Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 04:51 PM) You do realize that the article clearly states: This is a necessary legal step before such action can take place but does not mean that it will. Newspapers sell on sensationalism, so far there is no concrete evidence that the US has actually armed the rebels (at least that I have seen as of right now). There has been talk that the US may do it. And I agree that giving out weapons is a really dangerous situation. But it's the idea that he's now given the OK for US-only intervention, whether that's providing weapons or not. And let's be real here, if he's openly discussing the possibility that the US will provide more than just medicine/food and that we might arm the rebels, there's zero reason for a "covert" US operation. We all know that means special forces doing secret things.

Ok, come on now. There's a difference between an objective of getting Iraq/Saddam out of Kuwait and ensuring middle east peace.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 04:19 PM) At the time there were no active Iraqi protests and there was no quasi-govt. Furthermore, Iraq was divided by religious beliefs (Sunni/Shia) with Saddam receiving substantial support from his group. because he tortured/killed people who did!

Also, there goes your claim that this is a UN/NATO only operation...

Fine, then we're done. Victory was achieved. Let's get ourselves removed from the situation. Why is there talk of potential this and potential that? Pretty sure the vast majority of Iraq was in full support of getting rid of Saddam. I don't think you have any basis to say this. It's no different than thinking that if we get rid of a murdering, torturing dictator that people would be happy enough to work together. Ghadafi might be gone, and this revolutionary government might take over in a more efficient way, but we have no idea what would result after their civil war ends. Then they should have veto'd it or at the very least let someone else spend the money and military resources to enforce the resolution. Why does the US have to take charge in all of these things if it's a UN-led effort? As discussed previously, this would get us into countless battles all over the world, but we don't do it. Oh please, until the UN decides it's done wasting the time and resources to continue refereeing the stalemate, other countries lose interest and refuse to vote for any further action and then we're back to were we started, only billions of dollars poorer for it (or worse, we pick up and do all the work ourselves) The most modern example prior to Iraq 2 was the Gulf War. Our objective? Get Saddam out of Kuwait. Victory was achieved, we went home. I dunno where you get this idea that wars become mired in uncertainty. Either we win the preset objectives or we give up and go home. We don't start fighting battles without knowing why and without knowing to what extent we'll be involved. And if that's Obama's military policy, then it's a screwed up one.

Ha, here's a good piece basically proving my point that no one actually knows what the plan is here: In essence, we're playing the role of referee to make sure this civil war doesn't get TOO out of hand. Good use of money...

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 01:44 PM) Because there is no such thing as "victory", if you want clear cut answers politics isnt going to be for you. The idea that war has a victory condition is some what antiquated in a post WWII society. When you are talking about military objectives that do not include capturing territory for your own nation, you are always going to be left with very uncertain goals. Some of the other questions are also hilariously bad: "didn’t answer every question" Unless he was on tv for the next 2,000 years he wasnt going to be able to answer every question. Historians still havent answered every question about the cause of the Civil War and lets not even get into the Vietnam war. We will be lucky if one day people could answer half the questions, let alone all of them. I guess maybe they just want some hollow victory parameters established so that we can pretend that we won the war, regardless of what happens and how long we have to stay in a variety of differently named roles after the declaration of victory is made. I have a hard time taking most of these politicians seriously because their so biased I cant trust them. And that goes for both Democrats and Republicans. this is not true.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 02:43 PM) Ive outlined what I hope to occur, but I do not believe I have ever used the term "victory", which suggests that there is some absolute condition that we must achieve. The situation is fluid, what may be a victory one day, could be a defeat another. Part of the reason I would never commit to what victory is that this is not my battle. This is the battle of the people of Libya, while I may want a secular capitalist democracy, they could decide on a religious socialist democracy. I dont really believe that I have the right to say which is the right answer nor to force my own political views on people. In my opinion the use of force to stop the advance on Benghazi was the condition. The UN stopped the advance. After the UN stopped the advance, anything else we can do to help the people of Libya is icing on the cake. That is why victory conditions are so silly, had Obama been more of a weasel he just would have said that victory was achieved, but now we are just enforcing the conditions of our victory. Its all hollow, we may as well get back to real discussion about how to end the fighting in Libya, instead of arguing about changing a history that has already happened. If I actually believed that any of those politicians cared, instead of just political posturing, maybe it would mean more, but at this point most politicians are too biased in their opinions. How do you not see that it's a problem engaging the US in third war without knowing what the f*** the end game is? There's never been a war that we've waged where we're like "well, lets just start fighting and we'll figure out in 5 years why we decided to do this in the first place" Goals might change, plans might be amended (and should be), but to say that it's a fluid situation is just more proof that we should never have gotten involved. I'm guessing you were one of the people who had a problem (for good reason) with the way BushCo rushed into Iraq without a proper plan. Well, we found out the hard way that going in guns blazing without a well thought out plan, with exit strategies and contingencies, is a stupid idea. Yeah, we're not to that point YET in Libya (and maybe never to that degree), but Balta brings up a good point. What if Ghadafi, who is insanely rich btw, is able to fend off the rebels for 6 months, despite a no fly zone? What if the rebellion stops or becomes too weak? Is NATO (the US) going to send ground troops in? Target him with a missile? Just pull out and have the whole thing be a complete waste of time/energy/money/life?

