we're completing a fifth wave. The last time we had a fifth wave was the roaring '20's. If they're right, we're in for a doozy of a crash, which I tend to agree with in action. Like I mentioned before, I sold my house and am now renting. When fifth waves terminate, you get depressions and I'm staying away from assorted bubbles (fifth waves tend to have these).

... getting back to the original topic, Jimmy Carter wanted to develop Breeder Reactors, strict CAFE standards on vehicles and major improvements to building efficiency standards, among other things. He also favored a Manhattan-like project on fission. But that was then.

I think if he'd put a more positive spin on this some of that may have come to fruition. I'd also add a carrot and stick / be blunt as well.
Here's how I'd present an energy policy, not some "war on <insert noun here> BS. "

So here goes with my lame assed virtual stump speach: "My fellow Americans, it's time to put *America First (TM). Here is my proposed energy policy to free us from the whims of foriegn powers who now hold our future destiny in their dirty oily mits. Henceforth we will start a crash program to build breeder reactors throughout the land. Yes, these are nuclear plants, but here's the stark choices we face. We can remain slaves to the Mideast and subject our troops to mindless killing and further the forces of terrorism , or we can be free, once and for all of this. The other choice would be chronic blackouts/brownouts as well. It's high time we ditch using 19th century fuels!
Also, as part of the energy plan, I will introduce house bill 777 to provide funding to bioengineer plants to produce hydrogen fuel. I also plan on filing house bill 77 to provide for a crash program to explore and deploy x,y,z solar/methane/biodiesel technologies. House bill 77 will also enact place a floating oil tax such that oil prices will be set to $100.00/barrel, with the proceeds going to partially/fully fund house bill 77. The tax will be adjusted upward yearly by 4% or the inflation rate, whichever is higher. I realize many of you have purchased Mcmansions and SUV's. All I can say is tough %$#*.
If you want cheap oil, you can go fight for it. As for any NIMBY's, well, here's the deal, electricity does not come from light switches and gasoline goes not percolate up into gas pumps, OK ? Deal with it and no whining!

BTW, plants don't split water into it's components, they use solar energy to convert 6 H2O + 6 CO2 => C6H12O6 + 6 O2. If you want H2, try electrolysis or a catalytic chemical conversion from methane. See Mike Alexander (Mikebert) for details.

HTML Code:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis:

You might want to try again on that one. Water is the reducing agent in
photosynthesis. I refer you to the section, Water photolysis. So yes, while plants do indeed create glucose as the end product, there are H+ ions generated in the process. That's where I'm going. I'm thinking about bioengineering plants to have another set of enzymes divert the H+ ions to a new H2 creation chain.

* "America First" is a registered trademark of Ragnarök_62 LLC, all rights reserved.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

As a 1961 cohort, I must agree that high school did have a double meaning late in the awakening. Back then, I actually thought that pot would be legal by the end of the 1980's. The "moral equivalant of war" phraise was not one of Carter's better moments, but then again, most of his best momnets have come from when he wasn't president.

You're just 1 year ahead of me, so what you say about school makes perfect sense. The strange thing is that I have 2 Millie nephews going through the exact same school system, but nothing's the same! No smoking pit, they call the cops if you fight, and you can't leave campus until the school day's done. It's just so strange. Never mind they have the drug dogs as well on top of all that other stuff.

I really can't argue with any of the above. I doubt that many who are not bought by interested parties would. BTW, Welcome to the forum. It's good to correspond with new people who are willing to jump right in. It's a hard thing for many to do, I'm glad that some of us can. :

Thanks for the welcome. I'm not sure about the first part. Folks get hacked off when the lights go out and really hacked off in Texas when there's no AC in the summer. I'd hope folks would get a clue about such things.

My contemporary Andy Bacevich--another violent critic of contemporary American foreign policy--reveres Carter's 1979 malaise speech, which also called for energy independence, because it's the only time since 1950, roughly, when a US President said, 1) we have big problem to solve and 2) American military might is not the answer. But no one would listen.

