..and hell will be a safer place to be after these soldiers are through doing their work!

Way to see past the end of your nose!

And I’d call you a half-wit, but some of my best friends are half-wits, and they’d take offense at the association.

For example (and implied in the report) there is a tendency, as one approaches the left end of the spectrum, to believe that the ownership of more than one or two firearms automatically qualifies one as being an “extremist,” rather than a collector, enthusiast, hobbyist, or somesuch harmless thing.

The defense of such positions belies the truth of your claim. Dipshit.

Anyway, now all the people I’ve insulted will know who I am and will come to my house to kill me!

Oh, wait, they won’t. Firstly, I doubt I’m that important to anybody. And secondly, the type of character I like to insult does not, nor will ever, own a passport.

I can see how they would find a foothold in those returning from service. My father, and brother and uncle etc, are having a hard time getting their deserved health insurance and benefits, and I’m having a hard time wrestling my financial aid since he served forty years. I think we need to be more accepting that yes, things happened to them, yes, they need to be looked after, and yes they do know how to kill you about a hundred different ways with their bare hands.

I’m gonna stop rambling. I get very passionate about the vets.

I also have the selfish self preservationist thinking too. If I want trained killers, I want them happy so they are less likely to stab me to relieve boredom. I never understood why that doesn’t seem logical to those actually training the military and then receiving them when they get home.

Sure, the humane thing is to respect them and treat them well but even the selfish thing is to treat them well to contain the danger you’ve created. I do hate shortsightedness.

Besides, a resource neglected is a resource for your enemies, be they within or without. And… I’ll stop sounding like a bad fortune cookie starting… Now.

The intelligence assessment referred clearly to the lunatic fringe – neo-Nazi groups, Klan offshoots, the anti-choice extremists who actually kill doctors and bomb clinics, and their ilk. It did not try to imply that the entire Republican party came under its rubric. You nevertheless had mainstream commentators on the news, talk radio and in Right Blogsylvania claiming that the Obama administration was, through this assessment, trying to silence all dissent from the right.

The Democrats in Congress opted not to impeach Reagan for the Iran/Contra mess despite clear illegality. Cheney was right in the belly of the policy-making beast, deciding the main thing Reagan and North did wrong was get caught, and even that wasn’t too too bad.

Now here we are, and Cheney’s decided the main thing he did wrong was…absolutely fvcking nothing.

ENOUGH.

This time, a smirking arsehole needs to dance Danny Deever.

I do contend that extremists like Coulter and O’reilly get more support from mainstream, influential Conservatives than the Ward Churchills of the world get from Democrats.

But I acknowledge that “more support” is not remotely the same as “universal support”.

Of course people are going to be upset if you call them “whackjobs”, just as I hope I’ve upset you by calling you a dipshit.

The issue is that Democrats and other liberals can tell the difference between the far-left fringe and their own positions, whereas Republicans feel honour-bound to defend all right-wing positions, no matter how extreme, against any sort of criticism.

You’re talking about the reaction that comes when people explicitly claim that all of the Left follows the views of people like Ward Churchill, which is incorrect, unfair and slanderous, so one would bloody-well expect people to react negatively to such a stereotype.

Fools.

Our troops need so much more help (especially mentally upon returning home) than they’re getting… and most of them know more about how to harm us than we know ourselves.

PTSD is a killer. Of others and of selves. And the military (not particularly the people in it) has a pretty harsh stance against treating it, basically inferring that anyone who thinks they need help for PTSD is a cry baby.

I’ve had more friends kill themselves/others after coming home from the war than die over there (and I’m former army, dating a marine, i know a LOT of military people)

“Hell for a Democrat. Imagine being surrounded by patriotic Americans all of the time, most of whom vote Republican. ”

interesting – care to back that up with a cite that counters The Military Times annual poll of active-duty service members in 2007 gave the percentage of military Republicans at 46%. (and on a personal note, i’ve got a feeling that the results of the 2008 poll will have an even lower %)

Most of the time, I just find out that I am either wasting my time or dead wrong but I do have the fleeting moment of connection from time to time and as a wannabe writer, I crave that connection.

Aww, so cute! I think Fester might have just found himself a purple sock…

We’ve played this game before.

Such as allowing any two consenting adults to marry in any state, with inbreeding still being outlawed. Age of consent would be normalized for every state after consideration with Congress. Stuff like that would be federalized because this is a whole country.

However, the state based issues would actually be controlled by the state as long as they meet basic guidelines set by the federal government. This is to ensure that basic needs like education, water purity, etc are met at an adequate level.

Obviously, this is painfully vague but I shall blame my migraine on such things. I do believe in state control, I just balance that with the idea that this is one country and thus certain things should be homogenious throughout.

@purple: Sleep now.

in all seriousness – i think there’s gotta be a balancing between them all, there’s an obivious need and place for federal laws, same as state and local as well as international laws. if they’re all run properly and people respect the existing checks and balances that were supposed to be there then most of these issues wouldn’t be a problem. as for being fiscally conservative, i think obama is on the right track as far as fixing the whole mess we’re in and, again, there’s a need and a place for government spending. it doesn’t seem the spending is the problem insofar as the corruption involved in most aspects of the government are – the awarding of contracts without bids to companies what happen to be related to whoever is in office at the time (i’m referring mostly to cheney right there, but you can similar issues with the previous decision to bail out AIG – what genius sent that money out without strings attached? egads man, i was pulling my hair out in frustration with that)..
anyway, sorry got side tracked again. where were we going? a lovely vacation in the pacific i think…

Would that be about accurate?

Personally, I think there’s logic in that opinion. Meddling in Afghanistan, but leaving it alone in ruins when the Soviets left is one of the main reasons AQ and the Taliban were able to gain a foothold there. Wouldn;t want to see that happen again.

make your own decisions, i’m only here as a passing through instigator.