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 12:28 PM) There were no great teams. If you are saying Kentucky, Duke, UNC, etc. were overrated then who wasn't overrated? The Big East? College basketball sucked this year, so a lot of teams that would usually be top 15-20 type teams became top 5-10 teams. VCU was definitely not overrated. Butler was not overrated. There are a bunch of teams that were clearly underrated going into the tournament.

So, why isn't Obama getting reamed for the whole "Kill Team" fiasco? Wasn't Bush directly responsible for Abu Grhaib?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:43 AM) Wait a second...the biggest jolt that the Middle Class ever got was the end of the 2nd world war. That was the largest, most stable middle class we've ever had, and that was associated with a 90% top tier tax rate. As the top tier tax rate has gone down, as regulation of the financial industry has been dismantled, income has become more and more concentrated. Do you really want to argue that the regulatory and tax systems on the top tier are more stringent right now than they were int eh 1950's? There have been peripheral changes (Medicare, environmental legislation) but on straight income and financial shenanigans, it's been the exact opposite direction of what you say it has been. The thing I find jaw-dropping is that you're posting an article about how bad it is that states have to rely literally on the fortunes of less than a thousand people for their income because they so totally skew the nations' income distributions, but your conclusion is "those people should be taxed less and everyone else should be taxed more. That way their incomes go even higher". Here's my view of this whole thing. Tax the piss out of the rich. I have no problem with this. Maybe not the 90% tax rate we had before, but get it up to 50-60%, whatever. But at the same time, allow small businesses to flourish. Get people to be business owners again, not just workers. You guys have posted all of these graphs about the rise in CEO/top 1% pay. I wonder what the correlation is to the "big box" stores and other large businesses gobbling up the smaller shops. Basically without the successful (though not insanely rich) business owners, their wealth has gone to a few people. I'd love for the government to somehow devise a way to make small to medium size businesses the preferable way to own a business. I think we'd get more people employed at better wages. Obviously you can't do it retroactively (forcing huge companies to become smaller), so maybe you just offer a ton of financial incentives for companies under a certain number of employees. I have no idea how we'd switch to that kind of economic system, but I think that should be the goal. Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume that the greatest years for the middle class was back in the day when we had a lot more small to medium size businesses that were local or regional.

Wow, so it sounds like Painter to Missouri is a done deal. I actually think that's a great hire for Missouri. Might be rough on recruiting for a couple of years, but he's a solid coach who "rebuilt" Purdue after Keady's last few years. Edit: Might be premature. There's the lesson for not relying on message boards for breaking news.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 05:13 PM) Guenther probably won't be around much longer... I wish that were true but I feel like we're on about year 6 of that rumor.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 07:58 AM) Honestly, and I know i'll get killed for this, but Texas or Kentucky and frankly after winning the BET UConn had an argument too. Not saying UNC was a bad team at all, but they were being talked up as one of the main national title threats. The committee said if they won the ACC Tourney they would have been a #1. I know college basketball was weak this year but that was not a 1/2 seed. They should have lost to Washington in the second round, they got lucky Washington plays so out of control. I mean they had two top 25 wins all year. And RPI is kind of a joke, i'm sure you know that. It's all a moot point right now but they just never struck me as a legitimate threat. They played erratically and then turned it on at the end. They were a young team and it showed. I just never bought into the end of year hype with them I guess. Agreed. The ACC was terrible, their only competition was Duke, and yes, Kentucky is also overrated. This is like saying Duke wasn't overrated because it was a #1 seed. That's BS. Duke wasn't deserving of a #1 seed (shocker there, Duke getting an inflated seeding). They won nothing but the ACC title and had one top 25 win all season. That's a crappy resume for a #1. That elite 8 game between UNC and Kentucky was fantastic, but that's two decent teams, not two great teams. Kentucky is a no-call travel away from losing in the first round.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 07:32 PM) Please, explain. Anything you've tried so far has failed badly. Well, if you can't grasp what i'm saying there's not much I can do. I've provided similarities, you're choosing to ignore them. For the 3rd time, no one is saying that this situation is EXACTLY like Iraq, but how are there not similarities when we have a President using about 5 different excuses to justify involvement, the exact scope of our involvement isn't clear, and we really have no way of knowing how long we'll be there. So, yeah, again, that's three similarities to the situation we're having in Iraq. You told me before that the way I perceived this whole situation was wrong. I asked you to provide me with evidence that I was. You haven't yet. Probably because I'm right. The US was probably the 3rd country (behind France and Britain) to call out for some kind of action, and once we did, we took the lead and performed the vast majority of air strikes. So, again, how is that "noticeably divorced from reality?"