I have been teaching the Second World War at lesiure this year--the US in the Second World War. I doubt anyone has any conception any more of what a fantastic effort it was--industrial more than military. We doubled or tripled the production of some basic commodities, for instance, and wound up building 50,000 planes a year--that's only a start. We don't have that industrial/worker base any more. Could we possibly make such an effort for another cause? I doubt it.

Autarky was the response to the failure of globalization all over the world in the 1920s-30s. It's interesting to hear it come up again.

Interesting thread, which has nothing to do with rebranding Iraq. .. sorry. .. I've been the thread policeman here from the beginning.

David K '47

Originally Posted by salsabob

Consider stepping outside the box that everyone seems to want to deem reality, and consider the possibility that sectarian strife that engulfs much of the region is not only an inevitable, but possibly good, thing. Remove the American barrier of our kids and treasury from the road to peril and see if the regional power brokers decide to step back from the abyss. If they decide to stumble in, we probable won't hear from them for a few decades. Yes, the rest of us will all have to get real serious about alternatives to ME oil dependency -- a 4T perhaps, but a lot less substantial than the previous three or the one that we now seem headed toward if we stay as fully engaged as we are now.

I think salsabob's got it.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

You're just 1 year ahead of me, so what you say about school makes perfect sense. The strange thing is that I have 2 Millie nephews going through the exact same school system, but nothing's the same! No smoking pit, they call the cops if you fight, and you can't leave campus until the school day's done. It's just so strange. Never mind they have the drug dogs as well on top of all that other stuff.

Drug dogs, and I thought that the school my two millie nephews attend was hard core. That school has everything you mentioned except the drug dogs.

Just to touch base with rebranding Iraq, the Washington Post reports things going downhill in Iraq.

"No single narrative is sufficient to explain all the violence we see in Iraq today," Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the CIA director, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

Attempting to describe the enemy, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the DIA director, listed "Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, former military, angry Sunni, Jihadists, foreign fighters and al-Qaeda," who create an "overlapping, complex and multi-polar Sunni insurgent and terrorist environment." He added that "Shia militias and Shia militants, some Kurdish pesh merga, and extensive criminal activity further contribute to violence, instability and insecurity..."

I enjoyed TNR's mea culpa on Iraq.

Originally Posted by the Editors

"At this point, it seems almost beside the point to say this: The New Republic deeply regrets its early support for this war. The past three years have complicated our idealism and reminded us of the limits of American power and our own wisdom. But, as we pore over the lessons of this misadventure, we do not conclude that our past misjudgments warrant a rush into the cold arms of "realism." Realism, yes; but not "realism." American power may not be capable of transforming ancient cultures or deep hatreds, but that fact does not absolve us of the duty to conduct a foreign policy that takes its moral obligations seriously. As we attempt to undo the damage from a war that we never should have started, our moral obligations will not vanish, and neither will our strategic needs.

Also, Jews are like so cool you have no idea. Arabs totally suck, you know?"

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

BTW, plants don't split water into it's components, they use solar energy to convert 6 H2O + 6 CO2 => C6H12O6 + 6 O2. If you want H2, try electrolysis or a catalytic chemical conversion from methane. See Mike Alexander (Mikebert) for details.

Actually plants do split water, the oxygen they give off comes from water. Howver they do not use the electrons freed from the oxygen in water to reduce H+, but rather to reduce CO2 to carbohydrates (CH2O).

Making hydrogen from plants doesn't seem very sensible to me. Making ethanol makes more sense and the technology is already quite far along. A "solution" to the energy problem would include more nuclear reactors, ethanol fuels, biodiesel, coal gasification (which also can be used as a source of hydrogen) and most important, increased efficiency.

For nuclear power we need a repository for the waste. Ragnorok, will you be volunteering your backyard? Obviously a solution for nuclear waste should involve payment of a subsidy to those who volunteer to store the waste. For example, if everyone living within a couple hundred miles of the proposed storage facility at the time of the facility went live were paid a yearly stipend as "compensation" and this stipend would be transferred to new owners of these properties, then I suspect the NIMBY concern over the facility would vanish. Perhaps other sites would volunteer to house the waste (and get the stipend). In this case the size of the stipend paid could be negotiated. The cost of the stipend program would be charged to the utilities generating the waste. In this way the full cost of the nuclear option would be captured (nuclear energy is actually quite expensive when you account for all the externalities).

