lostfan

Ford declined federal money IIRC. They didn't need it and didn't want to have the government telling them what they could or couldn't do.

Must be a slow news day if this is being brought up again.

There are a lot of things we do here in the United States that would be considered blatant election fraud in other industrialized countries.

Социализм является путь к величию. Мы должны убедить kapkomet словами или с помощью силы. edited to green so kap's head doesn't explode when he figures out what I just said.

Hey guys, next Saturday (3 October) I'll be doing the AIDS Walk Washington in downtown DC. I'm asking you guys for help - I'm looking for people to sponsor my team with donations if anyone is interested. If you can't donate, no big deal at all, but if you could that'd be awesome. The link to my team is below: http://www.aidswalkwashington.org/faf/sear...547029&cj=Y Thanks!

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 25, 2009 -> 09:26 AM) I'm going to have to disagree here. He knows everything that is being done, functionally. He is intentionally unaware of the methodologies employed by the captains. This is by design, and it works in both directions. Right. His "favors" are implied. He intentionally doesn't know so it doesn't get traced back to him. That's how he never gets caught doing anything.

I'm not sure what it would take for Daley to NOT get re-elected. A federal indictment?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 11:41 PM) There appears to have been a totally separate one aimed at a Federal building in Springfield, ILL that was also broken up in an identical manner. I looked at the picture and assumed this guy was a domestic terrorist because he was white but as it turns out he changed his name to Talib Islam and idolized John Walker Lindh. Egg on my face.

The main takeaway from the election fiasco was that the Ayatollah's hold on power wasn't airtight and showed serious cracks for the first time. It's not clear how it will play out from here. It wasn't clear in 1979 when the Shah left for a few months either.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:39 PM) Which should tell you something. About socialism? lol

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:35 PM) The funny thing is that Achy was elected for his socialist stuff, such as redistrubution of oil money. Yeah and their economy isn't doing so great either which is one of the reasons so many people were thinking he would lose. I actually wonder what the real numbers looked like if they weren't so obvious in how they rigged them. He isn't as unpopular in the rest of Iran as it seems from here.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:30 PM) Of course, and isn't that kind of the point? What do you mean? I was saying that both Sunni Arabs and Iranians are equally as anti-Israel. Most of the sentiment comes from media coverage of the conflict over the past few decades, not so much religion. Religion is just kind of a convenient shell for it that lets bin Laden types exploit it.

Eh foreign policy study isn't really my business, that's more like a hobby. I think I already said that they used the Israel-Palestine conflict to play the card. Either that or forcing the self-fulfilling prophecy with "see, the world is against Iran." They don't buy that in the cities and such but that's not Ahmadinejad's base of support.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:23 PM) Not at all. I don't assume that about Jordan. They are just as Muslim as Iran. The difference is that I have yet to see the leader of Jordan on TV calling for the destruction of Israel, since about the 80's. I didn't mean "you" as in southsider2k5. But Arab leaders are mostly pretty moderate and pretty pro-US, and this pisses off their populations a lot but they don't really have a choice since the leaders were "elected" with 100% of the vote. The actual population is much more anti-Israel and if they had elections (to use the term loosely) like Iran does then you'd see Arab versions of Ahmadinejad.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:16 PM) The arab world doesn't give a rats ass about the Palestinians. They're pawns to perpetuate the larger cause. The same thing applies in Iran too. By the way if the "larger cause" you're referring to is the expansion of Islam then the overt destruction of Israel wouldn't really help. They wouldn't really need to, all they'd have to do is wait a couple of generations for the Palestinians to out-populate the Israelis.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 01:00 PM) That is the impression I have gotten so far - they were tracking some folks, the folks got together in an unexpected way, and then a few details of the situation on the ground changed such that they needed to act quicker than originally planned. I just hope that doesn't mean they didn't gather enough evidence to put these people away. QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:04 PM) And the FBI busted up a plot to blow up a Dallas skyskraper today. The agents actually gave the guy intert explosives, he parked the SUV in an underground parking garage, called a number to denonate the explosives, and was arrested when he hit "send". That is just a little too damn close. There's a rope the FBI tries to walk that's pretty delicate, if they're aware someone is in a terrorist cell they won't go and arrest him right away. There isn't much value in that. They'll wait, see what he's doing, see who he talks to and basically give him as much rope as possible to hang himself with without allowing anything to happen. Then you can either take down his buddies or start watching them too. The more you have the easier you can prosecute them and the worse their sentence will be. I think it's pretty amazing that the FBI has been basically batting 1.000 on this sort of thing and they haven't missed a beat since the administration changed. Knock on wood.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 12:49 PM) kind of hope lost can add some light without compromising anything. Of what it says in this, how much of the tactics to track him are...ahem...of recent legality. Say...8 years... out of curiosity. The government in general is pretty risk-averse now. The FBI is a lot more experienced in handling this sort of thing since 2002-ish and everyone pretty much knows where the boundaries are.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 10:04 PM) The destruction of Israel is the centerpiece of their public policy. Them and basically all the Arab countries for the past 50-60 years. It doesn't count for much of anything. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settled and they were still talking the same game then I'd be worried. Now, not so much.

Who's saying Iran is innocent, I'm saying they are not insane and suicidal and trying to frame what they're doing in regular geopolitical terms. People just assume that because they're a Muslim country and they're state sponsors of terror that they're the same thing as al-Qaida.

Yeah I remember during the campaign season it was being said that there could be as many as 3 justices being replaced but they were all libs. Who's the oldest conservative? Scalia?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 09:10 PM) What would have happened? I don't know that I could even imagine the societial impact of people's entire wealth disappearing in a nanosecond. Yeah that's what I'm trying to do and I can't. Wouldn't we basically have to start everything over somehow?

So what actually happens if the entire Western banking system collapses, like what it appears would have happened?

If what you were saying were true this would be documented and something that Iranians on the streets were aware of. It would also be a part of the Islamic Revolution values that they supported when they changed their government and not a secret policy objective. Ahmadinejad is an obnoxious anti-Semitic piece of s*** but this doesn't mean the Iranian government is going to sacrifice Iran to destroy Israel, and Palestine along with it.

What is a "society" if it isn't "collectivist" to some degree?

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 08:38 PM) You're more "conservative" then you allow yourself to admit. But the guy's a moron to say what he said. I know that I'm pretty close to the line but what puts me to the left of center is where I see the role of government. I used to be about where Balta is and I moved to the right a few steps. The poor guy though, he means well. I can tell he gets all of his information almost exclusively from talk radio and prime-time opinion shows on Fox. He told me that Reagan always balanced the budget and when I told him Reagan never had any balanced budgets he said it was because the Democrats earmarked it all. lol. the last line in that chat is somewhere where I firmly agree with conservatives. But it's not in contradiction to some basic liberal ideas either.