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) I figured the first part, but I sorta expected that 2k5 would have a legit response. Perhaps Obama's Libya actions caused the bus crash, but Bush could have prevented it. Lol. No, I meant for that link to be there. Goes back to my earlier argument that instead of spending 600 million and counting on this Libya situation, we may be better suited to spend that money back here at home, where, you know, people still get shot at by rogue gang members. I think ssk5's comment might relate to this article, comparing Obama's speech with Bush's second inaugural address (the source of my quote).

OBAMA: “For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 11:24 AM) I just said that if Illinois is on his list that I think Purdue could be too and that I really think he wants one of elite programs or Indiana ultimately. Yeah that was directed to the other people who are claiming Illinois wouldn't be considered.

Pretty good article about Obama's statements during his speech, this one is pretty telling:

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Mar 28, 2011 -> 02:23 PM) Well if you think that VCU is a better basketball team than OSU or UNC because they advanced to the Final Four, then you haven't been watching the same basketball as me. This is the truth. I guess I am the one arguing it, but the "best" argument doesn't matter in the long run anyway. Ten years from now, all that will be remembered was that VCU made an improbable run and that Connecticut was the national champion. Why? Give me a good argument to believe you. If VCU wins the title, how are they not at least in the discussion of best teams (which is good enough since no one would agree on who the "best" is if they all lost). Seems to me that people ignore what NC teams have to go through to win the whole thing. It's not a fluke. Sure, there are some easy roads to the title, but do you really want to claim that VCU has played no one so far? UNC was incredibly overrated btw. Just because they played in a high caliber environment doesn't mean they were a high caliber team.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 10:41 AM) I agree that Illinois is above Purdue. I just don't know exactly what the guy wants. He may want to stay in Indiana for all we know and Purdue could be the opportunity he gets to be in a major conference in the state. That's why I would debate Michigan St. being a top job, Izzo is the number one reason far and away that the program is so good. Obviously Izzo is a huge part of it, but I think a lot of coaches could do well there once they get established in the high school scene. It's not like Izzo's recruiting classes are all non-Michigan guys. Kids want to go to MSU, not Michigan. And I fail to see why Illinois wouldn't be on his list. I'm not arguing Illinois is equal to these other programs, but based on location and membership in a big conference it'd be getting him to that upper level. Purdue and Indiana make sense for the same reasons.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 09:14 AM) It's not comparable to Iraq because the size, scope, reasons, costs, lives lost, or any other possible quantitative measure shows that it's a s*** comparison that people who were gullible enough to support the Iraq war are trying to use to bolster their failed positions. Oh bulls***. No one is claiming it's Iraq 2. But continue to ignore the obvious similarities. Also, I'm still waiting on your links to show that the US/Obama was leading the charge on this from day one.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 08:26 AM) If we were willing to begin launching air raids in Libya (which we wouldn't be doing if it wasn't for their oil supplies, even you admit that)... Do you really think we'll allow that country to endure a period like what Egypt is going through right now...constant riots, no recognizable government, fairly violent debate over the direction of the country? Esp. if it disrupts the oil exports? Anyway...it's interesting how "breaking Qadaffi's military" became the goal of this humanitarian operation almost immediately, and how the army is providing the rebels with close air support while denying that it's providing close air support. It's also interesting that people, including you, continue to say that the goal is to remove Quadaffi, but that is exactly my point about the lack of an exit strategy. Balta, we don't agree on much, but i'm with you 100% here. As soon as we dropped the first bomb we were invested in this thing and are now stuck to see it through. And NSS, how is this situation not comparable to Iraq? Obviously they were two totally different wars brought about by different scenarios, but look at it a little more broadly. We're using multiple justifications here for military action despite none of them being the true reason (oil). It's humanitarian mission....it's to get rid of a bad leader....it's instilling a stable government in Libya.... We started a military action without knowing how it's going to play out. Obama's speech was exactly what I thought it would be: hit all the positive talking points for military action, ignore all the negatives, promise we won't get TOO involved (as if that means anything since we already are), and say god bless america. The Great Communicator has been pretty s***ty so far in communicating.

QUOTE (He_Gawn @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 08:48 AM) Stevens wouldn't even sniff at the Illinois job. Everyone knows what jobs he is waiting for, and which one in particular. Regardless, Weber isn't going anywhere. Duke? Or Indiana?

QUOTE (hitlesswonder @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 02:34 AM) This is surprisingly entertaining. Illini message boards are stuffed full of posts hoping Painter goes to Mizzou and Weber leaves UI for Purdue. Of course, they are delusional about how attractive the Illinois program is and the quality of coach they would get to replace Weber (Stevens isn't leaving Butler for Illinois...). If they throw enough money at him he might. Illinois is the kind of program that would fit him perfectly - midwest, big ten, "small" community but tons of fans. He's within mere hours of his recruiting home and would have the opportunity to start getting kids from Chicago. Is he gonna leave for a 10% raise? No. But a couple million a year? 5-6 year long deal? I could see it. But Weber isn't going anywhere. The admn likes him, and so does Guenther.