Of course nuclear or coal gassification (both real solutions) cannot really get going as long as conventional CO2-generating coal plants are a permissable way to generate electricity (which they are with more being built every day). We have a lot of coal and may well run out of nuclear fuel before we run out of coal.

So to actually address the energy and climate issue proactively many things have to happen politically that simply are not likely to happen. For one thing the Republicans have to either (1) lose the Presidency and nine more Senate seats or (2) abandon their support for CO2-producing coal plants. Since the GOP writes legislation like "Clean Skies", number 2 ain't going to happen. And I don't think #1 is going to happen either, so doing something about energy and climate change in Washington is sort of like invading Iraq to install a Western democracy--a pipe dream.

I think the problem will be addressed. After electricity gets very expensive or even unavailable in places due to deteriorating infrastucture, millions of Americans will not be able to afford (or in some cases even have) air conditioning (just like folks in Iraq). Tens of thousands in the South and Southwest will perish in unprecedented killer heatwaves. More will perish along the Gulf Coast, in Florida and the Eastern seaboard by killer storms and unprecedented flooding.

Public opinion will shift in favor of doing something about energy and climate change. Private utilies will then retrofit their coal plants, build nuke plants with compensation for those living near repositories and generally clean up their act. Car companies will produce exclusively high mileage and alternate-fueled vehicles. Communities along the Eastern seaboard and the West Coast will build dikes and seawalls for storm protection. This and much more will happen because individual state governments (in blue regions) will have mandated it years eariler or (nomad-led) business will (eventually) do it for PR reasons (in red regions). It will cost far more than it would have if they had addressed the issue proactively now.

At the national level debate will continue to revolve around the threat of Chinese-backed married gay terrorists. Once we finally come to realize that the gay terrorist threat was overblown, about when the Nomads will be taking over, we will find the Crisis will have ended and the High begun.

The LA Times is suggesting one possible change of course in Iraq, allegedly being considered behind closed doors. The idea is to Unleash the Shiites.

AS SECTARIAN violence rises in Iraq and the White House comes under increasing pressure to revamp its strategy there, a debate is emerging inside the Bush administration: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and, instead, throw its lot in with the Shiites?

A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost.

I don't see this as a total win, nor risk free, but it is the first real alternative I've seen to the status quo. The current strategy is leading to disaster. Neither a brief addition of more troops nor a withdrawal is likely to change the current drift towards failure. Sharing power among the many Iraqi factions isn't working. Choosing and enabling a least worst faction before bugging out is worth considering.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

So here goes with my lame assed virtual stump speach: "My fellow Americans, it's time to put *America First (TM). Here is my proposed energy policy to free us from the whims of foriegn powers who now hold our future destiny in their dirty oily mits. Henceforth we will start a crash program to build breeder reactors throughout the land. Yes, these are nuclear plants, but here's the stark choices we face. We can remain slaves to the Mideast and subject our troops to mindless killing and further the forces of terrorism , or we can be free, once and for all of this. The other choice would be chronic blackouts/brownouts as well. It's high time we ditch using 19th century fuels!
Also, as part of the energy plan, I will introduce house bill 777 to provide funding to bioengineer plants to produce hydrogen fuel. I also plan on filing house bill 77 to provide for a crash program to explore and deploy x,y,z solar/methane/biodiesel technologies. House bill 77 will also enact place a floating oil tax such that oil prices will be set to $100.00/barrel, with the proceeds going to partially/fully fund house bill 77. The tax will be adjusted upward yearly by 4% or the inflation rate, whichever is higher. I realize many of you have purchased Mcmansions and SUV's. All I can say is tough %$#*.
If you want cheap oil, you can go fight for it. As for any NIMBY's, well, here's the deal, electricity does not come from light switches and gasoline goes not percolate up into gas pumps, OK ? Deal with it and no whining!

You had better get ready to be a dictator rather than a democratically elected president because no one will put up with that. I for one would like to see solutions that take into account the most important factor: human nature. For a fellow '62 cohort, you don't sound very pragmatic to me. Thats the problem with most of these plans, you ignore human nature. You can't impose things like that on a people in a democracy. It has to get REALLY REALLY bad in order for people to allow themselves to be subjected to the stuff you propose. We ain't even close, man - not by a long shot.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

The LA Times is suggesting one possible change of course in Iraq, allegedly being considered behind closed doors. The idea is to Unleash the Shiites.

Quote:
AS SECTARIAN violence rises in Iraq and the White House comes under increasing pressure to revamp its strategy there, a debate is emerging inside the Bush administration: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and, instead, throw its lot in with the Shiites?

A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost.


I don't see this as a total win, nor risk free, but it is the first real alternative I've seen to the status quo. The current strategy is leading to disaster. Neither a brief addition of more troops nor a withdrawal is likely to change the current drift towards failure. Sharing power among the many Iraqi factions isn't working. Choosing and enabling a least worst faction before bugging out is worth considering.

My first reaction is revulsion. Chances are that whatever we do at this time will be, by necessity, immoral (thanks to Dubya for the Catch-22). But under this plan we would be directly complicit in the slaughter of multitudes of Sunni Arabs. Furthermore, I don't think the Shi'ites would feel particularly beholden to us in any event and all we'll end up doing is directly helping Iran's position in the region.

That said, I don't know what the right thing to do is. The only thing that seems the least horrible to me of all options is to redeploy our troops so as to protect the flow of oil (for economic stability), divide Iraq into three quasi-nations (Shia Arab, Sunni Arab, and Sunni Kurd), and then let them and the neighboring powers fight it out. That will make us indirectly complicit in genocide rather than directly, which is small, cold comfort.

My first inclination is to not even be in this mess in the first place, but HC and his boy screwed the pooch every which way from Sunday on that one. My next inclination is to call for a draft and triple the amount of troops in the region and belately pursue the Powell Doctrine, but thanks to Globalization and the Tranzi Overclass and it's pillaging of America, we cannot economically afford to that even if the American people did accept a draft.

So that leaves my still highly distasteful suggestion above.

What a clusterf*ck. I agree with those who call for Dubya's impeachment, conviction, and imprisonment. He is the biggest boner of a man this nation has seen since Jefferson Davis.

Originally Posted by Linus

I enjoyed TNR's mea culpa on Iraq.

Originally Posted by The Editors

Also, Jews are like so cool you have no idea. Arabs totally suck, you know?"

Are you sure that last line is really in there? I don't have a subscription, so I'll have to take your word for it.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Just to touch base with rebranding Iraq, the Washington Post reports things going downhill in Iraq.

Hmm, my first thought as I was about to read the linked story was not "let's see what's happening in Iraq right now", but "what (not-so-)hidden agenda is this story going to be pushing?" We're in the All-Spin Zone now...

Originally Posted by Finch

Hmm, my first thought as I was about to read the linked story was not "let's see what's happening in Iraq right now", but "what (not-so-)hidden agenda is this story going to be pushing?" We're in the All-Spin Zone now...

Yah. A lot of MSM reports coming out of Washington say more about how the politicians want to spin things than fact. The gist of this one, though, is that there are a heck of a lot of factions shooting at a heck of a lot of other factions just now.

One of the changes in strategy being considered is giving up on playing 'neutral' in the ethnic wars, giving up on a neutral government that shares power, and instead choosing a least-of-evils Shiite faction and supporting them. Basically, if a strongman dictator is needed to end the violence, at this point the best we can do is choose which strongman dictator gets left in charge. Thus, instead of trying equally to prevent Shiites from killing Sunni, and Sunni from killing Shiite, we concentrate on protecting the Shiites while letting selected Shiite militias run wild.

Reports that everybody is shooting everyone and it is going out of control might be a spin to justify such a policy, but saying that everybody is shooting everybody else and things are going out of control might just be plain truth.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Actually plants do split water, the oxygen they give off comes from water. Howver they do not use the electrons freed from the oxygen in water to reduce H+, but rather to reduce CO2 to carbohydrates (CH2O).


Making hydrogen from plants doesn't seem very sensible to me. Making ethanol makes more sense and the technology is already quite far along. A "solution" to the energy problem would include more nuclear reactors, ethanol fuels, biodiesel, coal gasification (which also can be used as a source of hydrogen) and most important, increased efficiency.

We don't know yet. We use plants to produce any number of chemicals right now due to bioengineering. I'm just stating it should be tried as an option. I see nothing at all wrong with experimentation to gain what may be an efficient and cost effective way to convert photons to hydrogen.

For nuclear power we need a repository for the waste. Ragnorok, will you be volunteering your backyard?

I wouldn't have even considered writing a post like that since I knew such a query would be forthcoming. For the record, I don't mind. I grew up 4 miles away from a sulfurous fuming oil refinery and I'm still here I made it though the above ground nuclear tests as well. I'm sure I got my share of fallout at a young age. I see it like this. I'd rather have my lights stay on and store nuclar waste than have the whole power grid go kaput. I'd also rather put up with nuclar waste than to have any of my 5 Millie nephews go off to war in that god forsaken hellhole, the MidEast.

Obviously a solution for nuclear waste should involve payment of a subsidy to those who volunteer to store the waste. For example, if everyone living within a couple hundred miles of the proposed storage facility at the time of the facility went live were paid a yearly stipend as "compensation" and this stipend would be transferred to new owners of these properties, then I suspect the NIMBY concern over the facility would vanish. Perhaps other sites would volunteer to house the waste (and get the stipend). In this case the size of the stipend paid could be negotiated. The cost of the stipend program would be charged to the utilities generating the waste. In this way the full cost of the nuclear option would be captured (nuclear energy is actually quite expensive when you account for all the externalities).

I have no issue with most of the above. 200 miles seems a bit extreme though. I'm still at a loss about why folks have this thing about nuclear power. Coal plants spew out radiation (radium likes coal for some reason) , let alone the mercury emmisions.

Of course nuclear or coal gassification (both real solutions) cannot really get going as long as conventional CO2-generating coal plants are a permissable way to generate electricity (which they are with more being built every day). We have a lot of coal and may well run out of nuclear fuel before we run out of coal.

See above, there are things about coal burning that few take into consideration. I think you'd have to consider the sum of uranium and thorium. But sure, it's an option since we have it here.

So to actually address the energy and climate issue proactively many things have to happen politically that simply are not likely to happen. For one thing the Republicans have to either (1) lose the Presidency and nine more Senate seats or (2) abandon their support for CO2-producing coal plants. Since the GOP writes legislation like "Clean Skies", number 2 ain't going to happen. And I don't think #1 is going to happen either, so doing something about energy and climate change in Washington is sort of like invading Iraq to install a Western democracy--a pipe dream.

Of course I agree, which is why I labeled it "lame assed". Actually, I don't see much action to secure something besides 19th century fuels/technology until the whole infrastructure/economy comes crashing down. It's like a fault line. I know it's there, but I don't know when it will give way.

I think the problem will be addressed. After electricity gets very expensive or even unavailable in places due to deteriorating infrastucture, millions of Americans will not be able to afford (or in some cases even have) air conditioning (just like folks in Iraq). Tens of thousands in the South and Southwest will perish in unprecedented killer heatwaves. More will perish along the Gulf Coast, in Florida and the Eastern seaboard by killer storms and unprecedented flooding.

The above is the "earthquake" that will happen when my "virtual" fault line moves.

Public opinion will shift in favor of doing something about energy and climate change. Private utilies will then retrofit their coal plants, build nuke plants with compensation for those living near repositories and generally clean up their act. Car companies will produce exclusively high mileage and alternate-fueled vehicles. Communities along the Eastern seaboard and the West Coast will build dikes and seawalls for storm protection. This and much more will happen because individual state governments (in blue regions) will have mandated it years eariler or (nomad-led) business will (eventually) do it for PR reasons (in red regions). It will cost far more than it would have if they had addressed the issue proactively now.

Sigh.... How well I know. I'll save my tirade over "Debtor nation" for some other thread.

At the national level debate will continue to revolve around the threat of Chinese-backed married gay terrorists. Once we finally come to realize that the gay terrorist threat was overblown, about when the Nomads will be taking over, we will find the Crisis will have ended and the High begun

.

That's when I plan on expanding the "New Buffalo". Ie. casinos. I'll just sit back in my poker chair and enjoy the new "real" prosperity and most likely
have a good time in the next Awakening. The odds are, I'll be checking out at age 93 if those internet age predictors are worth anything.

Originally Posted by takascar2

You had better get ready to be a dictator rather than a democratically elected president because no one will put up with that. I for one would like to see solutions that take into account the most important factor: human nature.

Not to worry, I have enough "youthful and not so youthful indescretions that public office is pretty much off limits anyway. I don't think I'd even get elected to dog catcher, let alone POTUS.

For a fellow '62 cohort, you don't sound very pragmatic to me. Thats the problem with most of these plans, you ignore human nature. You can't impose things like that on a people in a democracy. It has to get REALLY REALLY bad in order for people to allow themselves to be subjected to the stuff you propose. We ain't even close, man - not by a long shot.

OK, I'm a bad boy. I guess being on the cusp really can suck at times. So I screwed up and let some sort of Boomer traits show through

Originally Posted by Linus

I enjoyed TNR's mea culpa on Iraq.

I attempted to open this myself and could not, without registration/payment. Are you vouching for the whole quote, including the last line???

David K '47

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

I'm still at a loss about why folks have this thing about nuclear power. Coal plants spew out radiation (radium likes coal for some reason) , let alone the mercury emmisions.

Ignorance and because the anti-nuclear loons used 3-mile Island and Chernobyl as propaganda. I get tired of refuting thier "Chernobyl caused 100,000 deaths" BS.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Just to touch base with rebranding Iraq, the Washington Post reports things going downhill in Iraq.

OK. This is just lovely. I read the article cited, but couldn't help but click on
yet another bodycount
X'ers and Millies both to the meatgrinder here.

Some lyrics and a pic for Bush's dream and our national nightmare.

Krokus - "Burning Bones of War"

In a restaurant
Drinkin' beaujoulais wine
You're with your favourite girl
And you're passin' the time

Well, you look through the paper
Holocaust in the roxy
Five bottles later
You're lovin' your lady

I can see
Burning bones of war
I can see
Ashes on the floor

There stands a soldier
In a barbed-wire land
The fear of death in his eyes
And a bottle in his hand
But, now the wine he's drinking
It's got the taste of blood
No more plastic war movies
To show him what it's like

I can see
Burning bones of war
I can see
Ashes on the floor

(Guitar solo)

I can see
Burning bones of war
I can see
Ashes on the floor

Future Iraq Picture

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I attempted to open this myself and could not, without registration/payment. Are you vouching for the whole quote, including the last line???

David K '47

I have to write something that's got more than 10 characters.
Try This.

Originally Posted by Odin

Ignorance and because the anti-nuclear loons used 3-mile Island and Chernobyl as propaganda. I get tired of refuting thier "Chernobyl caused 100,000 deaths" BS.

Chernobyl is not a fair comparison in any event. Our plants, and most certainly any new ones we build (if we build), are, or will be, nothing like Soviet ones, IIUC.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62
I'm still at a loss about why folks have this thing about nuclear power. Coal plants spew out radiation (radium likes coal for some reason) , let alone the mercury emmisions.

Originally Posted by Odin

Ignorance and because the anti-nuclear loons used 3-mile Island and Chernobyl as propaganda. I get tired of refuting thier "Chernobyl caused 100,000 deaths" BS.

You know, people tend to react that way when they see others get cancer and die from radiation. My particular viewpoint was developed after I watched my father and a great many of his co-workers in the U.S. uranium mines of the 50s, 60s and 70s, die from oats cell lung cancer. Technology could have been used that would have saved them from that fate, but sometimes in America (surprise!), business and the government just look the other way.

Same goes for those of us unlucky enough to have been downwind from those "harmless" tests in Nevada. Tends to make you cautious.